Only four countries have not registered delegations at the COP30 climate talks in Belém, Brazil: Afghanistan, Myanmar, San Marino and for the first time, the United States. Others however are picking up the Trump administration’s slack to underscore the popular support that climate action and investment in renewables has in the US. DW reports:
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‘Europe’s Environment 2025’ is the European Environment Agency’s (EAA) is the seventh five-year report issued by the watchdog group. The findings are not a big surprise. The chart above illustrates that the safe operating space of six of the nine planetary boundaries are being exceeded.
Continue readingCarbon Brief has just published an in-depth factcheck of some of the most common myths about solar power.
Screenshot of what is covered:
The 11-day August heat wave that ended on Monday (17th) was deemed a ‘rare event’ by Météo-France. It ranks among the most severe ever experienced in the south of France, rivaling the historic August 2003 event, according to the French weather forecasting adminstration. It was also the second-longest recorded in August.
Continue readingAustralia’s ABC News report on a University of Queensland and Barcelona Supercomputing Centre study that found that climate change is responsible for a nearly 40 per cent decline in the average abundance of tropical bird species since 1950.
From the report:
The joint study from the University of Queensland and Barcelona Supercomputing Centre in Spain, published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, found severe weather events had combined to reduce fertility, alter breeding habits, and kill both young and mature birds.
Using statistical modelling and noting how those bird populations changed after abnormal weather events, the authors were able to specifically assess climate change’s impact on species.
They found a 25-38 per cent decline in the overall abundance of tropical species, largely due to prolonged and extreme heat.
Link.
The Trump EPA is saying that carbon pollution isn’t harmful for your health after all.
I’ve heard this recently likened to a criminal, caught in the act, destroying all evidence of his crime so he can continue committing the same crime.
Continue readingFrom the press release issued today (7 Jul 2025):
“June 2025 saw an exceptional heatwave impact large parts of western Europe, with much of the region experiencing very strong heat stress. This heatwave was made more intense by record sea surface temperatures in the western Mediterranean. In a warming world, heatwaves are likely to become more frequent, more intense and impact more people across Europe.”
– Samantha Burgess, Strategic Lead for Climate at ECMWF
Global Temperatures
And
Europe and other regions
And
Sea surface temperature
From The Guardian (5 Jul 2025): How chefs, street performers and cheesemongers struggled to get their jobs done in record-busting temperatures.
Via Copernicus: Europe is the fastest-warming continent, and the impacts of climate change here are clear. 2024 was the warmest year on record for Europe, with record temperatures in central, eastern and southeastern regions.
The European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service released its dataset for August 2024 today, which found that: August 2024 was the joint-warmest August globally in the ERA5 dataset, tied with August 2023, with an average surface air temperature of 16.82°C. Last month was 0.71°C above the 1991-2020 average for August. This concludes the warmest global… Continue reading
Between 2012 and 2022, around the world, one environmental defender was killed every other day, according to international human rights group Global Witness. That’s nearly 2,000 peasants, farmers, fisherfolk and activists murdered for defending their land from some of the biggest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions — including mining, logging and agribusiness corporations — as well as hydropower projects, which have their own ruinous environmental impact.
Link.
From Inside Climate News (18 May 2023):
“Water storage in many of the world’s biggest lakes has declined sharply in the last 30 years, according to a new study, with a cumulative drop of about 21.5 gigatons per year, an amount equal to the annual water consumption of the United States.
Continue readingFrom Propublica (18-May-2023).
When you add externalities into the cost of fossils fuels, it’s not remotely close to a profitable business.
Cleaning up, plugging and decommissioning California’s old gas and oil wells will cost an estimated $21 billion, three times the industry’s projected future profits. And those costs don’t include cleaning methane and carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Continue readingFrom Euractiv (20 Jan 2023):
There are around 3,900 ski resorts in Europe, the majority of which are located in Germany, Italy, France and Austria.
Most threatened are those in lower altitudes because the snow line, which marks the area with permanent cover, moves up by about 150 metres with each increase of 1 degree Celsius.
“We are already experiencing warmer winters, which will escalate beyond 2030″ and further deteriorate skiing conditions, according to the Slovak Institute of Environmental Policy.
Continue readingFrom Earthwatch Europe and UKGBC (January 2023):
Tiny Forest is an innovative tree planting initiative that establishes accessible, nature-rich green spaces in our towns and cities, where they are needed most by people and wildlife. The disproportionate power of a Tiny Forest is delivered through three positive impacts:
Tiny Forest’s approach is about planting ‘the right trees in the right places’.
More.
A nine month investigation by The Guardian (publishe 18 Jan 2023), SourceMaterial and Die Zeit found that some of the world’s biggest companies, from Netflix to Ben & Jerry’s, are pouring billions into an offsetting industry whose climate claims appear increasingly at odds with reality.
Source Material story / Guardian story.
From The Financial Post (17 Jan 2023): A study published Jan. 17 by a dozen groups including Reclaim Finance, Stand.earth, the Rainforest Action Network, Les Amis de la Terre France, and South Africa’s Centre for Environmental Rights, says the 56 largest members of the Net-Zero Banking Alliance — a sectoral subset of GFANZ members —… Continue reading
From Science (13 Jan 2023):
A new study showes how Exxon scientists predicted global warming with shocking accuracy between 1977 & 2003. The company failed to act.
A complimentary offer from the NY Times Insider TBooks collection, “Climate Refugees: How Global Change Is Displacing Millions” is a compilation of Times reporting in 2016 on people and communities forced to resettle due to the effects of climate change.
The ebook brings together the work of Times reporters who spent months on the ground in several countries on four continents: Bolivia, China, Niger, Kiribati and the US (Alaska and Louisiana where the first federal grant was given to relocate climate refugees). I’ve read most of the stories and linked to some separately here, but it is quite useful and convenient to have them all bundled together.
Available for just about every kind of reader or simple PDF. Get it here (link updated 22 July 2025).