If you are like me, you must be astounded at the lack of attention and action given to the enormous threat of global warming that could lead to the extinction of so much life on Earth...including our own...

The 7th annual Universe is here Today. How Will You Celebrate?

Japanese coal plant (Photo: Chris Lewis, Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

Coal-fired power plants have provided cheap energy for over a hundred years, and despite coal-burning’s high emissions, about 2,400 are planned globally. A new study calculates that emissions from global energy generation must reach zero before the middle of the century to keep climate change below a two-degree Celsius temperature rise. Niklas Hohne of the New Climate Institute discusses the study with Living on Earth’s Helen Palmer and explains why building these plants is inconsistent with emissions control commitments countries have given...

Pope Francis prayed Sunday for the success of the global climate summit in Paris, where another week of negotiations are underway to reach an agreement that would limit the warming of the planet...

Activists have targeted the French owner of the Hazelwood brown-coal power station for its sponsorship of the Paris climate summit, calling on it to accelerate plans for the plant's closure in the spirit of the negotiations to tackle global warming...

The December 2015 Paris Climate Conference initiated by the United

Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) will be

attended by leaders of most of the nations of the world...

Buildings are seen near the ocean in North Miami, Florida in March 2014. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

As we get deeper into the Paris climate negotiations, activists are poring over confusing texts full of noncommittal brackets. Upon this, it seems, does the fate of the planet depend...

Some of the event's sponsors might be part of the problem, not the solution...

But poorest half of world’s people contribute to just 10% of emissions, says British charity as negotiators work on UN climate change deal in Paris. An average person among the richest 1% of people emits 175 times more carbon than his or her counterpart among the bottom 1%, Oxfam said...

Ice broken off from Perito Moreno glacier floats in Los Glaciares national park, part of the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the third largest ice field in the world, in Santa Cruz, Argentina. Most glaciers in the park have been retreating over the past 50 years due to global warming. Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Negotiators in Paris are trying to craft a deal at the UN climate talks that will keep global temperature rise below 2C. But what does that mean in reality - and what difference will a couple of extra degrees really make?

From the Guardian newspaper Australia:

Wind turbines at the Sere Wind farm, close to Vredendal, in South Africa. (RODGER BOSCH/AFP/Getty Images)

When it comes to electric power, Africa is still the dark continent. More than half of its 1.1 billion inhabitants lack access to electricity, and Africa’s total generating capacity, from Cairo to Cape Town, is only 160 gigawatts, or about half as much as Japan, a country with one-tenth of its population.

© The Washington Post

The man who helped launch the personal computer revolution says the nations of the world aren’t doing nearly enough to boost the search for new energy sources that could help humans avoid a global-warming calamity.

Nik Spencer/Nature

Countries have pledged to limit global warming to 2 °C, and climate models say that is still possible. But only with heroic — and unlikely — efforts.

Turn the knobs on a new interactive map and see what future emissions, adaptation strategies...

AFP/Getty Images: A conference attendee looks at a projection of the Earth on Monday, the opening day of the COP 21 United Nations conference on climate change, in Le Bourget, on the outskirts of Paris.

The business community is well-represented at the United Nations climate summit underway in Paris — and it will be much more engaged in finding positive solutions than ever before...

(Image: Icy waters, rising steam, gas jets via Shutterstock; Edited: JR/TO)

Tuesday, 13 January 2015 09:23 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis

During a recent hike in Washington State's Olympic National Park, I marveled at the delicate geometry of frost-covered ferns. White crystalline structures seemed to grow from the green leaves, encasing them in a frozen frame of temporary beauty...

French President Francois Hollande, right, speaks with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as they attend "The Climate Challenge and African solutions" event during the COP21, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Le Bourget, north of Paris,Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2015. (Philippe Wojazer, Pool via AP)

President Barack Obama said Tuesday that parts of the global warming deal being negotiated in Paris should be legally binding on the countries that sign on, setting up a potential fight with Republicans at home...

While the world is watching and waiting for world leaders to act on climate at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP21, things are already heating up for French climate activists..

Pope Francis pauses while answering questions from journalists aboard his flight from Bangui, Central African Republic, to Rome Nov. 30. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

While Pope Francis has expressed hope that world leaders meeting in Paris for discussions on confronting climate change will find solutions to the problem, he has also said the inaction on the issue up to now is approaching global suicide...

World leaders kicked off the two-week climate change summit in France on Monday with warnings that this conference is the most important, and possibly the last, opportunity governments have to make a difference concerning climate change.

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at the COP21 session of statements by heads of state and government at the climate summit in Paris, France November 30, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

attended by leaders of most of the nations of the world.

Policemen fight with activists during a protest ahead of the 2015 Paris Climate Conference at the place de la Republique, in Paris, Sunday, Nov. 29, 2015. More than 140 world leaders are gathering around Paris for high-stakes climate talks that start Monday, and activists are holding marches and protests around the world to urge them to reach a strong agreement to slow global warming. (Laurent Cipriani/Associated Press)

 The soap opera of global climate talks has been playing for 20 years. As it comes to Paris on Monday, Suzanne Goldenberg reviews the tears, the bloodshed and the unspeakable catering...

Policemen fight with activists during a protest ahead of the 2015 Paris climate conference at the Place de la Republique. Photograph: Laurent Cipriani/AP

• Millions expected to take to streets ahead of Paris climate summit
• Sydney to Seattle, via Hong Kong, Berlin, London and Sao Paulo, march on Sunday
• Climate change protests take place across Australia
• Keep it in the ground: the Guardian’s climate change campaign
• Interactive: why we are joining the global climate march

The time has finally arrived!

We're on the Eurostar heading to Paris for the COP21 climate conference kick-off...

In this Nov. 25, 2015 photo, President Barack Obama speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington...

Hamstrung by Congress, GOP opposition, Obama heads to Paris to clinch global climate agreement...

President Barack Obama meets in October with leaders from across the U.S. to discuss climate change. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

President Barack Obama heads to a terror-scarred Paris Sunday night to tackle one of the most important priorities of his second term — climate change...

A new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) shows that the climate denial echo chamber organizations funded by ExxonMobil and Koch family foundations produced misinformation that effectively polluted mainstream media coverage of climate science and polarized the climate policy debate.

Oil tankers are seen parked at a yard outside a fuel depot on the outskirts of Kolkata February 3, 2015.

Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri

Almost 200 nations will meet in the French capital on Nov. 30 to try and seal a deal to prevent the planet from warming more than the 2 degrees Celsius that scientists say is vital if the world is to avoid the most devastating effects of climate change...

When he puts it like that, it seems totally worth a try...

The December 2015 Paris Climate Conference initiated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) will be attended by leaders of most of the nations of the world...

Tybalt Peake was allowed to miss school to witness the effects of global warming on board ‘Snow Dragon II’

'Everyone thinks of the Arctic as a cold place but when I went there were times I would watch the ice melting in a T-shirt'

"We’re going to have a say on whether they’re going to get their money or not,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said. | Getty

The simultaneous climate and budget deadlines give the GOP a tool to derail a legacy-defining pact for the President

Umiujaq (Canada) (AFP) - On the front line of climate change in the Canadian Arctic, scientists hunt for clues to a potentially catastrophic global warming trend: melting permafrost.

Still reeling from the worst terrorist attacks in French history, Paris will host nearly 140 world leaders gathering next week to spearhead a climate pact tasked with keeping Earth liveable for humanity...

Paris climate talks: the issues

Climate change is starting to have a personal impact on billions of people and we need to cut back on greenhouse gases and adapt to a warmer world...

Men work on the site where the upcoming COP21 World Climate Summit will be held at Le Bourget, near Paris, France, November 19, 2015. Reuters/Benoit Tessier

Heads of state invited to climate talks in Paris starting on Nov. 30 have confirmed they will attend even after the Nov. 13 attacks by Islamic State militants that killed 130 people, a French presidency source said.

This graphic provided by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows land and ocean temperatures for October 2015. Even for a record breaking hot year for Earth, October stood out as absurdly warm. The hottest October on record by a third of a degree over the old mark, a large margin for weather records. (NOAA via AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Even in a record-breaking hot year for Earth, October stood out as absurdly warm.

This image obtained November 16, 2015 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows the satellite sea surface temperature departure for the month of October 2015, where orange-red colors are above normal temperatures and are indicative of El Nino. (AFP Photo/Handout/NOAA)

Matters seem to have escalated in the current dispute between Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

One of the most under-appreciated aspects of the climate change problem is the so-called "fat tail" of risk. In short, the likelihood of very large impacts is greater than we would expect under typical statistical assumptions.

A new video simulation from NASA is so beautiful to watch, it's easy to forget it's tracking one of the biggest disruptors of our climate...

People hold placards at last year’s climate march in Paris. Photograph: Tom Craig/Demotix/Corbis

People around the world should protest ‘on behalf of those who can’t’, say organisers of climate march forbidden in light of Paris terror attacks...

U.S. Senate Republicans on Wednesday said Congress would not approve the Obama administration's $500 million request for its first payment into a United Nations climate fund, a move they said would undermine the upcoming climate change summit in Paris.

Climate change is increasingly understood as an issue of inter-generational justice, and it has become a truism that today's children will bear the brunt of our inaction. In spite of this, children are rarely addressed in climate change policy - or given a seat at the table when climate change agreements are being discussed. In countries around the world, the voice of the generation with the most at risk is mostly unheard...

A residential block covered in smog in Changchun, northeast China's Jilin province (AFP Photo/STR)

Don't forget public health at Paris Climate talks: WHO

Livestock is responsible for 65% of all human-related emissions of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas with 296 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide, and which stays in the atmosphere for 150 years...

Can the earth be saved by bureaucrats in long meetings, reciting jargon and acronyms while surrounded by leaning towers of documents?

France will limit a U.N. climate summit in Paris starting in two weeks' time to core negotiations and cancel planned marches and concerts after the attacks that killed 129 people, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Monday.

Paris (AFP) - If mankind fails to curtail global warming, we will have to deal with fallout ranging from massive refugee crises and submerged cities to scorching heatwaves and drought, scientists say.

Paris Mourns but so does our Mother Earth...

President Obama and other world leaders will still meet in Paris later this month, despite the recent spat of terrorist attacks. In fact, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius says the meeting is essential, and must go forward...

The Paris climate talks are set to begin at the end of this month. Here’s what you need to know about which nations are involved, what policies they will be hashing out, and what the chances are of substantial progress

  The goal of COP-21 – the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 21st Conference of the Parties – in Paris at the end of November is to produce an international agreement to ensure greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by an amount necessary to prevent a 2 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperature this century. With that as a goal, the conference is doomed to failure. Three reasons why:

The Forests of Oregon, viewed from Bend. Credit: Rod Parmenter

Efforts to foster forests and slow deforestation, which is one of the leading causes of global warming, are largely being glossed over by most nations as they prepare for a historic round of climate negotiations.

US secretary of state, John Kerry, has said that any climate deal in Paris is ‘definitively not going to be a treaty’. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AP

US warned that any agreement in Paris will be enshrined in law after secretary of state said it would ‘definitively’ not be a treaty

An island in the Maldives, which is vulnerable to rising seas.
Credit: Alessandro Caproni/Flickr

If rich countries don’t agree to help poorer ones recover after storms amplified by global warming tear villages apart, or help communities prosper even as their homes sink into rising seas, climate negotiations in Paris risk being scuttled...

Nnimmo Bassey

“…it boils down to the fact that the world is in a state of potential destruction. There’s no use worrying about anything else.”

—Ansel Adam’s final interview, Summer of 1984.

1000 MILLENNIALS TOOK THE STREETS FOR JUSTICE ON RACE, CLIMATE, IMMIGRATION

On November 9th, a wave of people power swept over Washington, DC. In an epic demonstration of unity, 1,000 millennials took the streets for justice on race, climate, and immigration.

The world has passed the halfway mark to the 2C target, the agreed safe limit to avoid catastrophic global warming, say scientists. Photograph: Thibault Camus/Pool/Reuters

Haze shrouds the Musi River as vehicles drive across the Ampera Bridge in Indonesia. (Dimas Ardian/Bloomberg)

President Barack Obama looks at Bear Glacier during a boat tour of the Kenai Fjords National Park Seward, Alaska last September. | Getty

It's no accident the president rejected the Keystone pipeline before he seals a global deal to combat climate change.

21st Conference of the Parties on Climate

UNFCCC COP 21/ CMP 11.  30 Nov – 11 Dec, 2015

Washington (CNN)President Barack Obama on Friday rejected the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, ending the political fight over the Canada-to-Texas project that has gone on for much of his presidency.

A man sunbathes in the midday sun during a heat wave at Glenelg beach on January 13, 2014 in Adelaide, Australia.

Extreme weather events, from droughts to floods and heat waves, are some of the most tangible present day impacts of global warming, and they will take center stage in speeches at the upcoming Paris Climate Summit. Now a new report gives leaders pushing to reduce emissions of global warming pollution, including President Obama, additional ammunition

In this Nov. 12, 2014 file photo, President Obama shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the conclusion of their joint news conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. Six countries produce nearly 60 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. China and the United States combine for more than two-fifths. The planet’s future will be shaped by what these top carbon polluters do about the heat-trapping gases blamed for global warming. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

With the 2015 UN climate conference looming less than a month away, there’s a strong economic reason for the United States to support a strong international agreement to curb carbon emissions, says a new report: There are trillions of dollars to be gained at home from other countries’ climate mitigation efforts.

Greenhouse gases can stay in the atmosphere for an amount of years ranging from decades to hundreds and thousands of years. No matter what we do, global warming is going to have some effect on Earth. Here are the 5 deadliest effects of global warming

The Obama administration rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline on Friday, handing a major victory to environmentalists after a seven-year review process that gave rise to a grassroots climate activist movement. President Barack Obama announced his decision at a morning news conference in the White House Roosevelt Room, alongside Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden.

U.N. climate negotiations begin in Paris in less than a month.
Credit: Omarukai/Flickr

Diplomats steeling themselves for a historic round of United Nations climate negotiations remain divided by a handful of stubborn disputes. Discord persists over financial and procedural issues, for example, and over how pollution from farming and deforestation should be addressed alongside energy generation.

The fundamentals of climate science, however, are not among the issues being debated...

The Republican Party could be the single greatest impediment to global efforts to slow climate change. But cracks are forming in the conservative wall of denial.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are hot but not too bothered by global warming...

The world is getting hotter. But a lot of important people aren't "buying in."

If the Greenland ice sheet melts completely, will drive up sea levels in the coming decades by about 20 feet. Photo: AFP

Researchers gather empirical data from the bone chilling glaciers in Greenland to assess the impact of climate change amid the looming threat of suspension of government funds for these projects...