Climate Change

By Ed Hawkins, University of Reading | – The world has just suffered through its warmest month ever recorded. Heatwaves have swept across southern Europe, the US and China, breaking many temperature records in the process. Climate scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades that this type of event will become more frequent as […]

Climate Change

The Other Threat of Massive Climate Change: Nuclear War

The Conversation

By Mark Maslin, UCL | – Christopher Nolan’s biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer has revived morbid curiosity in the destructive power of nuclear weapons. There are now an estimated 12,512 nuclear warheads. A war in which even a fraction of these bombs were detonated would create blast waves and fires capable of killing millions of […]

Bangladesh

Climate Crisis: Bangladesh is Undertaking the World’s Largest Resettlement Program

The Conversation

By Atmaja Gohain Baruah, King’s College London | – Bangladesh is particularly vulnerable to climate extremes. The nation’s topography lays its citizens bare to cyclones, flash floods, erosion and drought – not to mention the significant socio-economic impact these bring. Agricultural economist GM Monirul Alam showed, in a 2017 study, that with more than 230 […]

Climate Crisis

Could Solar Panel Arrays in Earth Orbit provide all the Clean Electricity We’d Ever Need?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The European Space Agency isn’t as well known in the U.S. as NASA or even Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. The $7 bn.-a-year agency funded by 22 European states, however, has what could turn out to be a game-changing idea for solar power. ESA is contemplating installing a solar panel […]

Corporations

The Profiteers of Armageddon: Oppenheimer and the Birth of the Nuclear-Industrial Complex

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few months, you’re undoubtedly aware that award-winning director Christopher Nolan has released a new film about Robert Oppenheimer, known as the “father of the atomic bomb” for leading the group of scientists who created that deadly weapon as part of America’s World […]

Climate Crisis

WMO: July to be Hottest month on Record, as World enters era of Global Boiling, Global Burning

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The World Meteorological Association said this weekend as July comes to a close that it will have been the hottest month in recorded history. Its first three weeks were certainly the hottest on record. It likely will have been the hottest month in 120,000 years. Modern homo sapiens as a […]

Africa

Egypt and Ethiopia are finally working on a Water Deal – what that means for other Nile River States

The Conversation

By John Mukum Mbaku, Weber State University | – Egypt and Ethiopia have waged a diplomatic war of words over Ethiopia’s massive new dam – the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam – on the Blue Nile, which started filling up in July 2020. The political row has threatened to get out of hand on occasion but […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Crisis: Though Turkey’s Forests are at Risk from Wildfires, the Country is still Wedded to Dirty Coal

Arzu Geybullayeva

In Turkey, when forests are not on fire, they are being destroyed by greedy men in suits Protests to save Akbelen forest continue despite the violence Written byArzu Geybullayeva ( Globalvoices.org) – Since 2019, the local residents of İkizköy village in Turkey’s southwestern province of Muğla have been trying to prevent deforestation in […]

Climate Crisis

Renewable Energy poised to overtake Coal, Providing 1/3 of Global Electricity: IEA

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The International Energy Agency’s report on electricity markets is out and it has some good news. Depending on how cold the winters are, the IEA expects renewable sources of energy to outstrip coal in 2024, and forever thereafter. It calls this change “structural.” That is, it isn’t a blip or […]