“The last decade was the warmest on record, NASA and NOAA find”

“The data is a closely watched indicator of the Earth’s changing climate, particularly as projections for future years anticipate the trend to continue.”

“That conclusion, based on newly released data, also found that 2019 was the second-hottest year in recorded history.”

“‘Every decade since the 1960s has been warmer than the decade previously, and not by a small amount,’ Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, told reporters in a news briefing Wednesday [Jan. 15].

“Average global temperatures in 2019 were 1.71 degrees Fahrenheit (0.95 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 20th century average, according to separate independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),” by Denise Chow, NBC News. Read more

“Trump Rule Would Exclude Climate Change in Infrastructure Planning”

• Editor’s note: This country’s environmental review degradation by the Trump Administration will take years to repair, if ever, once Trump leaves office.

“Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark environmental law.

“The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when courts ruled that the Trump administration did not properly consider climate change when analyzing the environmental effects of the projects,” by Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. Read more

“Trump administration set to remove protections against water pollution”

“The Trump administration appears ready to move ahead with its plan to remove protections for some of the nation’s millions of miles, streams and arroyos, completing one of its most far-reaching environmental rollbacks,” by Ellen Knickmeyer, AP. Read more

“Trump’s Latest Attack on the Environment May Be His Most Alarming Yet”

“President Donald Trump has shown his hand in this debate many times — he’s continually on the side of corporations, which is unsurprising considering he, himself, is a businessman. Trump has rolled back or begun rolling back 95 environmental regulations as of December. He has been fixated on allowing the building of pipelines. This line of policy has come to a head with his administration’s recent proposal to roll back NEPA, the nation’s oldest environmental law.

“NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] is often described as the Magna Carta of environmental law, and for good reason,” by Sharon Zhang, Truthout. Read more

“Greta Thunberg calls for climate action in Davos, as Trump lashes out at ‘prophets of doom’”

“In two speeches at the conference, the 17-year-old Thunberg renewed the call to ‘start listening to the science’ on climate change. The world, she said, needs to ‘treat this crisis with the importance it deserves.

“Thunberg’s remarks echoed her warning in Davos last year, when she told world leaders: ‘I don’t want your hope. I don’t want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act,” by Rick Noack, The Washington Post. Read more