Climate Change & Environment
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The Cost of Mobility in Lebanon

It has been well established in numerous studies that the Lebanese passenger transport sector is unsustainable.

This study provides an approach from the cost side of mobility to generate recommendations in order to move the Lebanese passenger transport sector towards sustainable ground. It provides a particular methodology to calculate mobility cost in Lebanon, where data and information are scarce.

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Sea-Level Rise Accelerating, Say Scientists

Sea-level rise is accelerating, not declining as some have hoped, scientists said on Monday citing meltwater from Earth's ice sheets as the likely cause.

In 2013, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the global mean sea level rose by 19 centimeters (7.6 inches) from 1901-2010, an average 1.7 mm (0.06 of an inch) per year. 

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Obama Approves Oil Drilling in Arctic

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration on Monday approved petroleum giant Shell's request to drill for oil and gas in the Arctic under certain conditions, despite opposition from environmental groups.

The decision by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management granted Shell the right to explore the Chukchi Sea as long as the Anglo-Dutch firm gets the correct permits from the agencies that regulate the environment and marine mammal health.

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World Bank: Carbon Price Vital for Zero-Emission Goal

Safely reaching the UN's climate target requires governments to have a long-term vision that includes carbon pricing, the World Bank said Monday.

A price on carbon dioxide (CO2), the principal greenhouse gas, "is an efficient way to raise revenue while encouraging lower emissions," the Bank said.

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Permafrost Holds Key to Release of Trapped Carbon

Three sets of scientists in the same week have helped narrow the uncertainties about how the natural world will respond to extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

Carbon locked in the frozen earth will escape gradually as the Arctic permafrost melts – but the scientists say the process could accelerate.

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Australia PM Advisor Says Climate Change a U.N.-Led Ruse

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's top business advisor on Friday claimed climate change was a ruse encouraged by the United Nations to create a new authoritarian world order under its control.

Maurice Newman, chairman of the Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council, said the real agenda was "concentrated political authority. Global warming is the hook".

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Motorsport is Undergoing a Full-Throttle Green Revolution

You’d think it was the ultimate petrolhead paradise, and indeed there is plenty at the Williams F1 headquarters – in an old Johnson and Johnson factory in Oxfordshire – to stimulate the inner Toad. Portraits of drivers Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas gaze down from the walls at the F1 car which dominates the reception area, looking, to the uninitiated eye like a high-tech stick insect, while topiary outside depicts a busy pit stop.

But the surprise is that, far from harboring an aggressive Top-Gear-type disdain for all things green, the company is reinventing itself as a champion of environmentally friendly technology. Yesterday it unveiled plans to fit aerofoils developed from racing cars to supermarket fridges so as to save energy, while a fuel-saving F1 flywheel is being tried out in buses. It is even supplying ecologically- correct supercars for the next Bond film.

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Joss Whedon: Politicians Who Deny Climate Change ‘Deny Basic Scientific Truth’

If there’s anything to be gleaned about Joss Whedon’s worldview from his hit show Firefly, it might be that he’s pessimistic about the future of politics.

“Nothing will change in the future,” Whedon, who also wrote and directed the enormously successful Avengers movie, once said about the dystopian universe depicted in Firefly. “Technology will advance, but we will still have the same political, moral, and ethical problems as today.”

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Study: Extreme Weather already on Increase Due to Climate Change

Extreme heatwaves and heavy rain storms are already happening with increasing regularity worldwide because of manmade climate change, according to new research.

Global warming over the last century means heat extremes that previously only occurred once every 1,000 days are happening four to five times more often, the study published in Nature Climate Change said.

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In Historic Move, BP's Shareholders Adopt Global Warming Resolution

BP's shareholders overwhelmingly supported a resolution on Thursday that would force the company to disclose some of its climate change-related risks. The shareholder vote was extraordinarily lopsided, with about 98% of shareholders approving the resolution, which had the backing of BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg.

The embrace of the climate change resolution is being called a watershed event in the history of climate-related shareholder resolutions, which investors large and small have been pursuing since 1999 to try to encourage oil, coal and gas companies to inform shareholders of their climate change-related risks and shift their investments into renewable sources of energy.

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