Laura Hinerfeld and her husband, Dale Geist, never thought they’d leave California. But after the Complex fires of 2017 killed 24 people, ravaged 7,000 structures and crept too close to their house in Sonoma, they talked about it for the first time.
The global energy sector's methane emissions are massively underreported, the International Energy Agency said in a report, seeking more transparency and stronger policy action
Climate change is warming oceans and melting glaciers, accelerating the rise of tides and coastal flooding at a frightening pace. A recent scientific report confirmed the United States will see another foot of sea level rise by 2050 — as much increase as the country experienced over the entire last century.
Scientists say 2020 is on track to be among the hottest years on record. They know this from a worldwide network of sensors and satellites that constantly monitor land and ocean temperatures.
A new report warns Kern County agriculture will face tough challenges in the decades ahead as climate change makes irrigation water scarcer and weather conditions more variable and intense.
Last summer was among the hottest on record in Europe, with record high temperatures that sent millions of people across the continent seeking shelter from the heat.
Due to global warming, the United States is today more than twice as likely to endure a devastating "dust bowl" scenario than during the Great Depression, researchers said Monday.
An analysis of satellite imagery from the past four decades suggests that global warming has increased the chances of storms reaching Category 3 or higher.
While the world wrestles with the immediate impacts of the coronavirus crisis, the more gradual climate crisis continues to accelerate in the background.
California is aiming to slash planet-warming emissions faster than ever over the next decade — and critics say state officials aren’t acting with nearly enough urgency.
Onshore wind power, utility-scale solar power, reduced food waste: These are just the first three of Project Drawdown’s plan to end the climate crisis with existing technologies.
Disaster Days: How megafires, guns and other 21st century crises are disrupting California schoolssFrom climate-driven natural disasters to crumbling infrastructure and threats of mass shootings, modern dangers are sending California kids home from class in record numbers.
A study released by the University of Washington found the birds, called common murres, probably died of starvation between the summer of 2015 and the spring of 2016.
The historic ruling marks the first decision by a UN human rights treaty body based on a complaint filed by an individual seeking protection from the effects of climate change.
Diners at some of San Francisco most popular restaurants might notice a new line item on their bills this month, a one percent add-on that’s known as the Restore California surcharge
A new study that rising temperatures brought on by climate change could be shortening pregnancies by as many as two weeks suggests worrisome implications for babies’ health and children’s later development.
After years of scorching summers, storms of fire and ash, floods, and drought, Californians now rank climate change as their No. 1 political priority, according to a new poll of Democratic primary voters.
If our society is being dumb for not taking more urgent action about human pollution and human pollution can make us dumber, will we get to a point to where we can’t even understand how stupid we are being?
Caltrans will conduct region-specific climate change vulnerability assessments for each of Caltrans’ 12 districts to help identify how climate change will impact California's transportation system.
Starting next year Italian schools will be required by law to study climate change in every grade. The announcement came on the heels of historic flooding in Venice.
The idea seemed so catchy, simple and can-do. There’s room to plant enough trees, albeit many, many, many trees, to counter a big chunk of the planet-warming carbon spewed by human activities.
At this very moment, we have the dubious honor of living through an event whose impact will span generations: climate change. Never before has our kind faced such omnipresent peril, from supercharged storms to rising seas to drought to crop failure to biodiversity crises.
Harvest season has just begun in California's Napa Valley. But the $160 billion wine industry could dry up if something isn't done to combat a changing climate.
If the prospect of climate change makes you stressed, anxious or depressed, you aren’t alone. With reports of some children becoming terrified by climate change and the protest group Extinction Rebellion holding “grief-tending workshops”, there is an increasing awareness of so-called eco-anxiety.
Climate change is heating the oceans and altering their chemistry so dramatically that it is threatening seafood supplies, fueling cyclones and floods and posing profound risks to the hundreds of millions of people living along the coasts, according to a sweeping United Nations report issued Wednesday.
Climate change dominates the headlines and our news feeds and infiltrates our daily conversations. It’s a problem that weighs heavily on our society, but a promising solution could be lying right beneath our feet — in the soil.
A leading group of international climate scientists is warning that “large-scale strategies” are needed immediately to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avert “catastrophic circumstances” that threaten every part of the world.
The estate house grounds at Spottswoode Winery look like a postcard from a 19th-century dream. A sprawling Victorian mansion commands a view of lush gardens, a shimmering swimming pool and 45 acres of grape-filled vines that soon will be harvested.
There were dance parties, DJ sets, drum classes and tutu-making workshops. Still, despite the buoyant mood it wasn’t just another festival tailor-made for glossy Instagram photos. Instead, Catharsis on the Mall, which was inspired by Burning Man and took place on the National Mall in May, had a different aim— healing.
California and 23 other states on Friday sued the Trump administration over its bid to restrict their authority to limit auto emissions, setting the stage for a bitter court battle over states' rights and climate change.
In the fight against climate change, gas-guzzling cars are increasingly seen as the biggest enemy. Carbon dioxide from automobiles has surged in the U.S. at the same time that the emissions have declined from power plants. The transportation sector is now the nation’s single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions -- beyond electrical generation from coal, leaking oil wells and burping cows.
By the time David Kaisel got back from selling his flour at a farmers' market, a wildfire in California's Capay Valley had burnt both his tractor and the shipping container where he kept some tools. His insurer is set to pay out a sixth of his losses.
Every year, the state Lands Commission makes decisions that impact the lives of millions of Californians and over 150 indigenous nations. This little-known agency manages more than four million acres of the state’s public lands. From managing oil and gas leases along the coast, to overseeing development in the vicinity of the Tijuana River in the south, and Goose Lake in the north, the commission’s decisions have consequences that last for generations.
Scientists recently put this belief to a test. A new study examined 20 years of documented bites in California correlating weather patterns and climate changes.
Los Angeles residents want to bring back a 14-acre community garden that once served more than 300 low-income families. The South Central Farmers Restoration Committee has filed a lawsuit to stop proposed development of the tract.
California is investing a lot of money, from a variety of sources, in finding ways to slow climate change and improve the environment. The state legislature has also recognized that those investments need to benefit everyone in California.
During the first three years of California’s 5-year-old cap-and-trade program, the bulk of the greenhouse gas reductions occurred out of state, which means that state residents did not see the benefits of improved air quality from presumed reductions in harmful co-pollutants, such as particulate matter, according to a new study led by UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University researchers.
Decades after civil rights icons Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta brought worldwide attention to the plight of farm workers in California’s Central Valley, a new generation of activists are making an impact in the region — with the focus now on the myriad issues facing young people and efforts to get them involved in civic affairs.
A $119.5-million settlement announced Wednesday of claims stemming from the Aliso Canyon gas leak marks the biggest action yet to deal with the health effects and climate damage of the largest release of methane in U.S. history.
Climate Justice acknowledges that climate change has a bigger impact on disadvantaged people, as well as economically disadvantaged countries in the Global South. Advocates for Climate Justice also highlight that climate change disproportionately affects those who contribute the least to it.
California has the world’s fourth largest greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program, which raises billions of dollars for the state. An innovative project is directing some of that revenue to bringing renewable power and energy efficiency to some of the state’s most disadvantaged communities.
Opponents of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline have warned of possible harm to the environment and challenged Dominion’s right to take private property for this purpose.
Under cloudy skies with an intermittent drizzle, hundreds of thousands of Puerto Rican people and their allies turned out for the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade. But this year was special: It celebrated the rich, proud tradition of the Puerto Rican people whose homeland has been devastated by hurricane Maria.
Call it the "People's Climate March, Part III." On Saturday, Sept. 8, thousands of people are expected to converge on the streets of San Francisco to demand that government leaders commit to ending all new fossil fuel projects and accelerating the move toward renewable energy
Climate impacts often fall disproportionately and unfairly on society’s most vulnerable, but cities are uniquely well-positioned to do something about these inequities by taking innovative climate action.
Solar industry, renewable energy and environmental justice organizations and advocates applauded a decision today by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) that will increase opportunities for low-income households to go solar, lower their utility bills, and participate in the state's growing clean energy economy.
n California’s San Joaquin Valley—home to many of the nation’s largest fruit, nut, and vegetable operations—agricultural soils have been sterilized and depleted of natural fertility.
Reports of climate science being scrubbed from U.S. government websites arrived early in President Donald Trump’s tenure. And the hits keep coming. From the Environmental Protection Agency, to the Energy Department, to the State Department and beyond, references to climate change, greenhouse gases and clean energy keep disappearing.
CBE has worked to build a healthy Richmond for over 20 years. Richmond is a working class community, predominantly people of color, and it’s been impacted by decades of environmental blight and economic divestment. Richmond is home to the 3,000 acre Chevron Oil refinery – the largest polluter in the area and the top greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter in the state.
The Environmental Justice Atlas is an international collaboration that tracks land and energy conflicts around the world. Researcher Julie Snorek from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain reports.
“Climate change is accelerating the rate at which oceans are rising and our lower-lying shoreline areas are increasingly exposed to flood waters,” San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee stated in the city’s Sea Level Rise Action Plan, which was completed in March 2016.
California is a global leader in using, investing in, and advancing research to set proactive climate change policy, and its Climate Change Assessments provide the scientific foundation for understanding climate-related vulnerability at the local scale and informing resilience actions. The Climate Change Assessments directly inform State policies, plans, programs, and guidance to promote effective and integrated action to safeguard California from climate change.
California is a global leader in using, investing in, and advancing research to set proactive climate change policy, and its Climate Change Assessments provide the scientific foundation for understanding climate-related vulnerability at the local scale and informing resilience actions. The Climate Change Assessments directly inform State policies, plans, programs, and guidance to promote effective and integrated action to safeguard California from climate change.
The Golden State is a world leader when it comes to clean-air policies and fighting climate change but we still suffer from the worst air quality in the nation and when it comes to who bears the greatest burden of our pollution there is a clear and disturbing color line.
Phillips 66 has agreed to dismiss its lawsuit challenging San Luis Obispo County’s denial of its plan to build a rail spur to transport crude oil to its Nipomo refinery, environmental groups said Monday.
A federal judge struck down the city of Oakland's ban prohibiting companies from transporting coal through a proposed export terminal that U.S. miners see as a key link to overseas markets.
Bay mussels in Washington's Puget Sound have tested positive for trace amounts of oxycodone, providing more evidence that the opioid prescription medication is truly ubiquitous.
You don’t just feel the heat of global warming, you can see it in action all around. Some examples of where climate change’s effects have been measured.
Thanks to carbon emissions, the ocean is changing, and that is putting a whole host of marine organisms at risk. These scientists are on the front lines.
Climate Central has added Spanish language versions of their online tools Risk Finder, Risk Zone Map and Mapping Choices. These tools now provide detailed information in Spanish for U.S. coastal communities on populations, infrastructure, and property at risk from rising sea levels and coastal floods.
Rare tropical fish from Australia have been spotted in New Zealand waters after a record-breaking hot summer and warm ocean temperatures lured the creatures across the Tasman sea.
Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting at a rapidly increasing rate, now pouring more than 200 billion tons of ice into the ocean annually and raising sea levels a half-millimeter every year, a team of 80 scientists reported Wednesday.
A squad of seals living off the coast of West Antarctica has provided scientists with data that could help to improve estimates of future sea-level rise.
About 70 students and a handful of parents and other adults gathered at Vaughn Next Century Learning Center on Saturday morning for the area’s first Youth Environmental Conference. In workshops, students presented information on climate change, growing produce at home, bike use and “food deserts,” areas where grocery choices are relatively scarce.
The Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 650,000 years there have been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat, with the abrupt end of the last ice age about 7,000 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era — and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth’s orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.
Weedy plants will thrive and displace long-lived, ecologically valuable kelp forests under forecast ocean acidification, new research shows. The researchers describe how kelp forests are displaced by weedy marine plants in high carbon dioxide conditions, equivalent to those predicted for the turn of the century.
Dry rivers such as those that wind across Canterbury could be a significant contributor to global warming, researchers have discovered.sFor the first time scientists have analysed the amount of carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere when plant material in dry riverbeds becomes wet when waters return.
The National Park Service has released its first-ever report on how the impact of sea level rise and flooding from storms could impact national parks around the country.sMore than a quarter of the property managed by the park system is on a coast, according to the report, and many face increasing threats from rising sea levels connected to global warming and increased threats of flooding from storms in the coming decades.
Over the next two centuries, warming oceans could trap nutrients at the poles and starve out many of the world’s fisheries, according to a recent study.
An underwater “dead zone” larger than the area of Scotland has been discovered by robots exploring the Arabian Sea.sScientists say the situation is “worse than feared” after finding almost no oxygen in the Gulf of Oman, the strait that connects the Arabian Sea to the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East.
Scientists at the University of British Columbia recently revealed that climate change will gut the global fishing industry by $10 billion per year within a few decades.
The Chemehuevi Tribe is using a solar #microgrid to provide clean and affordable energy to power its community center in the Mojave Desert. Solar power can benefit underserved communities in other remote locations. In fact, California is committing $44 million to additional mcrogrid projects in 2018.
It is increasingly clear that climate change will touch every corner of California. For the state’s coastal marshes – a major ecosystem from San Diego to Humboldt counties – the toll may be complete annihilation.
Sailboat drones powered by wind and sun have been collecting data in the Pacific Ocean about temperature and currents. Additionally, they collect information on wind and solar radiation. Among other findings, these data show how the ocean and air exchange gases such as carbon dioxide and oxygen which could help explain why the tropical Pacific emits carbon dioxide, rather than absorbing it like the rest of the ocean.
Scientists have found surprising evidence of rapid climate change in the Arctic: In the middle of the Arctic Ocean near the North Pole, they discovered that the levels of radium-228 have almost doubled over the last decade.
Our national parks are especially susceptible to the effects of #ClimateChange. That’s why the National Park Service which has established the Climate Friendly Parks (CFP) Program. Learn how more than 120 National Parks plan to respond to Climate Change issues such as sea level rise in the Everglades and the shrinking range of the Joshua Tree.
Scientists have attributed an algal bloom that killed off $800 million worth of salmon in Chile to rising ocean temperatures, and they say other aquaculture operations around the world are at risk.
The climate change simulations that best capture current planetary conditions are also the ones that predict the most dire levels of human-driven warming.
Called white plague, white blotch and other names, depending on the pattern of damaged or destroyed tissue, the disease has infected more than 20 South Florida coral species from the mid-Florida Keys through Palm Beach County.
Climate change is now a credit issue for city and state governments vulnerable to extreme weather events and natural disasters made worse by global warming.
Thousands of tiny baby penguins starved after changing weather forced their parents to trudge across Antarctica in search of food amid the changing climate.
Increasing year-to-year variability in temperature and precipitation that will create greater contrast between drought years and wet years. Severe wildfire seasons like the one that has devastated California this fall may occur more frequently because of climate change.
The world is changing and all the changes we observe are consistent with a warming world. It is hard to predict where we will be in five or ten decades.
The answer isn’t as clear-cut as it was this summer, when drought- and heat-stoked fires raged across the Rockies and Pacific Northwest. Instead, a mix of forces are driving the fires in Southern California, and only some of them have a clear connection to global warming.
Seventy takes us near the end of this century, when predictions from climate models describe terrifying scenarios. If the world as we know it would cease to be in 70 years, people should start to take notice now.
Climate change risk is rising, and yet behavioral economics research argues that we are collectively underinvesting in protecting ourselves. Private insurance has a significant role to play.
Five years after Superstorm Sandy was supposed to have taught the U.S. a lesson about the dangers of living along the coast, disaster planning experts say there is no place in America truly prepared for climate change and the tempests it could bring.
A controversial California climate program got a shot of good news this month when a study suggested it is successfully reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions and providing other environmental benefits on the side.
Electric cars and smartphones of the future could be powered by supervolcanoes like Yellowstone after scientists discovered that ancient deposits within them contain huge reservoirs of lithium—a chemical element used to make lithium-ore batteries, supplies of which are increasingly dwindling.
The small Louisiana town of Cameron could be the first in the US to be fully submerged by rising sea levels – and yet locals, 90% of whom voted for Trump, still aren’t convinced about climate change.
California Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra plans to announce a lawsuit on behalf of the state that will challenge President Trump’s proposal to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border, a project Becerra has called “medieval.”
As the United States confronts global warming in the decades ahead, not all states will suffer equally. Maine may benefit from milder winters. Florida, by contrast, could face major losses.
Global warming is already here. A growing number of leaders see that in order to address it, we need not only more renewable energy and cleaner transport. We must also harness the power of nature.
The U.S. economy probably would lose about 0.7 percent of its GDP for each 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in global temperatures. But that financial pain won’t play out evenly.
Harvey and Irma are sad reminders that policy matters. At a time when damage from climate change is escalating, we need sensible policy in Washington to protect the citizens of this country, both by reducing future climate change and preparing for its consequences.
Climate change may not have “caused” Hurricane Harvey, but it seems likely that warming temperatures — the consequence of man-made greenhouse gases trapping heat in the atmosphere — exacerbated the storm conditions.
A team of writers and researchers led by American environmentalist Paul Hawken has just published Drawdown, a comprehensive plan to scale back the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. The book offers hope that real solutions within reach.
How do voters of color perceive climate change in California? They see it as a major threat to the future generations and an issue we must address before it’s too late.
How do voters of color perceive climate change in California? They see it as a major threat to the future generations and an issue we must address before it’s too late.
Climate change policy is about saving the planet through making better choices. We will always come up short if we fail to include solutions for the people we wish to save.
While it's true the oceans can provide us with some amazing eco-solutions like alternative energy, they are undergoing some serious stress factors. Here are the seven biggest problems, plus some light at the end of the tunnel.
Climate change is tied to government policies, but it’s also the combination of so many of us using things we don’t need. We can’t afford to not think this is a problem.
A new approach for identifying the impacts of climate change and extreme weather on the variability of wheat production has been proposed. The study analyzed the effect of heat and water anomalies on crop losses over a 30-year period.
Yet the ocean is still home to treasure troves of biodiversity, and evidence is mounting that protecting such significant local areas builds resilience to climate change—and can even help regenerate what has been lost.
“We’ve done a lot for this global environment, but we’ve done very little for the needs of these communities,” said Garcia, a Mexican-American who heads the Assembly Natural Resources Committee.
In 2015, the U.N. Refugee Agency counted 65.3 million people around the world as “forcibly displaced,” including about 40 million within their home countries. Wars, ethnic conflicts, economic stresses, famines and disasters are among the reasons people leave their homes.
The rapid decline of ancient ice sheets could help scientists predict the impact of modern-day climate and sea-level change, according to research by the universities of Stirling in Scotland and Tromsø in Norway.
Air pollution — not just climate-warming greenhouse gases — would be melded into the complex cap-and-trade program under Assembly Bill 378, by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia. Garcia heads the Assembly’s Committee on Natural Resources, which passed the proposal.
Last month the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that without intervention, as much as 67 percent of Southern California’s beaches could be lost to rising seas by the end of the century.
Recorded year after year, studies brought home a global reality: The seasons are not what they used to be. On average, spring is earlier. Fall is later. And winter is getting squeezed on both ends.
A new study has unpicked how warming ocean temperatures have already driven an intensification of blooms around North America — the first time this link has been established at an ocean scale.
Bay Area parks and open spaces suffered more than $14 million damage from winter storms, and the toll is expected to rise much higher as record-setting rain lingers into spring.
Researchers at Stony Brook University, in New York, analyzed the effects of rising ocean temperatures on two of the most toxic types of algae and found growths are becoming more widespread and profiling through the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans.
More than two-thirds of the coral in Australia's Great Barrier Reef is experiencing "shocking" amounts of bleaching, new aerial surveys have revealed. The Australian government says climate change is mainly to blame.
One type of beetle could kill as many as 27 million trees in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, including parts of the desert. Trees that shade, cool and feed people from Ventura County to the Mexican border are dying so fast that within a few years it’s possible the region will look, feel, sound and smell much less pleasant than it does now.
Earth's greenery comes with natural carbon-capturing abilities, but now several studies are investigating how to tweak those tendencies to have a maximum impact on carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.
Stanford researchers have found that global warming from human emissions has made extreme hot weather events more likely across over 80 percent of the areas of the globe for which observations are possible.
Lawmakers are debating how to continue the state’s fight against climate change; the system is being targeted by some environmentalists who would rather force industry to directly reduce its emissions.
The researchers documented the extent of the damage the reef off the coast of Australia, and found that only 8.9 percent of more than 1,000 reefs escaped with no bleaching along a stretch more than 2,300 kilometers long.
The arrival of an early spring in the United States is a major indicator of the sweeping changes caused by climate change. Researchers have identified the risks and disadvantages of this current phenomenon.
A new report shows that under extreme future climate change, global sea levels could rise by more than eight feet by the end of the century — one of the highest estimates yet to be presented in a federal report.