The Supreme Court has been quiet on the EPA's ability to slash carbon emissions. Their decision to nail the biospheres coffin shut will be revealed before noon today when Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in. Not one justice is a scientist, let alone a climate scientist. Their ruling should be ignored.
Alito has killed women and girls with his Roe decision, and Thomas killed New Yorkers by overruling a century-old gun law. Today's ruling ends the fight to save the planet.
Despite the court torching the planet, there is one minimal consolation as well, not from the six GQP fascists on the Supreme Court. But instead, Homeland Security approved 3 billion spread out over five years for coastal resiliency. We'll take it.
Today, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina M. Raimondo announced funding opportunities from NOAA’s $2.96 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds to address the climate crisis and strengthen coastal resilience and infrastructure. Over the next five years, NOAA’s targeted investments in the areas of habitat restoration, coastal resilience, and climate data and services will advance ongoing federal efforts toward building climate resilience.
“The climate crisis is affecting every community in the U.S. and impacting our nation’s economy,” said U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “The funding from NOAA will be used to support transformational projects that will help communities, especially underserved communities, build up local climate resilience and climate-ready infrastructure.”
“This funding provides NOAA and its partners with a historic opportunity to invest in the climate smart infrastructure of the future,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “Together, we’ll help ensure our coasts are climate-ready, our fisheries and protected resources are resilient, and our climate and data products reflect the needs of decision makers.”
Study reveals powerful links between methane and climate change
Cheng Chin-Hsien, first author of the study and a researcher at the NTU Asian School of the Environment, said: "Through looking at four decades worth of data, we found that nature could be producing more and consuming less methane than was previously realized. We put this down to delayed effects from nature's interactions with methane emissions. This means that the recent sudden surge in methane emissions and the increase in warming could be a result of climate change years or even decades ago. Similarly, the full effect of rising temperatures today on the atmospheric methane concentration may only become more apparent in the decades to come."
Professor Simon Redfern, lead author of the study and Dean of NTU's College of Science, said: "Our results show that the links between methane and climate change have been underestimated. We still have so much to learn about the complex interactions that drive climate change. The message from this study is clear and echoes what scientists have been calling for in recent years—that we need to cut back methane, as well as carbon emissions, to fight climate change."
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The latest figures from the United States' National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show that the amount of methane in the atmosphere reached historic highs in 2020 and 2021 and is currently increasing at its fastest recorded rate.
In general, a warmer environment leads to an increase in the amount of methane generated by microbes. This leads to further warming due to more heat trapped in the atmosphere. Eventually this atmospheric methane is removed when it undergoes oxidation, reacting to form atmospheric carbon dioxide and water.
Kagan: "The Court appoints itself—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.