Forget the fittest, this study suggests evolution might favour the laziest

Laziness may be a fruitful evolutionary strategy for the survival of individuals and species, a large scale study of fossils from the last five million years from the Atlantic Ocean has found.

The researchers analysed metabolic rates -- or the amount of energy the organisms need to live their daily lives -- of about 299 mollusk species, and found higher metabolic rates were a reliable predictor of extinction likelihood.

"We wondered, 'Could you look at the probability of extinction of a species based on energy uptake by an organism?'" said Luke Strotz, postdoctoral researcher at University of Kansas in the US.

"We found a difference for mollusk species that have gone extinct over the past 5 million years and ones that are still around today. Those that have gone extinct tend to have higher metabolic rates than those that are still living," Strotz said.

'Climate change is real,' carmakers write in a letter to White House

Automakers urged the White House to cooperate with California officials in a coming rewrite of vehicle efficiency standards, saying “climate change is real.”

The plea came in a May 3 letter to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the industry’s leading trade group. It said carmakers “strongly support” continued alignment between federal mileage standards and those set by California. General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Daimler AG and nine other carmakers are members of the Alliance.

“Automakers remain committed to increasing fuel efficiency requirements, which yield everyday fuel savings for consumers while also reducing emissions -- because climate change is real and we have a continuing role in reducing greenhouse gases and improving fuel efficiency,” David Schwietert, executive vice president of federal government relations at the Alliance, wrote in the letter, which was made public Monday.

The letter came roughly a week before President Donald Trump signaled he was open to talks with California on mileage standards. The direction came after the administration’s April ruling that the Obama administration standards for model years 2022-2025 were too aggressive and needed to be eased.

The hottest April day ever: Pakistan's Nawabshah scorching at 52 degrees

Pakistan's Nawabshah city on Monday hit 50.2 C, marking the highest temperature recorded for the month of April, ever.

This might just be the highest temperature ever reliably measured on the planet during April.

Dozens of people fainted in Nawabshah and Larkana, Dawn reported, adding that the city remained deserted for the day as people avoided coming out of their houses.

An expert on global weather extremes, Christopher Burt told the Washington Post that Nawabshah probably had the highest temperature "yet reliably observed on Earth in modern records."

The report stated that Burt's observation cannot be confirmed as the World Meteorological Organization does not conduct official reviews of such monthly temperature extremes.

Paris climate accord pledge of $100 bn still a distant dream, shows study

Wealthy countries are falling well short of their pledge to provide $100 billion a year to developing countries by 2020 as part of the Paris climate accord, a report published today said.

Of the $111 billion invested in clean energy technologies only $10 billion was provided by rich countries, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The pledge was first made at a Copenhagen summit in 2009 and confirmed by signatories of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

The $100 billion, to be raised from multiple sources including from the private sector, was intended to be a minimum, with nations expected to set a new goal by 2025.

UN negotiators meeting in Bonn, Germany, this week are trying to work out how to implement the Paris accord, which aims to keep warming at "well under two degrees Celsius" (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

But US President Donald Trump has pulled his country out of the deal, and analysts have warned that other national leaders may struggle to find the funds to match their ambitions.

On Monday, Standard and Poor's released a report questioning where the money would come from, citing a need for many countries to increase budgets and debt burdens to finance their pledges.

"In our view, it is very unlikely that governments would be willing, or able, to risk deteriorating their creditworthiness by stretching their budgets and debt burdens to fund the implementation costs," the analysts wrote.

But Bloomberg New Energy Finance also said that developing countries needed to improve legal frameworks in order to make investments in clean energy more attractive, both for public and private investors.
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Why Hurricanes Harvey and Irma won't lead to action on climate change

It’s not easy to hold the nation’s attention for long, but three solid weeks of record-smashing hurricanes directly affecting multiple states and at least 20 million people will do it.

Clustered disasters hold our attention in ways that singular events cannot – they open our minds to the possibility that these aren’t just accidents or natural phenomena to be painfully endured. As such, they can provoke debates over the larger “disaster lessons” we should be learning. And I would argue the combination of Harvey and Irma has triggered such a moment.

The damages caused by the storms will undoubtedly lead to important lessons in disaster preparation and response. For many, though, the most urgent call for learning has been to acknowledge at long last the connection between climate change and severe weather.

Will this cluster of disasters provide the lever that will move climate change in the United States from a “debate” to an action plan?

It’s easy to view disaster history in this cause-effect way – to hop in time from disaster to disaster and spot the reforms as though they naturally emerge from adversity and commitment to change. But as a historian with a focus on risk and disasters, I can say this view can be misleading.
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Al Gore mocks Trump, says 'ethical reasons' could end presidency early

Former US Vice President Al Gore suggested on Tuesday that the presidency of Donald Trump could end prematurely for "ethical reasons," drawing laughter from a packed movie theatre at the European premiere of his latest film on climate change.

"We’re only six months into the experiment with Trump. Some experiments are ended early for ethical reasons," Gore said, acknowledging the "provocative" nature of his comment.

Gore said he was convinced that US cities, states and business executives would meet US obligations under the 2015 Paris agreement to fight climate change, despite Trump's decision in June to withdraw from the global pact.

"We have a global agreement and the American people are part of this agreement in spite of Donald Trump," he told hundreds of moviegoers at Berlin's Zoo Palast cinema after a showing of his new film, "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power."

"We can win this ... All we need is the political will," he said, adding his hope that the United States would "soon once again" have a leader who was committed to halting global warming.
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US govt bans official use of the phrase 'climate change'

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has directed its officials to avoid using the term "climate change" in their work, and refer to "weather extremes" instead.

According to the Guardian, a series of emails between officials of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a USDA unit that oversees farmers' land conservation, show the Trump administration had in February listed "climate change" in the "avoid" category. The term was replaced by "weather extremes".

An official statement from Bianca Moebius-Clune, director of soil health, instructed employees to use "resilience to weather extremes", instead of "climate change adaption".

The term "sequester carbon" is also ruled out and replaced by "build soil organic matter", the daily reported on Tuesday.

In an email to staff, Moebius-Clune said: "We won't change the modelling, just how we talk about it -- there are a lot of benefits to putting carbon back in the sail [sic], climate mitigation is just one of them."

In a separate email to senior employees, just days after Trump's inauguration, Jimmy Bramblett, deputy chief for programmes at the NRCS, said: "It has become clear one of the previous administration's priority is not consistent with that of the incoming administration. Namely, that priority is climate change. Please visit with your staff and make them aware of this shift in perspective within the executive branch."
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Has the moment for environmental justice been lost?

Given how President Donald Trump has taken aim at the Environmental Protection Agency with regulatory rollbacks and deep proposed budget cuts, it may come as no surprise that the Office of Environmental Justice is on the chopping block.

This tiny corner of the EPA was established 24 years ago to advocate for minorities and the poor, populations most likely to face the consequences of pollution and least able to advocate for themselves.

It does so by acting as a middleman, connecting vulnerable communities with those who can help them. It heads a group that advises EPA officials about injustices and another that brings together representatives from other federal agencies and the White House to swap proposals.

When it works, all the talk leads to grants, policies and programs that change lives.

In the Arkwright and Forest Park communities in Spartanburg, South Carolina, residents were living near contaminated industrial sites and a landfill — and dying of respiratory illnesses and cancer at extraordinary rates. They used a $20,000 environmental justice grant from the EPA as seed money to form partnerships with local businesses and government agencies. Those alliances, in turn, helped bring more than $250 million in infrastructure, community health centers, affordable housing, environmental cleanups and job training to the area.

Trump's budget proposal would effectively eliminate the office and the $2 million it takes to operate it. An EPA spokesperson suggested in a statement that the agency doesn't need a special arm devoted to environmental justice to continue this work.
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Donald Trump, Angela Merkel to meet ahead of G20 talks

US President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel plan to meet Thursday for what are expected to be tricky talks on the eve of a Group of 20 summit in Hamburg.

Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said the meeting would come before the summit, "most probably in the early evening of Thursday".

The pair are also scheduled to talk by telephone today, Trump said in a tweet.

Transatlantic differences on climate change, trade, defence spending and refugees hang over the July 7-8 meeting of the world's major industrialised and emerging economies.

Last week Merkel met with key European leaders and vowed to make a stand for climate protection and open markets at the meeting with Trump, who has said he will take the US out of the Paris climate deal and pursue a protectionist "America First" policy.

Merkel said that "the differences are obvious and it would be dishonest to try to cover that up. That I won't do."

She also said the US exit from the 2015 Paris climate pact had made Europe "more determined than ever" to make the accord a success.

Today, presenting her party's election platform, she predicted "a whole series of thorny issues" at the G20.

"We know the positions of the US government and I do not expect them to disappear on a two-day trip to Hamburg," the chancellor said.

She warned against high expectations, noting that the summit's final communique has to be "approved unanimously".
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Refugee crisis to escalate as rising ocean levels could affect 2 bn by 2100

Climate change is causing sea level rise around the world. According to a recent study, in the year 2100, two billion people - about one-fifth of the world's population - could become climate change refugees due to rising ocean levels.

Those who once lived on coastlines will face displacement and resettlement bottlenecks as they seek habitable places inland, according to Cornell University research.

"We're going to have more people on less land and sooner that we think," said lead author Charles Geisler, professor emeritus of development sociology at Cornell.

"The future rise in global mean sea level probably won't be gradual. Yet few policy makers are taking stock of the significant barriers to entry that coastal climate refugees, like other refugees, will encounter when they migrate to higher ground."

Earth's escalating population is expected to top nine billion people by 2050 and climb to 11 billion people by 2100, according to a United Nations report.

Feeding that population will require more arable land even as swelling oceans consume fertile coastal zones and river deltas, driving people to seek new places to dwell.

By 2060, about 1.4 billion people could be climate change refugees, according to the paper. Geisler extrapolated that number to two billion by 2100.

"The colliding forces of human fertility, submerging coastal zones, residential retreat, and impediments to inland resettlement is a huge problem. We offer preliminary estimates of the lands unlikely to support new waves of climate refugees due to the residues of war, exhausted natural resources, declining net primary productivity, desertification, urban sprawl, land concentration, 'paving the planet' with roads and greenhouse gas storage zones offsetting permafrost melt," Geisler said.
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Why US firms will ignore Trump's withdrawal from Paris climate agreement

Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord has received widespread condemnation from political leaders, scientists, activists and climate experts. Perhaps surprisingly, a number of big businesses have also voiced their disagreement with the US president’s move.

Among others, well-known companies such as Apple, General Electric, Google, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Tesla, Morgan Stanley, PepsiCo, Walmart and Walt Disney all condemned the announcement and vowed to continue with their own efforts to protect the environment regardless. Coupled with statements from states and cities, as well as other organisations, this shows that while the president may be appealing to a very specific slice of his electorate, many Americans are decidedly critical. Even large oil companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron have argued against withdrawal.

It’s clear why. Climate change cannot be ignored and these companies are better off moving with the times – and profiting from it in the process.

Competitive advantage
Trump had campaigned against the Paris Agreement. He argued it placed a heavy burden on America’s economy by putting people (notably coal miners) out of jobs to the benefit of other nations.

Of course, all policy decisions have an impact on business in some way. But the US president’s assertion that taking steps to limit climate change is bad for business is evidently wrong given the very significant growth in renewable energy investment and jobs in recent years. For example, in the US, there are already more than twice as many more people employed in the solar energy sector compared to coal.

Indeed, many of the US’ biggest companies are its most innovative. And it has been their engagement with climate change that has led to significant (green) product innovations and process improvements that have saved businesses countless dollars in energy costs. Take Campbell Soup for example. Until 2020 its aim is to reduce its environmental footprint including carbon emissions by 50%. The company’s varied initiatives span across reducing waste, water and packaging, but it also made improvements in the transporting and handling of raw materials and ingredients.
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Trump's exit of Paris climate accord strengthens China and Europe

President Trump’s much-anticipated decision to exit the Paris Agreement on climate change strikes another blow against the current multilateral international order by his administration and reinforces its America First stance toward the world.

Trump declared his administration’s intent to stop honoring and cease all implementation of the nonbinding parts of the Paris Agreement. This includes the goals and actions to reduce emissions outlined in the U.S. Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) as well as any further contributions to the Green Climate Fund, which provides money to poor countries to lower emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change.

With this action, which goes against the positions of almost all other countries in the world, President Trump officially, and entirely voluntarily, ceded hard-won U.S. international leadership. Already, China and the EU are showing signs they are willing to fill the leadership vacuum.

Even if slightly hyperbolic, Fareed Zakaria on CNN declared it as “(t)he day that the United States resigned as the leader of the free world. It is nothing short of that.” Other U.S. foreign policy analysts have intoned the same. What does this move mean for the U.S. and its foreign relations?

Fulfilling a campaign promise
With the announcement to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, President Trump elected to go with ideology over pressing environmental concerns, recommendations by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and business leaders, and public opinion. These and other groups believe that it would have been more prudent to remain within the Paris Agreement and keep a prominent seat at the table as future decisions are made.
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Wal-Mart, IBM oppose US exit from Paris deal, but will stay on WH panel

Several major US companies, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc, JP Morgan Chase & Co and IBM Corp, on Friday said their CEOs will remain in an influential presidential advisory group despite objecting to President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord.

Citing the need to stay engaged with the administration, business leaders said they would remain in their advisory roles to continue working to influence White House policies.

Trump, a Republican, on Thursday said he would pull the United States from the landmark 2015 global agreement to fight climate change, drawing anger and condemnation from world leaders and heads of industry.

Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and Walt Disney Co CEO Robert Iger reacted by leaving White House advisory councils after Trump's move.

"Climate change is real. Leaving Paris is not good for America or the world," Musk said in a Twitter post on Thursday. He was a member of the business advisory group, known as the President's Strategic and Policy Forum. He also belonged to Trump's manufacturing jobs council.

Asked about CEOs' criticism of the U.S. withdrawal, White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Friday said some companies that expressed support for remaining in the agreement raised concerns about the emissions reduction targets.

Spicer, speaking to reporters at a daily news conference, added he does not know if Trump will replace Musk and Iger on the business council.

A spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the largest U.S. retailer, said on Friday that Chief Executive Doug McMillon will remain on the business council.

McMillon said in a Facebook post late on Thursday he was "disappointed in today's news about the Paris Agreement. We think it's important for countries to work together to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty will remain on the council, the company said on Friday as it reaffirmed its support for the Paris accord.
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How World War I changed the weather for good

Culture has rarely tired of speaking about the weather. Pastoral poems detail the seasonal variations in weather ad nauseam, while the term “pathetic fallacy” is often taken to refer to a Romantic poet’s wilful translation of external phenomena – sun, rain, snow – into aspects of his own mind. Victorian novels, too, use weather as a device to convey a sense of time, place and mood: the fog in Dickens’s Bleak House (1853), for example, or the wind that sweeps through Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights (1847).

And yet the same old conversations fundamentally changed tense during World War I. Because during the war, weather forecasting turned from a practice based on looking for repeated patterns in the past, to a mathematical model that looked towards an open future.

Needless to say, a lot relied on accurate weather forecasting in wartime: aeronautics, ballistics, the drift of poison gas. But forecasts at this time were in no way reliable. Although meteorology had developed throughout the Victorian era to produce same-day weather maps and daily weather warnings (based on a telegram service that could literally move faster than the wind), the practice of forecasting the weather as it evolved and changed over time remained notoriously inadequate.

Changing the weather

English mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson saw that the pre-War practice of weather forecasting was much too archival in nature, merely matching observable weather phenomena in the present to historical records of previous weather phenomena.

This, he deemed, was a fundamentally unscientific method, as it presupposed that past evolutions of the atmosphere would repeat in the future. For the sake of more accurate prediction, he claimed, it was essential that forecasters felt free to disregard the index of the past.
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Most of the Rs 54,000-cr National Clean Energy Fund remains unused

Latest News - The effort of the Centre to financially support clean energy initiatives by imposing a cess on coal producers seems to have failed. 

The cess pool has collected Rs 54,000 crore since 2011-12 but only half has been transferred to the National Clean Energy Fund (NCEF), and barely Rs 9,000 crore has been used to “finance clean energy projects”. NCEF was renamed Clean Environment Fund in last year’s Budget.

A major share of the NCEF fund went as “budgetary allocation” to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE). The amount of Budget grant to the MNRE was Rs 1,977 crore in 2014-15; Rs 4,000 crore in 2015-16 and Rs 4,947 crore in 2016-17 — 98 per cent of the MNRE’s budget — indicated data compiled by the finance ministry, which was reviewed by Business Standard.

The disbursed amount included projects from (Read More)