By David Timmons | – The main solution to climate change is well known – stop burning fossil fuels. How to do this is more complicated, but as a scholar who does energy modeling, I and others see the outlines of a post-fossil-fuel future: We make electricity with renewable sources and electrify almost everything. That […]
Raging wildfires threaten to turn Northern Hemisphere’s forests from vital carbon stores into climate heaters
By Stefan H Doerr, Chuanyu Gao, and Cristina Santin | – In 2014, we travelled to the northern boreal forests of Canada to set experimental fires that would help us understand the effect of wildfires on the global carbon cycle. Sadly, we never got the chance to set those fires, because the firefighters enlisted to […]
How Forms of Political Islam failed in Egypt and Turkey
By Ahmet T. Kuru | – Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first-ever democratically elected president, died unexpectedly during a trial in June 2019. He was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an almost century-old Islamist group that rose to power after the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Its political tenure was short. Morsi was deposed by a coup […]
What’s behind the protests in Kashmir?
By Sumit Ganguly | – India recently enacted a law which will end a special autonomous status given to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, known in the West as simply “Kashmir.” Amit Shah, India’s minister for home affairs, announced in Parliament that the Bharatiya Janata Party government was revoking Article 370 of the Indian […]
New research shows that Antarctica’s largest floating ice shelf is highly sensitive to warming of the ocean
By Dan Lowry | – Scientists have long been concerned about the potential collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its contribution to global sea level rise. Much of West Antarctica’s ice lies below sea level, and warming ocean temperatures may lead to runaway ice sheet retreat. Since the last ice age, the ice […]
Trump’s Trade War is tanking US Economy & Destroying 70 Years of World Order
By Shiro Armstrong |- President Trump’s “America First” agenda is rapidly trashing the global economic system and the rules and norms the US has championed throughout in the post war era. Mr Trump has been singling out particular countries, including China and Mexico, for punitive tariffs way in excess of those imposed on imports from […]
Globally and in El Paso, Far-Right Language is Changing, Provoking More Violence
By Arie Perliger | – The recent shooting attack in which a young white man is accused of killing 22 people in a Walmart in El Paso fits a new trend among perpetrators of far-right violence: They want the world to know why they did it. So they provide a comprehensive ideological manifesto that aims […]
Thousands of Years of World’s Heritage Endangered in Syria, Cradle of Civilization
By Lubna Omar | – I used to be a Near Eastern archaeologist working in Syria. Nowadays, I am stuck in academic purgatory, observing from a great distance as the country burns, unable to help protect its history or its present. Syria sits within what’s known as the cradle of civilization. It’s part of the […]
To Avoid Boiling the Earth, we Need a New Agriculture: Farming emits 1/3 of Greenhouse Gases
By Mark Howden | – We can’t achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement without managing emissions from land use, according to a special report released today by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Emissions from land use, largely agriculture, forestry and land clearing, make up some 22% of the world’s greenhouse gas […]