By John Parnell
– The day’s top climate change stories as chosen by RTCC
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Wednesday 4 July
Last updated: 1700 BST
Latest news
China has declared the Three Gorges Dam project complete. The $50bn project was started in 1994. It generates huge amounts of clean electricity but attracted criticism for displacing 1.3 million people.
Lawmakers in North Carolina, which has a long Atlantic Ocean coastline and vast areas of low-lying land, have voted to ignore studies predicting a rapid rise in sea level due to climate change and postpone planning for the consequences. Television comedian Stephen Colbert joked recently that North Carolina was considering making sea level rise illegal.
Staying in North Carolina, fracking has been made legal because a lawmaker accidentally voted the wrong way. Democrat Becky Carney meant to vote to keep the ban but accidentally pressed the wrong button handing the decisive vote to the Republicans who were looking to lift it.
Meanwhile in Washington the Department of Energy have made $30m available for companies developing diesel and jet fuel substitutes for conventional fuels – to ensure the USA is not so reliant on imports.
There’s evidence that the effects of much of the damage we have done to our atmosphere will be felt for centuries to come. Another report investigating the effects of increased flooding on coastal areas of South East Asia and the Pacific has estimated that as many as 52 million people could be displaced becoming “flood refugees“. The result is not new but the estimated scale is.
Top Tweet
Despite multiple scientists linking the higher frequency of wildfires with climatic variability, mentions of climate change in media coverage of the disaster are few and far between…check out the image.
Only 3% of wildfire coverage by news outlets mentioned climate change: twitpic.com/a3k2yi Full study: bit.ly/MRMoyl
— Media Matters (@mmfa) July 4, 2012
The end of ‘peak oil’ – must-read @Revkin post on vast new oil sources which could doom the world’s climate: dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/25/a-f…
— Mark Lynas (@mark_lynas) July 4, 2012
A flat pack wind turbine? Truly awesome businessgreen.com/bg/news/218909…
— Will Nichols (@WillN_BG) July 4, 2012
Big question
The world’s attention is on a group of scientists buried under a mountain in Switzerland as they prepare to announce the discovery of the Higgs Boson. So if the public are prepared to “believe in” so-called cosmic soup, why is climate change so hard to grasp? What does the discovery mean for climate science? Here’s our take on today’s hot topic.
Video of the day
Jude Law and Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke have made a short film as part of Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic campaign.
Video of the day#2
We couldn’t choose between these two videos so we’re bringing you both! Watch the all-electric Nissan Leaf break the world reverse record…