AFL fans will be happy to see the massive percentage of AFL footballers pushing for greater climate action. See what they have done at their local clubs.
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Yes! New declarations might not be receiving a lot of media coverage these days but there are now 2,248 jurisdictions that have passed a Climate Emergency Declaration (CED). In just the last fortnight there have been two more CEDs in the UK (North Yorkshire County Council and Swindon Borough Council) and one more in Japan (Hiroshima City).
Certainly the rate of new declarations has slowed since the start of the pandemic, but even the CEDs that are happening now seem to get less media coverage than during the 2019 peak. The ground-breaking declaration by the first Australian state, South Australia on 31 May 2022, received little media coverage, and the April declaration by Nillumbik Shire Council in Victoria received none.
In April 2020 there was just one new CED in the US and one in Italy. That suggests that the pandemic that was escalating at the time was a factor slowing the rate of new declarations. But it wasn’t the only factor. The dark purple bars in the chart above show the UK CEDs, a massive 506 before April 2020. Of those, 265 were mid-tier councils in England, of which there are only 333 in total. By 2020 there weren’t enough non-CED mid-tier councils left for such a high rate of new CEDs to be possible. Even so, their numbers did continue to rise. Currently 278 (83.5%) mid-tier councils of varying political persuasions have passed declarations.
Extreme heat is predicted for large parts of the US including Kansas, which is one of the country’s top three beef producers
This week, the National Weather Services (NWS) predicted extreme heat on parts of the Gulf coast and spreading to the Great Lakes in the midwest, with more than 100 million Americans advised to stay inside to fight the heat.
Read the article
European-based researcher Ember was commissioned by the environmental group, Lock the Gate Alliance, to analyse available data on methane emissions from the Australian Greenhouse Emissions Information System (AGEIS), the Clean Energy Regulator (CER), the Australian Chief Economist, Department of Natural Resources and Mines, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Global Energy Monitor.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas and its global warming potential is more than 25 times that of carbon dioxide.
The report found that in 2019, Australian coal mine methane emissions made up 68 per cent of overall energy industry emissions, making it a bigger contributor than oil and gas.
"That's a really massive climate impact before we even start to think about the carbon dioxide emissions released from burning coal."
By ABC national regional reporter Nathan Morris
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| Coffs Harbour 7m rise. Click to enlarge. |
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"Efforts to reduce carbon pollution using ethanol appear to have backfired.
For over a decade, the US has blended ethanol with gasoline in an attempt to reduce the overall carbon pollution produced by fossil fuel-powered cars and trucks. But a new study says that the practice may not be achieving its goals. In fact, burning ethanol made from corn—the major source in the US—may be worse for the climate than just burning gasoline alone.
Corn drove demand for land and fertilizer far higher than previous assessments had estimated. Together, the additional land and fertilizer drove up ethanol’s carbon footprint to the point where the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions—from seed to tank—were higher than that of gasoline. Some researchers predicted this might happen, but the new paper provides a comprehensive and retrospective look at the real-world results of the policy.
Proponents have long argued that corn-based ethanol bolsters farm incomes while providing a domestic source of renewable liquid fuel, while critics have said that its status as a carbon-reducing gasoline additive relies on questionable accounting. Based on the new study, both sides may be right."
Go to the original ARS - Technica article.
