Study warns of grave consequences for agriculture and economy, affecting over one billion people. If global warming continues unchecked, summer monsoon rainfall in India will become stronger and more erratic. This is the central finding of an analysis by a team of German researchers that compared more than 30 state-of-the-art climate models from all around the world. The study predicts[Read More…]
At a time when the world is already in the middle of a serious survival crisis, it is a matter of deep concern that most responses to crisis situations are narrow responses which cannot go very far as, while trying to respond to a part of the crisis, they fail to look at the whole and at best can make[Read More…]
Extreme drought may be going to hit across the Western U.S. Some scientists saying the region is on the precipice of permanent drought. In 2000, the Western U.S. entered the beginning of what scientists call a megadrought — the second worst in 1,200 years — triggered by a combination of a natural dry cycle and human-caused climate change. The U.S.[Read More…]
This is an important year for climate change negotiations and climate change diplomacy is picking up fast, with an important virtual meeting called by US President of several world leaders scheduled for April 22. What is absolutely clear is that climate change mitigation and adaptation are among the most important challenges before humanity, and all countries, all people should try[Read More…]
Grandiose plans to cool Earth, saving the planet from overheating by utilizing low-tech balloon flights sprinkling particles into the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation back into outer space have been delayed, nobody knows for sure when, or if, it’ll proceed. The planet-cooling scheme referred to as Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment aka: SCoPEx headed by Harvard professor Fran Keutsch hopes to[Read More…]
A new study projecting the amount of heat stress residents of the South Asia region will experience in the future finds with 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the population’s exposure to heat stress will nearly triple. Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will likely reduce that impact by half, but deadly heat stress will become commonplace across South Asia, according[Read More…]
Australia’s east coast is being hit by record rainfall, with flood warnings issued and a natural disaster declared for parts of New South Wales (NSW), Australia’s most populous state with 8 million people. The flooding comes in stark contrast with the devastating bushfires that struck Australia in late 2019 and early 2020, when nearly 7% of NSW land was scorched.[Read More…]
Here’s one of the things I now do every morning. I go to the online Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and check out the figures there — global coronavirus cases and deaths, U.S. coronavirus cases and deaths. And I do so the way that, not so long ago, I would have opened the sports pages and checked out the latest scores of[Read More…]
This year 2021 is widely regarded as an important year for climate change negotiations. The more obvious reason for this is of course that the 26th Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change could not be held as per schedule last year due to Covid related factors and is now scheduled to be convened in[Read More…]
“(T)he most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” David Foster Wallace Bill Gates has both a new book and education campaign on mitigating climate change. Mr. Gates personifies successful, transforming innovation. His book is just coming out now but he has been following the evolution of our climate problem[Read More…]
CNBC recently produced a 17-min video about direct air capture (DAC) and corporations, specifically big oil, funding R&D operations. The video discusses the basic technology, as well as some pitfalls. Direct air capture is in early stages of developing technology to remove atmospheric CO2. (Source: Money is Pouring Into Carbon Capture Tec, But Challenges Remain, CNBC, March 3, 2021) By[Read More…]
A recent UN Assessment, as of February 26th 2021, regarding progress or lack thereof by the 195 nations to the Paris 2015 climate agreement is starting to look like a big bust. As described in the report, nations are not meeting their voluntary commitments to decrease carbon emissions, especially based upon the Paris ‘15 goals to decelerate CO2 emissions of[Read More…]
Warnings by leading climate scientists regarding the high sensitivity of the atmosphere in response to abrupt compositional changes, such as near-doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations, are now manifest: According to Wallace Broecker, (the “father” of climate science) “The paleoclimate record shouts out to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth’s climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts to even small[Read More…]
Big companies are finding profit in carbon offsets market. “The value of the global market for carbon emissions offsets,” writes Frank Watson (Global carbon offsets market could be worth $200 billion by 2050: Berenberg, 13 May 2020 https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/051320-global-carbon-offsets-market-could-be-worth-200-bil-by-2050-berenberg) “could increase to $200 billion by 2050, German bank Berenberg said in a note”. Frank Watson writes: “Although now relatively small, the[Read More…]
It is very sad that many reports of repression of climate activists are being received from several parts of world at such an early stage of climate activism. Even a very quick net search would reveal several recent instances from Brazil, Chile, Kenya, India , Russia and other countries. These are reports where climate activism is directly mentioned. But if[Read More…]
AN OVER-HEATED PLANET, UNCONTROLLED HUMAN POPULATION & COVID-19 A triad of intersecting world-wide pandemics simultaneously threatening humanity today are the end results of its own insatiable greedy human desire for endless, unchecked growth. Ugly, profit-based, commercial development, unimaginative high-rise towers or mega-social housing projects continue to destroy everything in their wake in an impossible attempt to try to accommodate the[Read More…]
Slowing the pace of climate change and getting “tough” on China, especially over its human-rights abuses and unfair trade practices, are among the top priorities President Biden has announced for his new administration. Evidently, he believes that he can tame a rising China with harsh pressure tactics, while still gaining its cooperation in areas of concern to Washington. As he wrote in Foreign Affairs during the[Read More…]
It is very, very sad that young climate activists are being victimized at an incipient stage of the movement in India. This is one of the relatively new movements and there are understandably some uncertainties regarding the exact course of action and the stand to be taken on certain issues, but one thing which is absolutely certain is that this[Read More…]
Media reports from U.S. said: The slow-moving winter disaster pummeling Texas that began with snow, ice and widespread blackouts is now moving into a new phase: A dire lack of food and fresh water. Millions do not have safe water at home, and residents looking for groceries or bottled water said they arrived to stores with bare shelves and long[Read More…]
Texas’s freeze entered a sixth day on Thursday. At least 31 people have died as of Wednesday afternoon as a result of the severe weather in Texas. But some media reports said, days of glacial weather have left at least 38 people dead in the U.S. The snow made many roads impassable, disrupted coronavirus vaccine distribution and blanketed nearly three-quarters[Read More…]
Texans are freezing to death because of Republican greed. Decades ago, corporations paid off politicians to support the deregulation of the Texas energy market and limit federal oversight of the state’s energy grid. As a result of the latest climate catastrophe, so many Texans lost sewer and water service for days. Their water pipes burst. Many apartment complexes have become[Read More…]
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports and comprehensive summaries of the peer-reviewed literature raise questions regarding the assumptions inherent in computer modelling of future climate changes, including the supposed linearity of future global temperature trends (Figure 1). Computer modelling does not necessarily capture the sensitivity, complexity and feedbacks of the atmosphere-ocean-land system as observed from paleoclimate studies. Underlying published[Read More…]
Last year will be remembered for many things, and let’s be honest: most of them will be bad. But amidst the hardship and suffering, there is a positive story to be told. 2020 was perhaps the first time in living memory when governments around the world took radical action to put the interests of public health and wellbeing above that[Read More…]
If you live in California, you’re likely to be consumed on occasion by thoughts of fire. That’s not surprising, given that, in last year alone, actual fires consumed over four and a quarter million acres of the state, taking with them 10,488 structures, 33 human lives, and who knows how many animals. By the end of this January, a month never before[Read More…]
The world’s ice is melting so fast that sea level rise predictions cannot keep up. The ice melting is faster today than in the mid-1990s, new research suggests, as climate crisis nudges global temperatures ever higher. In the 1990s, the Earth’s ice was melting at a rate of about 760 billion tons per year. That has surged 60 percent to[Read More…]
Throughout the world, scientists are speaking out like never before. They’re talking about an emergency situation of the health of the planet threatening “complex life,” including, by default, human life. It’s scary stuff. On this subject, America’s green NGOs prefer to address the danger by sticking to a middle ground, don’t scare people, too much doom and gloom backfires, turns[Read More…]
It is hard to think of a more Orwellian expression than that describing the increase in toxic atmospheric methane gas as “gas-led recovery.” Several of the large mass extinctions of species in the geological past are attributed to an increase in atmospheric methane (CH₄), raising the temperature of the atmosphere and depriving the oceans from oxygen. Nowadays a serious danger to the[Read More…]
Early this new year, the Alliance of World Scientists (13,700 strong) delivered a biting report, not mincing words: “Scientists now find that catastrophic climate change could render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable consequent to continued high emissions, self-reinforcing climate feedback loops and looming tipping points.” (Source: William J. Ripple, et al, The Climate Emergency: 2020 in Review, Scientific[Read More…]
Ceasefire in our suicidal war against nature Here are some quotations from a December 2, 2020 article by Justin Rowlatt entitled “Humans waging suicidal war on nature – UN chief Antonio Guterres”: “Humanity is waging what he describes as a suicidal war on the natural world. “Nature always strikes back, and is doing so with gathering force and fury, he[Read More…]
Keeping in view the importance of checking climate change , all sectors must contribute to he reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. In this context the extremely important contribution which the food and agriculture sector can make was underestimated initially but more and more research is now indicating that the contribution of this sector can extremely important. In fact if all[Read More…]
Climate change has emerged as one of the most critical problems of our times. Its disrupting impacts on farming and related activities is already being felt by farmers, pastorals and others in the form of highly erratic weather, extremes of weather and rise in the intensity and frequency of various disasters. Hence two big questions arise—How can farmers make an[Read More…]
Climate change is a global issue but we should not forget that the impacts of climate change are highly localized. Most policies around water and irrigation issues are poorly informed by science and evidence, often leading to implementation failure. More importantly, these programs focus on getting things out, but the real challenge is in getting things to the right people[Read More…]
Global warming is the biggest challenge of all time. It impacts every living species. However, the inherent dangers are very difficult to comprehend, as such, people brush it off as one more issue in life that will somehow be handled, fixed, no worries, human ingenuity will prevail. But, what if it’s not that simple? Stuart Scott, executive producer of Facing[Read More…]
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. – Albert Einstein. As the world is trying to hopefully recover from the tragic effects of COVID-19, it is reminded there is no vaccine for the existential threat for its life support systems posed by global warming, nor for the looming threats of future wars and[Read More…]
Although sea levels are rising due to the climate crisis and threatening near-coastal infrastructures, higher temperatures in other areas are having exactly the opposite effect. The water levels are falling and causing massive problems. The consequences are equally serious. But the declining water levels are receiving less attention according to Matthias Prange, Thomas Wilke of the Justus Liebig University in[Read More…]
Every one of the world’s coral reefs could bleach by the end of the century, unless there are drastic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has warned. Coral reefs are incredibly important and sustain a wide variety of marine life. They also protect coastlines from erosions from waves and storms, sink carbon and nitrogen and help[Read More…]
Looking back at the climate change movements for the past couple of decades, it is easier to notice the role of governments and corporations of the Industrial era, in triggering the massive climate change effect. When it comes to main causes of climate change and global warming, more than often, fossil fuels, chemical affluent and pollutants are the usual suspects.[Read More…]
“Climate change is posing one of the greatest threats to our existence on the planet Earth. It is real, and we need to panic.” It has already been five years since 196 countries signed Paris Agreement, but we are still miles away from the target of limiting global warming to well below 2 (preferably 1.5) degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial[Read More…]
Am I doing my part in protecting the environment? Am I entirely aware of how to do the required? Are the government’s policies in favour of the protection of the environment or corporate-driven? Is media bringing the relevant environmental issues in front of me? These are just a few questions, and there are many more which come in our mind[Read More…]
“The story of methane really is a story of a very serious definitive threat to our future existence on this planet.” (Peter Wadhams) Legendary Arctic explorers Sir James Clark Ross, who located the northern magnetic pole in 1831 and Sir William Edward Parry, who set a record in 1827 for the Farthest North exploration serve as footnotes in the context[Read More…]
Ed Yong is a very insightful science journalist. In an article published in The Atlantic in September Yong lists what he calls nine errors of intuition, conceptual errors that still hamstring the US pandemic response. Remarkably many of Yong’s errors of intuition offer valuable insight into the global failure to enact effective climate mitigation. The successful and not very successful[Read More…]
Climate change truly is a global phenomenon whose ripple effects remain invisible to even the most well-read and educated. Part of the challenge is in understanding how an activity as simple as burning coal to generate electricity in India can have ramifications for the icecaps and glaciers in the Arctic. The human mind simply cannot fathom these far-reaching implications. We[Read More…]
The United Nations Environment Program’s (UNEP) emissions gap report – Emissions Gap Report 2020 – released on December 9 warns: Despite a brief dip in carbon dioxide emissions caused by the pandemic, the world is still heading for a temperature rise of 3.2°C this century. The report published at the end of every year measures national commitments to reduce emissions[Read More…]
“I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round…” John Lennon “Regain a sense of wonderous awe at the miracle of creation and work tirelessly to protect and restore nature’s splendor.” Dr. Glen Barry Look out the window, any window, and behold portends of the end of being. The very ecological fabric of being is unraveling. Disease, famine,[Read More…]
Climate Change: National Geographic defines climate change as “the long-term alteration of temperature and typical weather patterns”. The major cause of climate change is accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in Earth’s atmosphere. Human activity like burning of fossil fuels can be attributed to the recent increase in GHG emissions. There have been many international efforts for a coordinated response to[Read More…]
Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion/XR recently interviewed Peter Carter, M.D., who has the distinguished title – Expert IPCC Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The interview was conducted to get to the bottom of what science says about the state of affairs, specifically the health of the planet. The following is a video link to that brilliant[Read More…]
Erich Fromm, the renowned German-Jewish social psychologist who was forced to flee his homeland in the early 1930s as the Nazis came to power, offered a disturbing insight later in life on the relationship between society and the individual. In the mid-1950s, his book The Sane Society suggested that insanity referred not simply to the failure by specific individuals to[Read More…]
In what critics are calling a parting gift to the fossil fuel industry, the Trump administration on Tuesday will ask oil and gas companies to choose which areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska—which is the sacred homeland of the Gwich’in Indigenous people—they would like to drill. The Washington Post reports the administration’s call for nominations is a key part of a rush[Read More…]
Record Numbers of War-Displaced to Be Dwarfed by Those Driven From Their Homes by Climate Change I saw them for only a few seconds. One glimpse and they were gone. The young woman wore a brown headwrap, a yellow short-sleeved shirt, and a long pink, red, and blue floral-patterned skirt. She held the reins of the donkey pulling her rust-pink[Read More…]
Scientists and science-informed activists say that to save the Planet there must be rapid cessation of fossil fuel exploitation, but oil, coal and gas use continue to rise. America and its lackeys Australia and Canada are variously committed to gas and a disastrous coal to gas transition (gas can be dirtier than coal greenhouse gas-wise). Pro-fossil fuels Trump has been[Read More…]
Mammals, birds and amphibians worldwide have lost on average 18% of their natural habitat range as a result of changes in land use and climate change, finds a new study. The scientists estimate that species have lost an average of 18% of their natural habitat range sizes thus far, and may lose up to 23% by 2100. The study (Robert[Read More…]
A notable satellite-telephonic call to colleagues in late October from Swedish scientist Örjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University briefly described a haunting discovery. On board the research ship R/V Akademik Keldysh, a 6,240-ton Russian scientific research vessel equipped with 17 on-board laboratories and a library, far off the coast of Russia, Dr. Gustafsson reported: “This East Siberian slope methane hydrate system[Read More…]
The U.S. has officially left the Paris climate agreement. However, the permanence of its departure hangs on the still-uncertain outcome of Tuesday’s U.S. presidential election. While President Donald Trump made the decision to withdraw the U.S. from the agreement, his rival former Vice President Joe Biden has promised to rejoin “on day one,” as NPR pointed out. Either way, the U.S. withdrawal has hurt trust in[Read More…]
Mega-droughts, droughts that last two decades or longer, are tipped to increase, finds a new research. The finding came after an analysis of geological records from the Eemian Period – 129,000 to 116,000 years ago – which offered a proxy of what we could expect in a hotter, drier world. The research (Hamish McGowan, Micheline Campbell, John Nikolaus Callow, Andrew[Read More…]
Soil has the capacity to bind large quantities of carbon in the long term. An international team of researchers, including from the University of Bonn, is now advocating effective use of this potential. Experts estimate that this could reduce the increase of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by a third. At the same time, agricultural yields in[Read More…]
This has been the year of fire. Across continents and climates, uncontrollable and destructive wildfires are becoming an expected part of annual calendars. This year has been a case in point. From the 45 million acres scorched during Australia’s 2019-2020 fire season to the record amount of carbon dioxide released from wildfires in Siberia (half of which burned on carbon-rich peatland), wildfires have gone[Read More…]
Twenty-five percent (25%) of the Northern Hemisphere is permafrost. By all appearances, it is melting well beyond natural background rates, in fact, substantially! Making matters much, much worse, new research has identified past warming events of large-scale permafrost thaw in the Arctic that may be analogous to today, thus spotting a parallel problem of large-scale thawing accompanied by massively excessive[Read More…]
I would regard anyone as my leader a) whom I have met personally, b) with whom I work or interact directly face to face on a more or less daily basis c) has proved themselves friendly, kind, sympathetic, compassionate and giving. I only trust someone who demonstrates behaviour in accordance with the positive human virtues and eschews negative actions. They[Read More…]
Flames from forest fire in Ras el-Harf village, in the Baabda district, Lebanon: An aerial picture. Hundreds of massive wildfires ravaged parts of the Middle East over the weekend, forcing thousands to flee their homes. The wildfires triggered by a heat wave hitting the region have killed three people, and detonated landmines along the Lebanon-Israel border. The areas hit by the[Read More…]
Our Homo sapiens reality is that global warming, if it continues at the current rate, could trigger a sixth planetary extinction. Unlike past extinctions, this one will not be brought on by a random meteorite/asteroid strike or a convulsive planetary volcanic eruption. It will be self-inflicted; the result of Biosphere degradation because of our use of fossil fuels. CO2 in[Read More…]
Two time scales The central problem which the world faces in its attempts to avoid catastrophic climate change is a contrast of time scales. In order to save human civilization and the biosphere from the most catastrophic effects of climate change we need to act immediately, Fossil fuels must be left in the ground. Forests must be saved from destruction[Read More…]
Global warming is ravaging forests throughout the world. “New studies show drought and heat waves will cause massive die-offs, killing most trees alive today.” (Source: We Need to Hear These Poor Trees Scream: Unchecked Global Warming Means Big Trouble for Forests, Inside Climate News, April 25, 2020) According to Bill Anderegg, a forest researcher at the University of Utah: “Global[Read More…]
In December of 2019, my best friend Kit took me and my partner to the place where she grew up, in the remote Thora Valley, in the pristine forested foothills of Eastern Australia’s Great Dividing Range. As we drove down Darkwood, the single road into the Thora, Kit told us stories of floods and mouldy houses, of Christmases spent at[Read More…]
Here are two comments regarding what we must do regarding the threat to our species’ continued existence being posed currently by global warming; here’s the first one: The primary reason for this headlong fling toward disaster is that our economic system is based on perpetual growth—on the need to consume the earth at an ever-increasing rate. Our world is dominated[Read More…]
Against the Institution of War As we start the 21st century and the new millennium, our scientific and technological civilization seems to be entering a period of crisis. Today, for the first time in history, science has given to humans the possibility of a life of comfort, free from hunger and cold, and free from the constant threat of infectious[Read More…]
The World Wildlife Foundation, in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London, recently issued an eye-popping description of the forces of humanity versus life in nature, the Living Planet Report 2020, but the report should really be entitled the Dying Planet Report 2020 because that’s what’s happening in the real world. Not much remains alive. The report, released September 10th, describes how[Read More…]
Arctic sea ice reached a minimum extent of 3.74 million square kilometers on September 15, likely the annual low, and the second lowest minimum on record. The orange line represents average extent of sea ice from 1981 to 2010 on that day. (NSIDC) Arctic sea ice extent fell to the second-lowest annual minimum on record last week, a status that[Read More…]
In my “Changing Our Species Name” I question Homo sapiens as an appropriate name for our species, and suggest an alternative that I believe to be more appropriate. The reason that I give in that paper is not the only reason, however, for changing our species name; in this paper I suggest another reason. Let me preface my remarks here,[Read More…]
Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus [1707 – 1778], known as the “father of modern taxonomy,” is the individual who can be credited with giving our species the name Homo sapiens. The “sapiens” in that species name indicates that we: are highly intelligent primates that have become the dominant species on Earth. Actually, however, “sapiens” is “a Latin word meaning wise;” and[Read More…]
Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction (published in 2014) reminds us that mass extinctions are not a novelty in Earth history;[1] and also that there have been some survivors of each of the five mass extinctions of the geological past. In fact, primates were survivors of the last (i.e., fifth) mass extinction—termed the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, and having occurred about 66[Read More…]
A new Arctic is emerging. The regions landscape is changing rapidly. Temperatures are skyrocketing, sea ice is dwindling and many experts believe the far north is quickly transforming into something unrecognizable. This week, new research confirms that a new Arctic climate system is emerging. A new Arctic will be warmer, rainier and substantially less frozen. Animals that used to be common may[Read More…]
Satellite images show that two important glaciers in the Antarctic are sustaining rapid damage at their most vulnerable points, leading to the breaking up of vital ice shelves with major consequences for global sea level rise. In recent years, the Pine Island Glacier and the Thwaites Glacier on West Antarctica has been undergoing rapid changes, with potentially major consequences for[Read More…]
Human calamities abound. The unrelenting coronavirus pandemic has already claimed more than 900,000 lives worldwide. The images of exploding wildfires from the American Southwest—California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington—look apocalyptic. Racial injustice and inequity in the United States marches on. And, the economic suffering?—painful. In this moment of so much death and suffering—do we even have the capacity to extend our[Read More…]
In my new book I examine an area of our thought process that is the primary cause of our extinction possibility today; the dark neurotic psychotic side of the human brain. XXXX That “dark side” is driven by a self-serving dynamic. We allow it to enrapture us. It can turn us against each other. We have been and continue to[Read More…]
I am one of those who did not obtain help to fix the house. I am living in it because I am not the owner of the house I’ve been living in for six years, and without documents I could not obtain help to repair it. Staying here in these conditions is not easy. But since I have my daughter[Read More…]
Countries in the Asia Pacific region are in the forefront of bearing the onslaught of climate change. During the last three decades 45% of the world’s natural disasters have occurred in this region, which is vulnerable to floods, cyclones, earthquakes, droughts, storms and tsunamis. While climate change affects everyone but impacts of climate change related events are not gender neutral.[Read More…]
One of the few rays of hopeful sunshine in the UK’s currently bleak political landscape is the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill. In fact, I feel like it is such a vitally important development that I want to use this article to urge you to get behind it, while also offering a rather different perspective on why I feel it matters[Read More…]
Since the turn of the new century, every aspect of climate change has gone ballistic, up, up, and away, not looking back, leaving the 20th century fairly harmless, but only on a relative basis, especially as compared to the rip-snorting 21st century. It’s a whole new ballgame, starting with this new century. Society is witnessing a great acceleration of climate[Read More…]
Greenland’s ice sheet, — the world’s second-largest ice body, would continue to lose ice even if global temperatures stop rising, and it may have passed a point of no return, setting it on an irreversible path to complete disappearance, according to scientists at Ohio State University. Snowfall that normally replenishes Greenland’s glaciers each year can no longer keep up with[Read More…]
Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes in Death Valley National Park. Temperatures in Death Valley in the U.S. skyrocketed to a blistering 130°F (54.4-degree Celsius) on Sunday. Possibly, it is the highest mercury reading on Earth since 1913. If the National Weather Service’s recording is correct, it would also be among the top-three highest temperatures to have ever been measured in Death[Read More…]
Two million Californians experienced rolling blackouts Friday night after officials declared a Stage 3 energy emergency due to a statewide heat wave. The last time California was in a Stage 3 emergency was in 2001. At that time, the state was in the middle of a very different type of energy crisis – and the governor lost his job over[Read More…]
When the complaint was lodged in May 2019, there was a sense of the audacious about it. Eight Torres Strait Islanders had taken the trouble to petition the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Committee, citing climate change and Australian violations as their main concern. Australia, they claimed, had violated their fundamental rights under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.[Read More…]
NASA satellite images of fires in eastern Siberia depict an inferno of monstrous proportions, nothing in modern history compares. And, as of July, it’s intensifying. Should people be concerned? Answer: Yes, and double yes. According to Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts: “What has been surprising[Read More…]
The recently launched ‘Towards a Better World’ campaign by Medha Patkar, conceived by Eco-Socialism Front and in the online presence of half a dozen activists from different countries representing Fridays for Future campaign of Greta Thunberg advocates taking small steps to achieve a more equitable society. It talks about contributing to economic, political and societal change through a personal commitment,[Read More…]
Australia has done vastly better than other rich European countries in the Covid-19 pandemic because (a) it is a large island that accordingly could readily minimize Covid-19 importation, and (b) while notoriously anti-science over climate change, Australia’s neoliberal government chose in this instance to listen to the health experts. However an Australian Senate Covid-19 Inquiry noted but declined to publish[Read More…]
It’s no surprise that first prize, or the blue ribbon, for exceeding 2°C above baseline goes to the Arctic with permafrost that covers 25% of the Northern Hemisphere. Recognition is long overdue, as it’s been totally neglected far too long by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This crucial nugget of knowledge comes by way of a recent virtual[Read More…]
“It’s time the government told the public about the impact climate change will have on our future and the economy.” Katta O’Donnell, The Guardian, Jul 24, 2020 While coronavirus ravages life, dominates policy and clouds debate, that other pressing issue of addressing climate change has moved into a more modest gear. That has not prevented some bubbling activity from taking[Read More…]
Human-caused carbon emissions islikely to trigger irreversible damage to the planet, according to a comprehensive international study released Wednesday. Researchers studying one of the most important and vexing topics in climate science — how sensitive the Earth’s climate is to a doubling of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — found that warming is extremely unlikely to be[Read More…]
Planetary heat is turning skeptics into climate change worrywarts with record temperatures galore! But wait, the worst is yet to come. It’s guaranteed, as future heat is already locked and loaded into the vast climate system. It’s the inertia bugaboo. Today, we’re living with yesteryear’s carbon emissions from the turn of the century. Meantime, the next decade and a half[Read More…]
As the pandemic continues to dominate public politics around the world, a single number – the reproduction rate (R) – has become the focus of policy-making and public communication. Keeping R below 1.0 appears to be the primary objective of public health policy. In the case of climate change the number 2°C (or 1.5°C) operates in a similar way. And[Read More…]
Indians are about 1 in 6 of the world’s people and how the World faces the existential threats of nuclear weapons and climate change, in addition to over-population, biodiversity loss and resource depletion, will impact India and vice versa. India needs to urgently stop population growth, biodiversity loss and loss of arable land. While the Developed World must embark on[Read More…]
Introduction Birds are chirping, highways have quieted, rush hour traffic follows easily, airports have been shut down, smog has disappeared, reviving sunny and blue skies. COVID-19 has left this earth with dramatic drops in air pollution and a hope to solve the climate crisis by putting a halt to several harmful practices. It has drastically changed life on a global[Read More…]
With the humans locked up inside, the past few months of Corona-pandemic have given us a world with nature reclaiming its space. The reduced levels of air-pollution have given a chance to rare-sighted mountains and peaks to reveal themselves to populations where their visibility had become folktales, only to be shared by elders as memories of yester years. AQI in[Read More…]
The Enlightenment substituted reason and the scientific method for primitive superstition. Science brought huge advances in agriculture, industry and medicine but has had the downsides of over-population, massive biodiversity loss, deadly high-technology wars and the existential threats to Humanity and the Biosphere from nuclear weapons and climate change. However in seriously addressing these horrendously damaging deadly downside consequences we must[Read More…]
Earth at 10°C above pre-industrial is unimaginable. It’s a deadly horrifying thought, but as shall be explained herein, it should not be dismissed out of hand. The following story might be labeled as reckless, and it might be criticized as a fearmongering piece of journalism and probably will be. Nevertheless, “10C Above Baseline” explores a dystopian world envisioned by John[Read More…]
Climate strike has kicked off on Friday 20 September across continents. Millions of people and students from Sydney to Delhi and Melbourne to London and New York have marched/are marching for urgent action on climate crisis. Students and citizens of different ages and from different occupations have joined the strike in hundred of cities. Many mobilizations of people in cities[Read More…]
From August 31 this year, a part of the media and social media was abuzz with a supposed oracle of some scientists. Headings like: “We Cannot Fight Climate Change With Capitalism, Says Report,” “A dire new report reveals our capitalist economic system may not be up to the task of dealing with the climate disasters to come”, “This is how[Read More…]
The science of Climate Change has come to be well established. Predictive models indicate its dangers to the existence and survival of the future generations. While future technologies can arrest the dangers and reduce the pace of increase of atmospheric CO2, it has already crossed the alarm level of 408 PPM much above the acceptable limit of 350 PPM. Yet[Read More…]
My friend, Ashok A. in India, wrote me: “Clearly the main wealth of America lies in the vast territories it has usurped [from Native Americans – S. D.] and holds. I agree, much of the world’s population will perish in this century. We’ll be long gone. Our children – those who survive – will find it in them to sustain[Read More…]
Who says President Trump doesn’t have a coherent foreign policy? Pundits and critics across the political spectrum have chided him for failing to articulate and implement a clear international agenda. Look closely at his overseas endeavors, though, and one all-too-consistent pattern emerges: Donald Trump will do whatever it takes to prolong the reign of fossil fuels by sabotaging efforts to curb carbon[Read More…]
Last Week, David Wallace-Wells wrote a cover story for of New York Magazine, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” on some of the worst-case scenarios that the climate crisis could cause by the end of this century. It describes killer heat waves, crippling agricultural failures, devastated economies, plagues, resource wars, and more. It has been read more than two million times. The article has[Read More…]
Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement was by no means a surprise. For, the US has always been seeking to subvert the multilateral, global initiatives to address the vexing global problems. Those who express surprise at the US withdrawal seem to be unaware that the US was not a Party to the Kyoto Protocol, the global accord under[Read More…]
Climate criminal Australia is among world leaders in per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, climate change inaction, and in exports of coal, gas, iron ore and methanogenically-derived meat. However the Finkel Review chaired by Australia’s Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel advocates continued gas and coal use for over 50 years, and utterly ignores the worsening climate emergency, the worsening[Read More…]
[Paper presented for a day long discussion in the Central Party School of the CPI(ML) Red Stat held at Kolkata in June, 2016] Human beings, or rather, their dominant economic-industrial systems, have started to change the earth in major ways, leading many observers and thinkers to accept that we are into the new age of “Anthropocene” – a new chapter[Read More…]
Trump’s action withdrawing US from the Paris accord on climate change calls for outright condemnation. It should be opposed without letup. This US action is not new. His predecessors had taken almost the same attitude towards Kyoto Protocol like earlier agreements also. Imperialism means plunder and wars for plunder. No doubt, world public opinion should be created and intensified uninterruptedly[Read More…]
President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement follows the path of previous presidents who have undermined international climate agreements. We disagree with Trump but it is important to understand his actions in the context of the history of the United States regarding previous climate agreements. Once again, the political problems in the US are bigger than Trump. His action brings greater clarity to the inability of the US government to confront the climate crisis and clarifies the tasks of people seeking smart climate policy.
It is known scientifically that the Earth System, or Gaia if you will, is organized and functions similarly to other scales of biology, including organisms and old-growth forests. Gaia is a self-regulating, reproducing life-form, and as such is alive. As industrial human growth destroys Gaia’s naturally evolved ecosystem organs, the human family is failing to embrace a rich and truthful[Read More…]
The People’s Climate March on Saturday, April 29, 2017, flooded Washington, DC, with over 100,000 protesters. Organizers claimed 150,000, with marches in 330 other cities across the country and in three dozen solidarity events abroad. Coinciding with President Trump’s 100th day in office, the marchers also protested his anti-environmental actions. The previous Saturday (April 22, 2017), thousands of scientists[Read More…]
Maybe not now. But that’s what he could well become. Pope Francis’ Encyclical “On Care for Our Common Home” recognizes the incredible damage being done to climate change and biodiversity. Few realize how strong his beliefs are and the unused power of persuasion he has. Here’s 10 ways that power could be used. 1. Francis could call for a[Read More…]
Not since World War II have more human beings been at risk from disease and starvation than at this very moment. On March 10th, Stephen O’Brien, under secretary-general of the United Nations for humanitarian affairs, informed the Security Council that 20 million people in three African countries—Nigeria, Somalia, and South Sudan—as well as in Yemen were likely to die if not provided[Read More…]
Today is Ambedkar Jayanti. It would be appropriate to take a re-look at Ambedkar’s idea of nationalism in the face of virulent Hindutva nationalism in India and also on the global context
Are you confused about climate change/global warming: is it real, or is it fake news? And if it is real, what can be done about it? I have just published (April 2017) a peer-reviewed article on this subject and what we can do about it in the (relatively new) journal “Class, Race and Corporate Power” on this very subject, and[Read More…]
Will we experience a Methane (CH4) Hydrate Feedback Loop that will place us on a repeat path like that of the Permian Triassic mass extinction? Or, to our horror, will there be some other self-induced something even more horrific and impossible to reverse? “Biosphere” is a term used to define the relatively thin layer of the earth’s surface that[Read More…]
The situation we face First, let’s please just acknowledge there is a crisis. I’m afraid any reasonably educated, rational, and unbiased adult (or younger) can understand what the climate science has been telling us now for two decades: the Earth is warming (so far by about 1 degree Celsius since 1800), slowly but surely, due to humans’ putting carbon dioxide[Read More…]
A metamorphosis of the human mind far surpassing others seen throughout history will be occurring. Humans finally will have come to an understanding of a harsh reality; by their own actions and inactions they have brought on the beginning of their end. A painful lesson will have been learned, one forcing them to accept the fact that their continued existence[Read More…]
With climate deniers sweeping into the White House, it’s time for scientists on the front lines of climate change to speak from the heart. I’m afraid to publish this article. Why? Because I’m a climate scientist who speaks out about climate change, and in speaking out I may be risking my career. But I do so anyway, out of love—love[Read More…]
Distortion? False information? Conspiracy theories? Hacked email? Climate scientists have known all this for decades. What can be learned from their rich experience with climate propaganda. The world is slowly waking up. “Post-truth” was declared the word of the year 2016 by the Oxford Dictionaries. Finally, people start to widely appreciate how dangerous the epidemic of fake news is for[Read More…]
Human caused global warming increasingly threatens all we love and care about. Climate change from this warming caused (mostly) by greenhouse gases (GHGs) from our use of fossil fuels is a potent growing risk to our families, our kids and their kids, our communities and country. This radical change threatens most of the species and ecosystems with which we share[Read More…]
When Countercurrents.org started 15 years ago CO2 level in the atmosphere was 372 ppm. In the last 15 years it increased only at the rate of less than 2 ppm/year. This year we are seeing a jump of 3.5 ppm over the past year. United Nations climate change secretariat tweeted “January Mauna Loa record shows atmospheric CO2 concentration accelerating, now at[Read More…]
OVERVIEW The Amundsen Sea sector of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has most likely been destabilized and ice retreat is unstoppable for the current conditions. No further acceleration in climate change is necessary to trigger the collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet on decadal time scales. Antarctica has the potential to contribute more than a metre[Read More…]
Defeats are supposed to teach people how to do better; in theory. In practice, it often happens that defeats teach people how to become masters in blame-shifting. With some exceptions, this seems to have been the main result of the recent defeat of the Democrats in the 2016 presidential election, where we saw a truly spasmodic search for culprits: Putin,[Read More…]
For the third year in a row, the world experienced its warmest year on the books, global scientists have determined. The new assessments come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the UK’s Met Office, as well as the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which relies in part on data from those[Read More…]
Global sea ice levels are at their lowest in recorded history, according to new statistics from the U.S. National Snow & Ice Data Center. In the Arctic, the loss is due to climate change and extreme weather events that are likely influenced by global warming, while the changes in the Antarctic may be attributed to natural variability, the center said.[Read More…]
The catastrophic climate change is no longer a subject for argument, at least on a mainstream level within the science community. Yet, as temperatures continue to rise, American efforts to combat global warming, sadly seem to decline. President Elect, Donald Trump is more concerned by the economic cost of combating global warming, and has repeatedly rejected United States’ role[Read More…]
Our window of time to act on climate may be shrinking even faster than previously thought. We may only have one year remaining before we lock in 1.5ºC of warming—the ideal goal outlined in the Paris climate agreement—after which we’ll see catastrophic and irreversible climate shifts, many experts have warned. That’s according to the ticking carbon budget clock created by[Read More…]
The loss of Arctic sea ice has already been shown to be part of a positive feedback loopdriving climate change, and a recent study published in the journal Nature puts the spotlight on what appears to be another of these feedback loops. It has to do with soil, currently one of Earth’s carbon sinks. But warming may lead to soils[Read More…]
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should resign. That’s laughable presently. The Trudeau government is still enjoying an extra long honeymoon; Canadians are still as happy about the change to ‘sunny ways’ as Americans are distraught with the specter of at least four years of slime, sleeze and shame. But our PM is a dead man walking. Trudeau and his government[Read More…]
Global domination by neoliberal One Percenter climate criminals has meant that a catastrophic plus 2C temperature rise is now unavoidable and that the Paris ideal of no more than plus 1.5C will be exceeded in 4-10 years. The most effective collective action now for decent Humanity to mitigate inescapable climate catastrophe is to promise that all climate criminals will[Read More…]
On December5, former vice president Al Gore met with Donald and Ivanka Trump in an effort to convince the president-elect that he should not gut federal policies and agreements dealing with climate change. Three days later, actor Leonardo Di Caprio also paid the Trump duo a visit, urging them to help build a green, climate-friendly economy with lots of[Read More…]
It appears that over the past 18 months or so we have pushed the earth into an irrevocable spiral. The accumulating feedback loops cannot now be contained, though with concerted effort we may be able to diminish them. Dr Thomas Crowther wrote “It’s fair to say we have passed the point of no return on global warming and we[Read More…]
The results of a search for “climate hoax” on Google Trends Google Trends shows a remarkable spike in the interest for the coupled terms “climate” and “hoax”. Does that mean that people are becoming more skeptical about climate science? Or simply more interested in the subject? On this point, Google Trends tells us that there has been no special[Read More…]
The Climate Science Legal Defense Fund (CSLDF) was founded in September 2011 to defend climate scientists from harassing and invasive attacks via the legal system. Five years in, we’re expanding our efforts to reflect the new challenges scientists face, including increasing education and outreach work. Now more than ever, it’s important that scientists prepare themselves for how best to deal[Read More…]
President-elect Donald Trump’s Energy Department transition team has reportedly been asking for the names of civil servants that have worked on environmental policies under President Barack Obama, sparking fears of a coming “climate purge” by the incoming Trump administration. A “document circulated by the Energy Department,” first reported by Bloomberg Thursday and later by Politico, lists 65 questions posed by[Read More…]
As 2016 draws to a close, we appear to be living in a world that is increasingly defined by its illusions, where the truth is a matter of subjective interpretation or argumentative debate. Indeed, following the United States election and Brexit referendum there is much talk of a new era of post-truth politics, in which appeals to emotion count more[Read More…]
On the day that you read this article, 200 species of life on Earth (plants, birds, animals, fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles) will cease to exist. Tomorrow, another 200 species will vanish forever. The human onslaught to destroy life on Earth is unprecedented in Earth’s history. Planet Earth is now experiencing its sixth mass extinction event and Homo sapiens sapiens is[Read More…]
Why are we failing at communicating the danger of climate change? Maybe people don’t have enough information? (This is the “information deficit” model). Or maybe they have too much information? (This is called the “cultural cognition” model). Or maybe they are not getting the right information? Or there is something else that’s wrong? Without going into the details of the[Read More…]
Co-Written by Michael Lazarus & Harro van Asselt The World Energy Outlook 2016, released last week, is just one among an increasing line of studies showing how nations need to slow and, ultimately, phase out investment in new fossil fuel supply infrastructure – from oil fields and pipelines to coal mines – if they are serious about keeping warming to[Read More…]
The election of Donald Trump reflects the unraveling of the centre-left across the West, and with it a fragile consensus on climate change. For two decades parties of the centre-left have created narratives about climate change that they do not really believe. They have done this to try and convince their fragile coalition of supporters and to try to bring[Read More…]
What is happening in the Arctic will not stay in the Arctic. In an ominous (though not hopeless) report published Friday, researchers warn that as many as 19 various ‘tipping points’ could be triggered by the increasingly warm temperatures in the world’s northern polar region. The Arctic Resilience Report, produced under the auspices of the Arctic Council by an international[Read More…]
The Great Barrier Reef suffered through the worst coral die-off in recorded history this year, scientists found, with unusually warm ocean water and record-setting bleaching eventskilling a stunning 90 percent of all coral in the worst-hit area. Those were the conclusions of a study published Monday by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. “One of the worst-hit areas[Read More…]
The 4th Assessment Report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change released in 2007, unambiguously states that climate change is not gender-neutral and women experience it differently than men.News reportsabound of exacerbated effects of climate change on women in the poorer and vulnerable parts of the world. It is a well-documented fact that globally women constitute the majority of the[Read More…]
While it was all but obscured in the course of the US presidential excitement, negotiators at the climate change conference in Marrakech were busy attempting to hammer out the means to implement the Paris Climate Agreement. The long and confusing shadow cast over the negotiations was considerable. Donald Trump has made no bones about climate change as a plot conjured[Read More…]
Another UN climate summit is over and despite the prevalent rhetoric of hope, the gap between the 1,5 or 2 degree target agreed in Paris last year and the real commitments to achieve this target is nowhere near to closing. Worse, this gap hasn’t even been a focus of this year’s UN climate talks in Marrakesh although time is running:[Read More…]
With the unexpected triumph of Donald Trump, what’s in store for U.S. climate and energy policies? Answering that question is hard since Trump has never run a public institution and thus has no track record. His most cited comment about global warming — that it was a Chinese hoax invented to destroy American jobs — came in November 2012 from[Read More…]
A year ago, it appeared that the once-promising and environmentally risky prospects for exploitation of new shipping routes through the Arctic Ocean were waning because of low oil prices, high insurance costs, and dangerous ice conditions that persist even though climate change is rapidly melting away sea ice. Only 17 vessels sailed through Canada’s Northwest Passage in 2014, due in[Read More…]
The degree of resignation spotlighted below is something that activists must pay attention to; there’s a clear need to change gears in reaching out to citizens. The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (2015) demonstrated that a mere 52 percent of registered U.S. voters felt that alterations in the earth’s climate were mainly a function of human activity. That should[Read More…]
Climate change is viewed by many as a classic case of ‘tragedy of the commons’ i.e. anything used commonly and freely by people is not cared for by anyone. ‘Commons’ are usually natural resources such as air, land, water, forests, and fish. Thus, they are not anybody’s private property. The most cited example of this ‘tragedy’ is that of overgrazing[Read More…]
Many Americans are frightened by the idea of Donald Trump as the country’s new pilot-in-chief, fearing he’ll crash the airliner of state (including climate and environmental policies) into a mountain or the ground. Clinton, they argued, for all her flaws, knows how to fly this thing called a country using the federal government and at least won’t end up crashing[Read More…]
Global temperature goes from heat record to heat record, yet the sun is at its dimmest for half a century. For a while, 2010 was the hottest year on record globally. But then it got overtopped by 2014. And 2014 was beaten again by 2015. And now 2016 is so warm that it is certain to be once again a[Read More…]
Climate change is already affecting life on Earth, despite a global temperature increase of just 1°C, according to a new study published in the journal Science on Friday. Nearly every ecosystem on the planet is being altered, and plants and animals are being so affected that scientists may soon be forced to intervene to create “human-assisted evolution,” the study, titled[Read More…]
Arctic News June 10, 2014 “There are such massive methane reserves below the Arctic Ocean floor, that they represent around 100 times the amount that is required to cause a Permian style major extinction event, should the subsea Arctic methane be released in a short period of time into the atmosphere….The energy necessary to produce these Arctic methane release rates[Read More…]
In order for carbon storage even in tropical forests to be beneficial, it must remain stored essentially permanently (for many hundreds to thousands of years). No one can guarantee that future climate change, disease, and/or land use change won’t cause release of this forest carbon back into the atmosphere, which would bring us back to the starting point, before any forest carbon storage efforts were even attempted.
Global warming is on track to top 3° Celsius, the United Nations warned this week, because today’s climate pledges are “not nearly enough” to prevent dangerous levels of warming. That’s according the latest annual “Emissions GapReport” (pdf) from the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), which concluded that pledges to cut emissions will result in a global temperature rise of 3.4ºC[Read More…]
The Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is one of the first international instruments to include the term ‘climate justice’. While the notion of justice has been explored in several contexts – purely legal, economic, and social –, the visible effects of climate change, most notably in the form of extreme weather events, have[Read More…]
Miraculous nature is being murdered. Everywhere we look inequitable over-consumption is devastating the natural ecosystems that sustain a living Earth. Together we yield to ecological truth – personally embracing a global ecology ethic, and demanding others do so as well – or we all needlessly die at each others’ throats as the global ecological system collapses and being ends. The[Read More…]
From campaign finance reform to gun violence to poverty to education to LGBTQ rights,lots of important subjects were ignored by corporate media debate moderators in the presidential (and vice-presidential) debates. All of these topics are urgent and deserve a spotlight on the national stage. But one topic stands out as a non-factor: climate change. Climate change—or, more accurately, climate disruption—is[Read More…]
Last month was the hottest September on record, which means 2016 is all but locked into being the hottest year on record, according to new NASA statistics released Tuesday. “With data now available through September, 2016 annual record (~1.25ºC above late 19th [century]) seems locked in,” tweeted Dr. Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. With data[Read More…]
Even today, the fossil fuel industry remains one of the biggest contributors to release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, raising the temperature of the earth by 1.5 degrees which is lethal for life to survive. For these ‘Big Oil’ companies are bringing about an economic cost for the world in terms of impact of climate change. But these companies are[Read More…]
Scientists have reached a near unanimous agreement that the earth has entered a new geological era – anthropocene – characterised by human induced climate change. The resulting super floods, typhoons, and heat waves have caused several thousands of deaths in the past ten to fifteen years. However, climate change not only claims its victims through the occurrence of these mega[Read More…]
As the evidence mounts that we are fast approaching the final point-of-no-return beyond which it will be impossible to take sufficient effective action to prevent climate catastrophe – see ‘The World Passes 400 PPM Threshold. Permanently’ http://www.climatecentral.org/news/world-passes-400-ppm-threshold-permanently-20738 – the evidence of ineffective official responses climbs too. See, for example, ‘Climate Con: why a new global deal on aviation emissions is[Read More…]
A 2012 World Bank report stated that without quick action to curb CO2 emissions, global warming is likely to add 4 degrees Centigrade (39.2 degrees Fahrenheit) during the 21st century which is dangerously close to the temperature that initiated the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago when 96% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates were[Read More…]
Planet Earth, our habitat, is in dire straits And our world is suffering from various crises, conflicts and problems. There is hardly any sign that something is seriously being done to solve these problems. Some Americans – not government officials, not corporate big-wigs, but civil society activists – have now come forward to save the earth and, along with it,[Read More…]
September’s carbon dioxide output failed to drop below 400 parts per million (ppm) despite historically being the year’s low point for CO2 emissions, which means the Earth has very likely passed that symbolic climate threshold forever. The Earth has hit 400ppm before, but seasonal cycles have always reduced carbon dioxide output back below that level. Now, climate scientists say it[Read More…]
Only with honesty, truth and justice can there be a future for our species, and I don’t see any of it-anywhere
To much fanfare, global leaders have agreed to tackle the climate crisis by ratifying theParis climate agreement, but a group of esteemed scientists is warning that current pledges to reduce emissions are far from sufficient and, in fact, put the world on track to reaching the dangerous 2°C climate threshold by 2050. “The pledges are not going to get even[Read More…]
On September 21, 31 countries, including Brazil and Mexico, ratified the Paris climate agreement at a United Nations event in New York City. They joined the U.S., China, and 27 other nations which had previously committed to the agreement,bringing the total to 60 and surpassing the first of two thresholds, requiring 55 nations to ratify it. In addition, their combined[Read More…]
The truth is we don’t know. We pretend that we can continue to dodge the mass terrors like the one a generation ago, where we eluded a nuclear annihilation. It is now more often that we find asking ourselves, that for how long the Earth will last, when we have poisoned the water and soils and trampled thousands of creatures[Read More…]
Time is about to run out on holding global warming to two degrees. The next President needs to be prepared to act promptly and decisively to assure that the world changes direction. The world’s seeming inability to make progress on climate change appears to be more a refusal to jeopardize growth of the GDP, even though economic growth (a) has arguably[Read More…]
Washington based think tank and advocacy group Oil Change International in association with 14 other climate change groups have come out with a very relevant report which assesses the fossil fuel production and its likely impact on the climate change which has received global attention in the recent time in Paris climate meet where new goals for global warming were[Read More…]
The planet could pass the critical 1.5°C global temperature threshold in a decade—and is already two-thirds of the way to hit that warming limit, climate scientists warned on Thursday. Speaking at a University of Oxford conference this week, led by leading U.K. climate researcher Richard Betts, scientists said global greenhouse gas emissions are not likely to slow down quickly enough[Read More…]
One of the major treaties to combat climate change is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is a binding multilateral agreement that entered into force in 1994 with the objective of “. . . stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” Its[Read More…]
Illustration from the paper “The Sower’s Way.” by Sgouridis, Csala and Bardi recently published in the IOP Environmental Research Letters journal. The main points of the paper are summarized in a previous post. Note how fast the production of energy must fall in order to prevent temperatures from rising above the 2°C limit. It is a true “Seneca collapse“, necessary[Read More…]
One of the silliest arguments of climate deniers goes like this: the atmosphere with its greenhouse gases cannot warm the Earth’s surface, because it is colder than the surface. But heat always flows from warm to cold and never vice versa, as stated in the second law of thermodynamics. The freshly baked Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts has recently phrased it[Read More…]
In a year of record-setting heat on a blistered globe, with fast-warmingoceans, fast-melting ice caps, and fast-rising sea levels, ratification of the December 2015 Paris climate summit agreement — already endorsed by most nations — should be a complete no-brainer. That it isn’t tells you a great deal about our world. Global geopolitics and the possible rightward lurch of many countries (including a potential deal-breaking election in[Read More…]
Another month, another temperature record shattered. NASA data released Monday shows not only that last month was the hottest August since record-keeping started in 1880, but that it tied with July for the warmest month in the last 136 years. According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, August 2016’s temperature was 0.16 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous warmest August[Read More…]
Humanity has waged war against the natural world for millennia, intensifying with the industrial revolution, culminating with 9/11 terror and resulting perma-war, and threatening now to collapse the biosphere. Centuries ago an epic wave of ecological terror swept from Northern Europe as the industrial revolution and colonialism put a price on everything, liquidating natural ecosystems for illusory consumption by some,[Read More…]
I was travelling in Europe last month, and was very disappointed by what I saw and heard. There is a lack of unity between Western workers and the workers of the world. The gap between the prosperity of a few highly professionalised workers in the West who are more and more aligned with the capitalists and managers, and the[Read More…]
On the second anniversary of the 2014 Kashmir flood – dubbed by some as the worst in a century – I write this short piece as a victim of climate change. I was in New Delhi when the flooding began. Having spoken to my parents on the very morning of the flood, I was told that the muddied Jhelum waters[Read More…]
The Anthropocene Epoch has begun, according to a group of experts assembled at the International Geological Congress in Cape Town, South Africa this week. After seven years of deliberation, members of an international working group votedunanimously on Monday to acknowledge that the Anthropocene—a geologic time interval so-dubbed by chemists Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000—is real. The epoch is[Read More…]
The highly influential but neoliberal Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) has published a detailed analysis entitled The Economics of Climate Change. However this report ignores a veritable Herd of Elephants in the Room apparent to science-informed climate change analysts, ignores the acute, existential seriousness of the worsening climate emergency, and absurdly argues for effective Business As Usual (BAU)[Read More…]
The head of the United Nation’s climate body has called for a thorough assessment of the feasibility of the international goal to limit warming to 1.5C. Dr Hoesung Lee, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told delegates at a meeting in Geneva, which is designed to flesh out the contents of a special report on 1.5C, that[Read More…]
On Monday it was confirmed that the Earth has broken an ominous climate milestone amid a wave of troubling records: July 2016 was the hottest recorded month—ever. According to new NASA data, the global mean surface temperatures last month were 0.84° Celsius (1.51° Fahrenheit) above average and was the warmest July in their data set, which dates back to 1880.[Read More…]
It’s no secret that we have trashed, poisoned, and warmed oceans at an unprecedented ratevia human-caused climate change and pollution. It seems that oceans may be paying us back in kind, according to a new study that found levels of bacteria responsible for life-threatening illnesses spiking in the North Atlantic region. The study published Monday in the Proceedings of the[Read More…]
This new Homo sapiens contradictory planetary reality leaves not just the western world, but the whole world in search for answers. We need to find the reason we are heading so rapidly toward dangerous shoals. How could we, the most clever and brilliant primate ever, be bringing on our own demise? Where did we all go so wrong? Could it[Read More…]
John Michael Greer has written a provocative essay: Climate Change Activism: a Postmortem. His list of activist mistakes should be interesting to many of you but Greer makes the same tactical error as the activists he derides in his ‘postmortem’. Greer is still concerned about winning political and economic battles instead of getting to necessary emergency government as quickly as[Read More…]
Environmental records of all kinds are being shattered as climate change takes effect in real time, scientists warned on Tuesday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) released its annual State of the Climate report with the dire warning that 2015 was the hottest year on record since at least the mid-to-late 19th century, confirming the “toppling of several symbolic[Read More…]
“Flowers may be losing their diverse and delicious fragrances, thanks to increasing temperatures associated with global climate change, scientists say.”The research was published in the journal Plant, Cell and Environment. The ideal temperature required for cultivation of flowers – 28 degrees and 18 degrees respectively for day and night – is not available anymore, not even during winter.Due to climate change[Read More…]
Record global heat in the first half of 2016 has caught climate scientists off-guard, reportsThompson Reuters Foundation. “What concerns me most is that we didn’t anticipate these temperature jumps,” David Carlson, director of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) climate research program, told Thompson Reuters Foundation late Monday. “We predicted moderate warmth for 2016, but nothing like the temperature rises we’ve[Read More…]
The World Meteorological Organization(WMO), a specialized UN agency has decided to constitute a committee to know whether Kuwait’s Mitrabah had experienced the hottest day with the temperature 54.0°C; the temperature is the highest for the eastern hemisphere. The WMD is itself worried and to know whether the data was accurate, a high level scientific committee with Kuwait and WMO official[Read More…]
An example of coral bleaching. (Photo: SarahDepper/flickr/cc) Climate change is the primary cause of coral reef degradation around the world, according to a groundbreaking new study that casts doubt on the previous scientific understanding of reef erosion. The research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, finds that even isolated coral reefs, far away from localized human degradation like[Read More…]
As the party of climate science denial convenes in Cleveland this week—minus the few Republicans who care about global warming—new data further confirms that the world is on fire. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) announced Tuesday that June 2016 was 1.62° F above the 20th century average, breaking last year’s record for the warmest June on record by[Read More…]
Less than a day after becoming the U.K.’s unelected leader, Prime Minister Theresa May closed the government’s climate change office, a move instantly condemned as “shocking” and “plain stupid.” May shuttered the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) on Thursday and moved responsibility for the environment to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. The decision comes[Read More…]
Co-Written by Richard Heinberg, David Fridley Ed. note: This is Chapter 10 of Richard Heinberg’s and David Fridley’s new book, Our Renewable Future, now available from Island Press. Post Carbon Institute’s companion website,ourrenewablefuture.org has also just been launched and contains additional content not in the book. Sound national and international climate policies are crucial: without them, it will be impossible to[Read More…]
We must assess the consequences of our lifestyle on the planet’s declining liveability, as we already have a rising chemical imbalance in the biosphere which impairs life’s ability to control its climate. Furthermore, we’re expecting 9 billion people within thirty odd years; this, in a world of depleting organic and inorganic resources, rising sea levels, and increasing temperatures, that will[Read More…]
The June temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 71.8°F, or 3.3°F above the 20th century average, surpassing the previous record of 71.6°F set in 1933. The year-to-date (January-June) temperaturewas 50.8°F, 3.2°F above the 20th century average, making it the third warmest on record. The June precipitation total for the contiguous U.S. was 2.46 inches, 0.47 inch below the 20th century[Read More…]
Shrinking sea cover means the Earth’s surface darkens, increasing absorption of the sun’s energy. (Photo: Christopher Mikel/flickr/cc) Arctic sea ice plummeted to a record low in June, shrinking 56,900 square kilometers (22,000 square miles) per day last month, according to new figures from the National Snow & Ice Data Center. June’s “sea ice extent” was 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square[Read More…]
The Paris climate conference set the ambitious goal of finding ways to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, rather than the previous threshold of 2 degrees. But what would be the difference between a 1.5 and 2 degree world? And how realistic is such a target?
“In a time of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act” –George Orwell March 2016 set a new record temperature for that time of year, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The global temperature was 2.30 °F (1.28 °C) warmer than the average for March from 1951 to 1980, which is used as a baseline. http://climate.nasa.gov/news/2432/[Read More…]
Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will stay permanently above 400 parts per million (ppm) this year due to El Nino—and will likely not drop below that number again “within our lifetimes,” according to a study published this week in the journal Nature. The milestone represents a symbolic threshold that scientists and environmentalists had long sought to avoid. Greenhouse gases have jumped 48[Read More…]
A sword age, axe age, shields are cloven, a wind age, wolf age, ere the world sinks — Volupsa There is no question that anthropogenic activity has profoundly damaged the vast interrelated web of ecological systems that maintain the conditions for life on this planet. Similarly there is an increasingly agreement among climate scientists that we are currently in the[Read More…]
Children suffer the most from fossil fuel burning. Fossil fuel combustion and associated air pollution and carbon dioxide (CO2) is the root cause of much of children’s ill health children today as well as their uncertain future. There are strong scientific arguments, as well persuasive economic ones, for reducing the world’s dependence on energy generated by the burning of fossil[Read More…]
Annual global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions presently total 64 billion tonnes CO2-equivalent with methanogenic livestock production contributing over 50%. With annual emissions of CO2 per se from industry at a record high, and with Humanity and the Biosphere existentially threatened by the Methane Bomb of the warming Arctic in coming decades, we must all urgently adopt a vegetarian or[Read More…]
Record carbon dioxide levels are set to surpass the symbolic threshold of 400 parts per million (PPM) this year and will likely never fall below that line again in our lifetimes, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. Scientists at the UK Met Office used emissions data, sea surface temperature figures, and a climate[Read More…]
[This essay is excerpted from Noam Chomsky’s new book, Who Rules the World? (Metropolitan Books).] In January 2015, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced its famous Doomsday Clock to three minutes before midnight, a threat level that had not been reached for 30 years. The Bulletin’s statement explaining this advance toward catastrophe invoked the two major threats to survival:[Read More…]
Threatened by climate change, pollution, overfishing, and oil spills, the world’s oceans are suffering, scientists warned on Wednesday—the day designated by the United Nations as one to honor the deep blue sea. From widespread coral bleaching to floundering fish species to garbage stretching across the water’s surface and hundreds of feet down, it’s clear that human activity is taking its[Read More…]
Censoring climate change and its reporting is a big business, notably among fossil fuel obsessives and those in denial. It continues to fulfil a role in the policies of Australia’s Turnbull government. Even after the demise of Tony Abbott last year, his successor continues to scrub his own environmental credentials from his profile. As he does so, an assortment of[Read More…]
On the surface, things appear normal. The status quo of life in America circa 2016 isn’t to everyone’s liking, but at least the system is still working after a fashion. The price of oil is going up a bit: that means the cost of driving is also creeping higher, but steeper prices provide a little welcome relief for an oil[Read More…]
Rational risk management is crucial for societal safety and successively involves (a) accurate information, (b) scientific analysis, and (c) informed systemic change to minimize risk. However the anti-science, anti-environment, pro-fossil fuels Australian Coalition Government has utterly perverted this process in relation to the worsening climate emergency through spin, lying by commission, lying by omission and censorship. Critically, Coalition Government[Read More…]
Dr.Ambedkar: Current Political and Economic Scenario 
Rally in support of Ambedkar’s grandson-in-law held outside Indian Visa and Passport Application Center 
Coronavirus Strikes Papua New Guinea 
Pam Africa: As Mumia Awaits Heart Surgery, I am Issuing a Challenge to CNN’s Michael Smerconish and DA Larry Krasner 
How to Make a Gulf Monarchy All-American Increasing Need for Early Availability of More Reliable Mortality Data 
Chronicle of the unavailing Afghan war 
Reactions to U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan 
Educate, Agitate, Organize: Self-reflections 
Surveillance Capitalism threatens public university in India 
Gates Unhinged: Dystopian Vision for Agrifood Must Not Succeed 
The Pandemic: death toll reaches 3 million, crisis deepening in Brazil, India, France 
Rising Garden Film Festival reaches wider audience virtually amidst pandemic 
‘Sholay’ was a landmark film but not a classic with a social theme 
The British Prime Minister, Oxford MPs and the Green Party MP on Farmers Protest in India. 
Uniforms 
A Taste of Patriarchy in Speech: Language and Gender 
Contribution of Urban Gardening Can Improve Greatly with A Few Changes 
Comparing Response to Two Important Diseases—Tuberculosis and COVID-19 
Fight against Covid-19: Incompetence or deliberate negligence 
Ultimate Success 
Empire’s Afghan War: A lost war, a profitable war 
Raul Castro steps down, next generation of anti-imperialist leaders take responsibility 
Does Historiography Transcend Anachronism? 
Thrissur Pooram – 2021 
The Dirty Campaign Underlying Ecuador’s “Free and Fair” Election 
The Myth of Peace in the Middle East: Deconstructing the Naturalization Narrative 
U.S. Joins Past Empires In Afghan Graveyard 
India should welcome the end of US occupation of Afghanistan 
Centre’s ordinance: A big blow to cinema 
Indian monsoons becoming more chaotic 
Hindi Cinema Has Not Properly Tapped the Potential of Social Thrillers 
Movements for Improving Internal Strengths, Integrity and Resilience of Rural Communities 
Killing Yemen 
Mohammad Azharuddin was simply the ultimate embodiment of cricketing poetry and grace 
Jean Swanson honoured for standing up for Indian farmers and opposing CAA 
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Scheduled for Open-Heart Surgery –Racism Remains the Greatest Medical Threat to Mumia’s Health Exiting Afghanistan: Biden Sets the Date 
As the US plans its Afghan troop withdrawal, what was it all for? 
US: Indian Ocean is not India’s ocean 
When I founded Countercurrents.org in 2002, Disha Ravi who was arrested for sedition yesterday was a two-year-old toddler. In 2002, the CO2 level in the atmosphere was 370 ppm. Now it is 415 ppm. In just 19 years CO2 levels increased by just over 2ppm/year. The level of cumulative greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, including Methane, Nitrous Oxide etc is[Read More…]
