Super Storms

( 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

Where the Climate Target of 1.5°C (2.7°F) Came from, and Why we must not Lose Sight of its Importance

The Conversation

By Piers Forster, University of Leeds | – The US economist William Nordhaus claimed as early as the 1970s, when scientific understanding of climate change was still taking shape, that warming of more than 2°C would “push global conditions past any point that any human civilisation had experienced”. By 1990, scientists had also weighed in: […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Change is increasing the Intensity of Tropical Storms, and even Weak ones are now Fiercer

The Conversation

Wei Mei, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Shang-Ping Xie, University of California, San Diego Tropical cyclones have been growing stronger worldwide over the past 30 years, and not just the big ones that you hear about. Our new research finds that weak tropical cyclones have gotten at least 15% more intense in […]

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 […]

Australia

First-Nations-Led Youth Win Climate/ Human Rights Case against Mammoth Coal Mine in Australia

Juan Cole

By Justine Bell-James, The University of Queensland | – In a historic ruling today, a Queensland court has said the massive Clive Palmer-owned Galilee Basin coal project should not go ahead because of its contribution to climate change, its environmental impacts, and because it would erode human rights. The case was mounted in 2020 by […]

Climate Crisis

Just Stop Oil: Research shows how Activists and Politicians talk differently about Climate Change<

The Conversation

By Clare Cunningham, York St John University | – The environmental activist group Just Stop Oil has grasped public attention with a series of “art action” stunts targeting famous paintings and buildings with cans of soup and paint. They have climbed motorway gantries, blocking drivers on the M25. Their message has been loud, but has […]

Climate Crisis

How young Climate Activists built a Mass Movement to be Reckoned With

Waging Nonviolence

By Nick Engelfried | – ( Waging Nonviolence ) – When I became a climate organizer in college in the early 2000s, the words “youth climate movement” referred more to something activists hoped to bring into existence than a real-world phenomenon. Growing numbers of young people were concerned about the climate crisis and had begun […]

Climate Crisis

From Sponge Cities to Early Wildfire Detection Systems: Top 4 Ways Climate-fuelled Disasters can be Thwarted

The Conversation

By Roslyn Prinsley, Australian National University | – Climate change is driving a worldwide increase in extreme events. The latest State of the Climate report confirms the risks of disasters are rising in Australia. Repeated floods have devastated our east coast. Other extreme events are getting worse too. Since 1987 bushfires have burnt increasing areas, […]

Climate Crisis

After Failures of COP27, only a Radical Effort to Slash CO2 can keep Climate from Going Chaotic

The Conversation

By Peter Schlosser, Arizona State University | – The world could still, theoretically, meet its goal of keeping global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, a level many scientists consider a dangerous threshold. Realistically, that’s unlikely to happen. Part of the problem was evident at COP27, the United Nations climate conference in Egypt. While nations’ climate […]