[Dec 13-19’21] The X-mas edition

Falling fertility rates linked to air pollution, NYC managed to ban new gas hookups, climate impacts across 193 countries and the king of fossil fuel propaganda.

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Weekly Climate 🎉

References: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6].

This will be the last issue in 2021 as I will be on x-mas vacation until January. So the next issue will go out January 10., So I thought it would be good to reflect a bit on where we are.

On August 16 approximately a year after launching the newsletter I decided to paywall the full version of the newsletter and send out a summed up version for free. The rationale being that I’m spending too much time on the newsletter to give it away for free and heck, it saves readers multiple hours every week. Out of my ~ 760 subscribers, 22 has decided to go paid and quite a few of them even signed up for an annual subscription. I’m eternally grateful for that - thank you 🙏.

But I can only interpret the fact 738 people decided not to go paid in two ways: (1) That I’m not generating value of ~1$ for you pr newsletter or (2) that you just love “The Brief”-version way more than the detailed edition 🙃. I would really love to get feedback on this so feel free to DM me (michael@weeklyclimate.com).

Also in the spirit of X-mas we’re gonna do a sale of the annual subscription, where you can get it for 40$/yr forever, that’s 3.33$ pr month. In order to take advantage of this just click this link or simply hit this button:

The offer expires on Jan 12 2022 (i.e. 2 days after the next newsletter). Free subscribers have gotten a sneak peak of parts of the full newsletter this week.

🎅🤶🎄Merry x-mas and happy new year everybody and thanks for being a reader of The Weekly Climate 🎅🤶🎄

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‼️News you can’t miss

Here’s one important scary/bad (🙀), good (😻), interesting (😼) and fossil (💩) news item.

🙀 Falling fertility rates might be linked to air pollution according to a new study.

😻 New York City has managed to ban new gas hookups … from 2024, but still.

😼 Detailed look at climate impacts across all 193 countries in the UN.

💩 A profile of the King of Fossil Fuel propaganda: Edelman

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👩‍⚕️ Status: Climate & Science

Let’s look at how we’re doing this week!

[#doomsdayglacier] — Here’s a detailed look at how one of the biggest glaciers in the world the so called Thwaite’s Glacier is retreating… fast. It’s losing ice surface at a rate of 2km pr year. But it’s not just the Thwaite’s Glacier, the Antarctic is changing very fast. And this beautifully animated New York Times article tries to explain just what is happening.

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📰 The 7 Grand Challenges

⚡️Decarbonize Electricity

Clean electricity is the one do-or-die challenge we must solve.

[#methane] — Just prior to COP26 100 nations launched the Global Methane Pledge which aims to cut methane emissions. This detailed article looks at the options and the lack of action that face EU politicians who may or may not be trying to fulfill this pledge.

[#coal] — You know, there’s thing called climate change which is causing the planet to warm and all sorts of nasty things to happen to humans because we keep on burning fossil fuels. So it’s interesting to see that the IEA expect coal to reach and all time high in 2022. You would think this is the wrong move, wouldn’t you? Coal demand has soared 9% in 2021 to power the COVID recovery.

🏘 Reduce impact of urban and rural areas

Lowering the impact of urban and rural areas.

[#fossilgas] — I was seriously surprised by this one. If you’re a long time reader of this newsletter you know that I’ve included a lot of articles about how cities have tried to get rid of new fossil gas hookups but some how the gas lobby has always been able to intervene even threatening city governments with COVID (yes that happened). That’s why it came as such a surprise when I read that NYC succeeded in banning gas heating and stoves from new buildings … from 2024. Still better than nothing.

[#icetoev] — Don’t want to rid of your beloved Mustang or big pickup truck but you want to push on the climate agenda? Just convert it to an electric. Doing that is becoming easier and easier as new companies launch electric motors to help do just that.