Environment

The Arctic hasn’t been this hot for 3 million years – and that foreshadows big changes for the rest of the planet

By Julie Brigham-Grette and Steve Petsch | – Every year, sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean shrinks to a low point in mid-September. This year it measures just 1.44 million square miles (3.74 million square kilometers) – the second-lowest value in the 42 years since satellites began taking measurements. The ice today covers only […]

Climate Crisis

Top 5 Most Horrible things Trump said in his Abnormal Debate

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The “debate” was an unfortunate and distasteful spectacle, largely because of Trump’s bullying and mendacious behavior. But let us resist the cable-tv temptation to focus only on personalities and the horse race to consider some actual policy issues. And the true horror lay in what Trump had to say about […]

Green Energy

We Predict: Electric Cars will be Cheaper than Gasoline Cars by 2025

The Conversation

By Venkat Viswanathan, Alexander Bills and Shashank Sripad | – Electric vehicle sales have grown exponentially in recent years, accompanied by dropping prices. However, adoption of EVs remains limited by their higher sticker price relative to comparable gas vehicles, even though overall cost of ownership for EVs is lower. EVs and internal combustion engine vehicles […]

Climate Crisis

Live fast, die small: how global heating is simplifying the world’s ecosystems

The Conversation

By Miguel Lurgi | – Global warming is one of the biggest threats to biodiversity worldwide. As temperatures increase, many species are forced to move to new habitats, like fish fleeing warming waters. While the fish have to adapt to new conditions elsewhere, it’s the effect that their departure has on other species that unpicks […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Trumpnado in the West: Fire and Fury Like the World Has Never Seen

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – It was August 2017 and Donald Trump had not yet warmed up to Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s portly dictator. In fact, in typical Trumpian fashion, he was pissed at the Korean leader and, no less typically, he lashed out verbally, threatening that country with a literal hell on Earth. As he put […]

Climate Crisis

The Many Ugly Faces of Climate Science Denial

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – In the midst of a global pandemic forest fires now take unprecedented area of West Coast real estate, and several hurricanes have battered the East and Gulf Coasts. The continuing and intensifying episodes of climate crisis may provide the sort of shock Naomi Klein has identified as […]

Climate Change

Germany’s Crypto-Neo-Nazi AfD Party calls for end to all climate action efforts

Benjamin Wehrmann

( Clean Energy Wire ) – The right-wing nationalist AfD party has called for an end to all major climate action efforts Germany has committed itself to and wants to abandon both the Paris Climate Agreement and the European Green Deal. One year before the general election in autumn 2021, the party that holds 12.6 […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Emergency feedback Loop: Trees are growing faster, dying younger – and will soon store less carbon

The Conversation

By Roel Brienen and Emanuel Gloor | – As the world warms and the atmosphere becomes increasingly fertilised with carbon dioxide, trees are growing ever faster. But they’re also dying younger – and overall, the world’s forests may be losing their ability to store carbon. That’s the key finding of our new study, published in […]

Climate Crisis

Arctic Heat Wave: Block of Ice Twice as Big as Manhattan breaks off Greenland’s largest Ice Shelf, goes into Ocean

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A 42 square mile block of ice has just hived off from the Arctic’s largest ice shelf, in northeast Greenland, alarming climate scientists. That is the size of Santa Barbara, California. It is ginormous. Danish scientists are speaking ominously of “glacier disintegration.” The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland reports, […]