by Eléonore HUGHES Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — The world’s biggest iceberg is on a collision course with a remote South Atlantic island that is home to thousands of penguins and seals, and could impede their ability to gather food, scientists told AFP Wednesday. Icebergs naturally break off from Antarctica into the ocean, but climate change has accelerated the process — in this case, with potentially devastating consequences for abundant wildlife in the British […]
Tag: climate
UK says US ties will go ‘from strength to strength’ whoever wins
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Britain on Wednesday insisted its close partnership with the United States was in safe hands whoever comes out on top of the tumultuous presidential election, while noting disaccord over the Paris climate pact. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a populist ally of President Donald Trump, stayed up into the night to follow the results coming in, according to a Downing Street spokesman. But Johnson refused to be drawn in parliament when […]
US formally quits Paris agreement as election hangs in balance
by Issam AHMED Agence France-Presse WASHINGTON D.C., United States (AFP) — The United States left the Paris accord on Wednesday, becoming the first country to ever withdraw from an international climate change pact as the fate of its presidential election hangs in the balance. It may prove to be a temporary blip before a Joe Biden administration rejoins the agreement. Otherwise, the global effort to rein in the Earth’s warming will have to proceed without […]
Last major Aussie bank ditches coal, in fresh blow to sector
by Andrew BEATTY / with Holly Robertson in Brisbane Agence France-Presse SYDNEY, Australia (AFP) — Australia’s ANZ became the country’s last major bank to walk away from thermal coal investments Thursday, delivering a fresh blow to a sector facing export market upheaval and widespread public hostility. The bank said that from 2030 it would no longer finance thermal coal mines or coal-fired power stations, joining Australia’s other “big four” banks who have already made similar […]
Giant metallic ‘steed’ traverses Iceland’s threatened glacier
by Jeremie Richard Agence France-Presse LANGJOKULL, Glacier, Iceland (AFP) — Instead of a slow slog on snowshoes, a giant bus sweeps passengers at up to 60 kilometres an hour across Iceland’s second largest glacier, which scientists predict will likely be nearly gone by the end of the century. The red glacier mega bus is 15 metres (50-foot) long and fitted with massive tyres for traction across the powder snow of western Iceland’s vast Langjokull ice […]
Last month warmest September on record globally: EU
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — Earth’s surface was warmer last month than during any September on record, with temperatures since January tracking those of the hottest ever calendar year in 2016, the European Union’s Earth Observation Programme said Wednesday. This year has now seen three months of record warmth — January, May and September — with June and April virtually tied for first, the Copernicus Climate Change Service reported. […]
New Zealand firefighters beating forest blaze
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — Firefighters in New Zealand battling a blaze that razed much of a small alpine village said they were making “good progress” Wednesday as high winds finally eased. The wildfire erupted in a mountain forest on the South Island in the early hours of Sunday morning and swept through the popular tourist spot of Lake Ohau, forcing residents to flee for their lives. Officials said it was miraculous no one was […]
Wildfires raze dozens of homes in New Zealand
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AFP) — Wildfires have destroyed up to 50 homes in New Zealand, authorities announced Monday, saying it was a miracle no one was hurt as “a wall of orange” razed most of a remote South Island village. The blaze began in a mountain forest early Sunday morning and, fanned by strong winds, swept through the village of Lake Ohau, forcing residents to flee for their lives. Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) […]
Changing economy and climate hit Austria’s Alpine pastures
by Blaise GAUQUELIN Agence France-Presse PERTISAU, Austria (AFP) — With tender care, Sepp Rieser adorns the bulky heads of his reluctant cows with flower wreaths, adds some more fir twigs, and adjusts the large bells around their necks. “I’ve been doing this since I was a little boy,” Rieser says of the ancestral tradition in which cattle are decorated for their journey from the high Alpine Gramai pasture in Austria’s western Tyrol state, where they graze […]
Antarctic Peninsula at warmest in decades: study
SANTIAGO Chile (AFP) — The year 2020 is the hottest in the Antarctic Peninsula in the past three decades, a study by the University of Santiago de Chile out Friday found. Between January and August, temperatures reached between 2 and 3 degrees Celsius (35.6 and 37.4 degrees Fahrenheit) on the peninsula, which is the northernmost part of mainland Antarctica, according to researchers at the Chilean Air Force’s Frei Base on King George Island. Those temperatures are […]
Sea level: Greenland ice loss worst in 12,000 years
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France-Presse Ice loss from Greenland’s massive ice sheet will cause sea levels to rise more during the 21st century than they have during any 100-year period in the last 12,000 years, even if global warming is held in check, scientists said Wednesday. The study — based on ice core data and models and published in the journal Nature — is the first to painstakingly reconstruct Greenland’s ice loss record over the […]
300 million delta dwellers vulnerable to cyclones, flooding
by Marlowe HOOD Agence France-Presse PARIS, France (AFP) — More than 300 million people in low-lying river deltas, mostly in poorer nations, are exposed to flooding from tropical storms made more deadly and destructive by global warming, researchers said Tuesday. One in ten live on floodplains hit by once-a-century cyclones that can generate 350-kilometre (200-mile) per hour winds and up to a metre (40 inches) of rain per day, they reported in Nature Communications. Warmer […]





