cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23489960

• Recent data from the University of Maryland show the tropics lost 6.7 million hectares (16.6 million acres) of primary rainforest in 2024 — nearly double the loss of 2023 and the highest on record.
• Six Latin American countries were in the top 10 nations for primary tropical forest loss.
• In the Amazon, forest loss more than doubled from 2023 to 2024, with more than half the result of wildfires. Other key drivers include agricultural expansion and criminal networks that increasingly threaten the region through gold mining, drug trafficking and other illicit activities.
• Fire was the leading driver of forest loss (49.5%), destroying 2.84 million hectares (7 million acres) of forest cover in Brazil, Bolivia and Mexico alone.

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/23402318

See also: https://www.axios.com/local/kansas-city/2025/05/28/fire-weather-more-frequent-kansas-missouri

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/22552301

In a remote corner of North America, salmon and mining companies are vying for new territory.

The Tulsequah Glacier meanders down a broad valley in northwest British Columbia, 7 miles from the Alaska border. At the foot of the glacier sits a silty, gray lake, a reservoir of glacial runoff. The lake is vast, deeper than Seattle’s Space Needle is tall. But it didn’t exist a few decades ago, before 2 miles of ice had melted.

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Find local events here

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27699157

New satellite analysis shows that wells and roads for a project in Uganda feeding Africa’s longest heated oil pipeline have progressed significantly within a protected area and near a critical wetland.

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27699157

New satellite analysis shows that wells and roads for a project in Uganda feeding Africa’s longest heated oil pipeline have progressed significantly within a protected area and near a critical wetland.

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27699028

The grim death toll from heat waves across European cities this past summer would be captured in shocking headlines if they happened all at once, in a bombing or plane crash—835 in Rome, 630 in Athens, 409 in Paris.

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“Experts do not believe that we can adapt health systems adequately to cope with the temperatures that we are currently facing. That’s why reducing fossil fuel use is one of the most important public health interventions of our time.”

Reducing fossil fuel use too rapidly would be suicidal; the rapid increase in temperature would make adaptation more difficult.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27698918

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/22839206

• Climate change is making North America warmer and drier, creating more favorable conditions for wildfires – this is well-established at a continental scale, but a new paper added strong evidence at a regional scale.
• A new study found that human-driven climate change was the main driver of worsening ‘fire weather’ – hot, dry, and windy conditions that help wildfires start and spread – in Western North America over the last 50 years.
• The contributions from human-driven climate change are given as a range; most of that range suggests human-driven climate change is entirely responsible, but even the lowest end of the range shows it’s mostly responsible (81% or more).
• According to scientists we interviewed, these results may suggest that in the absence of human-driven climate change, natural atmospheric conditions would have decreased fire weather in the region over that 50 year period.
• This new paper adds to a growing body of evidence showing that climate change is worsening wildfires – and the conditions driving them – in Western North America.

archived (Wayback Machine):

• article
• study

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/22541275

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The world’s biggest polluters are also the most protected from the environmental harm they helped create, a new study finds.

archived (Wayback Machine):

• EcoWatch article
• research cited

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/27698594

archived (Wayback Machine)