Hybrid systems offer air conditioning, backup heating while cutting emissions

This article was written by Emily Chung and was published by CBC News on January 3, 2024.

2023 ‘surprised all climate scientists,’ says deputy director of EU’s climate agency

This article was written by Nicole Mortillaro and was published by CBC News on January 9, 2024.

The year 2023 has been confirmed as the warmest on record, driven by human-caused climate change and boosted by the natural El Niño weather event.

This article was written by Mark Poynting and Erwan Rivault, and was published by BBC News on January 9, 2024.

Rapid reduction in fossil fuel burning urgently needed to preserve liveable conditions, say scientists, as climate damage deepens

This article was written by Damian Carrington and was published in The Guardian on January 9, 2024.

This article was written by Kate Abnett of Reuters News and was published by CTV News on January 9, 2024.

James Hansen says limit will be passed ‘for all practical purposes’ by May though other experts predict that will happen in 2030s

This article was written by Olive Milman and was published in The Guardian on January 8, 2024.

This article was written by Simon Ingram and Sarah Gibbens, and was published in the National Geographic on October 29, 2021. Photographs by Ciril Jazbec.

Melting ice, wildfires, heat waves, floods: These images show life in a warming world, and solutions to address it.

A huge ice cone, called a conical ice stupa, towers over a man in the north Indian territory of Ladakh. As snow dwindles and glaciers recede, these stupas are being constructed to store water in frozen form. This 110-foot structure (33.5 meters), located near the village…Show more

As the UN’s global climate change conference—COP26—approaches, ever-more-extreme weather has shown us climate change is here. Yet COVID-19 and the actions taken to control it have also shown us that cooperation can prompt dramatic global change.

Sometimes, all it takes is one photo to spark that action. Sometimes, it’s a collection of vignettes that show us what is at stake, and more importantly, inspire ideas of what we can do about it. In short, pictures can change the world. And as our world comes to terms with the reality of climate change, never has that been more needed.

Some of these images offer an instant visual punch to the gut: a dying coral outcrop on the Great Barrier Reef, for instance, juxtaposed with an older photo of how vibrant coral can be. Some of the images inspire in their ability to show that change is not only possible, it is happening—and that we have the ingenuity and the skill to make a real difference. 

But amidst these odds, there is hope. Nature is resilient, and given the chance, it can recover, if we have the courage to make it happen.

Left: A humpback whale mother and her calf swim past Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. The humpback whale population was decimated by commercial whaling in the first half of the 20th century. Commercial whaling ended in the early 1970s, and the humpback population has rebounded, in some places to near pre-whaling numbers.

PHOTOGRAPH BY GABRIEL BARATHIEU, BIOSPHOTO, MINDEN PICTURES

Right: Melting water carves grooves into an iceberg in Antarctica. Icebergs have always been melting, but the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth. The region is expected to warm more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) in the next 20 years.

PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL NICKLEN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Left: The Carlen family has been managing an ice cave in Switzerland’s Rhône Glacier since 1988, but when rising temperatures began melting the ice, they came up with a novel idea—for eight years they’ve covered part of the glacier in fleece blankets that reflect sunlight. Th…Read More

PHOTOGRAPH BY CIRIL JAZBEC, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Right: In August, the Caldor Fire blazed toward California’s Lake Tahoe Basin. Firefighters with CAL FIRE and other fire departments tried to protect homes and shelters. About 1,000 structures, more than 700 of which were homes, were destroyed.

PHOTOGRAPH BY LYNSEY ADDARIO, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Left: In September, houseboats sit in a narrow strip of water in California’s Lake Oroville. At the time, the lake was at just 23 percent of its capacity as extreme drought struck the region. Over the summer, the Western U.S. was gripped by deadly heat, severe drought, and massive wildfires.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOSH EDELSON, AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Right: A family has dinner in their flooded home in Central Java, Indonesia. For over 40 years, they watched as their productive farmland slowly disappeared under the sea. They have physically raised everything in their home to cope.

PHOTOGRAPH BY AJI STYAWAN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Left: The Algae Cultivation Center, a 16,00-square-foot building inside the Technical University of Munich, is focused on using algae to create biokerosene and other chemicals. With highly-efficient LED lights and transparent glass, scientists can recreate the climate conditions of any location on Earth, in turn simulating algae’s growth cycle. Results here will be used to create lighter fuels and construction material for the aviation industry.

Right: In Zurich, Switzerland, a machine made by the Climeworks company is directly capturing carbon dioxide from the air, an effort to mitigate climate change. First, air is drawn into the collector with a fan and a filter captures the CO2. Then, the gas is heated, which highly concentrates it, after which it can be collected and recycled or stored.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVIDE MONTELEONE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Left: Moving passengers through the skies without fossil fuels is enormously challenging, especially for long-haul flights. For shorter flights, many companies, including Wisk, a California start-up, are designing electric planes. Wisk’s plane, which flies without a pilot, can take off and land vertically, eliminating the need for a runway.

PHOTOGRAPH BY CRAIG CUTLER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Right: At the Ford Ion Park in Allen Park, Michigan, batteries are researched and tested. Batteries are the heart of electric vehicles, and automakers are trying to make them lighter, faster charging, and longer lasting.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID GUTTENFELDER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Left: The Global Himalayan Expedition is a project to bring solar energy to remote villages around the world. Here, expedition team members and residents of the Yal Village trek with solar panels, batteries, and other installation paraphernalia. The journey took two days of driving over treacherous roads and eventually finishing on foot.

PHOTOGRAPH BY SAUMYA KHANDELWAL, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

Right: At Columbia University, a panel coated with a novel polymer film radiates heat through the atmosphere to outer space, making it dramatically cooler than its surroundings. Panels like this one could reduce the need for air conditioning.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JYOTIRMOY MANDAL

Climate change is rapidly reshaping life on Earth—but our efforts to combat it also reached important milestones this year.

This article was written by Bykieran Mulvaney and was published in National Geographic on December 15, 2023.

Increasing temperatures, a melting Arctic, cataclysmic Canadian wildfires: in 2023, the effects of climate change and environmental threats to wildlife set records.

But not all the environmental milestones of 2023 were negative. Amid these causes for concern were signs of hope.

A trend away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy continues apace, even if not at quite the rate of change that many would like to see. While some species were declared extinct, other showed themselves for the first time in decades. And the 50^th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act highlighted that some species that had seemed destined to disappear are now, relatively speaking, thriving.

Both the good and the bad, here are six environmental milestones from the past year.

Temperatures kept climbing

With just two weeks remaining, 2023 appears destined to be the warmest year on record, with average temperatures approximately 2.5°F higher than they were before the industrial revolution. This year, we saw the hottest July, August, September, and October on record. July was the hottest month ever recorded, and July 4 was the warmest single day ever documented—possibly one of the warmest days in the past 125,000 years.

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels, the primary driver behind such temperature increases, also reached a new high in 2023, having increased by 1.1 percent since 2022.

This extreme heat has also been fueled by a strong El Niño event, which emerged this past spring in the Northern Hemisphere and developed rapidly during summer. According to the World Meteorological Organization, this weather pattern will likely lead to even higher temperatures in 2024.

Fire damage spreads

In a year that saw a succession of extreme weather events, few stood out more than the wildfires that swept across swaths of Canada and polluted the skies over much of the United States. A record 45.7 million acres burned across the country in 2023, almost three times the previous record amount and an area approximately twice as large as Portugal.

According to a study by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, Canada’s wildfires emitted 410 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, roughly the equivalent of Mexico’s emissions in 2021 and not far off the 546 million metric tons that Canada itself emitted as a result of human activity in 2022.

The Arctic and Antarctic sweltered and melted

Earth’s most northerly region continues to warm four times faster than the rest of the planet.

In December, NOAA published its annual Arctic Report Card, which found that 2023 was the warmest year ever recorded in the region.

In Greenland, temperatures at Summit Station, high on the ice sheet, temporarily nudged above freezing on June 26—temperatures only seen five times in the past 34 years.

At the other end of the Earth, sea ice dwindled to a record low.

For several years, Antarctic sea ice—which melts almost entirely each summer—had been stable, despite the warming ocean below it. Researchers have offered a number of explanations for this persistence but predicted that there would one day come a time when Antarctic sea ice would begin to retreat. That time is now.

The maximum extent of Antarctic sea ice for the year was the lowest ever recorded: 6.55 million square miles, almost 400,000 square miles below the previous low, and a cause for concern for the Antarctic wildlife such as penguins and seals, for which sea ice is a vital habitat.

Renewables are on the rise

The COP28 climate change conference concluded in December with a pledge to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.

That would almost certainly require more investment in the industry, but there’s reason to believe that investment is possible. The use of renewables has already reached new records in 2023.

The International Energy Authority stated in July that global renewable energy capacity will increase by 440 gigawatts over the course of 2023, 107 gigawatts greater than the growth in 2022. Two-thirds of that increase is driven by a growth in solar cell capacity, the IEA added.

According to a report published earlier this year by energy think tank Ember, wind and solar together provided 14.3 percent of global electricity in the first half of 2023, compared to 12.8 percent in 2022. Fifty countries set monthly records for solar generation in that same period, although energy generation from hydropower declined slightly, due largely to droughts in China.

Electric vehicles are gaining traction

The clean energy revolution is spreading to personal transportation. While sales were lower than what automakers and the federal government had hoped for, the number of EVs on the road had a notable increase in the U.S. and abroad.

Global sales of common types of electric vehicles rose 20 percent this year, according to one study. Sales increased by 43 percent in the United States and Canada, and 25 percent in China.

According to the BloombergNEF Zero Emission Vehicles Handbook, forecasts for the number of battery electric vehicles on the road by 2030 have risen 26 percent compared to 2022, with all zero-emission vehicles combined estimated to account for as much as 75 percent of global passenger vehicle sales in 2040.

This increase is primarily driven by China, where more than 25 percent of new passenger vehicle sales are electric vehicles.

Species went extinct while others were rediscovered

In May, a study of 71,000 animal species found that 48 percent are experiencing declines, 49 percent remain stable, and just three percent are seeing an increase in the size of their populations. That same study concluded that one-third of animal species that are not presently considered at-risk are nonetheless declining in numbers that threaten their long-term survival.

The U.S. government removed 21 species from the endangered species list because they are now considered extinct, including the Little Mariana fruit bat, the Bachman’s warbler, and several species of birds, mussels, and fish. However, as the Endangered Species Act reached its 50^th anniversary, the continued survival of several species— including bald eagles, peregrine falcons, and American alligators— is testament to what can be achieved when conservation measures are taken.

And some species, previously considered extinct, were rediscovered in 2023, including a “golden mole that swims through sand,” last seen in 1937, and a species of echidna named after Sir David Attenborough and described as having “the spines of a hedgehog, the snout of an anteater and the feet of a mole.

It resurfaced in Indonesia after more than 60 years.

Missed climate targets mean mounting damages. More forests burn, more ecosystems are lost, more people are killed or displaced by extreme weather.

This article was written by Steve Easterbrook and was published in the Toronto Star on December 30, 2023.

Eight years ago, at the Paris climate change talks, the United Nations agreed a legally binding treaty to limit global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial global average temperatures, and to pursue efforts to keep the temperature increase below 1.5°C. Canada was a vocal supporter of the more stringent 1.5C limit. But with the failure to agree on a meaningful timeline to phase out fossil fuels at this year’s COP28 meeting, and monthly global temperatures regularly shattering records, some scientists are starting to say it’s too late to save the UN’s 1.5C target. It now looks likely we’ll pass that temperature threshold within the next decade.

However, we must never give up on the 1.5C target, no matter how desperate it seems. The actions we must take to meet the 1.5C target are the same actions we need to take to stay below the 2C target (or indeed any similar target). Both targets require us to make massive investments in renewable energy alternatives and phase out fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. The only difference between the targets is how fast we must do it. Discarding a hard goal for an easier goal will merely remove some of the urgency. And if we relax our goal, we’ll stop trying so hard. We then risk missing the 2C goal as well.

Fossil fuel companies pay lip service to the 1.5C goal, but simultaneously work to undermine it because they want to sell as much oil, coal, and gas as they can before they are forced to stop. They are the most profitable industries in the world, so their intransigence is understandable. But with the price of renewable energy dropping fast, the clean energy infrastructure we must build will be just as profitable for whichever companies create it. The problem isn’t that we’ll somehow destroy the economy, or all end up poorer, or as Sultan al-Jaber, the chair of COP28 put it, end up sheltering in caves. The real question is who will reap the rewards of the energy transition: a handful of giant fossil fuel companies who want to keep doing what they have always done, or a vast array of smaller, more agile, cleantech companies who are already making the necessary investments.

It now looks likely that the world will reach and then exceed 1.5C of warming within a decade from now. Climate scientists might disagree on how exactly to determine the threshold has been passed, but that’s irrelevant. There’s no point arguing at what point the car can be said to be over the edge of the cliff, when the most important thing is that the car is going off the cliff.

But the car going over the cliff is the wrong metaphor anyway. The world doesn’t end at 1.5C, nor at 2C. What happens is the damages pile up. More forests burn down, more ecosystems are lost, more crops fail, more people are killed or displaced by extreme weather, more land is lost to the rising seas. So when we pass 1.5C, it is not game over. It is not even a defeat. It is an overshoot that needs to be managed and contained.

By retaining the 1.5C target even after we see it in our rearview mirror, we will commit to reversing course as fast as possible. We must then redouble our efforts to bring carbon emissions to zero as rapidly as possible, and ramp up emergency measures to remove carbon from the atmosphere to cool the planet back down again. It will never be okay to say we can give up on everybody whose lives or communities will be destroyed in the interval between 1.5C and 2C.

Every fraction of a degree matters; every fraction of a degree multiplies the destruction. So we must fight to avoid every fraction of a degree of further warming. If and when we miss the 1.5 degree target, we cannot let ourselves off the hook. The correct answer for how much more warming we should aim for is: none at all. The correct target for a world hotter than 1.5C is to get back to a world below 1.5C as rapidly as possible.

Steve Easterbrook is a professor and director of the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto.