Trump Skipping G7 Climate Meeting on Climate, Clea...

President Donald Trump headed for the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Canada on Friday but will be leaving before Saturday’s meeting on climate change, clean energy and oceans. The White House said an aide will take Trump’s place, CNN reported. The announcement of his early departure comes amid a brewing war on tariffs. French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a joint...

17 Governors Renew Climate Pledges on Anniversary ...

A year ago today, President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. His action spurred Syria and Nicaragua, the only two holdout countries, to join the landmark deal to limit warming well below the dangerous threshold of 2°C. While the federal government falters, scores of businesses, institutions, cities and states across the nation are bucking Trump and remain committed to the...

How Climate Change Ignites Wildfires From Californ...

The link between climate change and more frequent, severe wildfires is well-known, but two new studies published in Geophysical Research Letters this month provided more insight into exactly how warming temperatures are increasing fire risk around the world. In fire-weary California, urbanization and global warming are increasing ground temperature along the southern coast, decreasing cloud cover and increasing the risk of...

11 Turbines Successfully Installed at Wind Farm Tr...

The world’s most powerful wind turbines have been successfully installed at the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre (EOWDC) off Aberdeen Bay in Scotland’s North Sea. The final turbine was installed on Saturday just nine weeks after the first foundation for the 11-turbine offshore wind farm was deployed, according to the developers Vattenfall. Incidentally, the project was at the center of a contentious legal...

Massive Ice Highways Found Hiding Under Antarctica

Scientists have found huge valleys linking the smaller West Antarctic Ice Sheet to the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet, hidden deep under the ice. Three canyons — named Foundation Trough, Patuxent Trough and Offset Rift Basin — slice through the mountain ranges that divide the two major regions of the frozen continent. Foundation is 217 miles (350 kilometers) long (about the distance from Los Angeles to Las Vegas) and 22...

White House Considered Ignoring Climate Science, I...

The Trump administration debated whether it should attack or simply ignore federal research on climate change, the Washington Post reported Wednesday. A memo obtained by the Post written last September by former top White House energy and environmental aide Michael Catanzaro presented three pathways for the administration to approach climate science. The menu of options: conducting a red team/blue team exercise to...

Worst Case Climate Scenario Could Be Even Worse Th...

When scientists set out to model the impacts of climate change, they use four different Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), which each represent a different possible radiative forcing, i.e.a total of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions measured in Watts per square meter, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) Each RCP also sets a different option for global temperature, rate of...

New Pew Survey: Americans Are Noticing the Effects...

Significant majorities of Americans are seeing the impacts of climate change on their communities and don’t think that the U.S. government is doing enough to combat it, according to the results of the latest survey by the Pew Research Center, reported Monday. Some highlights of the comprehensive national survey on environmental attitudes, taken by 2,541 adults between March 27 and April 9, are outlined below. 1....

Trump Kills NASA Carbon Monitoring Program as CO2 ...

 As the Trump administration charges forward with its war on science by canceling a “crucial” carbon monitoring system at NASA, scientists and climate experts are sounding alarms over atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) that just surpassed a “troubling” threshold for the first time in human history. “The reading from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii finds that concentrations of...

Oberlin Council passes climate resolution

OBERLIN — City Council voted unanimously Monday evening to approve a resolution calling on the U.S. Congress to accept climate solution legislation. The resolution would call on Congress to pass “carbon fee and dividend” legislation that would give an economic incentive for people and companies to become more fuel-efficient. The policy would charge a rising fee at sources such as oil wells, coal mines, etc. The proposed fee...

Ohio wind-farm rules eased in proposed state Senat...

CLEVELAND, Ohio — There soon may be more wind farms in Ohio. The Ohio Senate’s GOP leadership is making an effort to encourage wind-farm development in the state by eliminating restrictive rules that previous GOP leadership slipped into a budget bill four years ago. The 2014 changes lengthened the distance a wind turbine can be to an adjoining property line  to 1,125 feet — rather than to the nearest home...

Top candidates for Ohio House speaker back bailout...

Updated on May 11, 2018: We’ve updated this post with a response from Rep. Larry Householder regarding his flight to Washington, D.C. aboard FirstEnergy’s corporate jet for President Donald Trump’s inauguration, and why he later sponsored a bill to bail out FirstEnergy’s nuclear power plants in Ohio.  Larry Householder and Ryan Smith, the two front-runners in the race to replace Cliff Rosenberger as Ohio House speaker, have...

California just became the first state to require ...

California just became the first state in the country to require all new homes to be built with rooftop solar panels. The California Energy Commission hearing room was packed full on Wednesday as the commission voted unanimously in favor of the proposed rule. Starting on January 1, 2020 any new home that’s three stories tall or shorter, be it a single-family dwelling, apartment building, or condo, will need to include...

Voters approve Athens carbon fee

Athens voters overwhelmingly approved a carbon fee in the primary election that will be collected to fund solar projects in town. There were 1,410 votes in favor of the initiative and just 437 against, according to figures provided Tuesday night by the Athens County Board of Elections. The results are unofficial. As The Messenger has previously reported, the opt-out carbon fee will only charge members of the Southeast Ohio...

Utah High Schoolers Convinced State Lawmakers to A...

Utah’s state lawmakers aren’t exactly friendly to climate change legislation. Their Republican governor said in 2015 that man-made climate change is “a little debatable.” In 2010, the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a resolution that implied global warming is a conspiracy and urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to stop all carbon dioxide reduction policies and programs. But thanks...