Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It is astonishing to me that we still have 287 million gasoline vehicles on our roads and that 20 percent of our electricity comes from burning dirty coal. We just go on blithely pumping over 5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, a powerful and dangerous heat-trapping gas, into the […]
- Africa (237)
- Animals (1)
- Asia (1,220)
- Australasia (8)
- Australia (25)
- Authoritarianism (382)
- Canada (6)
- Cats (1)
- Celtic Religion (1)
- Culture (518)
- Dehydration (1)
- Democracy (323)
- Dissent (428)
- Ecology (1)
- Economy (1,022)
- Agriculture (3)
- Banking (67)
- Carbon Footprint (6)
- Corporations (50)
- Cryptocurrency (2)
- Debt (21)
- Degrowth (1)
- Democratic Socialism (20)
- Demographic Decline (1)
- Development (26)
- Downward Mobility (1)
- Employment (118)
- Food Insecurity (21)
- Homelessness (15)
- Industry (5)
- Inequality (422)
- Inflation (5)
- infrastructure (10)
- Investment (92)
- Market Crash (10)
- Middle Class (61)
- Monopolies (8)
- Neoliberalism (200)
- Plutocracy (612)
- Poverty (205)
- Regulation (2)
- Sanctions (4)
- Taxes (37)
- Technology (3)
- Trade (114)
- Weapons sales (7)
- Education (146)
- Elderly (3)
- Electricity Cost (2)
- Energy (1,697)
- Batteries (49)
- Coal (137)
- Fossil Fuels (318)
- Fracking (50)
- Geothermal (7)
- Green ammonia (5)
- Green Energy (409)
- Green Hydrogen (8)
- Heat Pumps (5)
- Hydroelectric (14)
- Natural Gas (107)
- Nuclear Energy (157)
- Petroleum (297)
- Power Grid (12)
- Pumped Hydro (6)
- Solar Energy (398)
- Tar Sands (13)
- Wave Energy (9)
- wind energy (333)
- Environment (2,597)
- Climate Change (1,541)
- Acidification of Oceans (54)
- Agriculture (25)
- Biodiversity (12)
- Climate Refugees (2)
- CO2 (115)
- Dehydration (5)
- Denialism (145)
- Desalinization (4)
- Desertification (158)
- Divestment (2)
- Dust Storms (6)
- Environmental Investment (1)
- Extreme Weather (294)
- Flooding (135)
- Food Supply (2)
- Forests (17)
- Green New Deal (40)
- Greenwashing (3)
- Mass Extinction (61)
- Methane (20)
- Net Carbon Zerio (8)
- Nitrous Oxide (2)
- Rainforests (19)
- Rivers (11)
- Sea Level (335)
- Soil Carbon Release (14)
- Super Storms (252)
- wildfires (233)
- Wood Buildings (1)
- Climate Crisis (1,248)
- Drought (289)
- Ecology (10)
- Environmentalism (392)
- Green Transportation (249)
- Ice Melt (132)
- Invasive Species (2)
- Islands (1)
- Oceans (100)
- Oil Spills (7)
- Pollution (227)
- Water (92)
- wildlife (19)
- Climate Change (1,541)
- Europe (1,335)
- Featured (3,892)
- fiction (5)
- Food (14)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Health (664)
- History (342)
- Human Rights (1,418)
- Apartheid (259)
- censorship (292)
- Death Penalty (30)
- Disappeared (3)
- Displaced and Refugees (563)
- Food Insecurity (19)
- Gay rights (29)
- Genocide (41)
- Human Rights Watch (90)
- Migrants (4)
- Slavery and Trafficking (16)
- Starvation (2)
- Torture (97)
- Trans Rights (3)
- Transgender Rights (4)
- Unlawful Imprisonment (101)
- Unlwful Killing (76)
- War Crimes (378)
- War Rape (7)
- Immigration (20)
- International (791)
- Islamophobia (375)
- Juan Cole (270)
- Latin America (99)
- Latinos (4)
- leisure (21)
- media (472)
- Middle East (9,324)
- Arab World (5,150)
- Iran (1,285)
- Israel (882)
- Israel/ Palestine (3,118)
- Israel/Palestine (8)
- Kurds (289)
- Turkey (576)
- Turkiye (102)
- military (124)
- Modernism (3)
- nationalism (116)
- NATO (36)
- Natural Disasters (13)
- Neocolonialism (1)
- nuclear weapons (103)
- Patriarchy (10)
- Peace (136)
- Persian mythology (1)
- Pete Buttigieg (1)
- Planetary Exploration (1)
- Popular Culture (24)
- Poverty (12)
- privacy (21)
- racism (462)
- Rape (8)
- religion (1,470)
- Rights (139)
- robots (3)
- Romance (1)
- science (151)
- Secular (West) (9)
- Secularism (30)
- Sexual Assault (2)
- South Pacific (2)
- Spirituality (22)
- Statelessness (15)
- Stranded Assets (1)
- Surveillance (278)
- Terrorism (1,091)
- Tolerance (6)
- Uncategorized (8,075)
- United Nations (137)
- Urbanization (4)
- US Foreign Policy (1,288)
- US politics (5,240)
- Anti-War Movement (13)
- Campaign Finance (31)
- Censors (22)
- Central Intelligence Agency (63)
- Charity (1)
- Civil Rights (96)
- Congress (78)
- Conspiracy Theories (23)
- Constitution (397)
- Courts (13)
- crime (12)
- Democratic Party (944)
- Democratic Socialists of America (22)
- Domestic Terrorism (20)
- Drone Warfare (27)
- Espionage (124)
- Ethnicities (380)
- Far Right (388)
- FBI (47)
- Foreign Policy (204)
- Gay Rights (17)
- Guns (94)
- Immigration (236)
- Israel Lobbies (125)
- Marijuana (4)
- Militarization (271)
- National Security State (471)
- Native Americans (40)
- Nuclear arsenal (7)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (557)
- Police (43)
- prison reform (9)
- Private Prisons (2)
- Progressive Politics (12)
- Puerto Rico (30)
- Religious Right (15)
- Reproductive Choice (66)
- Republican Party (2,921)
- Supreme Court (125)
- Voter suppression (35)
- Whistleblowers (5)
- Xenophobia (9)
- Veterans (35)
- Voting Rights (16)
- War (501)
- White Supremacists (225)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (550)
- workers (231)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (210)
wildfires
COVID death Tolls are Horrific, but those of Global Heating are much Worse
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 […]
Pandemic Karma: Destroying Forests to Raise certain Foods Put us Closer to Viruses
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 […]
As Party of Climate Denial Meets, Wildfires Rage and Hurricanes Target Gulf Coast
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 […]
Energy isn’t just electricity – the common mistake obscuring the mammoth task of decarbonisation
By George Loumakis | – One of the first things I teach students is the difference between energy and electricity. Electricity is a particular form of energy, but often the two words are used interchangeably. Britain recently celebrated its longest streak without burning coal to generate electricity. For the first quarter of 2020, global electricity […]
The other Pandemic: Siberia hits over 100° F, hotter than Miami, 80 Years Early, because Coal and Gasoline
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – As if the coronavirus pandemic, depression-era unemployment, and a mad President in the White House were not enough, Mother Nature has decided to remind us what the Big Kahuna really is. It is the climate emergency. May was not only the hottest May since 1880, it was 18° F. (10° […]
Why Burning Fossil Fuels is to Today’s Pandemics as Fleas were to the Black Death
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sheri Fink at the NYT reports that Center for Disease Control scientific modeler Matthew Biggerstaff estimated in a conference call that the coronavirus pandemic could last for many months or as long as a year and could infect half to two-thirds of the population of the United States. Between 200,000 […]
The Contribution of Indigenous People to Fighting Climate Change is Hanging by a Thread in Bolivia
By Iokiñe Rodríguez and Mirna Inturias | – Earth’s forests oxygenate the atmosphere and store vast quantities of planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO₂). But research suggests that the health of these vast ecosystems in large part depends on the work of indigenous people. Indigenous territories and protected areas cover 52% of the Amazon forest and store […]
Climate Emergency: Australia’s Wildfires showed we’re One Step from System Collapse, with no Food, Fuel, Phones
By Anthony Richardson | – This summer’s bushfires were not just devastating events in themselves. More broadly, they highlighted the immense vulnerability of the systems which make our contemporary lives possible. The fires cut road access, which meant towns ran out of fuel and fell low on food. Power to towns was cut and mobile […]