Imagine during the Cold War that one political party, in the face of overwhelming evidence that the Soviet Union was engaged in espionage against the United States, had a nuclear arsenal pointed at the United States, kept Eastern Europe under its thumb and imprisoned dissenters, refused to consider the Soviet Union a danger — of any sort — to the United States or other Western democracies. And they would offer no credible evidence to the contrary, but rather assert that it was all a hoax.

Climate change could be kept in check if a phaseout of all fossil fuel infrastructure were to begin immediately, according to research. It shows that meeting the internationally agreed aspiration of keeping global warming to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is still possible. The scientists say it is therefore the choices being made by global society, not physics, which is the obstacle to meeting the goal.

Late last year, ‘yellow vest’ protests erupted across France. One trigger was a planned hike in the price of petrol. Fuel-tax rises, now on hold, are part of France’s strategy to reduce carbon emissions by 40% from 1990 levels by 2030 and phase out petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040. Clearly, public opposition might hinder these efforts.

When they arrived in the Americas centuries ago, European colonists brought pestilence and death. Their arrival was so devastating, in fact, that it may have contributed to a period of global cooling, according to a new study. The research, to be published in the March issue of the journal Quaternary Science Reviews, represents an ambitious attempt to show that, through a series of events, human activity was affecting the climate long before the industrial revolution and global warming.

After years of failing to pass a carbon tax, climate hawks are now rallying behind a bold new proposal for tackling global warming. Known as the Green New Deal, this economic stimulus package for the planet promises to dramatically cut carbon emissions through government spending on clean energy jobs, technologies, and infrastructure.

The age of climate panic is here. Last summer, a heat wave baked the entire Northern Hemisphere, killing dozens from Quebec to Japan. Some of the most destructive wildfires in California history turned more than a million acres to ash, along the way melting the tires and the sneakers of those trying to escape the flames. Pacific hurricanes forced three million people in China to flee and wiped away almost all of Hawaii’s East Island.

While there are many drivers of climate, CO2 is the most dominant radiative forcing and is increasing faster than any other forcing.

Americans should not be fooled by the Stalinist tactics being used by the White House to try to discredit the findings of mainstream climate science. The Trump administration has already purged information about climate change from government websites, gagged federal experts and attempted to end funding for climate change programmes.

Climate change might be the most urgent issue of our day, both politically and in terms of life on Earth. There is mounting awareness that the global climate is a matter for public action. For 11,500 years, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations hovered around 280 ppm (the preindustrial "normal"), with an average surface temperature around 15°C. Since the Industrial Revolution, this level has been rising continuously, reaching 410 ppm in 2018.

In a previous post, I discussed the essential role that questions play in the political landscape of contemporary democracy. The ability to ask questions, and to ask good ones at that, facilitates participation in political discussion and debate, allows us to gather information that speaks to our concerns, and those of our communities, and enables informed decision-making, about, for example, which box to tick on one’s ballot paper. Here I want to make the case stronger by looking at...

By the end of the century, the manifold consequences of unchecked climate change will cost the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars per year, according to a new study by scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency. Those costs will come in multiple forms, including water shortages, crippled infrastructure and polluted air that shortens lives, according to the study in Monday’s edition of Nature Climate Change. No part of the country will be untouched, the EPA researchers warned.

For as long as climate change has been a part of America’s national consciousness, it’s been talked about in dire terms, evoking images of some hellish, “Mad Max”-style dystopia. The title and much of the content of David Wallace-Wells’s recent book is a variation on the same theme, stirring up hundreds of pages of images’ worth of an “Uninhabitable Earth” to make the case that the conversation has not been dire enough.

I know, I know, dunking on the Wall Street Journal editorial board is a bit like smacking your four-year-old nephew’s would-be jumper out of the air before it even leaves his hands. But in an Op-Ed last week it peddled the tired and disingenuous notion that electric cars, by the very virtue of their production, pollute more than fossil fuel cars. This is wrong, and it cannot stand.

It is one of the great dilemmas of climate change: We take such comfort from air conditioning that worldwide energy consumption for that purpose has already tripled since 1990. It is on track to grow even faster through mid-century—and assuming fossil-fuel–fired power plants provide the electricity, that could cause enough carbon dioxide emissions to warm the planet by another deadly half-degree Celsius.

We published “The Uninhabitable Earth” on Sunday night, and the response since has been extraordinary — both in volume (it is already the most-read article in New York Magazine’s history) and in kind. Within hours, the article spawned a fleet of commentary across newspapers, magazines, blogs, and Twitter, much of which came from climate scientists and the journalists who cover them.

Corporate America is increasingly calling for a federal price on carbon, writes Anne Kelly of Ceres. Private sector commitments could encourage ambitious government policies.

Climate change and deforestation could also severely fragment much of the forest by 2050, a new model projects

Which Democratic candidates believe that the next president could stop climate change? Which candidates don’t believe that? And where do they stand on the future of health care, handguns, big tech, the Supreme Court and other issues that may come up at the debates on Wednesday and Thursday night?

France’s interior minister has asked the Paris police chief to explain a controversial riot police operation to remove climate activists from a bridge, after a video of officers using pepper spray and dragging protesters went viral on social media. The interior ministry said the police operation to clear the demonstrators was “necessary to restore traffic circulation in the centre of Paris”.

Mainstream discussions of the global emergency, writes a top U.N. official, are remarkably out of touch with the scale of the crisis and the economic and social upheaval it will bring.. Climate change is making headlines this summer with record temperatures, devastating floods, and climate-related migration. But in the U.S., mainstream discussions about climate change are remarkably out of touch with the scale of the crisis and the economic and social upheaval it will bring. Political leaders have failed to put forward a vision for avoiding catastrophic consequences or protecting those most affected.