Climate Change

By Francis Zwiers and Ronald Stewart | – Extreme weather and climate events causing extensive damage are a fact of the Canadian climate, and this year is no exception. On June 13, a mammoth hailstorm pounded Calgary with damage in excess of $1 billion dollars, the most expensive hailstorm in Canadian history. In early July, […]

Climate Crisis

Burning Oil Strengthens Hurricanes like Laura, which sow Environmental Catastrophe when they Strike Petroleum Facilities like Lousiana’s

The Conversation

By John Pardue | – Hurricane Laura plowed through the heart of Louisiana’s oil and chemical industries as a powerful Category 4 storm, leaving a chlorine plant on fire and the potential for more hazardous damage in its wake. The burning BioLab facility sent dark smoke and chlorine gas into the air over the small […]

Climate Crisis

COVID death Tolls are Horrific, but those of Global Heating are much Worse

The Third Pole

By Soumya Sarkar | – ( TheThirdPole.net) – Unless the world curbs greenhouse gas emissions significantly, extreme heat could become a major global killer by the end of this century, equalling death rates for all infectious diseases combined, including tuberculosis, HIV and malaria. In the largest international study till now on health and financial impacts […]

Climate Crisis

“Unsurvivable Storm Surge”: Hurricane Laura Most Powerful to Hit Louisiana in Recorded History, driven by CO2 Emissions

The Watchers

[Hurricane “Laura” became nearly a category 5 with winds at 150 mph or more on Wednesday evening before landfall. A category 5 has winds of 157 mph. Hurricanes are more frequent and more powerful because of the climate emergency driven by humans burning fossil fuels and putting heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. – ed.] By […]

Desertification

Pandemic Karma: Destroying Forests to Raise certain Foods Put us Closer to Viruses

The Conversation

By Terry Sunderland | – As the global population has doubled to 7.8 billion in about 50 years, industrial agriculture has increased the output from fields and farms to feed humanity. One of the negative outcomes of this transformation has been the extreme simplification of ecological systems, with complex multi-functional landscapes converted to vast swaths […]

Climate Crisis

As Party of Climate Denial Meets, Wildfires Rage and Hurricanes Target Gulf Coast

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – One of the speakers at the Republican National Convention on Monday evening was Nikki Haley, formerly Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, who helped usher the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords and who slammed Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal. Haley when pressed will admit that the climate is […]

Climate Crisis

Greta Thunberg and Youth to Angela Merkel: ‘Abandon Fossil Fuel Industry’

Benjamin Wehrmann

By Benjamin Wehrmann ( Clean Energy Wire) – Greta Thunberg and fellow activists have met German Chancellor Angela Merkel to exchange views on the fight against climate change. The campaigners said the 90 minute meeting’s atmosphere was friendly, but also added that “we look at the situation from different perspectives.” Merkel’s spokesman said the EU’s […]

Climate Crisis

On Day Scientists Announce Melting of Greenland Ice Sheet ‘Irreversible,’ Trump to permit Arctic oil, gas Drilling

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Trump administration on Monday finalized its plans to permit oil and gas drilling in the arctic wildlife reserve. This drilling will further imperil endangered species just by the setting up of the rigs, and it will desecrate land holy to the indigenous Gwich’in people, who call it “the sacred […]

Desertification

Experts: Trump Border wall construction may imperil sacred stream, biodiversity in Desert

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Alisa Reznick/Arizona Public Media ( Cronkite News) – Wedged between a sprawl of saguaros and a busy highway in Mexico, Quitobaquito is a tiny oasis. Wildlife and Indigenous communities have long relied on this rare spring system for fresh water in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. The spring flows into a pond just […]