Radical climate action 'critical' to Great Barrier Reef's survival, government body says

Australia's top Great Barrier Reef officials warn the natural wonder will virtually collapse if the planet becomes 1.5 degrees hotter – a threshold that scientists say requires shutting down coal within three decades.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority says
limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees is "critical".

This federal election campaign is a potential tipping point for Australia's direction on climate action, as the major parties pledge distinctly different ambitions for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

However neither party has rejected the proposed Adani mine outright or promised to phase out coal, an export on which Australia is heavily reliant.

Climate change has already wrought devastating effects on the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, including two consecutive years of mass coral bleaching in 2016 and 2017.

Read the story from The Age by Nicole Hasham - “Radical climate action 'critical' to Great Barrier Reef's survival, government body says.”

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions spiked in 2018 — and it couldn’t happen at a worse time

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions rose an estimated 3.4 percent in 2018, according to new research — a jarring increase that comes as scientists say the world needs to be aggressively cutting its emissions to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change.

The findings, published Tuesday by the independent economic research firm Rhodium Group, mean that the United States now has a diminishing chance of meeting its pledge under the 2015 Paris climate agreement to dramatically reduce its emissions by 2025.

The findings also underscore how the world’s second-largest emitter, once a global leader in pushing for climate action, has all but abandoned efforts to mitigate the effects of a warming world. President Trump has said he plans to officially withdraw the nation from the Paris climate agreement in 2020 and in the meantime has rolled back Obama-era regulations aimed at reducing the country’s carbon emissions.

Read the story from The Washington Post by Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis - “U.S. greenhouse gas emissions spiked in 2018 — and it couldn’t happen at a worse time.”

How a Massive Wall in Antarctica Could Hold Back Sea-Level Rise

Stephanie Pappas.

Glaciers are mighty rivers of ice that can carry boulders on their backs and grind valleys into rugged mountain ranges. But now, scientists say that humans might need to think about trying to engineer these formidable forces of nature.

Propping up glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic might be the most targeted — and, amazingly, the cheapest — way to slow sea-level rise in a warming world, according to a new paper in the journal The Cryosphere. A seawall, or even just a series of artificial seamounts for the glacier to get stuck against, could hold back unimaginable amounts of meltwater, the research suggests.

Read the story by Stephanie Pappas from LiveScience - “How a Massive Wall in Antarctica Could Hold Back Sea-Level Rise.”