Climate Change: The Science and Global Impact | edX

Free to attend - $49 for certificate

About this course
Climate change is arguably the greatest challenge of our time. Human activity has already warmed the planet by one degree Celsius relative to pre-industrial times, and we are feeling the effects through record heat waves, droughts, wildfires and flooding. If we continue to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, the planet will reach two degrees of warming by 2050 - the threshold that many scientists have identified as a dangerous tipping point. What is the science behind these projections?
Join climate scientist expert Michael Mann to learn about the basic scientific principles behind climate change and global warming. We need to understand the science in order to solve the broader environmental, societal and economic changes that climate change is bringing.
By the end of this course, you will:

• Develop a deep scientific understanding of HOW the climate system has been changing;
• Articulate WHY the climate system is changing;
• Understand the nature of these changes;
• Develop a systems thinking approach to analyzing the impacts of climate change on both natural and human systems.

Continue reading and enroll at: Climate Change: The Science and Global Impact | edX

Paris Is Building the World's Largest Organic Rooftop Farm

It will be roughly three football fields in size.
Why Global Citizens Should Care: Urban agriculture can help cities improve food security for their residents, while also combating climate change and air pollution. The United Nations encourages countries to invest in innovative agricultural methods to end hunger by 2030.
A 150,695-square-foot organic rooftop garden will open in the heart of Paris in 2020, according to the Guardian.

Image: Valode & Pistre Architectes

More than 30 different plant species will be grown on the roof and gardeners will be able to harvest a metric ton worth of fruit every day. The fresh produce will be used to feed local communities and supply a restaurant in the building. The project will use state-of-the-art watering technology and doesn’t require soil, making the farming process incredibly resource-efficient.
This verdant feat of engineering will be the largest such farming project in the world and its realization provides a window into a rapidly growing form of agriculture that could significantly improve global food security, combat climate change, and reduce air pollution. 
Continue reading at: Paris Is Building the World's Largest Organic Rooftop Farm

Video: The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing » Yale Climate Connections

'We are 50 to 100 years ahead of schedule with the slowdown of this ocean circulation pattern,' says climate scientist Michael Mann.
A stubborn blue spot of cool ocean temperatures stands out like the proverbial sore thumb in a recent NASA image of the warming world – a circle of cool blue on a planet increasingly shaded in hot red.

Watch the video
A region of the North Atlantic south of Greenland has experienced some of its coldest temperatures on record in recent years, a cooling unprecedented in the past thousand years. What explains that anomaly?
Climatologist Michael Mann of Penn State University, in this month’s “This is Not Cool” video, explains that this phenomenon may be an indication that the North Atlantic current, part of a larger global ocean circulation, is slowing down.
This current played a role in the 2004 science fiction movie The Day After Tomorrow, a film that was “based on science, but greatly overblown” and that therefore “frustrated a lot of climatologists,” Jason Box of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland points out.
Stefan Rahmstorf of the University of Potsdam, Germany, says this circulation – called the thermohaline circulation, but popularly known to many in the U.S. as “the Gulf Stream” – keeps northern Europe several degrees warmer than it would otherwise be at that latitude.
Continue reading at: Video: The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing » Yale Climate Connections

Could traditional architecture offer relief from soaring temperatures in the Gulf?

Temperatures in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Iran could soar to uninhabitable levels during the course of this century, according to a new study.
Already, places such as Al Ain and Kuwait can experience temperatures of up to 52℃. But the study predicts that the effects of global warming and the increase in greenhouse gases could push the average temperature up to the mid 50℃s or lower 60℃s.

Erwin Bolwidt/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Currently, many residents of the gulf can find refuge in air-conditioned homes, shopping centres and cars. But as temperatures increase, so does the need for cheaper, more sustainable, less energy-intensive ways of staying cool. Fortunately, the region’s past offers a rich source of architectural inspiration.
Continue reading at: Could traditional architecture offer relief from soaring temperatures in the Gulf?

Plastic particles falling out of sky with snow in Arctic - BBC News

Even in the Arctic, microscopic particles of plastic are falling out of the sky with snow, a study has found.
The scientists said they were shocked by the sheer number of particles they found: more than 10,000 of them per litre in the Arctic.
It means that even there, people are likely to be breathing in microplastics from the air - though the health implications remain unclear.

The researchers collected samples of snow in flasks. ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT / MINE TEKMAN
The region is often seen as one of the world's last pristine environments.
A German-Swiss team of researchers has published the work in the journal Science Advances.
The scientists also found rubber particles and fibres in the snow.

Continue reading at: Plastic particles falling out of sky with snow in Arctic - BBC News

Even with Trump in Office, the Climate Denial Movement Is Quietly Falling Apart - VICE

Behind the scenes, climate deniers are losing funding and succumbing to infighting.
t might seem like the climate denial movement is getting everything it wants.

A TIE ILLUSTRATED BY OIL WELLS WORN BY SENATOR JIM INHOFE. IMAGE BY LIA KANTROWITZ FROM A PHOTO BY AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY

The loose network of far-right think tanks and the reclusive billionaires who fund them helped convince Donald Trump to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate treaty. The administration is passing a wish list of policies boosting the fossil fuel industry and escalating its rollback of climate research. Trump's Environmental Protection Agency this June killed one of America's most far-reaching and effective climate laws, the Clean Power Plan, and replaced it with something much weaker.
But those who track and investigate climate deniers told VICE the movement itself appears to be in flux. Veteran deniers are being pushed out, fossil fuel funding is harder to come by and longtime policy goals are for now out of reach. They're suing each other for hundreds of thousands of dollars and attacking companies like Exxon as "alarmist" sell-outs.
Continue reading at: Even with Trump in Office, the Climate Denial Movement Is Quietly Falling Apart - VICE

Amazon emergency: two-thirds of species are under threat from deforestation – dispatch

hen Marco Aurelio Zapata first built his farm named La Flor Del Amazonas (The Amazon Flower) deep in the Colombian rainforest nearly half a century ago, the only sound from his surrounding 288 hectares was that of the wild: howler and capuchin monkeys, macaws, and immeasurable birds, insects and amphibians striking up a cacophony of noise.

The modern era has violently interrupted this natural chorus. During the country’s long civil war which ended with a ceasefire in 2017 low flying crop-dusting planes would roar overhead dousing the forest canopy with herbicide in a bid to stem the guerilla’s cocaine production, much of it centred in Guaviare province where Zapata lives and tends to his smallholding.
Now it is the distant buzz of chainsaws, growing nearer all the time. Machete in hand hacking a path through the rainforest, the 62-year-old Zapata leads us to a clearing the size of several football pitches recently levelled by a neighbour to sell as cattle pasture.
“I feel sad and also angry to see it,” Zapata says. “This is a beautiful place and we want to protect the land but here anybody can do what they want.” 

Concerned landowner and former coca grower Marco Aurelio Zapata is under constant pressure to sell his land to commercial cattle ranchers CREDIT: DAVID ROSE /THE TELEGRAPH
This swathe of jungle on the edge of Colombia’s Chiribiquete national park, declared a world heritage site in 2018 and championed by the Prince of Wales as a vital lung of the earth, is part of a rapidly unfolding environmental crisis stretching right across the Amazon basin.
Continue reading at: Amazon emergency: two-thirds of species are under threat from deforestation – dispatch