Union of Concerned Scientists

JULY 29, 2024

My colleague Dr. Kristy Dahl and I arrived in Sofia, Bulgaria, last week for the 61st session of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These documents offer an internationally accepted summary of the state of climate science, and form the backbone of many legal briefs I prepare.

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Climate Change Fossil Fuels Carbon Dioxide Paris Agreement 284

Union of Concerned Scientists

APRIL 24, 2023

In an important win for climate accountability in the United States, the US Supreme Court decided that lawsuits filed in Colorado, Maryland, California, Hawai’i, and Rhode Island against fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, Suncor, and others will remain in state courts.

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Legal Planet

NOVEMBER 15, 2021

The decision at the Glasgow climate conference to phase down fossil fuels is an important step forward — and not just because of climate change. We think of fossil fuels as a source of climate change, but that’s only a one part of the problem. Consider coal. Download as PDF.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

JUNE 26, 2024

This June, I had the opportunity to testify at the Pennsylvania House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee’s hearing on “Hydrogen Hubs and Climate Change.” My name is Julie McNamara, and I am a senior analyst and deputy policy director for climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

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Climate Change Fossil Fuels Carbon Dioxide Clean Energy 284

Union of Concerned Scientists

APRIL 27, 2023

Fossil fuel power plant owners are facing increased accountability for their air and water pollution, including from a new round of environmental and public health protections that are being rolled out by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We’ve heard these lazily disingenuous narratives before.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

FEBRUARY 23, 2023

And just like summertime in the US, this period (December, January, and February) has transformed into a “ danger season ” as a result of climate change, replete with deadly heatwaves, drought, and wildfires. Sixty times more likely is a remarkable figure to me. And there would be some justice.

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Legal Planet

AUGUST 18, 2022

Production and combustion of fossil fuels imposes enormous costs on society, which the industry doesn’t pay for. I want to talk about some options for using the tax system to change that. One option, a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, gets the most attention but seems politically impossible. Download as PDF.

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Fossil Fuels Carbon Dioxide Politics Air Pollution 266

Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 1, 2024

As a result of fossil fuel-driven climate change, it’s on track to be the warmest year in recorded history. This heat fueled extreme weather events across the world, with most having significant impacts on human life and infrastructure and ecosystems. 2024 will be a year to remember.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 23, 2023

And fossil fuel power plants may not stick to their retirement schedules for a variety of reasons. In 2021 alone, the plants slated for retirement emitted more than 28,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxides (NO x ), 32,000 tonnes of sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), and 51 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), according to EIA data.

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Environmental News Bits

APRIL 2, 2024

by Ned Randolph, Tulane University Billions of federal tax dollars will soon be pouring into Louisiana to fight climate change, yet the projects they’re supporting may actually boost fossil fuels – the very products warming the planet.

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Real Climate

APRIL 6, 2023

The summary for policymakers of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sixth synthesis report was released on March 20th (available online as a PDF ). There is a recording of the IPCC Press Conference – Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report for those who are interested in watching an awkward release of the report.

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Environmental News Bits

AUGUST 12, 2022

by Kevin Trenberth, University of Auckland When politicians talk about reaching “net zero” emissions, they’re often counting on trees or technology that can pull carbon dioxide out of the air. What they don’t mention is just how much these proposals or geoengineering would cost to allow the world to continue burning fossil fuels.

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PA Environment Daily

JULY 11, 2024

On July 11, the House-- by a vote of 127 to 75 -- and the Senate-- by a vote of 37 to 12 -- passed and sent to the Governor Senate Bill 831 (Yaw-R- Lycoming) establishing a framework for authorizing the geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide through injection wells. This practice could be widespread in a carbon-constrained world.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 20, 2023

Methane gas has devastating effects on the climate system and its extraction and combustion generate numerous harms to human health. Compared to carbon dioxide (CO2), methane doesn’t linger for long in the atmosphere after being emitted. But during the decade it does linger, its heat-trapping potential is 80x stronger than CO2.

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Environmental News Bits

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

As the hottest summer on record comes to a close and harrowing images emerge from wildfires across California, the urgency of addressing climate change has never been greater. But for years, Big Oil has spread disinformation about climate science and stymied climate action.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

This is an integral step towards cleaning our air and reducing climate-warming emissions. California’s fleet of commercial trucks and buses is responsible for an outsized impact on air quality and climate change. This is roughly the equivalent of taking 66 million fossil-fueled cars off the road for an entire year.

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Ocean Conservancy

NOVEMBER 15, 2024

Climate change is propelling these weather events to grow faster and stronger than ever before. Other climate change impacts are accelerating as well. Many scientists thought these high ocean temperatures would be years away, but the realities of climate change are not a distant threat.

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Fossil Fuels Ocean Climate Change Clean Energy 133

Union of Concerned Scientists

MARCH 7, 2023

Attribution science , which is about understanding the role of climate change versus natural weather patterns and climate variability, can help us better understand the connections between extreme weather and climate change, provide new insight into what specific emissions are driving the worst impacts, and help shape climate solutions.

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Physics World

OCTOBER 30, 2021

With the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) coming up next month, it is strange to think that less than 100 years ago global warming was not widely accepted, even among experts. Then in 1896, preliminary calculations by Arrhenius hinted that humanity’s burning of fossil fuels could raise CO 2 levels and warm our planet.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 16, 2022

Union of Concerned Scientists’ (UCS) research shows that top fossil fuel producers’ emissions are responsible for as much as half of global surface temperature increase. Updated analysis from 2020 shows that emissions traced to the 88 largest carbon producers contributed approximately 60 percent?of

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Union of Concerned Scientists

AUGUST 10, 2023

We are at the height of Danger Season , the time of year when extreme weather events driven by climate change are most prevalent across North America. The power sector is the second highest source of climate pollution in the U.S. thus, it is crucial that we address carbon emissions from power plants.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

APRIL 9, 2024

Earlier this year, ExxonMobil released its annual Advancing Climate Solutions report detailing the company’s current and planned contributions to a net-zero future. These kinds of curves are fairly standard when comparing strategies to address climate change as you can see in the comparable figure below. Who needs units anyway?

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A Greener Life

JUNE 19, 2024

It was a sign of how much has changed since 2021 when the UK hosted the flagship COP26 UN climate summit with a promise “irrefutably to turn the tide and to begin the fightback against climate change”. million has been given to pro-fossil fuel think tanks by Tory donors since the 2019 general election.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

JUNE 18, 2024

This included a bill that would have started a statewide conversation about the diminished role fossil fuels should play in Maine’s energy system as the state strives to meet its climate and clean energy commitments. Gas is primarily composed of methane—a fossil fuel with extremely high global warming potential.

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Greenbuilding Law

JULY 9, 2023

In this blog post, we will explore why targeting methane emissions presents a more advantageous strategy for the United States in its quest to mitigate climate change. Over a 20 year period, methane is estimated to be more than 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere.

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Environmental News Bits

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Kutscher, University of Colorado Boulder and Jeffrey Logan, University of Colorado Boulder In the summer of 1988, scientist James Hansen testified to Congress that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels was dangerously warming the planet.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 12, 2022

To help avoid the worst possible consequences of climate change, however, the alliance states need to reach that 100-percent objective much more quickly. Emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from power plants in alliance states drop 88 percent and 77 percent respectively by 2040.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

NOVEMBER 15, 2022

It is 80 times stronger than carbon dioxide (CO2) at trapping heat on short timescales. Of course, we also will have to make sharp cuts in CO2 emissions, the main driver of climate change. Methane emissions come from two main sources : fossil fuels and agriculture—primarily animal-based agriculture.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

JUNE 20, 2024

But with estimates suggesting that sea level rise will affect more than one billion people around the world in the next 25 years, this is one member of the dysfunctional climate change family that shouldn’t be ignored. Why is this? Read on for the science you need to know about sea level rise, in seven parts.

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Legal Planet

DECEMBER 6, 2023

Alongside a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels, substantial deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques might avert – or at least limit – overshoot of 1.5°C. At COP 28 this week the US and several partners launched a ‘Carbon Management Challenge’ with an aim to collectively store 1.2 Gt of CO2 by 2030.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

Switching from fossil fuels like gasoline to increasingly clean electricity sources is vital for hitting climate and air pollution goals. To meet emissions goals and avoid the worst impacts of climate change, this trend will need to accelerate over the coming decades. pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per gallon.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 25, 2023

This includes loopholes related to biomethane, whereby heavily polluting fossil fuel-fired hydrogen production facilities—the very facilities the tax credit is trying to incentivize a shift away from—can cloak themselves as “clean” and reap full tax credit rewards, without having done anything but pushed around paper.

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Law Columbia

MAY 9, 2023

On Tuesday, May 9, the Sabin Center and the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment launched Transferred Emissions are Still Emissions: Why Fossil Fuel Asset Sales Need Enhanced Transparency and Carbon Accounting. Fossil fuel asset sales do not just shift greenhouse gas emissions, but may increase them.

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HumanNature

MARCH 8, 2022

Candidate in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at Colorado State University If you read about climate change in the news, you’re probably familiar with the element carbon. But carbon isn’t the only element associated with climate change. Let me explain.

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PA Environment Daily

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

One strategy is to counterbalance carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that contribute to climate change by drawing an equal amount of carbon out of the atmosphere, such as through planting trees. Reports from these studies and partnerships are found on the DCNR website.

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Union of Concerned Scientists

MAY 26, 2022

Drawing on research by the Union of Concerned Scientists and others, the commission report found that fossil fuel companies fully understood their products’ impact on climate as early as 1965, when their own scientists discovered them. N ovel Approaches to Climate Litigation. The Importance of Climate Litigation.

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Law Columbia

OCTOBER 25, 2017

We know that burning fossil fuels is the main cause of anthropogenic climate change, and that climate change is the source of adverse impacts on communities and even regional and national economies. by Justin Gundlach. These points are largely undisputed. These points are largely undisputed.

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