Desertification

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction have issued a report finding that in the past 50 years, 11,000 droughts, storms, extreme temperature and other extreme weather events have accounted for 50 percent of all disasters and three-fourths of known economic losses, totaling $3.64 […]

Acidification of Oceans

IPCC – Carbon Dioxide concentrations highest in 2 mn years, Provoking ever more Extreme Weather

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued its sixth assessment report. The product of vast international cooperation, the report reflects the scientific community’s certitude that the globe’s climate is rapidly changing as a direct result of humanity burning coal, gasoline and natural gas, putting tens of billions of tons […]

Climate Crisis

Extreme heat waves in a warming world don’t just break records – they shatter them

The Conversation

By Scott Denning | – ( The Conversation) – Summer isn’t even half over, and we’ve seen heat waves in the Pacific Northwest and Canada with temperatures that would be hot for Death Valley, enormous fires that have sent smoke across North America, and lethal floods of biblical proportions in Germany and China. Scientists have […]

Australasia

Seriously ugly: here’s how Australia will look if the world heats by 3°C [5.4°F] this century

The Conversation

By Ove Hoegh-Guldberg and Lesley Hughes | – Imagine, for a moment, a different kind of Australia. One where bushfires on the catastrophic scale of Black Summer happen almost every year. One where 50℃ days in Sydney and Melbourne are common. Where storms and flooding have violently reshaped our coastlines, and unique ecosystems have been […]

Climate Crisis

The Southwest once had 4000-year-long Droughts; Could Human-Caused Climate Emergency bring them Back?

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Judy Fahys ( InsideClimate News/ Cronkite News Creative Commons. —— Bonus Video added by Informed Comment: The Enigmatic Montezuma Castle and Well in Arizona, USA | Ancient Architects

Climate Crisis

The Caspian Sea, central to Iran & Russia, is set to fall by 9 Yards or more this century – an ecocide is imminent

The Conversation

By Frank Wesselingh and Matteo Lattuada | – Imagine you are on the coast, looking out to sea. In front of you lies 100 metres of barren sand that looks like a beach at low tide with gentle waves beyond. And yet there are no tides. This is what we found when we visited the […]

Desertification

Demand for meat is driving deforestation in Brazil – changing the soy industry could stop it

The Conversation

By Angela Guerrero and Malika Virah-Sawmy | – Soy may have a pretty innocuous reputation thanks to its association with vegan food and meat alternatives. But don’t be fooled – crops of this pale legume are behind much of Brazil’s epidemic of deforestation. Since 2000, Brazil has doubled its total area of soy plantation to […]

Climate Crisis

The Lancet: Climate Crisis Menaces every Country with spike in Heat Strokes, Flood, Drought, and more Pandemics

The Conversation

By Celia McMichael, Ilan Kelman and Shouro Dasgupta, and Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson | – Climate change is resulting in profound, immediate and worsening health impacts, and no country is immune, a major new report from more than 120 researchers has declared. This year’s annual report of The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, released today, […]

Climate Crisis

UN Report: Human Environmental, Climate Destruction could unleash 800k Animal Viruses on Us

The Conversation

By Katie Woolaston and Judith Lorraine Fisher | – Human damage to biodiversity is leading us into a pandemic era. The virus that causes COVID-19, for example, is linked to similar viruses in bats, which may have been passed to humans via pangolins or another species. Environmental destruction such as land clearing, deforestation, climate change, […]