cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/24110139

Summary

In 2024, global temperatures rose 1.6°C above preindustrial levels, surpassing the 1.5°C Paris Agreement threshold for the first time.

The rise, driven by fossil fuel emissions and intensified by El Niño, caused extreme weather, record heatwaves, and widespread human suffering.

Experts warn the planet is on track for catastrophic 2.7°C heating by 2100 unless emissions drop 45% by 2030.

Despite renewable energy advances, 2024 saw record carbon emissions.

Based on data from 2019, the anti-poverty charity has estimated that the 77 million “super-rich” people in the global top 1% of earners – whose average income is $310,000 per year – use 2.1 tonnes of carbon dioxide each in just ten days. In contrast, it takes those in the world’s poorest 50% – 3.9 billion people – nearly three years to pollute that much.

At the remote Little Dome C site in Antarctica, a research team representing twelve scientific institutions from ten European nations has just achieved a historic milestone for climate science. As part of the European-funded Beyond EPICA - Oldest Ice project, the team successfully concluded a decisive drilling campaign, reaching the depth of 2,800 meters—where the Antarctic ice sheet meets the bedrock.

The extracted ice preserves an unprecedented record of Earth’s climate history, continuous information on atmospheric temperatures and pristine samples of old air with greenhouse gases spanning over 1.2-million-year-old ice and probably beyond.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: How shipping companies ‘enable’ beef driven forest destruction in Brazil.

Major shipping companies transported more than half a million tonnes of beef and leather from abattoirs linked to tropical forest destruction in Brazil in a two year period: equal to half the UK’s annual beef consumption.

New data from consultancy AidEnvironment analysed by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism shows that 12 meat plants run by Brazil’s biggest three beef companies – JBS, Marfrig and Minerva – were linked to at least 4,600 sq km of forest loss from August 2021 to July 2023, an area three times the size of London.

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To give you a sense of the minefield this means we're entering

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I'll note that a large chunk of the burned properties depend on the state-run FAIR plan, which provides much weaker coverage (eg: not replacement cost) than private insurers. The FAIR plan also has limited reserves, which it will replenish by issuing an assessment on commercial insurers and their policyholders.

The day the president-elect declared that he would oppose new windmills, fires fueled by climate change ravaged Los Angeles.

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cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/17941012

Dozens of sea mammals have been found dead since last month's Russian oil tanker spill in the Black Sea, a dolphin rescue center said Sunday, as authorities raced to contain the disaster.

The spill began on December 15, when two aging Russian tankers were caught in a storm off the Kerch Strait linking Crimea to southern Russia.

One sank and the other ran aground, pouring around 2,400 tonnes of a heavy fuel oil called mazut into the surrounding waters, authorities estimate.

Russia's Delfa center, which rescues and rehabilitates dolphins, said it had recorded 61 dead cetaceans since the incident, 32 of whom "most likely" died due to the spill.

Cetaceans are a type of aquatic mammal that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises.

[...]