Der Gehalt des klimaschädlichen Treibhausgases stieg von 2023 auf 2024 noch stärker an als in den Jahren zuvor.

A group of man-made chemicals are accumulating across the River of Grass—raising questions about potential impacts to water quality and ongoing restoration efforts.

From The Guardian The failure of carbon offsets to cut planet-heating pollution is “not due to a few bad apples”, a review paper has found...

From The Guardian > ** > ** > > **The failure of carbon offsets to cut planet-heating pollution is “not due to a few bad apples”, areview paper has found, but down to deep-seated systemic problems that incremental change will not solve.** > > **Research over two decades has found “intractable” problems that have made carbon credits in most big programmes poor quality, according to the study. While the industry and diplomats have made efforts to improve the system, it found much-awaited rules agreed at a UN climate summit last year “did not substantially address the quality problem”.** > > **“We must stop expecting carbon offsetting to work at scale,” said Stephen Lezak, a researcher at the University of Oxford’s Smith School and co-author of the study, in Annual Reviews. “We have assessed 25 years of evidence and almost everything up until this point has failed.”** > > **Carbon offsets are a tool to cut emissions efficiently by crediting rich polluters for financing cheap climate action abroad while pumping out the same amount of planet-heating gas at home.** > > **In theory, the practice could lead to lower levels of global heating by funnelling money to the places where it will do the most good as soon as possible. But voluntary carbon markets have long been plagued by “junk offsets” that overstate their impact.** > > **The researchers said the worst problems were with issuing additional credits for “non-additional” projects, such as building a windfarm that would have gone up anyway; impermanent projects, such as planting trees that later burn down in a wildfire; projects with leakage, such as protecting part of a forest but effectively pushing loggers elsewhere; and double-counted projects, such as restoring a peatland but letting the seller and buyer claim the drop in emissions.** > > **“An offset may be robust on three of these four dimensions, but if it lacks in the fourth, it may represent a far lower emissions reduction than was credited – or no real reduction at all,” the study warned.** > > **A meta-analysis published in Nature Communications last year found that less than 16% of the carbon credits investigated showed real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.** > > **The lead author, Benedict Probst, founder of the Net Zero Lab at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, who was not involved in the new paper, said it provided a “valuable high-level overview of the well-documented problems plaguing existing carbon crediting projects”, despite not providing a critical appraisal of the underlying studies.** > > **“This study echoes the main conclusions of our own research, but it provides a broader picture across the carbon crediting landscape,” he said.** > > **Probst added that the study identified some of the root causes of over-crediting, such as information gaps, but warned of other systemic factors such as the small constituency advocating for high-quality projects, conflicts of interest when drafting standards, and “chronically understaffed” regulators.** Carbon offsets are a furphy. A scam. A distraction. And they've been seized upon by governments and companies keen to pretend they're doing something about the climate.

Climate change is driving extreme wildfire events worldwide, finds a new global report revealing a stark picture of increased fire events across multiple continents.

Researchers say decline in phytoplankton suggests weakened planetary capacity to absorb carbon dioxide

Research led by Chinese scientists has recently revealed that subtle changes in ocean sulfate concentration can alter the way methane is consumed, acting like a "chemical switch" that regulates global climate, explaining how the Arctic Ocean amplified global warming 56...

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The most recent

Decision from governor, eyeing presidential bid, could echo across US as similar bans considered in states like New York

VITeff 2025 to showcase new technologies for wine stability and sustainability amid rising pH and alcohol levels in grapes

Planet-heating methane is escaping from cracks in the Antarctic seabed, with new seeps being discovered at an “astonishing rate,” raising fears that future global warming predictions may have been und...

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