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VIDEOHas actor Hugh Jackman fallen on hard financial times or does he genuinely worship Bill Gates as someone who knows what is best for everybody else? The latter scenario is actually scarier than the first.

Scientists have created an interactive map that shows how parts of Illinois may be swallowed up by Lake Michigan as climate change bites. The Great Lakes in the Midwest comprise the largest unfrozen freshwater stores on Earth, but experts have forecast that rising water levels could have serious consequences. More than 30 million people live along the lakes' roughly 4,500 miles of coastline, which stretches across the U.S. and Canada, and touches upon the cities of Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo, New York. That means millions of families could be hit hard by new, higher water levels, which could potentially wash...

In recent months Tesla has had a bumpy ride. In January the electric-vehicle (ev) pioneer warned that growth would be “notably lower” this year, as motorists’ enthusiasm for battery power loses charge. The same month it had to suspend most production at its giant factory near Berlin because of supply disruptions caused by turmoil in the Red Sea. Its market share in China, the world’s biggest ev market, is falling as it fends off cheaper local competition, especially from byd, which late last year briefly eclipsed Tesla as the world’s biggest ev-maker. Tesla hit another big pothole on April 2nd,...

OXFORD, England (AP) — Humanity has only two years left “to save the world” by making dramatic changes in the way it spews heat-trapping emissions and it has even less time to act to get the finances behind such a massive shift, the head of the United Nations climate agency said. With governments of the world facing a 2025 deadline for new and stronger plans to curb carbon pollution, nearly half of the world's populations voting in elections this year, and crucial global finance meetings later this month in Washington, United Nations executive climate secretary Simon Stiell said Wednesday he...

A team of European researchers says that hundreds of thousands of meteorites, which may provide valuable information about the dawn of life on Earth, are disappearing from Antarctica at an alarming rate. Based on their research, the scientists behind the alarming findings say that as many as three-quarters of the approximately 300,000-800,000 meteorites resting on the surface of the Antarctic ice sheet could be lost by 2050. Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the research says the culprit behind the wholesale disappearance is the steady rise in global temperature. “For every tenth of a degree of increase in global...

The Senate on Wednesday afternoon voted in favor of passing a bill reversing the Biden administration's actions mandating states to track and set reduction goals for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles on highways. The chamber approved the resolution in a 53-47 vote in which Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.; Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Jon Tester, D-Mont.; and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., joined every Republican voting in the affirmative. The bill was introduced in February by Sens. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.; Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.; and Manchin. "Few things are more frustrating in government than un-elected bureaucrats asserting authority they don’t have and foisting federal...

An amount of land equivalent to the Isle of Wight has been added to the shorelines of 13,000 islands around the world in just the last 20 years. This fascinating fact of a 369.67 square kilometre increase has recently been discovered by a group of Chinese scientists analysing both surface and satellite records. Overall, land was lost during the 1990s, but the scientists found that in the study period of three decades to 2020 there was a net increase of 157.21 km2. The study observed considerable natural variation in both erosion and accretion. Of course, the findings blow holes in...

A group of older Swiss women have won the first ever climate case victory in the European Court of Human Rights. The women, mostly in their 70s, said that their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to the effects of heatwaves linked to climate change. The court said Switzerland's efforts to meet its emission reduction targets had been woefully inadequate. It is the first time the powerful court has ruled on global warming. Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg joined activists celebrating at the court in Strasbourg on Tuesday. "We still can't really believe it. We keep asking our lawyers, 'is...

State insurance regulators are taking the first steps on what will be long and difficult effort to mitigate climate impacts. Foremost it will require cooperation and buy in. To that end, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners took the rare step of holding a media briefing Friday to again spotlight its landmark National Climate Resilience Strategy. Adopted March 18, the strategy is a desperately needed first step, said Andrew Mais, Connecticut insurance commissioner and 2024 president of the NAIC. “The goal of a strategy is to drive faster and more effective risk reduction by state insurance regulators to ensure that...

One of nature’s most important keystone species is working itself to death. Colonies of honey bees — crucial pollinators for a wide variety of plants and cash crops — are at risk of collapse because of climate change, a recent study by scientists at Washington State University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found. Long and warmer fall months across the Pacific Northwest encourage bees to emerge from their colonies when they should be resting, said Gloria DeGrandi-Hoffman, a research leader at the USDA’s Carl Hayden Bee Research Center in Arizona. “When it’s warm out, they fly and when they...

President Biden has done more to address climate change than any of his predecessors. So far, voters don’t seem to care. The Biden campaign and a collection of progressive groups are trying to change that. They believe the president’s record on climate change can boost his popularity with young voters. The strategy is risky because climate has never been a priority with voters. A Journal poll, which surveyed voters in seven swing states in March, found that just 3% of 18-to-34-year-old voters named climate change as their top issue, with most citing the economy, inflation or immigration. That is roughly...

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Lawyers advancing an effort to charge oil companies with homicide over climate-related deaths are ramping up their campaign to hold fossil fuel producers criminally accountable for contributing to climate change. The authors of “Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Death” embarked on a road trip of college campuses this spring, making the case for bringingcriminal charges against oil and gas companies. The push by David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s climate program, and Donald Braman, an associate professor at George Washington University Law School, aims to bolster support for the theory through presentations at law schools....

April 9 (UPI) -- The European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service said Tuesday that at 1.68 degrees Celsius hotter than the "pre-industrial" era, March was the warmest March on record and the tenth straight temperature record-breaking month. The new March high was calculated from an estimate of the average March temperature during the "pre-industrial" reference period, designated as 1850-1900 which also shows a year-round global average temperature from April 2023 to March 2024 period that is 1.58 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial average. The climate group's top scientist called for urgent cuts in the volume of greenhouse gasses being...

STRASBOURG, France, April 9 (Reuters) - Europe's top human rights court ruled on Tuesday that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change. The European Court of Human Rights's (ECtHR) decision on the case brought by more than 2,000 elderly Swiss women set a precedent that will resonate across Europe and beyond for how courts deal with a growing trend of climate litigation. The Swiss women, known as KlimaSeniorinnen, argued their government's climate inaction put them at risk of dying during heatwaves. In her ruling, Court President Siofra...

A major current of circulating air called the Arctic polar vortex has completely reversed course and is now spinning 'backwards'. With winds now blowing easterly, scientists are trying to predict what effect this might have on weather systems in the coming months. Before you start envisioning the sudden collapse of our planet's weather systems, these reversals aren't all that unusual. While the strength of the reversed winds has attracted attention, this is not the first reversal this year. During the summer months in the Northern Hemisphere, the vortex's circulating winds slow down and start spinning easterly (clockwise around the Arctic)...

A new study led by Jarmo Kikstra, a research scholar in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program, explores whether reducing production and consumption growth could make a significant contribution to resolving the climate crisis. As the effects of climate change become more severe and the scale of environmental damage gains magnitude, some researchers disagree about the desirability and feasibility of further economic growth in high-income countries. More recently, the case has been made for exploring a "degrowth" (or post-growth) strategy. Such a strategy would entail reducing less necessary forms of production and consumption (rather than growing them) with the...

Earthquakes on the East Coast are rare but sea level rise and frequent flooding may lead to a higher frequency of quakes. But here's why you shouldn't be alarmed. "An earthquake is based on tectonic plates, and New York is sitting on a 'lazy' plate, which is good, meaning we do not have so many earthquakes, but there are other things that happen -- too much rain or drought," Dr. Marsellos told NBC New York. Long periods of flooding can cause water levels to rise leading to possible landslides. Those slides can "lubricate" faults and may account for a higher...

A magnitude 4.8 earthquake shook the coast of the northeastern United States on Friday morning. The earthquake was felt from Boston down to Baltimore, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Many incoming flights at major airports in and around New York City were being diverted from landing, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in a tweet said, “My team is assessing impacts and any damage that may have occurred, and we will update the public throughout the day.”

The Biden administration announced recipients of the climate law’s biggest grant program Thursday, kicking off a $20 billion effort to transform community lending and green the U.S. economy. EPA will award eight initial grants under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, ranging in size from $400 million to almost $7 billion. The largest award will go to Climate United, a partnership that includes a nonprofit impact investment firm and two affordable housing lenders. EPA chose three nonprofits — Climate United, Coalition for Green Capital and Power Forward Communities — to distribute a total of $14 billion in capital to finance projects...

Changing weather patterns induced by climate change are contributing to shifts in the location of terrorist activity, according to new research. An exploratory study led by extremism expert Dr Jared Dmello, from the University of Adelaide's School of Social Sciences, found some climatological variables affected terrorist activity in India. "Suitability analyses indicate that all the climatological variables tested -- temperature, precipitation, and elevation -- relate to shifting patterns of terrorist activity," says Dr Dmello. "Urban centres have increasingly grown in population density, particularly in spaces with favourable climates, and some of the more remote areas once used by extremists have...