NASA – March 2022 was the 5th warmest March recorded.



NASA

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Victorious Macron vows to unite France after fending off Le Pen threat

Macron had leaned to the left in the final days to try to court Mélenchon voters, promising to speed up measures against climate breakdown and expand environmental policy. His first task is to appoint a new prime minister, who he promised would be specifically devoted to addressing the climate crisis.

Reminder........... The best thing you can do to stop climate change is to vote

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Climate change fueled extreme rainfall during the 2020 hurricane season

Human-induced climate change fueled one of the most active North Atlantic hurricane seasons on record in 2020, according to a study published in the journal Nature.

The study analyzed the 2020 season and the impact of human activity on climate change. It found that hourly hurricane rainfall totals were up to 10% higher when compared to hurricanes that took place in the pre-industrial era in 1850, according to a news release from Stony Brook University.

"The impacts of climate change are actually already here," said Stony Brook's Kevin Reed, who led the study. "They're actually changing not only our day-to-day weather, but they're changing the extreme weather events."

There were a record-breaking 30 named storms during the 2020 hurricane season. Twelve of them made landfall in the continental U.S.

These powerful storms are damaging and the economic costs are staggering.

Hurricanes are fueled in part by moisture linked to warm ocean temperatures. Over the last century, higher amounts of greenhouse gases due to human emissions have raised both land and ocean temperatures.

Reed, associate professor and associate dean of research at Stony Brook's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, says the findings show that human-induced climate change is leading to "more and quicker rainfall," which can hurt coastal communities.

"Hurricanes are devastating events," Reed said. "And storms that produce more frequent hourly rain are even more dangerous in producing damage flooding, storm surge, and destruction in its path."

The research was based on a "hindcast attribution" methodology, which is similar to a weather forecast but details events in the past rather than the future.

The publication of the study follows the release of a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a United Nations body — that found that nations are not doing enough to rein in global warming.

Michael Wehner, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the hurricane study's co-authors, said the increases in hurricane rainfall driven by global warming is not shocking.

"What is surprising is that the amount of this human caused increase is so much larger than what is expected from increases in humidity alone," Wehner said in the release from Stony Brook. "This means that hurricane winds are becoming stronger as well."

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Twitter toughening policy on climate disinformation in ads

Twitter will not allow "misleading advertisements" that "contradict the scientific consensus on climate change," the social media platform said in a statement Friday, marking Earth Day.

Why it matters: Inaccurate or misleading information on global warming has been common on social media sites.




Worth noting: The European Union announced Saturday that member countries have agreed to a new policy requiring Big Tech do more to address harmful content including disinformation and hate speech.
Driving the news: "We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis," Twitter sustainability executives Seán Boyle and Casey Junod said in a post.


  • They said the approach would be "informed" by authoritative sources including reports by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).


Yes, but: The policy announced on Earth Day is not wholly new. "Before today, advertisements denying climate change would have been rejected or halted per our Inappropriate Content policy," Twitter spokesperson Elizabeth Busby told Axios via email on Friday.


  • "The introduction of this formalized policy is to reinforce our commitment towards sustainability, drawing on IPCC assessment reports and input from global environmental experts," Busby said.
  • Asked if there's anything that would now be rejected that would have not been previously covered, Busby replied: "The formalized policy is a continuation of our earlier approach."


What we don't know: The company did not say specifically how it would make decisions about what's prohibited, but the post says the new effort will be in line with Twitter existing policy on "inappropriate content."


  • "In the coming months, we’ll have more to share on our work to add reliable, authoritative context to the climate conversations happening on Twitter," the company's Earth Day blog post states.
  • Also it's not clear how Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk may change Twitter's content moderation if his takeover bid succeeds.


What they're saying: The group Friends of the Earth, which tracks tech giants' climate policies, called it an "important move to demonetize climate disinformation."


  • "Companies like Meta must now take stronger action and stop being the last bastions of climate denial," the group said in a statement, referring to Facebook's parent company.