Michelle Chen – While Global Temperatures Rise, the Poor Burn Faster

Inequality is growing about as fast as the world is warming. That’s no coincidence, according to the latest analysis of the global wealth gap by Oxfam. As the bank accounts of the rich grow, so too does the environmental devastation they wreak through ravenous consumption: The richest 62 people have as much money as half the world’s population. And that …

2015 Officially the Hottest Year on Record

The final tally is in: 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history—by a record-breaking margin. On Wednesday, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced the official record for last year’s runaway temperatures, which by NOAA’s calculation hit an average of 58.62 degrees Fahrenheit (14.79 degrees Celsius). That’s 1.62 (F) degrees hotter than any average year in …

Air Pollution Killing Millions, Threatening Global Health Systems

The World Health Organization (WHO) over the weekend warned that skyrocketing air pollution levels are killing millions of people in thousands of cities and are poised to take an “enormous” toll on public health services worldwide. “We have a public health emergency in many countries from pollution. It’s dramatic, one of the biggest problems we are facing globally, with horrible …

Low-fiber diet may cause irreversible depletion of gut bacteria over generations

A study by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators raises concerns that the lower-fiber diets typical in industrialized societies may produce internal deficiencies that get passed along to future generations. The study, conducted in mice, indicates that low-fiber diets not only deplete the complex microbial ecosystems residing in every mammalian gut, but can cause an irreversible loss of diversity within …

In Age of Extreme Weather, Industrial Farming Threatens Us All

Extreme weather is damaging to crop production and threatens food safety worldwide, according to a new study published in Nature on Wednesday. And the most developed nations like the U.S., which rely heavily on industrial monocultures for food production, are particularly vulnerable. The study, which evaluated cereal production losses due to extreme weather in 177 countries from 1964-2007, found that …

Climate change altering Greenland ice sheet and accelerating sea level rise, says York University professor

TORONTO, January 4, 2016 – The Greenland ice sheet has traditionally been pictured as a bit of a sponge for glacier meltwater, but new research has found it is rapidly losing the ability to buffer its contribution to rising sea levels, says a York University researcher. York U Professor William Colgan, a co-author on the study published today in the …

Dahr Jamail – The Melting Arctic’s Dramatic Impact on Global Weather Patterns

Arctic sea ice is melting at a record pace – and every summer looks grimmer. This past summer saw the ice pack at its fourth-lowest level on record, and the overall trend in recent decades suggests this will only continue. “Using satellites, scientists have found that the area of sea ice coverage each September has declined by more than 40 …

John Michael Greer – Too Little, Too Late

Last week, after a great deal of debate, the passengers aboard theTitanic voted to impose modest limits sometime soon on the rate at which water is pouring into the doomed ship’s hull. Despite the torrents of self-congratulatory rhetoric currently flooding into the media from the White House and an assortment of groups on the domesticated end of the environmental movement, that’s …

Dean Baker – Treating Global Warming Denialism Like a Sex Scandal

The Washington Post ran a column last week that blamed the baby boom generation for global warming. Even for the Post this was extraordinarily low. This is not an issue of defending my generation; it is a question of how bad policy persists. And the answer puts the blame far more on media outlets like theWashington Post than people born in the two decades after World War …

Tim Radford – Forests of southwest US face mass die-off by 2100

Tens of millions of trees in California are now at risk because of sustained drought, according to new research. And a different study in a different journal foresees a parched future for the evergreen forests not just in the Golden State but in the entire US southwest. Gregory Asner of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California and colleagues …