Daily Briefing |
TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES
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Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our pick of the key studies published in peer-reviewed journals.
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Today's climate and energy headlines:
- March Was 4th Warmest on Record Globally
- Europe speeds up gas storage to prepare for Russian cut
- Coal gasification: The clean energy of the future?
- The IPCC's message is clear: it's the end of business as usual for fossil fuel users
- Climate change hysteria is ruining British businesses
- IPCC changes its tune on gas as way to mitigate climate change
- Climate contrarian backlash - a difficult lesson for scientific journals to learn
- IPCC report: the scientists have done their bit, now it is up to us
- Toward a better understanding and quantification of methane emissions from shale gas development
- Abrupt increases in Amazonian tree mortality due to drought-fire interactions
News.
Climate and energy news:.
Reuters reports: “European utilities are filling up gas
storage sites to prepare for a potential Russian supply cut to
Ukraine, an important transit route to Europe, taking advantage of
mild weather and healthy flows from alternative sources such as
Norway.”
Coal provides more than 40 per cent of electricity globally.
Could coal gasification with carbon capture and storage reduce the
environmental impact of coal burning, and offer new opportunities
for energy independence?
Climate and energy comment:.
IPCC lead author Jim Skea writes in the Guardian: “If we
postpone action [on cutting carbon emissions] until 2030, the
two-degree target will be beyond our grasp unless technologies to
remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are used.” The IPCC
report should have given governments the information they need to
accelerate action on tackling climate change, he says.
.
The IPCC represents “a bullying approach that is perfect for
politicians and control freaks”, writes the Express. “The aim of
all this alarmist talk is to blackmail us into accepting [an]
agenda of high taxes, green subsidies, bureaucratic regulation and
world government…”
As well as suggesting that the world must embrace low-carbon
technologies, the IPCC is now happy to stress “short-term measures
such as switching from coal to gas, as well as the loftier goal of
turning to renewable energy”, Durham’s DONG Energy Professor
suggests.
New climate science:.
Dana Nuccitelli of Skeptical Science argues that academic
journals are doing a patchy job of responding to attacks from
climate sceptic campaigners when they publish papers the sceptics
find unwelcome. “It’s important for journals to stand behind sound
research that contrarians may find inconvenient”, he
says.
The IPCC has clearly outlined the problem and risks of climate
change, as well as the solutions, writes WWF’s Leo Hickman in the
Guardian. “There is no time left for us to wait another seven years
to hear what the IPCC has concluded. Procrastination and delay are
now our worst enemies … Our collective fate is on our own hands
and we must move forward with urgency and clarity of
purpose.”
Scientists have found high levels of methane above seven individual
shale gas wells in the US during the drilling stage. The findings
could have implications for the evaluation of the environmental
impacts from natural gas production, say the
researchers.
A longer dry season in the Amazon will lead to prolonged
drought, causing more intense and widespread wildfires, according
to new research. The scientists say this is likely to be a far
bigger driver of tree death than previously thought.