Our best shot at cooling the planet might be right under our feet

 Cracked soil by a village in Iran abandoned by
farmers because water reserves ran dry
due to overuse. 

It’s getting hot out there. Every one of the past 14 months has broken the global temperature record. Ice cover in the Arctic sea just hit a new low, at 525,000 square miles less than normal. And apparently we’re not doing much to stop it: according to Professor Kevin Anderson, one of Britain’s leading climate scientists, we’ve already blown our chances of keeping global warming below the “safe” threshold of 1.5 degrees.

If we want to stay below the upper ceiling of 2 degrees, though, we still have a shot. But it’s going to take a monumental effort. Anderson and his colleagues estimate that in order to keep within this threshold, we need to start reducing emissions by a sobering 8%–10% per year, from now until we reach “net zero” in 2050. If that doesn’t sound difficult enough, here’s the clincher: efficiency improvements and clean energy technologies will only win us reductions of about 4% per year at most.

Read Jason Hickel’s story on The Guardian - “Our best shot at cooling the planet might be right under our feet.”

Earth sets terrifying new temperature record

News of a heatwave around Australia to end summer was just the start of it.

Extreme heat means more extreme bushfires.

Shocking new data from NASA shows the temperature of Earth surged in January and February to the temperature targets set for the year 2100. The planet is now two degrees Celsius above the ‘normal’ mark – the point at which climate change becomes ‘dangerous’ to planet’s inhabitants.

February 2016 was Earth’s hottest February since records began in 1880, according to the US space agency, which Australian experts have described as an “awful” and “dismaying” result that may signal humanity has crossed a crucial tipping point.

Read The New Daily story - “Earth sets terrifying new temperature record.”