Free Republic

A problem is coming for global timekeeping, according to a paper published in the March 27, 2024 issue of Nature by Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, and global warming is influencing when that problem might arrive. Worldwide coordination of timekeeping is how all smartphones and computers can keep the same time. This timekeeping includes, every so often, an extra second, called a leap second, which makes a particular minute last for 61 seconds. Anyone who has forgotten the change to or from daylight saving time and found themselves an hour early (or...

President Biden will touch on a wide range of issues and policy priorities in his State of the Union address Thursday night, and he will need to thread the needle on his track record of climate change legislation, environmental protection and energy policy. The stakes for climate change couldn't be higher than they are in the 2024 presidential election, and Mr. Biden and former President Donald Trump couldn't stand farther apart on the issue if they tried. While climate change may not be the most pressing concern for voters, research has found that the issue can influence the outcome of...

California is bracing for a powerful winter storm that could bring up to 10 feet of snow and high winds to the Sierra Nevada. “A second winter storm will impact the West Coast on Thursday and Friday,” the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Weather Prediction Center said in a forecast discussion Thursday. “The storm will create heavy mountain snow that will affect many passes. Multiple feet of snow are likely (over 80% chance) for higher elevations, especially above 5000 feet, including many Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountain passes,” the notice added. “Extremely heavy snow rates surpassing 3 inches per hour are...

White House adviser John Podesta will replace John Kerry as the nation’s lead climate diplomat, the White House announced on Wednesday. “We need to keep meeting the gravity of this moment, and there is no one better than John Podesta to make sure we do,” White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, in a written statement shared with reporters. Podesta will remain at the White House and will get the title of senior advisor to the president for international climate policy. In that role, he will lead the Biden administration’s international climate policy agenda and will coordinate with other officials...

A top U.N. scientist on Thursday shrugged off an online quip from U.S. President Donald Trump that questioned global warming, saying a U.S. government report will show the “fundamental impacts of climate change on the U.S. continent.” Officials at the World Meteorological Organization also said environmentally minded efforts by the state of California, in parts of the financial sector, among grassroots activists and others will have more of an impact to help the fight against climate change than “political disturbance” and “discourse” will impede it. The science, they said, will have the last word. Some of that science comes Friday...

Utah Sen.-elect Mitt Romney signaled he may focus on climate change when he's sworn in in January. In a brief interview with E&E News yesterday, the former Republican presidential nominee said he sees climate change as a "critical area." ....snip Last year, Romney told college students in St. Louis that he was "concerned about the anti-scientific attitude" expressed by some of his Republican colleagues and that he was convinced humanity has played a part in global warming (Climatewire, Oct. 3). "I happen to believe that there is climate change, and I think humans contribute to it in a substantial way,...

The latest report from the world’s climate scientists has made clear the size of the challenge if the world is to stay below the global warming limit hoped for in the Paris climate agreement. Unfortunately, with current trends we are likely to cross this threshold within the next two decades because we are already two-thirds of the way there. But how do we know what is driving these climate trends? It comes down to the same kind of detective work that typifies a crime scene investigation, only here we are dealing with a case that encompasses the whole world. Let...

Amid the golden hills near Point Reyes, California, in the sunlit main hall of the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Christiana Figueres, the architect of the Paris climate agreement, is explaining how Buddhism saved her life. Her talk is part of a daylong gathering of activists, yoga instructors, Buddhist practitioners, and meditation enthusiasts all intent on bringing more mindfulness and loving kindness to their approach to climate activism. Timed to coincide with the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco hosted by Governor Jerry Brown, Saturday's retreat is about an hour's drive from the city - and a world away. The...

San Francisco International Airport’s corporate jet traffic rose roughly 30 percent during an international climate change conference in California, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. California Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown hosted the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco from Wednesday to Friday. Brown traveled to the conference by car with his security detail, but the governor is known for his lavish travel on other occasions, such as a 2016 trip to Italy, Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine with real-estate tycoon and Democrat Party donor George Marcus. (RELATED: Gov. Brown Is Launching California Into Space — To Fight Global Warming) More than...

It is a slam-dunk certainty that American mainstream media will seize upon a recent story in the Los Angeles Times, “Southern California sets all-time heat records amid broiling conditions,” as justification for its continuing support of the contested theory of man-caused global warming. It has already happened with a Yahoo News story claiming that the new temperature records world-wide prove man causes climate change.But there are problems in pursuing that path.First, days that reach and exceed 117-degree temperatures have been known to happen for a very long time in the interior basin of southern California, sometimes referred to as “Death...

There’s a ‘type’ when it comes to climate change denial it turns out – and it’s a pretty simple one: old, white and racist. Researchers found that American voters with the highest levels of racial resentment were far more likely to dispute the idea of man-made climate change. Researcher Salil Benegal at DePauw University analysed data from American National Election Studies – and found that Republicans with high racial resentment scores were 84% likely to disagree with man-made climate change. Previous Pew research has shown that climate change deniers tend to be old and white. The scores were measured on...

Canada’s climate is getting hotter and wetter and it may have an impact on your mental health. That’s what experts are warning as Canada’s climate continues to shift dramatically, causing severe flooding in many parts of the country, and even droughts and fires in parts of the Prairies and the West Coast. It’s extreme weather events like those experienced in the 2016 wildfires in Fort McMurray and the 2013 floods in Toronto that can trigger mental-health disorders such as anxiety and depression, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). And while some may believe these events are few and far...

Ask a typical person concerned about global warming if they think Congress will enact a bipartisan solution to climate change, and the response is likely to be a derisive laugh. For millions of Americans who watch cable news shows or read the papers, such cynicism is easy to come by. Democrats and Republicans can barely get together on keeping the government from shutting down. How in the world could they ever come together on an issue as politically divisive as climate change? But in the past decade, the findings and predictions of climate scientists have been validated by real-world evidence:...

Now at Harvard, the Obama administration alum admits it’s been hard to watch the Trump administration take aim at the work she’s proudest of. But she hasn’t lost hope. GINA MCCARTHY STRIDES INTO the ocean-view ballroom at the Sea Crest Beach Hotel in Falmouth, plops down her green backpack, and glances out the window. The waves are angrily advancing on this last night in April, which feels as dreary as mid-January. “The water seems way closer than it was the last time I was here,” she says. Maybe that’s because of climate change, the threat that McCarthy led the charge...

Even during times of rapid global warming, loooooong periods of cold weather can occur. April in the U.S. was one of those periods. Despite record warmth elsewhere in the world, it was the 13th-coldest April in the United States, where records date back to 1895. The Upper Midwest was particularly cold — Iowa and Wisconsin had their all-time coldest April while temperatures in surrounding states in the Central and Northeast U.S. were well-below average. From Minnesota to Mississippi, nine states had their coldest April overnight lows. In Minnesota, ice-out came as late in the season as it ever has. Ice-out...

In Spring Hill, early 20th Century houses look out over cinematic views of downtown Pittsburgh. The front of 36-year-old resident Randal Miller’s home appears fine, but the back is a mess. Part of it was slammed by a landslide this February. Landslides have always been an issue for the city due to its steep hills, clay soil and narrow valleys, but they usually occur in late spring and early early summer. Winter is typically Pittsburgh’s driest period, which is good, because the soil at that time is very wet as plants have yet to sprout and pull water from the...

One of the most electrifying moments of the 2018 Winter Olympics came when American cross-country skier Jessie Diggins surged from behind in the final seconds to win gold for her and teammate Kikkan Randall in the team sprint. It was a gutsy feat. Future Olympians may not get a shot at the dream Diggins achieved in PyeongChang. That’s because climate change is warming our winters, reducing our snowpack, and shortening our seasons - all changes that make it difficult to participate in snowsports. Diggins and four other winter Olympians - Stacey Cook, Arielle Gold, Maddie Phaneuf, and David Wise -...

Florida and Texas are the two states expected to suffer the greatest economic damage from climate change, according to a new study from Science magazine. The study used a model that aimed to calculate the future impact on each state’s gross domestic product (GDP) from events including hurricanes, storm surges, changes in agricultural yields, changing electricity demands, changes in mortality rates, changes to the labor supply, rising sea levels and rising crime rates. The study comes amid a concerted effort by climate activists to help the U.S. meet the goals of the Paris Accord of limiting temperature change to below...

It may be spring, but it feels like winter for the Northeast this morning as a snowstorm moves through Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and New England. The latest The snowfall rate at New York's LaGuardia Airport reached 2 inches per hour this morning. New York City saw 5.5 inches of snow this morning -- its heaviest April snowfall since 1982 when the city was dumped with 9.6 inches. Kimberly Richardson ✔ @kemrichardson7 Wow! #nyc right now #centralpark Beautiful but enough !!!!! #snow @ABC7NY 8:43 AM - Apr 2, 2018 The New York Yankees canceled today's home opener due to...

Limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius will not prevent destructive and deadly climate impacts, as once hoped, dozens of experts concluded in a score of scientific studies released Monday. A world that heats up by 2C - long regarded as the temperature ceiling for a climate-safe planet - could see mass displacement due to rising seas, a drop in per capita income, regional shortages of food and fresh water, and the loss of animal and plant species at an accelerated speed. Poor and emerging countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America will get hit hardest, according to the studies.