We all know what needs to be done: reduce carbon emissions. But so far, we members of global humanity just haven’t been able to turn the tide. The latest IPCC report documents that carbon emissions are still increasing, despite all the promises and efforts of the past few decades. The report tells us there’s only a narrow (and rapidly shrinking) pathway to[Read More…]

Members of Congress have begun drafting the 2023 “Farm Bill,” and they’ll be wrangling over it through most of the year. This legislation, passed into law anew every fifth year or so since the 1930s, has had far-reaching influence on food and farming in the United States. Each version of the bill is given its own name; the previous one,[Read More…]

  “World’s leading climate scientists issued an ear-splitting wake-up call to the world, that climate change is running faster than we are – and we are running out of time. We see the consequences all around us – more extreme weather, rising sea levels, diminishing Arctic sea ice. The scientists paint the most vivid picture we have ever had between[Read More…]

A battle over how to protect the planet from overheating is heating up. Academics are coming out of the woodwork, forming coalitions, issuing declarations. A subdued debate over the merits versus demerits of solar geoengineering (SRM) has been ongoing for years. Now battle lines are forming. The SRM controversy is coming to a head, in part, because of a small[Read More…]

Climate Code Red, a very thorough and well-respected source on climate change/global warming, recently issued a three-part study on where things stand with the climate system via looking through the rearview mirror at 2022 and reflecting that charred image into the future: Faster, Higher, Hotter: What We Learned About the Climate System in 2022 by David Spratt, Research Director, Breakthrough[Read More…]

by Jacopo DeMarinis and Drea Bergman When it comes to the climate crisis, we are running out of time. In 1994, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change established the Conference of the Parties (COP) to encourage UN member states to meet annually to discuss scientific data and technological advances related to climate change and implement international environmental agreements. Despite the global interest in[Read More…]

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 that San Francisco had much more to offer me[Read More…]

Two most prominently stated facts about climate change are—firstly, it is extremely important to check climate change and secondly, that greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced very significantly at a very fast pace, as scientifically determined. Both of these statements are absolutely correct. However if we confine ourselves just to these statements, then by themselves these can only give us[Read More…]

Dr. Tim Lenton is one of my fav climate scientists. His work on the physics and maths of tipping points and the implications of tipping points within the earth systems science understanding of how our climate could change is both fascinating and cliff edge scary. Now a new report delivered at Davos by Dr. Lenton’s Exeter university team and the[Read More…]

With two world summits on the global environment at the end of last year – COP27 and COP15 – there should have been the prospect of an immediate impact on the looming disaster of climate breakdown. In reality, results were limited at best. COP27 on climate change did agree to a ‘loss and damage’ fund that acknowledged the role of[Read More…]

  NASA claims that 2022 was one of the hottest years ever recorded with record-breaking heat waves around the world, as major commercial waterways, like the Danube, Po, Rhine, Yangtze, and Mississippi rivers temporarily dried up leaving humongous river barges choking in mud. But that was merely global-warming-lite. The real global warming threat is invisible. It’s the oceans where 90%[Read More…]

NASA claims that 2022 was one of the hottest years ever recorded. Furthermore, according to CareOurEarth.com, this past year experienced: “Record-Breaking Heatwaves Around the World.” It was the year of fires (everywhere, big fires), scorching heat (globally) floods (Pakistan! Europe, China) loss of potable water (especially France and Italy) nearly impassable commercial waterways (Danube, Po, Rhine, Mississippi) sunbaked droughts (US[Read More…]

In his book ‘Collapse’ (2011) Jared Diamond portrays the fate of societies which Choose to Fail or Succeed. On a larger scale the Fermi’s paradox suggests  that advanced technological civilizations may constitute ephemeral entities in the galaxy, destined to collapse over short periods. Such an interpretation of Fermi’s paradox, corroborated by recent terrestrial history, implies that the apparent absence of[Read More…]

Karl Burkart is deputy director of the ENGO One Earth and a prolific writer on environmental issues. Recently he has published two opeds defending the energy transition (here and here). These opeds are well intentioned but still disinformation at a crucial time for climate mitigation. I have written a critique of Mr. Burkart’s perspective, tried to find an address for him but[Read More…]

India has about 80.9 million sqkm of forest cover, which is 24.62 percent of the country’s geographical area. The total forest cover has been estimated to have increased by 2,261 sqkm in 2019. The location of dense and open forests is prominent in this forest cover. In recent years there has been an expansion of forest cover in different states[Read More…]

The growing disillusionment with the existing pace as well as the direction of the efforts for checking climate change is leading many people to explore the need for an alternative framework which can be more successful in checking climate change while at the same contributing much more to adaption aspects, and which is better integrated with important justice, equality and[Read More…]

Nature has been desperately trying to tell us something very important. When even desperate calls go unheeded, what does the caller do? It is likely that the caller will yell even more loudly, jump and throw around limbs and legs, and when all this fails, will even turn violent. This is exactly what nature has been doing recently—in the form[Read More…]

Headlines describing the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties (COP) of UNFCCC more commonly referred to as COP27 at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt sent troubling messages: “The Greenwashing Scam Behind COP27’s Flop” (In These Times) “COP27 Climate Summit Missed Chance for Ambition on Fossil Fuels” (Reuters) “COP27 Is Full of Politicians and Policymakers” (The Guardian). None of[Read More…]

by Stan Cox & Priti Gulati Cox  On October 29th, 75-year-old Saifullah Paracha, Guantánamo Bay’s oldest detainee, was finally released by U.S. authorities and flown home to his family in Karachi, Pakistan. He had been incarcerated for nearly two decades without either charges or a trial. His plane touched down in a land still reeling from this year’s cataclysmic monsoon floods that,[Read More…]

The climate crisis is a form of oppression by a wealthy few. In September 2022, an international group of climate scientists published a study showing that the world was close to, or in some cases had even surpassed, key tipping points in the climate crisis that would trigger irreversible changes in the world’s ecosystems. These include the collapse of the Greenland and[Read More…]

As President Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping arrived on the resort island of Bali, Indonesia, for their November 14th “summit,” relations between their two countries were on a hair-raising downward spiral, with tensions over Taiwan nearing the boiling point. Diplomats hoped, at best, for a modest reduction in tensions, which, to the relief of many, did occur. No[Read More…]

Left and right figures show warming in Europe of the summer half year during the latest four decades, sub-divided for clear-sky and all-sky conditions, respectively. Credit: Paul Glantz/Stockholm University The warming during the summer months in Europe has been much faster than the global average, finds a new study by scientists at Stockholm University (P. Glantz, O. G. Fawole, J.[Read More…]

There is nothing new to say Except that it is astounding, it is horrifying, it is revelatory that Those who began it, who knew what they were doing, who now know That the warming world, their enterprise, will kill itself and us too. And still they barely act.   We will not say anything new Except that we will omit[Read More…]

Believe me, it’s strange to be an old man and feel like you’re living on a new planet. On November 7th, the day before the midterm elections, I took my usual afternoon walk in New York City and I was wearing a short-sleeved shirt! That was a first for me. And no wonder, since it was 76 degrees out —[Read More…]

This November, voters stood up and rejected a host of anti-democratic candidates all across America. Although the GOP eked out a victory in the House of Representatives, dimming prospects for further progress on climate and other issues for at least a couple of years, the nation managed to avoid a much worse fate. In Part 1 of “In Real Time”[Read More…]

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued a new Living Amazon Report, 2022 at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. The eye-opening report defines a horror story of human destruction of the world’s largest rainforest. There’s no other way to look at it. Commercialization of the Amazon Rainforest is rampant in a pattern of ignorance amidst reckless abandon with a level of[Read More…]

Washington’s vaunted “rules-based international order” has undergone a stress test following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and here’s the news so far: it hasn’t held up well. In fact, the disparate reactions to Vladimir Putin’s war have only highlighted stark global divisions, which reflect the unequal distribution of wealth and power. Such divisions have made it even harder for a multitude[Read More…]

In the discourse on climate change, as the inadequacy of incremental change is increasingly realized, we are now beginning to hear those much needed words more frequently—that much wider changes in economy and society are needed to check climate change effectively. What exactly does this mean? It is a widely accepted norm of present-day society that people keep aspiring for[Read More…]

Figure 1Surface average atmospheric CO2 concentration (ppm). Since 1980, monthly data are from NOAA/GML (Dlugokencky and Tans, 2022) and are based on an average of direct atmospheric CO2 measurements from multiple stations in the marine boundary layer (Masarie and Tans, 1995). The 1958–1979 monthly data are from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, based on an average of direct atmospheric CO2 measurements from the Mauna[Read More…]

A tiny number of persons produce the same level of carbon emissions as of entire France’s population, says a new climate report – Carbon billionaires The investment emissions of the world’s richest people (Nov. 22, 2022, https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621446/bn-carbon-billlionaires-071122-en.pdf?sequence=14) The study, published by Oxfam, an international NGO, found that the investments of 125 of the world’s richest individuals have a carbon footprint equivalent[Read More…]

From my vantage point out here in the boonies, it’s easy to see that most of my fellow Canadians and citizens of at least the developed world are in society-wide implicatory denial on climate. (The climate science facts are not denied or re-interpreted, but instead “the psychological, political or moral implications that conventionally follow” from these facts are denied or[Read More…]

When I was growing up, there was a parody of an old-fashioned public announcement tacked to the wall of our kitchen that I vividly remember. It had step-by-step instructions for what to do “in case of a nuclear bomb attack.” Step 6 was “bend over and place your head firmly between your legs”; step 7, “kiss your ass goodbye.” That[Read More…]

Glaciers across the globe – including the last ones in Africa – will be unavoidably lost by 2050 due to climate change, the UN says in a report. A third of glaciers located in UN World Heritage sites will melt within three decades, a UNESCO report found. Mount Kilimanjaro’s last glaciers will vanish as will glaciers in the Alps and[Read More…]

Every year, the intensifying climate crisis brings more pain and suffering to hundreds of millions of people across the globe. The only way we can exit this climate crisis, and avoid an accelerating disaster, is by launching an urgent system-wide transformation of our economies and societies. But still, as the 2022 edition of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) “Emissions Gap Report” shows,[Read More…]

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our times. It has to be checked as a matter of highest priority. Despite this adequate attention has not been given to how human life must change to realize this objective. We know that fossil fuels must be phased out and replaced by renewable energy. But is renewable energy capable of[Read More…]

Despite scores of scientific study findings warning climate crisis and its consequences at global scale, the world capitalist system is still pressing on with its business of climate destruction. Deniers’ propaganda is also unabated. A huge amount of money, a part of capital, is engaged with in the business of climate-profit at the cost of deaths – death to our[Read More…]

Major contributors like Japan, Germany, France and multilateral banks need to engage with Asian governments to reform climate financial flows as an issue vital to the UN climate talks Asian countries have seen an annual 28% rise in climate finance to $20.5 billion in 2020 but this increase hides problems that are being mirrored across the world and are likely[Read More…]

Climate hazards threaten nearly 70% of population of a third of world cities, finds a new report by the CDP, a London-based non-profit which runs the world’s environmental disclosure system for companies, cities, states and regions. The analysis in Protecting People and the Planet, (https://www.cdp.net/en/research/global-reports/protecting-people-and-the-planet) released on October 13, 2022, is based on responses of 998 cities from across the[Read More…]

It’s that time of year again, with the annual UN climate meeting (the conference of the Parties) or COP, just a couple of weeks away. This year’s meeting, COP27, will take place from 6-18 November 2022 at the luxury resort of in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. This year, like so many before has once again shown in crystal clear terms why we[Read More…]

A mysterious uptick in atmospheric methane (CH4) was first detected 15 years ago. Of major concern, CH4 is a potent greenhouse gas that’s ~80 times greater than CO2. It’s like a turbo-charged booster heating up the planet. It is a climate change event that keeps scientist up at night, sleepless bouts of tossing, turning, sitting up, screaming on occasion. “In[Read More…]

The 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference committed to ideally less than a plus 1.5 degree Centigrade (+1.5C) temperature rise, and to no more than a catastrophic +2C. The  2021 Glasgow Climate Change Conference committed to “net zero emissions by 2050”. However there is no decrease in our record greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution, gas, oil, and coal use, or cattle, cement,[Read More…]

Heatwaves will become so extreme in certain regions of the world within decades that human life there will be unsustainable, the United Nations and the Red Cross said in a report on Monday. Heatwaves are predicted to “exceed human physiological and social limits” in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and south and southwest Asia, with extreme events triggering “large-scale[Read More…]

The Teck Mining Co. open-pit Elk River Valley coal mines, located in southern British Columbia along the Alberta border. Drawn from a photograph by Garth Lenz. Teck Resources were fined $60 million for polluting the rivers in March 2021. Two high-profile events will coincide next month. One of them—the US midterm elections, which will conclude November 8—could provide the strongest indicator yet of[Read More…]

The summer droughts that affected parts of the U.S., Europe, and China were made 20 times more likely by climate change, finds a new study by World Weather Attribution (WWA). China had its driest summer in 60 years, while drought conditions in Europe sparked brush fires and dried up rivers. The scientists with the WWA, an international organization comprised of[Read More…]

Sea level rise will flood huge swaths of the U.S. and submerge billions of dollars’ worth of land, according to a new report. The report – Sinking Tax Base Land & Property at Risk from Rising Seas – (9/8/2022, https://assets.ctfassets.net/cxgxgstp8r5d/2KKeTjnqbFelWrZalnPeRR/9a28719038f3a1dddbdd2e8b78b8455b/CC_Sinking_Tax_Base_20220908a.pdf ) by Climate Central delivers an assessment of sea level rise impact on the tax base of hundreds of coastal[Read More…]

This article addresses the most current research on sea level rise, as well as adaptation measures being taken around the world. Of special interest, brilliant adaptation measures are taking place in the face of higher seas. “Sea level has been fairly stable for 6,000 years, which is most of human civilization… but its risen eight (8) inches or twenty (20)[Read More…]

When the corrupters, swindlers, betrayers, deniers – the practitioners of ecocide and insanity – tell you, “Calm down.” Don’t calm down.  Rise up! When they tell you, “Don’t be an alarmist.” Don’t!  But sound the alarm clear, loud, and relentlessly. There are no “alternative facts.” There is reality. And there is no Planet B. When they tell you, “Don’t panic.”[Read More…]

Switzerland’s glaciers are melting like never before, found a study. Switzerland has the greatest volume of glaciers of any country in Europe. The study, released Wednesday, found with the glaciers’ ice volume declining by 6% this year amid rising concerns about global warming and a summer heat wave that swept across Europe. Media reports said: The Swiss Academy of Sciences[Read More…]

Thousands of African activists and members of communities on the frontlines of the worsening climate emergency turned out Friday to call on world leaders—who will gather in Egypt in November for the United Nations Climate Summit—to urgently address a crisis that disproportionately impacts their lives. Demonstrators took to the streets, public spaces, and even waterways in countries across a continent that’s responsible for just 4%[Read More…]

Australia has a mixed relationship with the United Nations Human Rights Committee.  Irritation, dismissal and even the occasional openly hostile comment, have registered.  But in 1994, the Toonen decision filtered through the Australian legal process, leading the federal government to remove archaically noxious provisions in the Tasmanian criminal code criminalising sodomy. The UNHRC has since found Australia’s compliance with the[Read More…]

What do Pakistan, Puerto Rico, and Jackson, Mississippi, have in common? They’ve all recently experienced climate-related catastrophic rains and flooding, resulting in the loss of homes, electricity, and running water. But, even more importantly, they are all low-income regions inhabited by people of color—the prime victims of climate injustice. They face inaction from negligent governments and struggle to survive as[Read More…]

As what is mainly a western caused climate disaster continues to hammer Africa, with tens of millions facing famine and starvation in the Horn of Africa, the small, underdeveloped country of Eritrea is leading the fight to prevent this from happening. Eritrea is doing this by aggressively carrying out water conservation by building water reservoirs, both small and large. Over[Read More…]

A mere category 1 hurricane dumped so much water on Puerto Rico so quickly that one of its rivers has swollen to 25 feet above normal, even more than it rose during Hurricane Maria in 2017, which was a Category 5 hurricane. The island is beset by flash floods, and is getting 16-30 inches of rain. The usual average amount of rainfall[Read More…]

When Congress directs the White House Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) to coordinate with other relevant federal agencies to research a five-year scientific assessment of solar and other rapid climate interventions, it’s only too apparent that the highest levels of government have gotten the internal memo that the climate is in trouble. Even so, they are still fashionably late[Read More…]

Identifying the GDP’s limitations help find the losses the working people have to make, untold yet, due to climate crisis, although it’s the working people that bear the most. The reason that works to put the working people in this position is, in briefest way, they are chained by capital. Nothing, but GDP? No. Yet, to fathom performance in economic[Read More…]

As is known, GDP, dating back to the 1930s, and innovated by Simon Kuznets, appraises the value of goods and services produced in an economy in a given period. At the same time, it’s now well-accepted that GDP, a Bretton Woods tool, doesn’t tell the whole fact. John Smith discusses the issue: “The ‘GDP Illusion’ is a fault in perception[Read More…]

Climate crisis takes its costs from gross domestic product. A recent study1 finds about a quarter of the countries studied are sensitive to such impact. Climate crisis, negatively affecting economy in countries, takes toll; and it’s peoples that pay the toll while capitals, the dominant force creating climate crisis, reaps profit. “[A] critical and still unresolved empirical question is”, the[Read More…]

While scientists and activists have done well to establish the urgency of checking climate change before it is too late, it is increasingly clear that the current paradigm of checking climate change is not working. Briefly, it has to be changed in ways which will link it very closely to checking militarism and inequalities while promoting peace and justice, preventing[Read More…]

 How bad can it (climate change) get? The sky’s the limit! No pun intended. Still, the general public is tired of negative articles about climate change. It turns them off. Climate change is impossible to deal with. It’s too much; it’s too negative! As a result, baffling emails come with loud and clear messages, some subtle but some not so[Read More…]

CNN reports that satellite photos show that the overflowing Indus has created a new body of water in southern Pakistan some 62 miles (100km) wide. It will take days or weeks for the water to recede, and in the meantime millions are left homeless and over all, 33 million people have been affected by the worst monsoon floods in recorded history. CNN quotes Pakistan’s[Read More…]

The annual State of the Climate report ( https://ametsoc.net/sotc2021/StateoftheClimate2021_lowres.pdf)  report published Wednesday in the U.S. shows that in 2021, greenhouse gas (GHG) levels, global sea levels, and ocean heat reached record highs. The international report was led by scientists from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information. “The data presented in this report are clear[Read More…]

A group of climate scientists have said: Time is short to secure a livable and sustainable future; yet, inaction from governments, industry and civil society is setting the course for 3.2 °C of warming, with all the cascading and catastrophic consequences that this implies. In this context, when does civil disobedience by scientists become justified. The scientists said: The scientific[Read More…]

As record-breaking high temperatures and historic droughts afflict millions of people around the world, a study published Thursday warned that by the end of the century, dangerous heat driven by the worsening climate emergency will hit much of the Earth at least three times more often than today. The study—conducted by climate researchers at Harvard University and the University of Washington[Read More…]

A new study details the disastrous consequences that would result for marine life across the world’s oceans if current levels of fossil fuel emissions are maintained, with up to 90% of ocean species facing extinction. Daniel Boyce, a research scientist at Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia, Canada, led the study examining 35,000 species of marine flora and fauna as well as[Read More…]

The Inflation Reduction Act is being hailed by the mainstream climate movement, Congress members, and the media as the most important climate bill in U.S. history. That’s a pretty low bar, and it says more about our government’s long record of failure on climate than it does about whether this law can prevent dangerous temperature increases in coming decades. The[Read More…]

“I always thought that we are the root cause of the pollution and climate change we are experiencing, now more than ever these days”, words of 17-year-old Poonam from Karauli district in Rajasthan. Poonam is one of the girl leaders of Rajasthan Rising, a young movement led by girls who primarily belong to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, OBC and minority[Read More…]

Increasing night-time heat could have high toll on human health, finds a new research. According to models, by the year 2100, the world could see an up to 60 percent spike in mortality due to rising temperatures at night. Published in The Lancet Planetary Health, data from Japan, South Korea and China show hotter night-time temperatures could lead to a 60[Read More…]

Could somebody please get an extension ladder to help Senator Schumer down from the ceiling? He’s stuck in the rafters in a high-pitched note of self-congratulation whilst spraining his elbow as he awkwardly and repeatedly tries to pat his own back, screaming over and over again “the greatest climate legislation of all time!” Compared to what? Still, one signal that[Read More…]

“(T)he technological and institutional status quo is a precarious predicament from which societies need to escape….If we act wisely, the coming century will be defined by the recognition of what we owe the future, and our grandchildren will look back at us with gratitude and pride. If we mess up, they might never see the light of day.”  William MacAskill[Read More…]

The pending massive climate legislation to reduce U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions 40 percent by 2030 as outlined by President Biden is still being held hostage in the Senate. The $369 billion package that is thicker than a New York phonebook contains 725 pages of text. Like any well-made sausage, the bill includes a myriad of bits and pieces of[Read More…]

We humans live on a planet which we have named Earth which, along with several other planets each of which we have named, revolves around a star which we have named Sun – all with different names in different cultures. More recently, we have recognized life on Earth ranging from micro-organisms to elephants and whales, and understand that in physical[Read More…]

We are stumbling—seemingly oblivious—into the bared teeth of the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch driven by humanity itself. We are walking straight into it and pretending it’s not here. The world today is on the verge of a major food emergency, provoked in part by Russia’s attack on Ukraine but more broadly by the damage heat from global warming is doing[Read More…]

For the first time, a significant loss at the base of the marine food web has been detected. The Scottish research vessel Capepod reported the findings in equatorial waters of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a disturbing discovery, but first a look at the marine food web, starting with the lowest organisms: (1) phytoplankton – plant-like plankton: green algae, diatoms, and[Read More…]

We were warned for decades about the death march we are on because of global warming. And yet, the global ruling class continues to frog-march us towards extinction. The past week has seen record-breaking heat waves across Europe. Wildfires have ripped through Spain, Portugal and France. London’s fire brigade experienced its busiest day since World War II. The U.K. saw its hottest day on record of 104.54 Fahrenheit. In[Read More…]

As the UK suffered its hottest-ever temperatures only recently, Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, interviewed Britain’s erudite environmental journalist George Monbiot July 21, 2022 about his most recent article in The Guardian: This Heatwave Has Eviscerated The Idea That Small Changes Can Tackle Extreme Weather, July 18, 2022. According to Monbiot: “Paper straws are not enough. Only System Change[Read More…]

Firefighters don’t normally allude to early English epics, but in a briefing on the massive Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire in northern New Mexico, a top field chief said, “It’s like Beowulf: it’s not the thing you fear, it is the mother of the thing you fear.” He meant that the flames you face may be terrifying, but scarier yet are the conditions[Read More…]

It rained for 9 hours at Summit Station/Greenland, 10,530’ elevation. Greenland is sending signals to coastal metropolises around the world that it’s never too early to start building seawalls. These are not mixed signals from the big ice island. Rather, they are straightforward signals indicative of rapid breakdown of average ice thickness of 5,000 feet sooner than ever thought possible.[Read More…]

Governments can either come up with a collaborative and urgent plan to tackle the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency that is already wreaking deadly havoc across the globe or keep allowing corporations to pollute the atmosphere without limit, thereby condemning humanity to a grim future. That stark warning comes from United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who said Monday: “We have a choice. Collective action[Read More…]

U.S.-attributable climate damages. (a) Ensemble mean GDPpc changes in each country attributable to U.S. emissions, over 1990–2014 with territorial emissions accounting and a short-run (contemporaneous) damage function. Missing data (white countries) denotes countries without continuous GDPpc data from 1990 to 2014. b, c U.S.-attributable damages in the five countries with the greatest GDPpc percent decreases (b) and percent increases (c). The black lines[Read More…]

It’s entirely possible that doomsayers of the world, though widely ridiculed, could be on target about the prospects for global societal collapse. But, of course, when? According to a recent Noam Chomsky interview, it’s an ongoing grind that will end with a thud. The onset of societal collapse is not hidden. Rather, similar to animals in the wild, people sense[Read More…]

In recent weeks, a newly emboldened right-wing Supreme Court struck down a more than century-old New York law restricting the carrying of concealed weapons and a nearly 50-year-old precedent on abortion.  Meanwhile, the January 6th Committee has been laying out in graphic televised detail how our last president tried to subvert the 2020 election.  Inflation, of course, continues to run riot; gas prices[Read More…]

Global warming has long been subjected to the propagandistic influence of a wide variety of public relations (PR) organizations. Yet, despite its overwhelming importance, the impact of public relations/propaganda on our awareness of global warming has long been overlooked. Over the past decades, gas and oil corporations have engaged many – if not almost all – top PR firms in[Read More…]

America loves its military. It should because it’s the most expensive defense force of all time. $778B was allocated for defense spending in 2022. China comes in a distant second at $229B. All of which prompts a provocative question: What if the Marine Corps publishes a landmark study that claims recipients of the US government defense budget are collectively responsible[Read More…]

All the signs are that this summer will break all existing records for heatwaves. It is only the middle of June, and yet large parts of the world are already registering temperatures that in the past were not reached until the height of the season. The US weather map for June 16 shows almost the whole South and Southwest and[Read More…]

The United States is moving fast on climate change—in the wrong direction. The Energy Information Agency forecasts that by 2023, the nation will set a new annual record for oil extraction: 4.6 billion barrels. Plans to build more than 200 new natural gas power plants are in the works. More than 130 new oil and gas pipelines now under development[Read More…]

Only few remain in denial of global warming (GW) leading to climate change (CC). At the other end of the scale, only few view GW-CC as an impending disaster. Leaders of societies and nations are among the bulk of in-betweens, and their understanding of GW-CC mostly remains limited. The Davos development dogma The focus of attention and planning among world[Read More…]

Activists from the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) “Climate Can’t Wait” project assemble on a street corner each week near the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill intercepting senators’ staff members as they walked to work. The group’s weekly action is a unique attempt to get their message across to the legislators through their staff that they need to take[Read More…]

In our world today many leaders and their followers refuse to acknowledge a planetary/cosmic reality: The future of Homo sapiens hinges not on their thought process and actions but on a reconfigured societal form that will allow human evolution to proceed by way of reciprocal planetary/cosmic interrelationship. This refusal is now a danger to Homo sapiens continuation on Planet earth. Here is an outline of the problem and a step by step process explaining how humanity can remove these leaders and[Read More…]

In case you have lingering doubts about the reality of human-caused global warming, hop on an airplane to parts of India or Pakistan and spend a few days. And, as long as you’re there, maybe be a good citizen and pick up a few of the dehydrated birds that drop out of the sky. Then, use the syringe you brought[Read More…]

Climate change is the result of a deadly calculus: human lives are worth risking and even losing over the profits of global corporations. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) recently dropped a bombshell announcement that should have garnered news headlines in the major global and U.S. media, but did not. New WMO research concludes that “[t]here is a 50:50 chance of the annual[Read More…]

There is a 50:50 chance of the annual average global temperature temporarily reaching 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial level for at least one of the next five years – and the likelihood is increasing with time, according to a new climate update issued by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The report was prepared by a team of 11 different forecast centers, including[Read More…]

The United States is facing two grim prospects in 2022: one, that continued abuse of the ecosphere could render much of the Earth unlivable for humans and myriad other species, and two, that the United States’ current political drift toward autocratic rule could accelerate, dashing any hope of attaining a multiracial, pluralistic democracy. These two emergencies are intertwined. Either we[Read More…]

Just before the release of the IPCC Working Group Three (WGIII) report on mitigation, this long time climate activist asked: Will the new IPCC report on mitigation detail and recommend supply-side pathways and policies to mitigate climate change? Will the report even mention regulating a phase out of fossil fuel production? Or will supply-side pathways and policies and their supporters[Read More…]

A revolutionary slogan by climate scientists “1.5C is Dead – Climate Revolution Now!” emblazoned the streets of the world on April 6th spawned by the Sixth Assessment Report, Mitigation of Climate Change, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released April 4th. Overnight, civil disobedience by climate scientists erupted in 25 countries on every continent enraged that the IPCC report was[Read More…]

As the world heats up with climate change, urban areas with their dense habitations, traffic congestions, higher pollution levels and excessive cement and concrete invariably heat up more than rural areas. What is less realized is that within a single city certain areas can heat up much more than others, and the difference can be as high as 10 degrees[Read More…]

The IPCC on Monday released its latest report, which found that nations are falling short of their pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to avert catastrophic climate change. While the technology exists to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) of average global temperature increase — the goal that virtually every nation agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate agreement and[Read More…]

Will the new IPCC report on mitigation detail and recommend supply-side pathways and policies to mitigate climate change? Will the report even mention regulating a phase out of fossil fuel production? Despite the increasing severity of climate impacts and the daunting timeline for mitigation needed to have even a fifty-fifty chance of staying climate safe? Or will supply-side pathways and[Read More…]

Climate disaster seems a distant threat One reason why the Glasgow Climate conference failed so miserably to produce urgently needed climate action was that humans tend to react to what is close to them. Money to pay the rent is urgent, while a climate catastrophe seems to be a distant threat. Cultural inertia A second reason is cultural inertia. All[Read More…]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in many respects, is a Delphic institution whose reports are a function of political discretion as it provides justification for nation/state policies that are seldom fulfilled, e.g., only a handful of the 193 signatory nations to Paris ’15 have met commitments. This scandalous outright failure at a dicey time for the climate system[Read More…]

Three years after the end of World War II, diplomat George Kennan outlined the challenges the country faced this way: “We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships[Read More…]

Extreme climate hits Antarctica, smashing records, shocking scientists as temperatures soar 50F to 90F degrees above normal. Welcome to climate change’s newest upheaval. But, don’t talk to the scientists about it. They’re speechless. But, they do tweet: “Antarctic climatology has been rewritten,” tweeted Stefano Di Battista, Antarctic researcher (Source: It’s 70 Degrees Warmer Than Normal in Eastern Antarctica. Scientists are[Read More…]

Current mean greenhouse gas concentrations have reached a level similar to those of the Miocene (5.3 – 23 million years ago)  when average temperatures exceeded 4 degrees Celsius and, while terrestrial adversaries keep pushing the Earth toward wars and a possible nuclear catastrophe, looming in the background are increasing heat waves, extreme fires and flood events, manifesting the huge calamity[Read More…]

Those Who Contribute the Least to Climate Change Suffer the Most Greenville, CA — Snow began falling on December 24th, big fluffy flakes that made lace on mittens before melting. Within hours it had coated the ashes, the brick chimneys that the flames had left behind, and the jagged remains of roofs strewn across my burned-out town. White mounds soon[Read More…]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change –IPCC- has issued its direst warning of all-time: “Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly.” Additionally, they readily admit to overly conservative predictions: “Many impacts will be more severe than originally predicted.” (Source: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Working Group II Sixth Assessment Report, 2022) The crowning blow of this heavy-hitting report is a chilling[Read More…]

In the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change’s twenty sixth Conference of Parties (COP is an annual inter-governmental meetings held to discuss and negotiate climate agreements) held in Glasgow in November 2021, the meeting’s President Alok Sharma, UN Secretary General António Guterres and other top leaders repeatedly chanted “Keep 1.5oC alive,” to make it the best-known mantra of the[Read More…]

Image by Thomas Homer-Dixon The second part of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) has just been released and “climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly, many of the impacts will be more severe than predicted and there is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages”. The Working Group 11 report focuses upon local as well as global impacts[Read More…]

Global warming has been extremely profitable for billionaires, even though many of them mouth and endorse policies (but only failed and failing ones) against global warming. All of this will be fully documented here. The public are actually strongly opposed to global warming, but they are very confused about the matter, largely because the policies that are advocated (by billionaire-fronts)[Read More…]

Ecologists around the world are making the case for societies to change the systems that oversee development and resource extraction so that ecosystem functionality—which supports all life—can be maintained or restored. Geologists have classified most epochs in Earth’s history according to fossils, radiometric dating and composition of the strata. The widely endorsed label for our current era, the Anthropocene, describes the extent[Read More…]

At the turn of the 20th Century, the astonishing advances in science emboldened humanity, giving rise to confidence that science could, at last, as the fountainhead of truth provide the wherewithal for a stable and equitable social order for a sustainable future. In such a world, God was dead and religion regarded as a bundle of superstitions and blind faith.[Read More…]

Four years ago, Boulder, Colorado, sued ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy—owner of the only oil refinery in the state—for climate change-related damages and adaptation expenses. Boulder and its co-plaintiffs, Boulder County and San Miguel County, home to Telluride, estimated the damage caused by extreme weather events would cost them more than $100 million by 2050. As it turns out, they overestimated the time span—and underestimated[Read More…]

The planet is heating up like never before, as “ground temperatures” hit all-time records in the Northern Hemisphere as well as the Southern Hemisphere, and ocean temperatures threaten the world’s major fisheries of the Far North, which are imperiled beyond any known historical precedent. (See- The Oceans Are Overheating, January 14, 2022) According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration[Read More…]

The world’s oceans in 2021 witnessed the hottest temperatures in recorded history. (Source: Lijing Cheng, et al, Another Record: Ocean Warming Continues Through 2021 Despite La Niña Conditions, Advanced in Atmospheric Sciences, January 11, 2022) According to the Ocean Conservancy: “From the beginning of industrialization until today, the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the heat from human-caused global[Read More…]

Satellite measurements indicate that 2021 was one of the warmest years on record, with the past seven years being the hottest period recorded globally  (M et Office, January 10, 2022). Attempts at global emission reductions, lowered in part due to COVID-19 economic slow-down, appear to have little effect on atmospheric CO2 rise, as indicated by the current rise of atmospheric[Read More…]

During the month of December 2021 two warnings of impending sea level rise were issued by highly respected groups of climate scientists. These are professional scientists who do not deal in hyperbole. Rather, they are archetypical conservative serious-minded scientists who follow the facts. The most recent warning on December 30th is of deteriorating conditions at the Arctic and Greenland. The[Read More…]

by Thomas Klikauer & Meg Young Unlike rather known concept of “climate” justice, the idea of “carbon” justice is so advanced that it does not even have a Wikipedia entry, yet. One of the countries that might serve as a near perfect example for carbon justice is Australia. With its massive coal export, Australia is one of, or perhaps, “the” worst country[Read More…]

To keep acting as if there wasn’t war declared against the planet and humanity is to accept we are already defeated. Continuing to play their game can only guarantee collapse. It’s time to flip the table. This year we saw some of the consequences of the climate crisis devastating rich countries in the Northern Hemisphere. This didn’t lead to any political[Read More…]

We’re on a trajectory to crash the futures of most people on the planet and finalize the irreversible annihilation of a big chunk of the natural world because of a mix of predatory delay and terminal entitlement.  Climate futurist Alex Steffen Climate wise it’s clear that as we limp from ‘21 to ‘22 those who want to protect the economy[Read More…]

“Forces profound and alarming are reshaping the upper reaches of the North Pacific and Arctic oceans, breaking the food chain that supports billions of creatures and one of the world’s most important fisheries.”(Source: Susanne Rust, Unprecedented Die-offs, Melting Ice: Climate Change is Wreaking Havoc in the Arctic and Beyond, Los Angeles Times, December 17, 2021) “Breaking the food chain that[Read More…]

Since the end of the feudal era the world order has been largely structured by the nation-state system. Individuals have been willing to kill and die for their countries. The pursuit of individual and collective interests has occurred largely within a national framework. Nonetheless, social and political movements have often transgressed national boundaries and expressed solidarities that go beyond them. People[Read More…]

When midnight strikes on New Year’s Day of 2050, there will be little cause for celebration. There will, of course, be the usual toasts with fine wines in the climate-controlled compounds of the wealthy few. But for most of humanity, it’ll just be another day of adversity bordering on misery — a desperate struggle to find food, water, shelter, and safety. In[Read More…]

Half a mile south of what’s left of the old Gold Rush-era town of Greenville, California, Highway 89 climbs steeply in a series of S-turns as familiar to me as my own backyard. From the top of that grade, I’ve sometimes seen bald eagles soaring over the valley that stretches to the base of Keddie Peak, the northernmost mountain in[Read More…]

The framework of the economic thought that formed in the Western world during the Holocene Period, gained momentum during the Industrial Revolution and is now global has brought on a parasitic symbiotic discordance between our species and our host: Planet earth.  It has become a threat to Homo sapiens continued existence on the planet. The hard fact is that if we continue this discordant relationship we face the possibility of extinction within the next[Read More…]

“We are simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.” Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Germany’s former chief climate scientist (2009) “Burning all fossil fuels would create a very different planet than the one that humanity knows. The palaeoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in[Read More…]

The disparity in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between rich and poor countries, and between rich and poor people within countries is just as extreme as economic inequality, a new report finds. Overall, emissions are closely correlated with income, according to a report released Tuesday by the World Inequality Lab, a Paris-based research organization. “Wealthy individuals pollute much more than low-income[Read More…]

The Trudeau government’s plan to buy 88 new fighter jets and 15 combat vessels will do little to protect Canadians from this country’s most serious threats. And some people are angry enough to take the streets to send this message to Ottawa. Two dozen rallies were held across the country last week to oppose a fighter jet purchase that will[Read More…]

Trees are not re-growing in burned-out forests. This strange occurrence is becoming more frequent as global warming turns verdant flora into flammable tinder, causing more and bigger wild forests fires. This article will examine the science behind failure of trees to regrow in burned-out forests. Additionally, and as a collateral issue, this puts one more distorted face on the consequential[Read More…]

We must continue to demand that international climate negotiations focus on the experiences of those most affected by the climate crisis and their solutions to mitigating it while ensuring that those who speak out against climate-damaging activities are not subjected to repression or violence. COP26 ended last weekend and with it, hopes that the negotiations would meaningfully address the needs of[Read More…]

On the sidelines of the climate change COP 26 meetings, a lot of background information came out in the limelight. The information is not new, would have been known to those working in the field for a long time but hasn’t received the attention it should. It is no doubt true that the Climate Change agenda is being driven by[Read More…]

With climate crisis, what roles can an individual play? An individual has much scope to play role in facing the crisis. An ABC News report — COP26: This is what individuals can do to slow down climate change, according to experts — by Julia Jacobo (November 1, 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/US/cop26-individuals-slow-climate-change-experts/story?id=80799029) said: “As the leaders of the world gather in Glasgow to[Read More…]

 by Thomas Klikauer and Meg Young A few days ago, President Biden was urging climate action when saying, we don’t have much more than 10 years. Fighting global warming is inextricably linked to what Bill McKibben and others call climate justice. Commonly, many like to distinguish between climate justice and ecological justice. Ecological justice is about non-human beings and the wild unspoiled by human interference. It is about animals[Read More…]

Just days before world leaders meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), a new report has revealed just how far off course we are to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and limiting the impacts of global warming. From October 31 to November 12, the leaders of the world are gathering in Glasgow for[Read More…]

The world’s largest economies will suffer severe human and economic consequences of climate change, especially if no action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, according to a new study (G20 Climate Risk Atlas, Impacts, Policy, Economics, https://files.cmcc.it/g20climaterisks/G20_all.pdf) from the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC), an Italian research center. “From droughts, heatwaves and sea level rise, to dwindling food supplies[Read More…]

Weather extremes can cause economic ripples along supply chains. If they occur at roughly the same time, the ripples start interacting and can amplify, even if they occur at completely different places around the world, a new study – “Ripple Resonance Amplifies Economic Welfare Loss from Weather Extremes” – by Kilian Kuhla, Sven Norman Willner, Christian Otto, Tobias Geiger and Anders Levermann (published on 27[Read More…]

by Noam Chomsky and Stan Cox This month will mark a critical juncture in the struggle to avoid climate catastrophe. At the COP26 global climate summit kicking off next week in Glasgow, Scotland, negotiators will be faced with the urgent need to get the world economy off the business-as-usual track that will take the Earth up to and beyond 3 degrees[Read More…]

Africa’s 1.3 billion people remain “extremely vulnerable” as the continent warms more, and at a faster rate, than the global average, warns the UN. Yet Africa’s 54 countries are responsible for less than 4% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In State of the Climate in Africa 2020 (https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=10833), a new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and other[Read More…]

I was 5 years old when I first got involved with environmental activism. For me, it started with caring about whales and the ocean, and that morphed into climate action. From handing out pamphlets at the local farmers market and being on a local radio station when I was 6, to speaking with the Connecticut governor and organizing a rally[Read More…]

This summer we witnessed, with brutal clarity, the Beginning of the End: the end of Earth as we know it — a world of lush forests, bountiful croplands, livable cities, and survivable coastlines. In its place, we saw the early manifestations of a climate-damaged planet, with scorched forests, parched fields, scalding cities, and storm-wracked coastlines. In a desperate bid to[Read More…]

The area under snow cover in Himachal Pradesh has declined by 18.5% according to a recent report published by State Centre on Climate Change (SCCC) and Space Application Center (ISRO) Ahmedabad. The report revealed this decreasing trend for the five major river basins in the State. As the report points out, the high altitude regions of Himachal Pradesh receive precipitation[Read More…]

Much of infrastructure in the U.S. is already at risk of being shut down by flooding, and as the global warming continues, the threat is expected to grow. a new report finds One-in-four pieces of all critical infrastructures in the U.S. including police and fire stations, hospitals, airports and wastewater treatment facilities face substantial risk of being rendered inoperable by[Read More…]

Pope Francis thanked a youth climate activist conference on Wednesday for the participants’ “dreams and projects of goodness” and encouraged them to keep up their advocacy of action to combat climate change. Speaking in Spanish via video to the Youth4Climate event in Milan, which drew 400 young activists from 197 countries, the Pope said their work is “for the good of humanity,”[Read More…]

When I was growing up in Kolkata, every monsoon the streets would get flooded. I remember looking forward to the days when school would get cancelled and I would get to stay home and watch cartoons. I would look out from the balcony to see life carrying on, people wading through sometimes waist-deep murky brown water. Somehow it all still[Read More…]

by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies President Biden addressed the UN General Assembly on September 21 with a warning that the climate crisis is fast approaching a “point of no return,” and a promise that the United States would rally the world to action. “We will lead not just with the example of our power but, God willing,[Read More…]

Twenty years and more ago climate talk concerned long term global warming effects not really occurring until mid-twenty-first century at earliest with most problems occurring toward the end of the century. I remember thinking I would not see the changes as the forecasts were well beyond my lifespan. There were signs of change, obviously, or it would not be an[Read More…]

by Stan Cox and Priti Gulati Cox From the field and kitchen of discomfort food So much carbon dioxide has now accumulated in the atmosphere that it’s no longer possible to prevent a dangerous rise in global temperatures through purely technological means. In other words, it’s too late to prevent catastrophic ecological damage and human suffering simply through building more[Read More…]

The sixth report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms yet again that we are rapidly destabilizing the climate and making the earth a more dangerous and biologically impoverished planet. No surprise; we’ve known this since the 1970s. The primary cause of the worsening situation, however, is not the combustion of fossil fuels, but the massive political dereliction that has[Read More…]

The Current Situation Shockingly, today’s climate crisis is driven by a mere increase of 1˚C in global temperature, primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Unless we take urgent action, the temperature could increase by four times that level within the lifetimes of our children, leaving them to face an apocalyptic future. In the US alone, the recent floods on the[Read More…]

Bart Everson, a Gaian and the convener of the Crescent City Gaian Guild in New Orleans, writes about his experience living through Hurricane Ida and her aftermath. If only my back didn’t ache, I could really enjoy this hurricane. Such were my thoughts as the outer bands of Hurricane Ida bore down on my home in New Orleans. I was sitting[Read More…]

Underscoring the necessity of immediate and sweeping action to take on the climate emergency, a World Bank report revealed Monday that 216 million people across six global regions could be forced to move within their countries by midcentury. Groundswell Part 2: Acting on Internal Climate Migration includes analyses for East Asia and the Pacific, North Africa, and Eastern Europe and Central Asia,[Read More…]

“Wally, Wally, quick, come and look at this!” These were the words of my roommate on a balmy Taiwanese evening on September 11th, 2001. Emerging into the living room I was just in time to see a plane slam into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York. Walking through the door to work the next morning, I[Read More…]

A momentous statement has just been published in the British medical journal The Lancet and in 200 other health journals. It is the global equivalent of the diagnosis you never want to hear in your own doctor’s office, complete with concurring second opinions from 200 other doctors. The statement’s authors are the editors of those journals, themselves doctors or highly trained health scientists,[Read More…]

I’m a climate scientist and on Wednesday night, I watched the rain outside my New York City window break the local record for the most accumulation in an hour. It was an event that caused catastrophic flooding and infrastructure failures across both the New York Metro area and a wide swath of the Northeast US, delivered by the remnant of a powerful hurricane[Read More…]

New research published Friday suggests that melting Arctic sea ice caused by global heating may be responsible for the deadly deep freeze that devastated much of North America and plunged millions of Texans into darkness in February. While climate researchers have previously connected the phenomena of polar heating and mid-latitute freezes, a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science is the first to link Arctic warming[Read More…]

Bolstering the case for meaningful climate action, a major report released Wednesday found that Earth’s atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and sea levels both hit record highs in 2020. Based on the contributions of more than 530 scientists from over 60 countries and compiled by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), State of the Climate in 2020 is the 31st installment of[Read More…]

In recent months, Washington has had a lot to say about China’s ever-expanding air, naval, and missile power. But when Pentagon officials address the topic, they generally speak less about that country’s current capabilities, which remain vastly inferior to those of the U.S., than the world they foresee in the 2030s and 2040s, when Beijing is expected to have acquired[Read More…]

 On Friday, the third anniversary of climate campaigner Greta Thunberg’s lone protest outside the Swedish Parliament, a global report revealed the scale of risks posed by the climate emergency for the world’s children. The United Nations’ agency for children’s rights, UNICEF, introduced the first-ever Children’s Climate Risk Index, which shows that nearly half of the world’s children are at “extremely high risk” for being faced[Read More…]

Since the end of the feudal era, the world order has been largely structured by the nation-state system. Individuals have been willing to kill and die for their countries. The pursuit of individual and group interests has occurred largely within a national framework. Nonetheless, social and political movements have often transgressed national boundaries and expressed solidarities that go beyond them.[Read More…]

The flooding disaster in Humphreys County, Tennessee over the weekend has so far killed at least 21 people, including two toddlers, with another 45 still missing. The flash floods were the result of a storm which dropped 17 inches of rain on the region on Saturday evening, likely a new state record. Early imagery shows whole communities devastated, with scores[Read More…]

It’s only 76 days until world leaders convene in Glasgow, Scotland, for some of the most important international negotiations in history. What happens during the twelve days of the Glasgow Climate Talks (known by climate wonks as COP26) will go a long way to determining the fate of much of the Paris Climate Agreement―which is another way of saying the fate[Read More…]

Admittedly, I hadn’t been there for 46 years, but old friends of mine still live (or at least lived) in the town of Greenville, California, and now… well, it’s more or less gone, though they survived.  The Dixie Fire, one of those devastating West Coast blazes, had already “blackened” 504 square miles of Northern California in what was still essentially[Read More…]

Written by Pep Canadell, Joelle Gergis, Malte Meinshausen, Mark Hemer, Michael Grose Earth has warmed 1.09℃ since pre-industrial times and many changes such as sea-level rise and glacier melt are now virtually irreversible, according to the most sobering report yet by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The report also found escape from human-caused climate change is no longer[Read More…]

More than a year after the Covid-19 pandemic shut down economies around the world and sharply reduced worldwide travel—sparking speculation among some that emissions would plummet as a result—a coalition of scientists said in a paper published Wednesday that the planet is nonetheless reaching multiple “tipping points,” with levels of sea ice melt, deforestation, and other markers revealing that urgent action is[Read More…]

Climate modelling isn’t the only way of forecasting what our climate-changed world will look like by the century’s end and beyond. Indeed, the huge complexities and caveats involved in trying to build an accurate picture of a carbon-soaked planet from initial tenets, may not even make it the best. Instead, we can look back in time to periods in Earth’s 4.6[Read More…]

Cyprus. Cuba. Turkey. Canada. Northern Ireland. Antarctica. All recorded their hottest-ever temperatures in the last two years, and according to a new study, more such extremes are coming. A Reuters report said: In the next three decades, “record-shattering” heat waves could become two to seven times more frequent in the world than in the last 30 years, scientists report in[Read More…]

 “Cloud research is a tricky business. Clouds sometimes have a warming effect on the local climate and sometimes a cooling effect — it all depends on the type of cloud, the local climate and a variety of other conditions. “One of the most fundamental questions about climate change is also one of the thorniest: How much, exactly, will the Earth[Read More…]

Less than three months before leaving office, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has openly conceded that the industrial world has failed to adequately fight climate change and that more rapid, pain-inducing steps were urgently needed. Media reports said: Merkel, who has led Europe’s largest economy and one of the world’s leading emitters of CO2 for the last 16 years, reflected on her own bitter experience.[Read More…]

Apocalypse is complete destruction of the world as described in some detail in the biblical book of Revelation. Nothing worse can happen to humanity. Interestingly, it has been a recurring aspect of civilization for over two thousand years but every prediction of “End Times” has failed. Yet, modern day society is proving that apocalypse has multiple possible outcomes. In fact,[Read More…]

In San Francisco, we’re finally starting to put away our masks. With 74% of the city’s residents over 12 fully vaccinated, for the first time in more than a year we’re enjoying walking, shopping, and eating out, our faces naked. So I was startled when my partner reminded me that we need to buy masks again very soon — N95 masks, that is. The California[Read More…]

It is well established that global warming (GW) is driving climate change (CC). Thinkers believe that in coming years, GW-CC will adversely affect societies and nations on a global scale like nothing before. Important among the IPCC-predicted long-term effects of GW-CC, as applicable to India, are: (1) Rise in sea level due to polar ice-melt, leading to coastal erosion or[Read More…]

Our planet hasn’t seen temperatures this hot in fifteen million years, when the sea level was forty meters higher than it is today. This is just the opening salvo. As the American west is gripped by potentially the worst drought since algebra was invented 1,200 years ago and temperature records are once again shattered on a weekly basis, we are entering into unknown[Read More…]

The record-breaking heat and intensifying drought engulfing the western U.S. right now are a stark reminder of how climate change is loading the weather dice against us. It’s making heatwaves hotter and longer, and droughts stronger. Yet, what we see today is just a fraction of what’s anticipated unless serious and immediate actions are taken to reduce carbon emissions. Last week,[Read More…]

The news does not get much worse than a recent scientific report that the planet is trapping twice as much heat as it did only 14 years ago. If this one report does not turn heads and create a sense of panic to get off fossil fuels, as soon as yesterday, then nothing will ever move the needle to fix[Read More…]

Hunger, disease and drought will afflict tens of millions of more people within decades, warns a draft UN assessment that lays bare the dire human health consequences of a warming planet. “Life on Earth can recover from a drastic climate shift by evolving into new species and creating new ecosystems,” the report says. “Humans cannot.” The forthcoming 4,000-page draft report[Read More…]

New data released Monday showed atmospheric carbon dioxide reached a monthly average level of 419 parts per million in May, which is not only the maximum reading ever recorded since accurate measurements began 63 years ago but also the highest level the planet has experienced in over four million years. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and[Read More…]

The International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based affiliate of the Organisation for Economic Co-ordination and Development (OECD), has released a special report outlining various pathways to ensure a world with a net zero carbon emissions rate by 2050. The report, which is titled Net Zero by 2050, states that in order to achieve a carbon neutral world by that year producers[Read More…]

“Net Zero by 2050” is the rallying cry of scientists and policymakers throughout the world. However, that epithet echoes past decades of climate change/global warming mitigation plans, one after another, all failures. The world’s continuing failure to come to grips with the dilemma led three notable climate scientists, deeply involved at the highest levels, to publicly ridicule past and future[Read More…]

Our Planet, Our Future is the title of the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit. As a follow up to that summit, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recently published Our Planet, Our Future: An Urgent Call for Action d/d April 29th 2021. The opening paragraph of the Nobel Laureate declaration implicitly calls for immediate unified worldwide action: “The first[Read More…]