Coastal Risk Australia combines Google Maps with detailed tide and elevation data, as well as future sea level rise projections. For the first time, Australians can see on a map how rising sea levels will affect their house just by typing their address into a website. And they’ll soon be able to get an estimate of how much climate change will affect their property prices and insurance premiums, too.
For half a century, climate scientists have seen the West Antarctic ice sheet, a remnant of the last ice age, as a sword of Damocles hanging over human civilization. The great ice sheet, larger than Mexico, is thought to be potentially vulnerable to disintegration from a relatively small amount of global warming, and capable of raising the sea level by 12 feet or more should it break up. But researchers long assumed the worst effects would take hundreds — if not thousands — of years to occur.
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In the spring, after the permafrost thaws and the ground settles, Wilson Andrew Sr takes a wrench to the metal pilings that hold up the foundation of his house in Atmautluak, Alaska, and makes it level again. He cranks the screws until the foundation flattens out, level with the ground. At least for now.
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A project backed by Bill Gates and a Canadian oil baron is attempting to turn back the clock on greenhouse gas emissions by snatching carbon dioxide particles out of thin air. The initiative, by Calgary, Alberta,-based Carbon Engineering Ltd., holds the prospect of powering vehicles using fuel reconstituted from tailpipe emissions, while helping to reduce greenhouse gases.
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More than 250 professors at the University of Chicago have called on the school to fight climate change by ridding itself of fossil fuel holdings – a gesture that would have exceptional resonance from the former home of Barack Obama and alma mater of current presidential contender Bernie Sanders.
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt President Barack Obama a blow by moving to temporarily block his administration’s rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Reacting to a lawsuit from 29 states, as well as the energy industry, justices blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan from going forward while the rule is challenged in court.
