Environment

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Laurie Laybourn-Langton, Lesley Rankin and Darren Baxter Februhe at the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain are warning in a new study as frantically as they can that “the extent, severity, pace and closing window of opportunity to avoid potentially catastrophic outcomes has led many scientists to conclude that […]

Climate Change

Pentagon Fears Climate Crisis, w/ Billions in Damage to US Bases & Societal Upheaval

AFP

Washington, DC (AFP) – Climate change and a deteriorating environment are likely to fuel social disorder and could threaten some US military bases, a top admiral said Tuesday. Admiral Philip Davidson, who heads the US military’s vast Indo-Pacific Command, told lawmakers he concurred with a recent assessment from the US intelligence community that listed climate […]

Pollution

No Insects, No Food: Pesticides, Deforestation have Caused Largest Extinction Event since Die-off of Dinosaurs

Marlowe Hood

By Marlowe HOOD | – Paris (AFP) – “Unless we change our way of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades,” concluded the peer-reviewed study, which is set for publication in April. The recent decline in bugs that fly, crawl, burrow and skitter across still […]

Climate Change

Climate Emergency: Australian Judge Strikes down Coal Mine in Part because of its Carbon Emissions

Juan Cole

Informed Comment (Ann Arbor) – In what is likely to be the first of many such rulings, an Australian court has ruled against a coal mine in part on grounds of the environmental damage that burning coal does by contributing to the climate emergency. Burning coal releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a powerful greenhouse […]

Climate Change

Last 5 Years Hottest on Record: NASA, NOAA; & World Hotter than any time in 120,000 years

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The National Space and Aeronautics Agency (NASA) and its sister agency NOAA report that the past 5 years are the hottest on record. World-wide temperature records began being kept from about 1880. Global heating proceeds differently in each area of the globe. The real heat wave in comparative terms was […]

Climate Crisis

2/3s of Himalayan Glaciers to Melt by 2100, Threatening Water for 2 Billion People

AFP

By Paavan MATHEMA | – Kathmandu (AFP) – Two-thirds of Himalayan glaciers, the world’s “Third Pole”, could melt by 2100 if global emissions are not sharply reduced, scientists warned in a major new study issued Monday. Even if the most ambitious Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) […]

Climate Change

Global Warming caused Enormous city-sized Hole discovered in Antarctic Glacier

Juan Cole

In an academic paper in the journal Science Advances nestles a short sentence that at first glance is hard to detach from the specialist prose and mathematical formulas that dot it. On profile T3-T4, we confirm the formation of a cavity 4 km [roughly 2 and a half miles] wide by 350 m [0.2 miles] […]

Climate Change

European colonisation of the Americas killed 10% of world population and caused global cooling

The Conversation

By Alexander Koch, Chris Brierley, Mark Maslin and Simon Lewis | – While Europe was in the early days of the Renaissance, there were empires in the Americas sustaining more than 60m people. But the first European contact in 1492 brought diseases to the Americas which devastated the native population and the resultant collapse of […]

Donald Trump

Bolton & Trump’s Gerontocrats may drag us into Venezuela over Oil when they could just buy an EV

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – There are many things wrong with National Security Adviser John Bolton, but the worst is his fixation on petroleum politics. His response to the complex crisis of Venezuela is to hope that US energy corporations can produce some of that country’s oil (“It will make a big difference to the […]