Climate Change

By John Feffer | – (Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Far-right governments in the U.S., UK, and Brazil are laying bare their nihilistic roots and full destructive potential. Doesn’t idiocy ever take a vacation? As August wound down, the populist troika of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Jair Bolsonaro proved once again that the […]

Climate Change

Could Climate Crisis’ Extreme Weather Threaten American Prosperity?

The Conversation

By Gary W. Yohe | – Scientists say climate change is causing powerful hurricanes like Dorian to increasingly stall over coastal areas, which leads to heavy flooding. Officials in the Bahamas feared “unprecedented” devastation after Dorian hovered over the islands for two days, pummeling it with rain. But beyond more intense and slow-moving hurricanes, the […]

Climate Change

Failing Breitbart Comes for Juan Cole on Climate History and it Won’t Go Well

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – I understand that the far, far rightwing reused toilet paper that is Breitbart ran a hit piece on me today for daring question the record of Florida’s Saint DeSantis on doing nothing about carbon dioxide emissions that are sinking his state. Breitbart’s offices are in Los Angeles, which is itself […]

Climate Change

Climate Crisis Explained: How to Cut Carbon Emissions & Prepare for Impacts

The Conversation

By Ralph Brougham Chapman | – First, let’s accept climate change is happening and will have major negative impacts on New Zealand. Second, let’s also accept that even if New Zealand did absolutely everything possible to reduce emissions to zero, it would still happen, i.e. our impact on climate change is negligible. Third, reducing our […]

Climate Change

Hurricane Dorian: DeSantis & Trump haven’t curbed CO2 Emissions & Should Resign

Juan Cole

Hurricane Dorian has gathered strength from the freakishly warm waters of the Caribbean to become a category 4. It is already raging with 130 mph winds, but is expected now to become even stronger. It is menacing the Bahamas, from which tourists can afford to flee; but what about the people who live there? It […]

Climate Change

Horrific Amazon Wildfires: How do they Threaten Us, and how can we stop them?

Juan Cole

By Jos Barlow and Alexander C. Lees | – Imagine a rainforest at dawn – the tall canopy laden with dripping ferns and orchids, tree trunks covered in spongy mosses and lichens, and the morning mist only slowly burning away as the sun rises. While there is fuel everywhere, it seems unimaginable that such humid […]

Climate Change

Plants Provide our Food, Medicine & Oxygen: We’re Driving them Extinct 350x Faster than Normal

The Conversation

Plants are going extinct up to 350 times faster than the historical norm By Jaco Le Roux, Florencia Yanelli, Heidi Hirsch, José María Iriondo Alegria, Marcel Rejmánek, and Maria Loreto Castillo | – Earth is seeing an unprecedented loss of species, which some ecologists are calling a sixth mass extinction. In May, a United Nations […]

Climate Change

Bernie Sanders’ Manhattan Project: The Game-Changing Green New Deal

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sen. Bernie Sanders’ breathtaking Green New Deal, with an advertised price tag of $16.3 trillion, is aimed at nothing less than saving the planet from the worst consequences of global heating. The plan aims to create 20 million new, well-paying jobs. It should be noted that one possible outcome of […]

Climate Change

Raging wildfires threaten to turn Northern Hemisphere’s forests from vital carbon stores into climate heaters

The Conversation

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 […]