The TV show Sixty Minutes ran a segment this weekend on a lawsuit making its way through the courts in the Pacific Northwest.  Titled "Juliana vs. United States," the suit seeks to have the government stop supporting fossil fuel use.  The lawsuit was filed in 2015 by Oregon lawyer Julia Olson on behalf of 21 children —the "climate kids" — that she recruited from environmental groups around the country.  The plaintiffs submitted evidence indicating that as early as 1965 the government had information on the cumulative dangers of fossil fuel usage, and ignored it.

Here's some background on the program.  

Mostly, it will feel a lot warmer.

Here's the map, courtesy of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

From a new report in Science magazine, via The New York Times.

NY Times article summarizing just-published research study.

As experts gather at the U.N. climate talks in Poland, they are considering measures that had been previously dismissed.  Carbon capture and storage is one of them.

Story in the Washington Post.

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agency, just issued its 2018 Arctic Report Card, showing persistent warming in the region.  

From the Washington Post.

"It's one enormous natural selection event."  NY Times.

NYT article about how global warming caused the wipeout of most life on Earth, 252 million years ago

From the Washington Post.

And the New York Times.

Scientists from around the world are meeting to try to work out details for the fossil fuel emissions goals agreed to in 2015 Paris climate agreement.

New York Times story.

The New York Times has an interactive video story about climate change's palpable effects on Yellowstone National Park.

A sobering National Geographic story about the effects of climate change in Antarctica.

The warming is yanking apart the gears of a complex ecological machine, changing what animals eat, where they rest, how they raise their young, even how they interact. At the same time, the shrimplike krill upon which almost all animals here depend for food are being swept up by trawlers from distant nations....So much here is changing so fast that scientists can’t predict where it’s all headed." 

The Washington Post reports on a "hyperalarming" study showing dramatic loss of insects in pristine American tropical forest.  The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  The Post story notes that 35% of the world's plant crops require pollination by bees, wasps and other animals, so that if pollinators go extinct so will many plant species.  

A couple of days ago, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, representing 91 top climate change researchers from 40 countries, released their long-awaited report on global climate change and the possibilities for topping rising temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.   This was a report that some vulnerable nations had requested after a larger UN meeeting in Paris in 2015 had resulted in the 2016 Paris Agreement committing participating nations to put best efforts to hold global temperature rise in this century to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.  Those nations were concerned about the consequences of even a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase.  

Here's a good summary of and response to the Panel's findings, which  indicate that the consequences of a 1.5 degree increase are still quite severe, and that they may come as soon as 2040.  Click the following link for the Panel's headline findings:  Download UN panel headline findings. 

One of the Panel's key suggestions for staving off such a global temperature increase turns on a tax on carbon dioxide emissions.   This is a policy recommendations developed by climate economist William Nordhaus.  Probably not coincidentally, the day after the climate report was released, Nordhaus was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Economics.   

The New York Times has an article today explaining the significance of the new UN Report on the impact of climate change.  Example:  Portion of the world population experiencing severe heat waves at least once every five years will increase from 14% to 37%.

New York Times story with amazing photographs.

Tender hatchlings are prey to the rising tides.  From the New York Times.

A report in the scientific journal Nature indicates that ingestion of plastic debris increases turtle mortality.

Check out this interactive application from the New York Times:  "How Much Hotter Is Your Hometown Than When You Were Born?"