Extreme Heat

Climate Emergency Overdrive: Our Age of Compound Disasters as 10% of Oregon is Evacuated, California Burns and Louisiana Sinks

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is astonishing to me that we still have 287 million gasoline vehicles on our roads and that 20 percent of our electricity comes from burning dirty coal. We just go on blithely pumping over 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, a powerful and dangerous heat-trapping gas, into the […]

Climate Crisis

Another Pandemic Looms: Global Heating will put new Areas at Risk for Malaria

The Conversation

By Mark Smith and Chris Thomas | – Of an estimated 228 million cases of malaria worldwide each year, around 93% are in Africa. This proportion is more or less the same for the 405,000 malaria deaths globally. That’s why there are huge efforts underway to provide detailed maps of current malaria cases in Africa, […]

Climate Crisis

COVID death Tolls are Horrific, but those of Global Heating are much Worse

The Third Pole

By Soumya Sarkar | – ( TheThirdPole.net) – Unless the world curbs greenhouse gas emissions significantly, extreme heat could become a major global killer by the end of this century, equalling death rates for all infectious diseases combined, including tuberculosis, HIV and malaria. In the largest international study till now on health and financial impacts […]

Climate Crisis

As Party of Climate Denial Meets, Wildfires Rage and Hurricanes Target Gulf Coast

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – One of the speakers at the Republican National Convention on Monday evening was Nikki Haley, formerly Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, who helped usher the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords and who slammed Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal. Haley when pressed will admit that the climate is […]

Climate Crisis

3 Dead as Iraqi Crowds Protest Electricity Outages in 124° Heat; Have US and Climate Crisis left Iraq Unviable?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Tuesday, the temperature in Baghdad hit 124° F. (51.2°). Just for perspective, the all-time highest temperature recorded for Asia was in Kuwait five years ago, at 129° F. Scientists consider an average temperature of 95° the highest consistent with habitability. Since these temperatures and higher will become more and […]

Climate Crisis

Emissions of methane – a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide – are rising dangerously

The Conversation

By Pep Canadell, Ben Poulter, Marielle Saunois, Paul Krummel, and Rob Jackson | – Fossil fuels and agriculture are driving a dangerous acceleration in methane emissions, at a rate consistent with a 3-4℃ rise in global temperatures this century. Our two papers published today provide a troubling report card on the global methane budget, and […]

Climate Crisis

New research shows the South Pole is warming faster than the rest of the world

The Conversation

By Kyle Clem | – Climate scientists long thought Antarctica’s interior may not be very sensitive to warming, but our research, published today, shows a dramatic change. Over the past 30 years, the South Pole has been one of the fastest changing places on Earth, warming more than three times more rapidly than the rest […]

Climate Crisis

100 degrees in Siberia? Top 5 ways burning Coal, Gasoline is causing Astonishing Transformation of Arctic

The Conversation

This Arctic heat wave has been unusually long-lived. The darkest reds on this map of the Arctic are areas that were more than 14 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in the spring of 2020 compared to the recent 15-year average. Joshua Stevens/NASA Earth Observatory By Mark Serreze, University of Colorado Boulder The Arctic heat wave that sent […]

Climate Crisis

The other Pandemic: Siberia hits over 100° F, hotter than Miami, 80 Years Early, because Coal and Gasoline

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – As if the coronavirus pandemic, depression-era unemployment, and a mad President in the White House were not enough, Mother Nature has decided to remind us what the Big Kahuna really is. It is the climate emergency. May was not only the hottest May since 1880, it was 18° F. (10° […]