Climate
Washington (AFP) - The world is currently experiencing its second major coral bleaching event in 10 years, with reef systems from Australia to Florida teetering on the brink of disaster following months of record-breaking ocean heat, a US agency announced Monday. The consequences of coral bleaching are far-reaching, affecting not only the health of oceans but also the livelihoods of people, food security, and local economies. Severe or prolonged heat stress leads to corals dying off, but there is hope for recovery if temperatures drop and other stressors such as overfishing and pollution are...
AFP
New York (AFP) - Despite the recent cancellation of a next-generation US nuclear plant, backers of the carbon-free power source remain hopeful new projects will come on line by the end of the decade. Late last year, the US energy company NuScale announced it was pulling the plug on a small modular reactor (SMR) project in the western state of Idaho. The project -- the sole SMR design yet to be approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- faced exploding costs that took the estimated price from $5.3 billion up to $9.3 billion. The "collapse of NuScale's project should spell the end for s...
AFP
Los Angeles (AFP) - The booming use of electric vehicles in parts of California is reducing CO2 emissions in those areas, a study showed Thursday, bolstering a key pillar of the state's drive towards net zero. Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, say a network of sensors set up around the San Francisco Bay Area -- where Teslas and other EVs are a common sight -- has logged a small but steady drop in the volume of planet-warming carbon dioxide being pumped out every year. "We show from atmospheric measurements that adoption of electric vehicles is working, that it's having the ...
AFP
New York (AFP) - The US conglomerate General Electric, co-founded more than 130 years ago by Thomas Edison, is opening a new chapter in its history on Tuesday: its break-up into three independent entities which will then concentrate on their disparate core businesses. The group announced its "spin-off" project in November 2021, which was to be carried out in several stages. An initial split took place in January 2023 with the creation of GE HealthCare, bringing together all the health care activities. The official finalization of the separation comes Tuesday, with General Electric disappearin...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - Climate change is causing heat waves to slow to a crawl, exposing humans to extreme temperatures for longer than ever before, a study published in Science Advances said Friday. While previous research has found climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more frequent and more intense, the new paper differed by treating heat waves as distinct weather patterns that move along air currents, just as storms do. For every decade between 1979 to 2020, researchers found heat waves slowed down by an average of five miles (eight kilometers) an hour per day. "If a heatwav...
AFP
Houston (AFP) - Though geothermal represents only a tiny fraction of current US energy production, several businesses and President Joe Biden's administration are betting on technological advances to make it a backbone of the green transition. "If we can capture that heat beneath our feet, it can be the clean, reliable, baseload-scalable power for everybody from industries to households," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told the CERAWeek conference in Houston this past week. Her department estimates that geothermal energy could overtake hydroelectric and solar power in the country by 2050. ...
AFP
Houston (AFP) - Texas and 15 other US states filed a lawsuit on Thursday challenging the Biden administration's freeze on new liquefied natural gas exports. Citing the climate crisis, Democratic President Joe Biden in January paused the granting of new permits to ship LNG abroad. "This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time," Biden said at the time. The United States only began exporting LNG in 2016 but rapidly became the world's biggest supplier, driven in part by Europe turning away from Russian gas following its invasion of Ukra...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - This winter was the warmest ever recorded in the mainland United States, data showed Friday -- the latest sign the world is moving towards an unprecedented era as a result of the climate crisis. The average temperature in the so-called lower 48 US states from December 2023 to February 2024 was 37.6 degrees Fahrenheit (3.1 Celsius), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, the highest in a record that goes back to the 1890s. It was 5.4F (3.0C) above the 20th-century average for the world's second biggest greenhouse gas emitter behind China. The second-warmest...
AFP
Paris (AFP) - Last month was the warmest February on record globally, the ninth straight month of historic high temperatures across the planet as climate change steers the world into "uncharted territory", Europe's climate monitor said Thursday. The last year has seen an onslaught of storms, crop-withering drought and devastating fires, as human-caused climate change -- intensified by the naturally-occurring El Nino weather phenomenon -- stoked warming to likely the hottest levels in over 100,000 years. Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) service last month said the period from Februa...
AFP
Paris (AFP) - Sea level rise could hit major US cities like New Orleans and San Francisco harder than expected by mid-century because coastal land is sinking, researchers said Wednesday, warning current flood defences leave people and property at risk. Global warming is melting ice sheets and glaciers and raising ocean water levels across the world, with predictions that the United States will see some of the fastest increases, threatening coastal regions that are home to some 30 percent of the country's population. Sea level rise of around 30 centimetres (nearly a foot) is already project...
AFP
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