Extreme Weather

Open Letter to Chancellor Merkel: Germany’s Mega-Floods are a Wake-Up Call that We need Radical Climate Action, Now

Prof. Dr. Eicke R. Weber 10625 Berlin An Bundeskanzlerin Dr. Angela Merkel Bundeskanzleramt Willi-Brandt-Straße 1 10557 Berlin July 25, 2021 Dear Chancellor Dr. Merkel, We are again in deep concern. We were very grateful that our first letter of March 2011, after the terrible Fukushima catastrophe (see attachment), may have helped to reach your quick […]

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 […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Crisis Grips Iran with Water Shortages, Provoking Protests, Clashes in Southwest

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan region, the center of its petroleum industry, has been wracked with protests for a week, in part over water shortages. Rallies have erupted in the towns of Mahshahr, Izeh, Ahvaz, Kut-e Abdollah, Susangerd, Aligoudarz and Shoushtar, according to Amnesty International The Iranian government has sometimes replied to […]

Climate Crisis

Climate activists demand faster energy transition after flood disaster hits Germany

Clean Energy Wire

By Charlotte Nijhuis | – ( Clean Energy Wire) – Activists are protesting for better climate protection measures after catastrophic floods hit several parts of Germany last week. On 23 July, environmental group Robin Wood kicks off a three-week raft tour from Berlin to Hamburg in order to push for a faster energy transition. “We […]

Climate Crisis

As coastal flooding worsens, some cities are retreating from the water

The Conversation

By A.R. Siders and Katharine Mach | – When the tide gets exceptionally high in Charleston, South Carolina, coastal streets start to run with seawater. Some yards become ponds, and residents pull on rain boots. The city also gets a lot of rain. After homes in one low-lying neighborhood flooded three times in four years, […]

Climate Crisis

With Massive Flooding in Germany, Scientists worry Climate is increasingly out of Control

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Our burning of gasoline, coal and natural gas on a massive global scale, putting tens of billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere annually, is turning the earth into . . . well, a greenhouse. Greenhouses are closed up, keeping in heat and moisture. In a greenhouse, the […]

Climate Change

What the Ottoman Empire can teach us about the consequences of climate change – and how drought can uproot peoples and fuel warfare

The Conversation

By Andrea Duffy | – In the late 16th century, hundreds of bandits on horseback stormed through the countryside of Ottoman Anatolia raiding villages, inciting violence and destabilizing the sultan’s grip on power Four hundred years later and a few hundred miles away in the former Ottoman territory of Syria, widespread protests escalated into a […]

Climate Crisis

Heating America: Nat’l Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin. issues Stats on ‘Normal’ U.S. Weather; this isn’t It

The Conversation

By Russ Schumacher and Becky Bolinger | – Anyone who listens to weather reports has heard meteorologists comment that yesterday’s temperature was 3 degrees above normal, or last month was much drier than normal. But what does “normal” mean in this context – and in a world in which the climate is changing? The National […]

Acidification of Oceans

More CO2 in our Atmosphere now than any time since 3.6 mn Years Ago, when Oceans were 90 feet higher (that’s our fate)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a scientific shocker, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found that despite the slowdown in carbon dioxide emissions in 2020 because of the pandemic, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere rose to a global average of 412.5 parts per million (ppm) from 410 in 2019. At the […]