Ice Melt

By Drew Shindell | – Methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, is a larger climate problem than the world anticipates, and cutting its emissions will be crucial to slow global warming, a new United Nations report warns. The greenhouse gas is many times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the planet, and its […]

Climate Crisis

“Unimaginable Amounts of Water”: Human-Made Global Heating in Danger of “Uncorking” Massive Antarctic Glaciers, causing Sea Level Rise

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A new article in Geophysical Research Letters found that four times as much of the Antarctic ices shelves would melt under a scenario where we heat the earth by 7.2 degrees F. (4 degrees C.) as opposed to the current Paris Climate Treaty goals of 1.5 degrees C. or at […]

Climate Crisis

Antarctica’s ice shelves are trembling as Earth heats, threatening Sea Level Rise unless we Act Now

The Conversation

By Ella Gilbert | – Images of colossal chunks of ice plunging into the sea accompany almost every news story about climate change. It can often make the problem seem remote, as if the effects of rising global temperatures are playing out elsewhere. But the break-up of the world’s vast reservoirs of frozen water – […]

Acidification of Oceans

More CO2 in our Atmosphere now than any time since 3.6 mn Years Ago, when Oceans were 90 feet higher (that’s our fate)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a scientific shocker, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found that despite the slowdown in carbon dioxide emissions in 2020 because of the pandemic, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere rose to a global average of 412.5 parts per million (ppm) from 410 in 2019. At the […]

Climate Crisis

Global heating from CO2 breaks Himalayan Glacier, floods sweep away Scores, destroy Hydroelectric Plant

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A huge chunk of the Nanda Devi glacier in the Himalayas broke off Sunday morning, melting and crashing down on villages around Joshimath in India’s Uttarakhand state, leaving nine dead and 140 unaccounted for. The turbulent grey deluge of water, ice and rocks slammed into two hydro-electric plants, destroying one […]

Climate Crisis

Scientists: Earth is substantially hotter than at any time during past 12,000 Years; entire Holocene was Cool

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Our human civilization, with agriculture is only about 10,000 years old. It started in the Middle East in the Neolithic. An ice age began about 3 million years ago, and we are still in it inasmuch as Antarctica is covered with ice as is the North Pole, Greenland and the […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Crisis: what would 7.1° F. ( 4°C) of global warming feel like?

The Conversation

By Robert Wilby | – Another year, another climate record broken. Globally, 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year ever recorded. This was all the more remarkable given that cool conditions in the Pacific Ocean – known as La Niña – began to emerge in the second half of the year. The Earth’s mean […]

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

How ExxonMobil’s plan to Surge its CO2 output is Like Trump’s plan to Deal with the Coronavirus

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump made a mad dash to escape his hospital room at Walter Reed, browbeating his military physicians into letting him go while he was pumped full of a cocktail of potions that included euphoria- and delusion-inducing steroids. His lungs laboring with broken glass syndrome, he vaulted up the stairs to […]