Climate Change & Environment
Latest stories
Australia's Emissions Rising and Vastly Underestimated, Says Report

The latest federal government carbon emissions inventory shows Australia has increased its emissions and has come under fire for allegedly vastly underestimating the amount of land clearing that has occurred, and its associated emissions.

The Quarterly Update of the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report, which counts emissions in Australia up to September 2015, says greenhouse gas emissions from land clearing have fallen to record lows.

W140 Full Story
An Upside To Climate Change? Better French Wine

While climate change threatens coastal cities and generates extreme weather, the effects of global warming could bring good news to some of France's most esteemed vineyards.

Here, the conditions needed to produce early-ripening fruit, which is historically associated with highly rated wines, have become more frequent, according to research published online Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

W140 Full Story
Worst Mediterranean Drought in 900 Years has Human Fingerprints all Over it

In a warming world, we expect to see increases in some extreme weather events. The science is pretty clear that in some parts of the world, drought and heat waves have and will continue to increase. In other areas, more severe storms along with precipitation and flooding have increased. Drought, heat waves, and floods are examples of changes to weather and climate patterns that will have costs for human society.

It’s tricky to discern not only whether past extreme weather have changed, but also whether human-caused global warming is a factor. Scientists need high-quality records that go back many decades to see if there is any trend towards increasing or decreasing extreme weather. But weather is quite variable. We can see a rise or fall in extreme weather events with no apparent cause, human or natural.

W140 Full Story
It's Three Months since the Paris Climate Summit. What has Turnbull Done?

Globally there are many well-known names who have raised concerns about climate change: the Pope, Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, Prince Charles, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Rockefeller Foundation.

In Australia too, a broad range of voices have added their concerns and fears to the debate: firefighters who can no longer protect people or houses as we battle increasingly extreme weather conditions, 90% of Australian youth who last year said climate change was an important issue for them, farmers who see the effects of climate change on their properties every day, doctors who stress the deadly impact of heatwaves on the elderly, very young and those with existing health problems, climate scientists, David Pocock, Cate Blanchett, the tens of thousands of protestors who took to the streets in climate marches held across the country in November 2015 … the list goes on.

W140 Full Story
DiCaprio Criticizes Climate Change Deniers Running for President

Fresh from his Oscar-winning role in "The Revenant," Leonardo DiCaprio suggested Wednesday that his upcoming documentary on climate change could help raise awareness about a phenomenon which some U.S. presidential candidates reject.

DiCaprio said one of the collaborators for the film to be released before the November election was Fisher Stevens, a producer of the 2010 Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove" about dolphin-killing in the small Japanese town of Taiji.

W140 Full Story
Cousteau Warns of Reef Damage in Florida Port Project

Filmmaker and conservationist Philippe Cousteau has warned that a multimillion-dollar plan to deepen an international shipping port off south Florida could devastate fragile parts of the continental United States' only barrier reef.

Cousteau, the grandson of famed ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau, joined a team of divers, scientists and journalists on Monday and Tuesday to document the current state of the reefs off Port Everglades, near Fort Lauderdale, and to draw attention to future dredging plans by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

W140 Full Story
Australia Invests $760 Million in Technologies to Fight Climate Change

Australia will invest Aus$1 billion in clean energy technologies, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Wednesday, in a stark shift away from his predecessor's climate change policies as an election looms.

Turnbull, long known as a supporter of action on climate change, said the Clean Energy Innovation Fund would be run by two agencies slated for the chopping board under former prime minister Tony Abbott.

W140 Full Story
Greenpeace: Coal Plants Use Enough Water to Supply 1 bn People

Coal plants are draining an already dwindling global water supply, Greenpeace warned Tuesday, consuming enough to meet the basic needs of one billion people and deepening a worldwide crisis.

Announcing its first global plant-by-plant study, Greenpeace said coal power use will increase with newly built plants, causing "huge stress" on the world's major river basins and threatening communities. 

W140 Full Story
U.N. Says Climate Changing at 'Unprecedented' Rate

January and February 2016 smashed temperature records, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Monday as it warned climate change was advancing at an "unprecedented" rate.

W140 Full Story
Miami Beach Mayor Rubio '100%' Sounds Like a Climate Change Denier

The mayor of Miami Beach, one of the US cities most vulnerable to sea level rise, has criticized Marco Rubio after the presidential hopeful said that it’s not possible to “change the weather” or the rising oceans through government regulation.

Asked if he accepted the reality of human-induced climate change, Rubio, a US senator for Florida and running for his party’s presidential nomination, said: “If the climate is changing, one of the reasons is because the climate has always been changing.”

W140 Full Story