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What’s in a number? The significance of the 1.5°C warming threshold and reporting on its possible breach in popular media
2023-05-24
These findings were widely covered by popular media outlets, including in articles published by The Guardian, CNN, and BBC, which all reported that this temperature increase would represent a breach of the key IPCC threshold. However, this is missing some important context.
“A single year above 1.5°C does not mean the world has passed that particular warming level”, said Zeke Hausfather. Such nuance was better captured by articles published in Reuters and Axios, which both correctly did not report that these new temperature projections, if realized, would constitute a breach of the threshold.
How much of a climate solution can technologies such as carbon capture and storage be?
2023-05-23
Science has shown consistently that adding CO2 to the atmosphere is changing the climate in various ways, including raising the surface temperature of the oceans and atmosphere. One of the climate change mitigation technologies is carbon capture and storage (CCS), where CO2 is captured from power plants and other industrial processes instead of being emitted … Continued
Wind turbines can kill birds, but not as many as fossil fuels and other anthropogenic impacts
2022-12-14
“It is true that renewable energy developments like solar and wind farms (along with the power lines to connect them to the grid) can impact negatively on birds and other wildlife, but compared to other human driven causes of bird mortality the impact remains small,” noted Aldina Franco, an avian ecologist at the University of East Anglia.
Google’s demonetization of misinformation: one year on
2022-11-07
ProPublica finds that Google still monetizes many websites and articles that promote harmful misinformation, much of which is in direct breach of its stated demonetization policy. Enforcement of its own rules on languages other than English is particularly lacking.
Here’s what we know about how climate change impacts hurricanes – and what we don’t
2022-10-11
The uncertainty surrounding how hurricane frequency could change as the climate warms has been brought up in claims seeking to undermine climate change’s impact on hurricanes. These claims are examples of straw man arguments: noting that climate change may not lead to a higher number of hurricanes in the future does not mean that climate change has had – or will have – no impact on hurricanes at all.
Different parts of the planet warm more quickly than others. That doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening.
2022-09-16
If you’re even a casual consumer of climate news, you probably know that some parts of the globe are warming more rapidly than others. Scientists have known for years, for instance, that the Arctic is heating up at a faster clip than the global average, and recently, the region made headlines after a study showed that the northernmost reaches of our planet are warming four times faster than the rest of the Earth.
Introducing the Climate Science Desk, Science Feedback’s new portal to help journalists verify climate claims
2022-09-09
Supported by the Climate Misinformation Grant Program from the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at the Poynter Institute, Science Feedback is launching the Climate Science Desk, an initiative aimed at helping fact-checkers and journalists connect with scientists to review the veracity of climate change-related claims. The Climate Science Desk features a portal where fact-checkers can submit … Continued
Yes, plants need carbon dioxide. No, that doesn’t mean it’s harmless.
2022-06-23
“The benefit[s] of increasing CO2 concentrations for plant growth are increasingly being outweighed by the negative impacts, especially of global warming. This is true for natural as well as agricultural ecosystems.”
Water scarcity in a changing climate: will drought get worse with warming?
2022-05-20
“The thing to remember is that drought is a very complex phenomenon. For one, drought is not just precipitation. Drought is also soil moisture and streamflow. This is an important distinction, because it means that other processes that may be affected by climate change (e.g., evaporation) can play a role in increasing drought, even if precipitation does not change.”
How sea ice in the Arctic and the Antarctic is influenced by climate change
2022-01-27
“The decreases have accelerated since the 1990s and have been part of a consistent suite of changes in the Arctic, including rising atmospheric temperatures, melting land ice, thawing permafrost, longer growing seasons, increased coastal erosion, and warming oceans. Overall, it has been a consistent picture solidly in line with the expectations of the warming climate predicted from increases in greenhouse gases. In particular, modeled sea ice predictions showed marked Arctic sea ice decreases, and the actual decreases even exceeded what the models predicted.”