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Environmental News Network -- Know Your Environment
The collective climate targets submitted by Governments to the UN will lead to global emissions far above the levels needed to hold warming to below 2°C, researchers at the Climate Action Tracker warned today.
The analysis by the consortium of four research organisations was released today in Bonn where Governments are meeting for the second to last week of negotiations ahead of the Paris summit on climate action.
A new satellite study has calculated that there are more than 3 trillion trees on Earth, around 422 trees for every person, although the number is believed to have dropped by 46 percent since the start of human civilisation. The Yale-led international research found the result of the tree count is around seven and a half times more than some previous estimates.
A ambos lados del estrecho de Bering, el hielo marino del verano ha vuelto a caer a un nivel que está llevando a miles de morsas a las playas costeras. Fotos tomadas en Ryrkaypiy, Chukotka, Rusia, muestran un estimado de 5,000 morsas en ese lugar, mientras que a través del estrecho en los Estados Unidos, miles más se observaron cerca del pueblo de Point Lay, Alaska.
El material particulado y la contaminación atmosférica por NO2 se asocian con un mayor riesgo de ataques cardíacos severos a pesar de estar dentro de los niveles recomendados por la Unión Europea, según un estudio presentado en el Congreso de la Sociedad Europea de Cardiología (ESC por sus siglas en inglés) por el Dr. Jean-Francois Argacha, cardiólogo del Hospital Universitario de Bruselas (UZ Brussel-Vrije Universiteit Brussel).
Since the 1990s, scientists and policymakers have proposed limiting Earth’s average global surface temperature to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, thereby averting the most serious effects of global warming, such as severe droughts and coastal flooding. But until recently, they lacked a comprehensive estimate of the likely social and economic benefits — from lives saved to economies preserved — that would result from greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies designed to achieve the 2 C goal.
Now, a team of researchers from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change has published a study in Climatic Change that provides scenarios that climate scientists can use to estimate such benefits. The study projects greenhouse gas emissions levels and changes in precipitation, ocean acidity, sea level rise and other climate impacts throughout the 21st century resulting from different global greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation scenarios. The scenarios include a business-as-usual future and one aimed at achieving significant GHG emission reductions limiting global warming since pre-industrial times to 2 C. Research groups convened by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have already begun using the MIT projections to evaluate the benefits of a 2 C emissions reduction scenario for agriculture, water, health, and other global concerns.
While many are used to thinking of ants as pests (especially during the summertime), new research published in British Ecological Society’s Journal of Applied Ecology says not so fast. Ants are actually pest controllers. They’re efficient, sustainable and safe, and these little guys are making a big impact on our planet.
