[Mar 27-Apr 2’23] Economists are waking up

Corporates watered down latest IPCC report, Vanatu in big win for climate lawsuits, economists are waking up and mining in fossil world is 535x worse.

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

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

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‼️News you can’t miss

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

🙀 Corporate interest watered down the language in the latest IPCC report

😻 Vanatu scored a big win that could have a big impact on future climate lawsuits

😼 Economists appear to be waking up: Climate disasters are slowing down economic growth

💩 Mining in a fossil world is 535x worse than in a green one

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👩‍⚕️ Status: Climate & Science

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

[#tornados] — This weekend the US midwest was hit hard by around 50 tornados. If you’re wondering whether climate change caused that massive amount of tornados, then the science is still a bit unclear about that one.

[#changes] — If you want to see how climate change are changing our world physically, take a look at these. From the vanishing island of Dhal Chor to the Hatonuevo mining complex.

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📰 The 7 Grand Challenges

🏘 Reduce impact of urban and rural areas

Lowering the impact of urban and rural areas.

[#trucks] — California is planning to require that 50% of all heavy duty trucks sold in 2035 to be electric. This is great obviously (could be sooner of course) but it’s also very interesting for a government to pick technological sides this early. AFAIK whether electrification is the best option for heavy duty trucks is still up in the air, but maybe thats why they’re only targeting 50%.

[#insulation] — The Oak Ridge Laboratory has had a breakthrough for a new insulation material that will cut heating and cooling costs (and thus carbon emissions, hopefully). Think about it, you spend a lot of time heating or cooling your home, but the outside is doing everything it can to pull the temperature up or down to the temperature the outside has, so we want well insulated homes not just to save money on our bills but also to mitigate climate change.