Global Warming or Climate Change

With new climate policies, civil unrest and supply-chain disruptions in 2014, more businesses are becoming activists Top business sustainability trends of 2014 2015: the beginning of the end for climate skeptics More end-of-year reflections and new year’s predictions It would be an understatement to say that a lot happened in 2014. There was pervasive civic and social unrest across the US, bringing issues like racism and justice to the forefront yet again, as well as a  historic agreement with China  to mitigate carbon emissions. Meanwhile, India enacted a law requiring companies to spend  2% of their net profits on social development , the  Philippines suffered yet another big typhoon , and the  Ebola crisis  killed  more than 7,000 people  in west Africa. Then there were the media shakeups, including  buyouts at the New York Times , a  mass exodus at the New Republic  and  a shift in Bloomberg’s top ranks ....

 The installation ‘has to be seen as a long-term investment, something this government seems unable to contemplate’. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Guardian Geoff Moore ( Letters , 28 July) seems very poorly informed as to how the payments for rooftop solar arrays are calculated. If nothing is generated and therefore there is no export to the grid, the payment would be nil. We have a solar array and in four years have generated over 13,500 kilowatt-hours. In summer we could generate up to 350 kilowatt-hours a month, in winter maybe a tenth of that, and payments reflect this. The only time I see nil generation is when there is fog or the panels are covered in snow. The installation costs £12,000 and at present generation it will take nine to 10 years to pay this back, and only then will a profit be made. If the money had been invested elsewhere then it would be earning from day one, so it has to be seen as a long-term investment – something this government...

World Bank’s climate change envoy: ‘We need to wean ourselves off coal’ Bank has stopped funding new coal projects except in ‘rare circumstances’ Smoke is emitted from chimneys at the Waigaoqiao coal-fired power plant in Pudong, Shanghai. Photograph: Imaginechina/Corbis The World Bank said coal was no cure for global poverty on Wednesday, rejecting a main industry argument for building new fossil fuel projects in developing countries. In a rebuff to coal, oil and gas companies, Rachel Kyte, the World Bank climate change envoy, said continued use of coal was exacting a heavy cost on some of the world’s poorest countries, in local health impacts as well as climate change, which is imposing even graver consequences on the developing world. The truth behind Peabody's campaign to rebrand coal as a poverty cure   Read more “In general globally we need to wean ourselves off coal,” Kyte told an event in Washington hosted by the New Republic and the Center ...

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks during a media conference at the conclusion of the G-7 summit at Schloss Elmau hotel near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, southern Germany, Monday, June 8, 2015. The two-day summit addressed such issues as climate change, poverty and the ...  more > By  Rowan Scarborough  - The Washington Times - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 A new  Pentagon  report says that climate change is an “urgent and growing threat to our national security” and blames it for “increased natural disasters” that will require more American troops designated to combat bad weather. Some studies have questioned whether such a trend exists. Says the  Pentagon  report released Wednesday, “Global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for U.S. national security interests over the foreseeable future because it will aggravate existing problems — such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual l...

FLICKR/MARIUSZ KLUZNIAK ( CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ) A new study says that climate-induced feedback loops could lead to a change in ocean stratification and the more rapid melting of ice sheets. By  Carolyn Gramling   21 July 2015 8:00 pm   16 Comments Climate scientist James Hansen has fired a new salvo in the climate wars. In a new paper, Hansen and colleagues warn that the current international plan to limit global warming isn’t going to be nearly enough to avert disasters like runaway ice-sheet melting and consequent sea-level rise. Hansen told reporters at a press conference yesterday that he hoped the paper—to be published online this week—would influence global climate talks this December in Paris and encourage negotiators to reconsider their goal of keeping warming to less than 2°C above preindustrial levels, a laudable but insufficient target, some scientists say. But how influential this paper will be is unclear, given its flaws. The new study, which in...

WHAT IS AN ICE SHELF? Ice shelves are permanent floating sheets of ice that connect to a landmass. Antarctica is home to a number of ice shelves. The formations are also found along Arctic coastlines. Credit: Ted Scambos, NSIDC Most of the world's ice shelves hug the coast of Antarctica. However, ice shelves can also form wherever ice flows from land into cold ocean waters, including some glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere. The northern coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island is home to several well-known ice shelves, among them the Markham and the Ward Hunt ice shelves. HOW DO ICE SHELVES FORM? Ice from enormous  ice sheets  slowly oozes into the sea through glaciers  and  ice streams . If the ocean is cold enough, that newly arrived ice doesn't melt right away. Instead it may float on the surface and grow larger as glacial ice behind it continues to flow into the sea. Along protected coastlines, the resulting ice shelves can survive for thousands of y...