Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Not only Toronto in Canada but New York, Washington, D.C. and other cities of the US northeast got a taste of the Middle Eastern Khamsin on Wednesday. Of course, we had our own, North American twist on it, since ours was not a sandstorm but a “smokestorm.” Some 400 wildfires […]
- Africa (206)
- Animals (1)
- Asia (1,170)
- Australasia (7)
- Australia (22)
- Authoritarianism (358)
- Canada (4)
- Cats (1)
- Celtic Religion (1)
- Culture (490)
- Dehydration (1)
- Democracy (313)
- Dissent (398)
- Ecology (1)
- Economy (973)
- Agriculture (3)
- Banking (67)
- Carbon Footprint (6)
- Corporations (36)
- Cryptocurrency (2)
- Debt (20)
- Democratic Socialism (20)
- Demographic Decline (1)
- Development (25)
- Employment (117)
- Food Insecurity (20)
- Homelessness (14)
- Industry (1)
- Inequality (403)
- Inflation (3)
- infrastructure (9)
- Investment (91)
- Market Crash (10)
- Middle Class (61)
- Monopolies (7)
- Neoliberalism (187)
- Plutocracy (585)
- Poverty (192)
- Regulation (2)
- Sanctions (4)
- Taxes (35)
- Technology (2)
- Trade (113)
- Weapons sales (4)
- Education (100)
- Elderly (3)
- Electricity Cost (2)
- Energy (1,595)
- Batteries (34)
- Coal (130)
- Fossil Fuels (292)
- Fracking (50)
- Geothermal (7)
- Green ammonia (5)
- Green Energy (381)
- Green Hydrogen (7)
- Heat Pumps (4)
- Hydroelectric (8)
- Natural Gas (100)
- Nuclear Energy (151)
- Petroleum (277)
- Power Grid (10)
- Pumped Hydro (5)
- Solar Energy (355)
- Tar Sands (13)
- Wave Energy (9)
- wind energy (292)
- Environment (2,364)
- Climate Change (1,396)
- Acidification of Oceans (52)
- Agriculture (20)
- Biodiversity (5)
- Climate Refugees (1)
- CO2 (81)
- Dehydration (5)
- Denialism (136)
- Desalinization (4)
- Desertification (150)
- Divestment (1)
- Dust Storms (4)
- Extreme Weather (270)
- Flooding (102)
- Forests (8)
- Green New Deal (39)
- Greenwashing (1)
- Mass Extinction (53)
- Methane (20)
- Net Carbon Zerio (8)
- Nitrous Oxide (2)
- Rainforests (18)
- Rivers (6)
- Sea Level (301)
- Soil Carbon Release (14)
- Super Storms (193)
- wildfires (170)
- Wood Buildings (1)
- Climate Crisis (1,032)
- Drought (225)
- Ecology (3)
- Environmentalism (382)
- Green Transportation (232)
- Ice Melt (121)
- Invasive Species (2)
- Islands (1)
- Oceans (82)
- Oil Spills (6)
- Pollution (219)
- Water (84)
- wildlife (17)
- Climate Change (1,396)
- Europe (1,248)
- Featured (3,552)
- fiction (5)
- Food (13)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Health (621)
- History (311)
- Human Rights (1,242)
- Apartheid (249)
- censorship (239)
- Death Penalty (24)
- Disappeared (2)
- Displaced and Refugees (511)
- Gay rights (23)
- Human Rights Watch (87)
- Migrants (1)
- Slavery and Trafficking (15)
- Torture (89)
- Trans Rights (3)
- Transgender Rights (3)
- Unlawful Imprisonment (85)
- Unlwful Killing (57)
- War Crimes (307)
- War Rape (4)
- Immigration (18)
- International (745)
- Islamophobia (357)
- Juan Cole (270)
- Latin America (91)
- Latinos (4)
- leisure (21)
- media (450)
- Middle East (8,655)
- Arab World (5,018)
- Iran (1,209)
- Israel (832)
- Israel/ Palestine (2,593)
- Israel/Palestine (8)
- Kurds (288)
- Turkey (559)
- Turkiye (85)
- military (117)
- Modernism (3)
- nationalism (112)
- NATO (32)
- Natural Disasters (12)
- nuclear weapons (90)
- Patriarchy (8)
- Peace (120)
- Persian mythology (1)
- Pete Buttigieg (1)
- Planetary Exploration (1)
- Popular Culture (24)
- Poverty (11)
- privacy (21)
- racism (440)
- Rape (8)
- religion (1,404)
- Rights (138)
- robots (3)
- Romance (1)
- science (138)
- Secular (West) (9)
- Secularism (30)
- Sexual Assault (2)
- South Pacific (2)
- Spirituality (22)
- Statelessness (15)
- Stranded Assets (1)
- Surveillance (277)
- Terrorism (1,074)
- Tolerance (6)
- Uncategorized (8,069)
- United Nations (117)
- Urbanization (4)
- US Foreign Policy (1,120)
- US politics (4,996)
- Anti-War Movement (10)
- Campaign Finance (31)
- Censors (21)
- Central Intelligence Agency (61)
- Civil Rights (95)
- Congress (70)
- Conspiracy Theories (19)
- Constitution (373)
- Courts (6)
- crime (9)
- Democratic Party (877)
- Democratic Socialists of America (20)
- Domestic Terrorism (20)
- Drone Warfare (26)
- Espionage (120)
- Ethnicities (361)
- Far Right (361)
- FBI (47)
- Foreign Policy (203)
- Gay Rights (17)
- Guns (94)
- Immigration (231)
- Israel Lobbies (110)
- Marijuana (4)
- Militarization (263)
- National Security State (456)
- Native Americans (37)
- Nuclear arsenal (7)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (526)
- Police (42)
- prison reform (7)
- Private Prisons (2)
- Progressive Politics (10)
- Puerto Rico (28)
- Religious Right (14)
- Reproductive Choice (59)
- Republican Party (2,833)
- Supreme Court (114)
- Voter suppression (35)
- Whistleblowers (4)
- Xenophobia (9)
- Veterans (33)
- Voting Rights (16)
- War (449)
- White Supremacists (205)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (511)
- workers (217)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (190)
wildfires
Looking for Home in an Overheating World: If Emissions continue, Will We all be Migrants Someday?
By Jane Braxton Little ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Greenville, CA — Pines and firs parched by a three-year drought had been burning for days on a ridge 1,000 feet above my remote mountain town. On August 4, 2021, the flames suddenly flared into a heat so intense it formed a molten cloud the color of […]
Climate Crisis: Severe Heat Wave in Israel Leads to 220 Wildfires on Friday, in Omen of Torrid Future
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The land over which Israelis and Palestinians are locked in conflict is itself unstable, subject to the vagaries of human-caused climate change. On Friday, Abdel Rahman Salah at Egypt’s Veto newspaper reports, sweltering temperatures and high winds lashed the land, causing wildfires to burst out throughout the country. Climate change, […]
Global Heating could make it too Hot for a Third of Humanity by 2080 – 2100
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – A lot of studies have focused on the economic cost of global heating, caused by humans burning fossil fuels. A new study in Nature Sustainability “Quantifying the human cost of global warming,” by Timothy M. Lenton et al. instead concentrates on what heating will mean for the lives of human […]
EPA Again Proposes Restrictions on Power Plant Carbon Dioxide Emissions
By: Robert Zullo ( The Wisconsin Examiner ) – The Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Power Plan — intended to cut carbon emissions from power plants — was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Trump administration’s much-criticized replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, derided as a “tortured series of misreadings” of the […]
2/3s of the Summer Dry Air that encourages Wildfires comes from Humanity burning Fossil Fuels
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The earth’s atmosphere can make things wet or dry them out depending on the water vapor pressure. When there is a Vapor Pressure Deficit, it dries the earth out. VPD is defined as “a measure of atmospheric water demand defined as the difference between the amount of water vapor in […]
On Earth Day, 69% of Americans want Carbon Neutrality, with Minorities and Youth in the Vanguard
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Earth Day, 2023, big public events were held by activists across the US (and across the world). But activists you always have with you. I joined in picking up garbage along the road that led to our high school on April 22, 1970, the first earth day. The world […]
America’s Climate Refugees are Swelling, driven by Rising Seas, Wildfires and Extreme Heat
By Laureen Fagan ( Sustainability Times) – News of an accelerating sea level rise along the Gulf Coast of the United States has renewed attention on climate migration, and the degree to which people in the U.S. have begun to retreat from climate challenges due to flooding, wildfire and other impacts. The new study, […]
Peak Fossil Fuels? Wind, Solar advance 20% Globally, with World on Verge of CO2 Emissions Drop
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The energy analysis firm Ember reports its latest findings about global energy trends, and it is relatively optimistic. Wind and solar had provided 10% of the world’s electricity in 2021, but that went up to 12% in 2022, a 20% increase. If we look at each source in its own […]