environment

The UN weather agency is sounding a “red alert” about global warming, citing record-smashing increases last year in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures and melting of glaciers and sea ice, and is warning that the world’s efforts to reverse the trend have been inadequate. The World Meteorological Organisation said there is a “high probability” that 2024 will be another record-hot year. The Geneva-based agency, in a “State of the Global Climate” report released Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT), ratcheted up concerns that a much-vaunted climate goal is increasingly in jeopardy: that the world can unite to limit planetary warming to no more than 1.5 degrees from pre-industrial levels. “Never have we been so close – albeit on a temporary basis at the moment – to the 1.5 degrees lower limit of the Paris agreement on climate change,” said Celeste Saulo, the agency’s secretary...

Punishing hot weather affects not only a person’s health or work productivity but also affects couples’ fertility and birth outcomes, a project by the National University of Singapore (NUS) found. Rising temperatures could further reduce Singapore’s resident total fertility rate, which dipped below 1 – a record low – in 2023. The rate refers to the average number of babies each woman would have during her reproductive years. Researchers from the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine studied sperm samples from 818 men that were already stored at the National University Hospital’s (NUH) andrology section. The scientists then traced the men’s exposure to extreme heat – or when a day’s average temperature exceeds 29.8 deg C – by looking at weather records 90 days before they provided semen samples at NUH. The team found that those who were exposed to extreme heat during the three months had a 4...

The Biden administration announced new tailpipe emission standards for new passenger cars that aim to cut over 7 billion tons of carbon emissions, as well as other harmful air pollutants. The standards will apply to new passenger cars and light-duty trucks, beginning with model year 2027 through 2032. The Environmental Protection Agency, in announcing the tougher standards, said the reduction of carbon emissions and other harmful air pollutants will help prevent premature deaths and reduce heart attacks, respiratory and cardiovascular illness, as well as asthma. “Three years ago, I set an ambitious target: that half of all new cars and trucks sold in 2030 would be zero-emission,” said President Biden in a statement. “Today, we’re setting new pollution standards for cars and trucks.” However, the new standards also ease a draft rule by the EPA that would have required car companies to  rely on all-electric vehicles as the s...

Nine small island states have won a historic climate change case at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which ruled that all signatories to a United Nations treaty on marine activities must do more to protect the world’s oceans from climate change. The tribunal found (PDF) that signatories to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea’s responsibilities to prevent marine pollution extend to greenhouse gas emissions, which harm oceans by altering the earth’s atmosphere. The island states had asked the court to clarify what was considered marine pollution under the convention, amid rising oceans, soaring ocean temperatures and ocean acidification caused by fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas emissions. Gaston Browne, the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, one of the countries that brought the case, said small island nations were “fighting for their survival” due to the emissions of big polluters....

For years, climate scientists have called for a phase-out of fossil fuels to avoid catastrophic global warming. Now, according to a first-of-its-kind survey of more than 200 environmental and agricultural scientists, we must also drastically reduce meat and dairy production — and fast. Global livestock emissions should peak by 2030 or sooner to meet the Paris climate agreement target of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the surveyed climate experts said. In high- and middle-income countries, which produce and consume the overwhelming majority of the global meat and dairy supply, livestock emissions should peak much earlier than in low-income countries. “We need to see major changes in livestock production and consumption — really deep and rapid changes over the next decade,” said Helen Harwatt, an environmental social scientist and lead author of the survey repo...