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Climate

Earth Spent 12 Months Above the 1.5C Warming Limit

On the Paris Agreement, monarch butterflies, and a slumbering polar bear

Earth Spent 12 Months Above the 1.5C Warming Limit
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Forest fires are under control in Chile’s Viña del Mar, but continue to burn in other parts of the country • Los Angeles recorded at least 475 mudslides due to the atmospheric river • It’s 75 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny in Naples, Florida, where a 9-acre beachfront retreat just hit the housing market for a record-breaking $295 million.

THE TOP FIVE

1. World exceeds 1.5C in warming for a full year

Temperatures on Earth have been more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for a year, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). New data shows that from February 2023 through January 2024, the average global temperature was 1.52 degrees Celsius higher than the 1850-1900 baseline. Last month was also the warmest January ever recorded, C3S confirmed. In 2015, 196 nations adopted the legally binding Paris Agreement with the long-term goal of limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius, and ideally below 1.5 degrees. A one-year breach doesn’t mean the target is bust, because it “refers to long-term warming – the IPCC uses 20 to 30 years – not annual temperatures that include the short-term influence of natural fluctuations in the climate, such as El Niño,” explainedCarbon Brief. However, some experts, including the new chief of the World Meteorological Organization, believe the rate of warming is speeding up.

C3S

2. New EPA air pollution rules could save thousands of lives

In case you missed it: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rolled out new air pollution rules yesterday, cracking down on dangerous particulate matter. Previously, the EPA’s annual standard for concentrations of particulate matter was 12 micrograms per cubic meter (µg/m3). Based on epidemiological research showing that this standard did not adequately protect public health, the agency has now lowered the standard to 9 µg/m3. The rules are expected to prevent 4,500 premature deaths per year by 2032. The EPA also updated its Air Quality Index in conjunction with the new rules, which could mean that even as the air gets cleaner, you might get more air quality alerts, reported Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo.

3. Monarch butterfly numbers drop sharply

Heat, drought, and pesticides and herbicides are taking a toll on the monarch butterfly population. Numbers of the iconic orange butterflies in Mexico, where they spend the winter, fell by 59% this year to their second lowest level ever recorded, The Associated Press reported. Extreme weather, logging, and chemical treatments are all hurting the insects’ natural habitat and killing the milkweed plant on which they lay their eggs. “It has a lot to do with climate change,” said Gloria Tavera, director of Mexico’s Commission for National Protected Areas. The monarchs’ migration path is the longest of any insect species known to science: They winter in Mexico and then head north to Canada. No single butterfly survives the entire trek; instead their offspring finish it for them, before turning around and heading back to Mexico to start the process over again.

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  • 4. Orsted had a no good, very bad year

    Danish energy developer Orsted said yesterday that it had lost a ton of money on its experiment trying to build wind farms in the United States, and planned to take on way less risk going forward. The figures are pretty grim, as Heatmap’s Matthew Zeitlin reported: Orsted had 9.6 billion Danish kroner worth of fees (about $1.4 billion) related to one New Jersey project, Ocean Wind 1, and had booked $4 billion of losses, most of which were due to Ocean Wind 1’s cancellation. Overall, it reported a loss of almost $3 billion in 2023. Orsted also said it was pulling out of Norway, Spain, and Portugal. In a call with analysts, the company’s chief executive Mads Nipper said that Orsted will spend far less money on projects before making the final approval to go forward with construction.

    5. Study suggests thinking about future generations moves people to support climate policy

    Convincing people to change their habits and beliefs is very hard, but when it comes to the climate crisis, widespread behavioral shifts are essential. A new “global megastudy” of more than 59,000 participants across 63 countries attempted to figure out which “interventions” can be most effective at shifting beliefs and getting people to support climate policy. The results, published in Science Advances, show that the act of writing a letter to future generations was “one of the top interventions tested.” Participants had to pen a note to a hypothetical child who will be turning 30 in the year 2055, detailing what they’re doing now to help keep the planet healthy. This exercise was the most effective intervention at nudging people toward supporting climate mitigation policies.

    THE KICKER

    Nima Sarikhani / Wildlife Photographer of the Year

    “Ice Bed,” by Nima Sarikhani, is the winner of the 2023 Wildlife Photographer of the Year 59 People's Choice Award. The picture shows a male polar bear drifting off to sleep on a small iceberg off the Svalbard archipelago. “I hope that this photograph also inspires hope,” Sarikhani said. “There is still time to fix the mess we have caused.” The competition is developed and produced by the Natural History Museum, London.

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    Climate

    AM Briefing: A Forecasting Crisis

    On climate chaos, DOE updates, and Walmart’s emissions

    We’re Gonna Need a Better Weather Model
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Current conditions: Bosnia’s capital of Sarajevo is blanketed in a layer of toxic smog • Temperatures in Perth, in Western Australia, could hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend • It is cloudy in Washington, D.C., where lawmakers are scrambling to prevent a government shutdown.

    THE TOP FIVE

    1. NOAA might have to change its weather models

    The weather has gotten so weird that the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is holding internal talks about how to adjust its models to produce more accurate forecasts, the Financial Timesreported. Current models are based on temperature swings observed over one part of the Pacific Ocean that have for years correlated consistently with specific weather phenomena across the globe, but climate change seems to be disrupting that cause and effect pattern, making it harder to predict things like La Niña and El Niño. Many forecasters had expected La Niña to appear by now and help cool things down, but that has yet to happen. “It’s concerning when this region we’ve studied and written all these papers on is not related to all the impacts you’d see with [La Niña],” NOAA’s Michelle L’Heureux told the FT. “That’s when you start going ‘uh-oh’ there may be an issue here we need to resolve.”

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    Culture

    2024 Was the Year the Climate Movie Grew Up

    Whether you agree probably depends on how you define “climate movie” to begin with.

    2024 movies.
    Heatmap Illustration

    Climate change is the greatest story of our time — but our time doesn’t seem to invent many great stories about climate change. Maybe it’s due to the enormity and urgency of the subject matter: Climate is “important,” and therefore conscripted to the humorless realms of journalism and documentary. Or maybe it’s because of a misunderstanding on the part of producers and storytellers, rooted in an outdated belief that climate change still needs to be explained to an audience, when in reality they don’t need convincing. Maybe there’s just not a great way to have a character mention climate change and not have it feel super cringe.

    Whatever the reason, between 2016 and 2020, less than 3% of film and TV scripts used climate-related keywords during their runtime, according to an analysis by media researchers at the University of Southern California. (The situation isn’t as bad in literature, where cli-fi has been going strong since at least 2013.) At least on the surface, this on-screen avoidance of climate change continued in 2024. One of the biggest movies of the summer, Twisters, had an extreme weather angle sitting right there, but its director, Lee Isaac Chung, went out of his way to ensure the film didn’t have a climate change “message.”

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    Politics

    Republicans Will Regret Killing Permitting Reform

    They might not be worried now, but Democrats made the same mistake earlier this year.

    Permitting reform's tombstone.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    Permitting reform is dead in the 118th Congress.

    It died earlier this week, although you could be forgiven for missing it. On Tuesday, bipartisan talks among lawmakers fell apart over a bid to rewrite parts of the National Environmental Policy Act. The changes — pushed for by Representative Bruce Westerman, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee — would have made it harder for outside groups to sue to block energy projects under NEPA, a 1970 law that governs the country’s process for environmental decisionmaking.

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    Green