Extreme Weather

Humanity put out more C02 than Ever Before last Year, but Green Energy Kept the Annual Increase Small

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – This is a bad news, good news story. Cathy Bussewitz at the Associated Press reports that carbon dioxide emissions reached an all-time high in 2022, of 36.8 gigatons. That is more CO2 spewed into the atmosphere by humanity in just one year than ever before. CO2 emissions were up nearly […]

Climate Crisis

Planting more Trees could reduce Heat-Related Deaths in Cities by a Third

The Conversation

By Meelan Thondoo, University of Cambridge; Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, Australian Catholic University; and Tamara Iungman, Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) | – (The Conversation) – Urban development leads to fewer shaded areas and more heat-absorbing paved surfaces. Cities tend to be warmer than their rural surroundings as a result, a phenomenon known as the urban […]

Antarctica

More Evidence that the Massive Thwaites Glacier is Melting Fast, Threatening the world’s Coasts

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is in the news again. We are fascinated with it because it is the Godzilla of glaciers, 80 miles across and as massive as Florida. If the ice sheet holding it back were to melt, and if Thwaites plopped into the ocean, it would all […]

Climate Crisis

Is Turkey’s Prosecution of Shady Builders after 12,141 Structures Collapse in Earthquake a Model for going after Big Oil for Climate Disasters?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Turkish government has issued 100 arrest warrants for building contractors suspected of erecting structures that did not meet building code standards in the 10 provinces most affected by last week’s massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake, which has left at least 32,000 dead and perhaps twice that. Some of the contractors […]

Climate Crisis

“Some say the World will End in Fire, some say in Ice”: Life in a Climate-Destabilized California

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – It was January 1983 and raining in San Francisco. The summer before, I’d moved here from Portland, Oregon, a city known for its perpetual gray drizzles and, on the 60-odd days a year when the sun deigns to shine, dazzling displays of greenery. My girlfriend had spent a year convincing me […]

Climate Crisis

A Water War Is Brewing Over the Dwindling Colorado River

ProPublica

By Abrahm Lustgarten | – (ProPublica) – On a crisp day this fall I drove southeast from Grand Junction, Colorado, into the Uncompahgre Valley, a rich basin of row crops and hayfields. A snow line hung like a bowl cut around the upper cliffs of the Grand Mesa, while in the valley some farmers were […]

Climate Crisis

2022’s US Climate Disasters: A Tale of too much CO2, Too much Rain – and too Little

The Conversation

By Shuang-Ye Wu, University of Dayton | – The year 2022 will be remembered across the U.S. for its devastating flooding and storms – and also for its extreme heat waves and droughts, including one so severe it briefly shut down traffic on the Mississippi River. During a period of five weeks over the summer, […]

Climate Crisis

The Pakistani Mega-Flood and our Climate Emergency

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Here is a talk I recently gave about the mega-flood this fall in Pakistan, which affected 33 million people, inundated a third of the country at one point, and caused between $15 billion and $30 billion in damages, including to crops and food supplies at a time when the Ukraine […]

Agriculture

Ending Amazon Deforestation: The Future of the World’s largest Rainforest

The Conversation

By Jennifer Weeks, The Conversation | – Brazil’s president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was greeted with applause and cheers when he addressed the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Nov. 16, 2022. As he had in his campaign, Lula pledged to stop rampant deforestation in the Amazon, which his predecessor, Jair Bolsanaro, […]