The Elephant
A resource for journalists, politicians, policy makers, activists and citizens interested in climate change and the environmental emergency
The ElephantA resource for journalists, politicians, policy makers, activists and citizens interested in climate change and the environmental emergency
Visit: pnas.org
Future of the human climate niche | PNAS
2024-06-20 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceAll species have an environmental niche, and despite technological advances, humans are unlikely to be an exception. Here, we demonstrate that for ...
The dawn of the tropical Atlantic invasion into the Mediterranean Sea | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2024-4-1 in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe Mediterranean Sea is a marine biodiversity hotspot already affected by climate-driven biodiversity collapses. Its highly endemic fauna is at fu...
Enhanced weathering in the US Corn Belt delivers carbon removal with agronomic benefits | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2024-03-04 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceTerrestrial enhanced weathering (EW) of silicate rocks, such as crushed basalt, on farmlands is a promising scalable atmospheric carbon dioxide rem...
Tagged under: USA | Agriculture | Carbon Capture and Storage
The planetary commons: A new paradigm for safeguarding Earth-regulating systems in the Anthropocene | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2024-1-22 in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe Anthropocene signifies the start of a no-analogue trajectory of the Earth system that is fundamentally different from the Holocene. This new tr...
New consumers: The influence of affluence on the environment | PNAS
2024-01-14 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceGrowing consumption can cause major environmental damage. This is becoming specially significant through the emergence of over 1 billion new consum...
An even drier future for the arid lands | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2024-01-01 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceAn even drier future for the arid lands
Naming and shaming as a strategy for enforcing the Paris Agreement: The role of political institutions and public concern | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-09-27 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceEnforcement is a challenge for effective international cooperation. In human rights and environmental law, along with many other domains of interna...
Tagged under: Climate Change
Mutilation of the tree of life via mass extinction of animal genera | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-9-18 in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceMass extinctions during the past 500 million y rapidly removed branches from the phylogenetic tree of life and required millions of years for evolu...
Collapse, environment, and society
2023-08-19 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceTagged under: Collapse
Farmland practices are driving bird population decline across Europe | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-07-26 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceDeclines in European bird populations are reported for decades but the direct effect of major anthropogenic pressures on such declines remains unqu...
Tagged under: Farming
Evidence for massive methane hydrate destabilization during the penultimate interglacial warming | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-07-25 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe stability of widespread methane hydrates in shallow subsurface sediments of the marine continental margins is sensitive to temperature increase...
Tagged under: Oceans | Methane
Recent and future declines of a historically widespread pollinator linked to climate, land cover, and pesticides | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-07-14 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe acute decline in global biodiversity includes not only the loss of rare species, but also the rapid collapse of common species across many diff...
Tagged under: Climate Change | Bees | Insects | Collapse
Anthropogenic climate change impacts exacerbate summer forest fires in California | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-07-09 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceRecord-breaking summer forest fires have become a regular occurrence in California. Observations indicate a fivefold increase in summer burned area...
Tagged under: Climate Change | Forest Fires | California | Climate Change Impacts | Trees
Scalable, economical, and stable sequestration of agricultural fixed carbon | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-05-26 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceWe describe a scalable, economical solution to the carbon dioxide problem. CO2 is captured from the atmosphere by plants, and the harvested vegetat...
On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system: Formidable challenges ahead | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-05-22 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe observed increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) since the preindustrial era has most likely committed the world to a warming ...
Melt rates in the kilometer-size grounding zone of Petermann Glacier, Greenland, before and during a retreat | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-05-13 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceWarming of the ocean waters surrounding Greenland plays a major role in driving glacier retreat and the contribution of glaciers to sea level rise....
Tagged under: Oceans | Sea Level
Revisiting the social cost of carbon | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-05-08 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe social cost of carbon (SCC) is a central concept for understanding and implementing climate change policies. This term represents the economic ...
Tagged under: Climate Change | Economics
Warming increases the risk of civil war in Africa | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-05-03 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceArmed conflict within nations has had disastrous humanitarian consequences throughout much of the world. Here we undertake the first comprehensive ...
Tagged under: Conflict | Climate Change | Africa
Predicting climate change impacts on poikilotherms using physiologically guided species abundance models | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-04-05 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencePoikilothermic animals comprise most species on Earth and are especially sensitive to changes in environmental temperatures. Species conservation i...
Tagged under: Predictions | Climate Change | Climate Change Impacts
Human responses to climate change will likely determine the fate of biodiversity | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-02-16 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceHuman responses to climate change will likely determine the fate of biodiversity
Tagged under: Climate Change
Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-02-01 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencePrudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understoo...
Tagged under: Climate Change
Rice yields decline with higher night temperature from global warming | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2023-01-25 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe impact of projected global warming on crop yields has been evaluated by indirect methods using simulation models. Direct studies on the effects...
Assessing effective radiative forcing from aerosol–cloud interactions over the global ocean | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2022-11-16 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceHow clouds respond to anthropogenic sulfate aerosols is one of the largest sources of uncertainty in the radiative forcing of climate over the indu...
Tagged under: Oceans | Climate Change
Climate change and the threat to civilization | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2022-10-6 in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceClimate change and the threat to civilization
Tagged under: Collapse
Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2022-09-09 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe term “tipping point” commonly refers to a critical threshold at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of a...
Tagged under: Climate Change | Climate Change Impacts | Tipping Points
Global food security under climate change | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2022-08-07 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThis article reviews the potential impacts of climate change on food security. It is found that of the four main elements of food security, i.e., a...
Tagged under: Climate Change | Climate Change Impacts
Wolf attacks predict far-right voting | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2022-07-19 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceDoes the return of large carnivores affect voting behavior? We study this question through the lens of wolf attacks on livestock. Sustained environ...
Tagged under: Predictions | Wildlife
Environmental outcomes of the US Renewable Fuel Standard | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2022-07-01 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) specifies the use of biofuels in the United States and thereby guides nearly half of all global biofuel productio...
Tagged under: Renewable Energy
Estimates of economic and environmental damages from tipping points cannot be reconciled with the scientific literature | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2022-05-22 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceEstimates of economic and environmental damages from tipping points cannot be reconciled with the scientific literature
Tagged under: Tipping Points
Marine anoxia linked to abrupt global warming during Earth’s penultimate icehouse | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2022-05-22 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencePiecing together the history of carbon (C) perturbation events throughout Earth’s history has provided key insights into how the Earth system respo...
Global biodiversity loss from tropical deforestation | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2022-03-19 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceGlobal biodiversity loss from tropical deforestation
Tagged under: Deforestation
The number of tree species on Earth | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2022-02-01 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceOne of the most fundamental questions in ecology is how many species inhabit the Earth. However, due to massive logistical and financial challenges...
Tagged under: Trees
Supercell tornadoes are much stronger and wider than damage-based ratings indicate | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2021-12-14 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceTornadoes cause damage, injury, and death when intense winds impact structures. Quantifying the strength and extent of such winds is critical to ch...
Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts
2021-12-14 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceNature is under siege. In the last 10,000 y the human population has grown from 1 million to 7.8 billion. Much of Earth’s arable lands are already in agriculture (1), millions of acres of tropical forest are cleared each year (2, 3), atmospheric CO2 levels are at their highest concentrations in more than 3 million y (4), and climates are erratically and steadily changing from pole to pole, triggering unprecedented droughts, fires, and floods across continents. Indeed, most biologists agree that the world has entered its sixth mass extinction event, the first since the end of the Cretaceous Period 66 million y ago, when mor...
Tagged under: Extinction Rebellion | Drought | Forest Fires | Insects | Trees
Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system
2021-12-12 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe term “tipping point” commonly refers to a critical threshold at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of a system. Here we introduce the term “tipping element” to describe large-scale components of the Earth system that may pass a tipping point. We critically evaluate potential policy-relevant tipping elements in the climate system under anthropogenic forcing, drawing on the pertinent literature and a recent international workshop to compile a short list, and we assess where their tipping points lie. An expert elicitation is used to help rank their sensitivity to g...
Tagged under: Tipping Points
Anthropogenic warming has increased drought risk in California | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2021-10-14 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceCalifornia is currently in the midst of a record-setting drought. The drought began in 2012 and now includes the lowest calendar-year and 12-mo pre...
Tagged under: Extreme Weather | Drought | Climate Change | California
Global urban population exposure to extreme heat
2021-10-04 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceIncreased extreme heat exposure from both climate change and the urban heat island effect threatens rapidly growing urban settlements worldwide. Yet, because we do not know where urban population growth and extreme heat intersect, we have limited capacity to reduce the impacts of urban extreme heat exposure. Here, we leverage fine-resolution temperature and population data to measure urban extreme heat exposure for 13,115 cities from 1983 to 2016. Globally, urban exposure increased nearly 200%, affecting 1.7 billion people. Total urban warming elevated exposure rates 52% above population growth alone. However, spatially heteroge...
Tagged under: Extreme Weather | Climate Change | California | Climate Change Impacts
Collapse, environment, and society
2021-09-28 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceHistorical collapse of ancient states poses intriguing social-ecological questions, as well as potential applications to global change and contemporary strategies for sustainability. Five Old World case studies are developed to identify interactive inputs, triggers, and feedbacks in devolution. Collapse is multicausal and rarely abrupt. Political simplification undermines traditional structures of authority to favor militarization, whereas disintegration is preconditioned or triggered by acute stress (insecurity, environmental or economic crises, famine), with breakdown accompanied or followed by demographic decline. Undue atten...
Tagged under: Famine | Collapse | Sustainability
Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2021-08-23 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceWe explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabil...
Tagged under: Climate Change | Tipping Points
Observational evidence that cloud feedback amplifies global warming | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2021-07-21 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceGlobal warming drives changes in Earth’s cloud cover, which, in turn, may amplify or dampen climate change. This “cloud feedback” is the single mos...
Tagged under: Climate Change
On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system: Formidable challenges ahead
2021-07-04 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe observed increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) since the preindustrial era has most likely committed the world to a warming of 2.4°C (1.4°C to 4.3°C) above the preindustrial surface temperatures. The committed warming is inferred from the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates of the greenhouse forcing and climate sensitivity. The estimated warming of 2.4°C is the equilibrium warming above preindustrial temperatures that the world will observe even if GHG concentrations are held fixed at their 2005 concentration levels but without any other anthropogenic forc...
Tagged under: Oceans | Arctic | Greenhouse Gases | IPCC | Climate Change | Sea Level | Climate Change Mitigation | Tipping Points
Renewable CO2 recycling and synthetic fuel production in a marine environment | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2021-04-12 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceA massive reduction in CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning is required to limit the extent of global warming. However, carbon-based liquid fuels...
Tagged under: Renewable Energy | Fossil Fuels
Constraining the atmospheric limb of the plastic cycle
2021-04-12 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceMicroplastic particles and fibers generated from the breakdown of mismanaged waste are now so prevalent that they cycle through the earth in a manner akin to global biogeochemical cycles. In modeling the atmospheric limb of the plastic cycle, we show that most atmospheric plastics are derived from the legacy production of plastics from waste that has continued to build up in the environment. Roads dominated the sources of microplastics to the western United States, followed by marine, agriculture, and dust emissions generated downwind of population centers. At the current rate of increase of plastic production (∼4% per year)...
Tagged under: Microplastics and Nanoplastics
Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2020-06-03 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThe ongoing sixth mass species extinction is the result of the destruction of component populations leading to eventual extirpation of entire speci...
Future of the human climate niche | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2020-05-05 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceAll species have an environmental niche, and despite technological advances, humans are unlikely to be an exception. Here, we demonstrate that for ...
Nutrient dilution and climate cycles underlie declines in a dominant insect herbivore
2020-04-25 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceParsing variation in long-term patterns underlying insect abundances and assigning mechanisms are critical in light of recent reports of dramatic insect declines. Grasshopper abundances in a North American prairie exhibited both 5-y cycles and >2%/y declines over the past 20 y. Large-scale climate oscillations predicted the cycles in grasshopper abundances. Moreover, plant biomass doubled over the same period—likely due to changes in climate and increasing atmospheric CO2—diluting the concentrations in plant tissue of key nutrients which in turn predicted the declines of a dominant herbivore. Nutrient dilution, li...
Tagged under: Predictions | Climate Change | Insects | Insect Populations
Oil and gas companies invest in legislators that vote against the environment
2020-02-26 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceDo campaign contributions from oil and gas companies influence legislators to vote against the environment, or do these companies invest in legislators that have a proven antienvironmental voting record? Using 28 y of campaign contribution data, we find that evidence consistently supports the investment hypothesis: The more a given member of Congress votes against environmental policies, the more contributions they receive from oil and gas companies supporting their reelection.
Tagged under: US Politics
The material footprint of nations
2020-01-25 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceThis original research paper addresses a key issue in sustainability science: How many and which natural resources are needed to sustain modern economies? Simple as it may seem, this question is far from trivial to answer and has indeed not been addressed satisfactorily in the scholarly literature. We use the most comprehensive and most highly resolved economic input–output framework of the world economy together with a detailed database of global material flows to calculate the full material requirements of all countries covering a period of two decades. Called the “material footprint,” this indicator provides...
Tagged under: Economics | Consumption | Sustainability
Social tipping dynamics for stabilizing Earth’s climate by 2050
2020-01-22 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceAchieving a rapid global decarbonization to stabilize the climate critically depends on activating contagious and fast-spreading processes of social and technological change within the next few years. Drawing on expert elicitation, an expert workshop, and a review of literature, which provides a comprehensive analysis on this topic, we propose concrete interventions to induce positive social tipping dynamics and a rapid global transformation to carbon-neutral societies. These social tipping interventions comprise removing fossil-fuel subsidies and incentivizing decentralized energy generation, building carbon-neutral cities, div...
Tagged under: Greenhouse Gases | Climate Change | Fossil Fuels | Tipping Points
Global reconstruction of historical ocean heat storage and transport | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2019-02-19 (or before) in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceMost of the excess energy stored in the climate system due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has been taken up by the oceans, leading to th...
Tagged under: Oceans | Greenhouse Gases
Declines in methane uptake in forest soils | PNAS
2018-8-21 in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceForest soils are a sink for atmospheric methane (CH4) and play an important role in modulating the global CH4 budget. However, whether CH4 uptake b...
Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2018-8-14 in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceWe explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabil...
Tagged under: Tipping Points
Global alteration of ocean ecosystem functioning due to increasing human CO2 emissions | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2015-10-27 in PNAS - Proceedings of the National Academy of ScienceRising anthropogenic CO2 emissions are anticipated to drive change to ocean ecosystems, but a conceptualization of biological change derived from q...
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