A retiring president, slower economic growth, and another hot year are in store for 2020. Retiring president. U.S. President Donald Trump will retire this year because he dare not contest the U.S. presidential election in November; losing it would expose citizen Trump to virtually certain criminal charges and possible civil suits. Vice President Mike Pence […]
Category: Environment
Runaway global warming is humanity’s gravest threat
Storms kill more people than any other extreme weather event–a reported 242,000 deaths in the 2o years to 2015. Any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5C degrees, or even 2C above the pre-industrial global temperature, as sought in the December 2015 Paris Accord, evaporated in 2017. No one knows how high the temperature […]
World little knows and much less cares about deaths and suffering of year’s worst flood catastrophe
Mumbai, India, August 29, 2017. AP Photo by Rajanish Kakade. Death, displacement, and distress of South Asia flooding are 10 times worse than Hurricane Harvey. You might have missed the news in the past week about the most catastrophic flooding this year. Incessant rains and flooding caused loss in two widely separated areas of the […]
350 million years ago. Source of prosperity, poverty, global warming, drought, famine and war.
We live in a second carbon period. Carbon dioxide is the main force driving global warming just as it did in the first carbon period 359 million years ago. When the CO2 level rose and fell in the first carbon period, so did the temperature. Our climbing CO2 is stimulating plant growth. That could increase […]
Global warming denial burdens world with catastrophe
Global warming denial—the work of ignorance, wishful thinking, demagoguery, and heedless self-interest—spreads global catastrophe. A writer in a letter in the Toronto Star asserts that “…climate change has absolutely nothing to do with carbon emissions… climate change is not about science but rather about the politics of social engineering and wealth transfer.” It is this, […]
SS Manhattan signals an open Northwest Passage
All photos by author As the ice continues to shrink, the 2017 sailing season could see a record number of vessels transiting the fabled Canadian Northwest Passage. The first vessel has already left port. An ancient resuscitated icebreaker is on a 23,000-kilometre, 150-day voyage from Toronto to Victoria to help mark Canada’s 150th birthday. A giant […]