Climate

Record-setting rainfall this past week sent Puget Sound’s rivers and streams over their banks, flooding homes in Snohomish County, closing roads and triggering mudslides. The atmospheric river was another blunt reminder of the dangers floodwaters pose to human-made infrastructure, including the culverts that guide waterways underneath the region’s roads. At least one creek’s surge outside Port Orchard overwhelmed a three-foot-wide metal culvert beneath Sunnyslope Road, washing out the road above it. Repairs will take months, closing the thoroughfare indefinitely. Culverts, the artificial pipes that squeeze once-meandering streams through a bottleneck of concrete or metal, exact an ecological toll on species like salmon. But they’re also an increasing liability in an era of climate change. Washington’s transportation network must become more resilient to such flooding in a time of diminished snowpack, heavy rainfall...

Glaciers in the Himalayas are melting rapidly, but a new report showed an astonishing phenomenon in the world’s tallest mountain range could be helping to slow the effects of the global climate crisis. When warming temperatures hit certain high-altitude ice masses, it sets off a surprising reaction that blows robust cold winds down the slopes, according to the study published December 4 in the journal Nature Geoscience. The warming climate creates a greater temperature gap between the surrounding air above Himalayan glaciers and the cooler air directly in contact with the ice masses’ surface, explained Francesca Pellicciotti, professor of glaciology at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria and lead author of the study. “This leads to an increase in turbulent heat exchange at the glacier’s surface and stronger cooling of the surface air mass,” she said in a news release. As the cool, dry surface air gets coole...

Dubai, United Arab Emirates—”The North Star of the COP28 Presidency is to keep 1.5°C within reach,” has been the frequent refrain of Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, the COP28 president overseeing the current U.N. climate change negotiations in Dubai. Al Jaber is reflecting the oft-chanted activist slogan “Keep 1.5 Alive!” The idea is that humanity must reduce its emissions of globe-warming greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels sufficiently to keep the planet from warming more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial baseline (1850-1900). It is worth tracing the history of where the 1.5 C “North Star” originated and what the consequences of breaching it would likely be. The 1.5 C threshold was officially enshrined as a goal under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change with the adoption of the Paris Climate Change Agreement in 2015. Article 2 in the Paris Agreement commits s...

The word “acceleration” is top of mind for many people as this year’s negotiations draw to a close at the 28th meeting of the UN Climate Conference of the Parties (COP28). With only a handful of years left to reach the net-zero agreements set out in the Paris Agreement of 2015, nations are racing to phase out unabated fossil fuel consumption and ramp up renewable energy sources. Stanford co-hosted an official side event with the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD) and the Independent University, Bangladesh to probe a critical tension: nations around the world will need to balance “fast and fair” approaches as they rapidly transition to clean energy technology, safeguard the long-term health of ecosystems, and prepare for lasting community impacts from climate change. The event was one of several co-organized by a delegation of Stanford faculty, scholars, and studen...

World leaders headed into overtime this week in Dubai at COP28, the international climate change summit, to broker agreements on lowering global-warming emissions. Driving the news: In the U.S., Texas continues to emit the most greenhouse gasses of any state with little signs of recent change. By the numbers: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) data show Texas’ overall CO2 levels increased nearly 85% from 1970 to 2021 across all sectors — homes, businesses and transportation. Threat level: The state is experiencing the impacts of climate change in many ways, from record-setting temperatures to longer droughts and wetter hurricanes. Between the lines: Texas has yet to see any significant change in emissions in recent years — just a 1% increase between 2016 and 2021, according to the EIA data. Meanwhile: A recent draft document from the Texas Department of...

Republicans visited the global climate summit in Dubai this weekend — marking engagement on the issue from a party that is not typically enthusiastic about fighting global warming.  One of the climate solutions touted by some of the GOP lawmakers that attended the conference, however, is natural gas, which is still a fossil fuel that contributes to such warming. The lawmakers’ appearance at the summit as part of bipartisan delegations is somewhat surprising given that the GOP is not known for embracing actions aimed at protecting the climate: Republicans voted against Democrats’ major climate bill last year and have opposed a number of the Biden administration’s environmental policies, while the party’s current crop of presidential candidates has largely brushed off climate change on the campaign trail. But Republicans say they want to show both Americans and the world that gas, nuclear and mining can be cl...

“A superstar of the Denialosphere” is how former journalist Eric Pooley described Myron Ebell in his 2010 book “The Climate War.” Business Insider wrote in 2009 that Ebell “may be enemy #1 to the current climate change community.” “One of the single greatest threats our planet has ever faced,” the Sierra Club opined in 2016. Rolling Stone put him in its list of top six “misleaders.” And those are just the labels Ebell has boasted about in his own biography. Ebell, 70, has been at the forefront of climate change denial for more than two decades — and in fighting against conservationists before that — through his advocacy, commentary and influence with conservatives and Republicans. He’s played roles in blocking cap-and-trade legislation for carbon dioxide, the unsuccessful 1990s efforts to change the Endangered Species Act and former President Donald Trum...