Extreme Weather

Georgia’s Embattled Sen. Perdue Protects own Beach-Front Mansion from Climate Emergency, while voting to Burn more Fossil Fuels

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Republican Senator David Perdue of Georgia, facing a run-off against Jon Ossof, has an opulent six-room beach-front mansion that has been protected with newly built, pricey jetties and sea walls against sea level rise, storm surges and coastal erosion. Why, it is as if Perdue thinks the climate emergency is […]

Acidification of Oceans

The Black Hole of Depressions: Doing nothing about Climate Emergency could cost more than all the Wealth in the World

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A study in Nature Communications has found that if you add in variability to calculations of the impact of climate change, the upper range of the damage it could do to property is $563 trillion.* That is in the worst case scenario where the world does virtually nothing to stop […]

Climate Crisis

Stunning Doubling of Severe Natural disasters in past 20 Years, many driven by Climate Emergency

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction issued a report today concluding that natural disasters caused by the human impact on earth’s climate have doubled in the past twenty years. Human beings have put increasing amounts of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the past 40 […]

Climate Crisis

Earth may Pass dangerous 1.5℃ (2.7° F.) Heating Limit for First time by 2024

The Conversation

By Pep Canadell and Rob Jackson | – The Paris climate agreement seeks to limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century. A new report by the World Meteorological Organisation warns this limit may be exceeded by 2024 – and the risk is growing. This first overshoot beyond 1.5℃ would be temporary, likely aided by a […]

Climate Crisis

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

Juan Cole

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

Burning Fossil Fuels is causing Extreme Rainfall and Acceleration of Earth’s Water Cycle

The Conversation

By Francis Zwiers and Ronald Stewart | – Extreme weather and climate events causing extensive damage are a fact of the Canadian climate, and this year is no exception. On June 13, a mammoth hailstorm pounded Calgary with damage in excess of $1 billion dollars, the most expensive hailstorm in Canadian history. In early July, […]

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

“Unsurvivable Storm Surge”: Hurricane Laura Most Powerful to Hit Louisiana in Recorded History, driven by CO2 Emissions

The Watchers

[Hurricane “Laura” became nearly a category 5 with winds at 150 mph or more on Wednesday evening before landfall. A category 5 has winds of 157 mph. Hurricanes are more frequent and more powerful because of the climate emergency driven by humans burning fossil fuels and putting heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. – ed.] By […]

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 […]