Climate Crisis - Haggard Earth

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Crisis; Hits: 56

Winds, blizzards and triple-digit heat put over half of the US in the path of extreme weather.AP WASHINGTON (AP) — Chaotic weather, from surprising heat in California to the threat of storms rolling into the East Coast, put over half the U.S. population in the path of extreme conditions Monday.Storms across the nation’s eastern half forced airlines to cancel roughly 4,000 flights nationwide Monday, and many schools closed early in the mid-Atlantic states, where high winds were in the forecast.

Blizzards buried parts of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota while torrential rains flooded homes and washed out roads in Hawaii.In Washington, the House and Senate postponed votes, and federal agencies told workers to go home early. But by late afternoon, the expected rough weather had failed to develop and a tornado watch expired. Airport delays and cancellations piled up Monday in some of the nation’s largest airports — including those in New York, Chicago and Atlanta. The private weather service AccuWeather calculated that more than 200 million people were under threat Monday of some kind of dangerous weather.Those range from extreme heat and wildfire advisories to flood and freeze watches from the National Weather Service.

Forecasters warn about a line of storms, tornadoes.....The storm system that dropped snow by the foot in the Midwest barreled toward the East Coast with the potential for high winds and tornadoes, the weather service warned Monday.“Wind is the primary threat, but within any of these areas of strong wind there could be some embedded tornadoes,” said Evan Bentley, a meteorologist with the weather service. The biggest threat stretched from Maryland to the upper edge of South Carolina.
Big snows in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan.......Blizzard conditions continued in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes on Monday after the storm walloped parts of Wisconsin and Michigan with several feet of snow.

And....wait for it! ......Landslides, rescues, collapsed home on Maui......and there's more- read on https://apnews.com/article/severe-weather-storm-snow-east-coast-a8bbd037aba99aaf0cc930e91fdb72ca?user_email=7a51910293749398eff22b8bf795b4f5ed4d3ebff046adf7c9ebf33811a9eca8&utm_medium=Afternoon_Wire&utm_source=Sailthru_AP&utm_campaign=AfternoonWire_Mon_March16_2026&utm_term=Afternoon%20Wire

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Crisis; Hits: 68

Economic growth is still heating the planet. Is there any way out? Rising GDP continues to mean more carbon emissions and wider damage to the planet.Guardian Can the two be decoupled? Guardian Alex Clark 9 Feb 2026 During Cop30 negotiations in Brazil last year, delegates heard a familiar argument: rising emissions are unavoidable for countries pursuing growth. Since the first Cop in the 1990s, developing nations have had looser reduction targets to reflect the economic gap between them and richer countries, which emitted millions of tonnes of CO2 as they pulled ahead. The concession comes from the idea that an inevitable cost of prosperity is environmental harm. That pattern seems to be holding. In 2024, global GDP per capita reached a new high as did annual carbon emissions. But as climate targets slip and warnings mount that tipping points may already have been crossed, faith in growth for growth’s sake is starting to fracture. This week, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called for economies to “move beyond GDP” as a measure of progress, warning that the world’s “existing accounting systems” were driving the planet towards disaster. His remarks echo an increasingly influential school of economics, known broadly as “post-growth”, that asks what was once unthinkable: will solving the climate crisis mean learning to live without constant expansion? Post-growth economists often reject GDP in favour of new frameworks that account for environmental damage – such as the “doughnut economics” adopted recently by Amsterdam, or New Zealand’s attempt at a “wellbeing budget”.

The field has its disagreements, particularly over the extent to which countries should actively pursue de-growth measures to scale down their economies. But proponents agree that with the planet pushed to the limit, a radical rethink is needed. “Economic growth has a near mythical status in the affections of economists and politicians. But wishful thinking won’t solve the climate crisis,” said Tim Jackson, professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey and a leading post-growth economist. “Post-growth economics offers us more choice, more realism and more insight into the possibilities for human prosperity. It’s not about returning to the cave but about breaking free from our intellectual prisons.” The roots of post-growth can be traced back to one book, which caused a storm upon its publication in the 1970s. The Limits to Growth was originally published in 1972 and received a major update in the 2000s. It has sold more than 12m copies. It presented a stark analysis using computer modelling: what happens to our economies and societies when we breach the limits of the natural world? While its methodology and conclusions have garnered much academic debate and even controversy, it is viewed by many as a founding environmental text.......open and keep on scrolling https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/feb/09/economic-growth-carbon-emissions-impact-global-heating

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Crisis; Hits: 111

The consequences of Trump’s war on climate in 7 charts. Seven snapshots reveal how climate rollbacks altered the trajectory of U.S. energy, environmental protection, and economic security. Grist staff In just one year, President Donald Trump has fundamentally changed the arc of federal climate and environmental policy. Upon returning to office 12 months ago, Trump immediately declared an “energy emergency” and promised to “unleash American energy.” He packed his cabinet with oil executives and climate skeptics who have since rolled back the climate initiatives and protections of presidents Obama and Biden while accelerating fossil fuel development. From dismantling regulations designed to cut emissions and tame pollution to repealing the country’s most ambitious climate action, Trump has reveled in reversing years of progress. He has withdrawn from both the Paris Agreement and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and undercut scientific research at every opportunity.

This retrenchment came even as much of the world moved forward in 2025. Worldwide, renewables provided 40 percent of all electricity. Coal-fired power generation declined in India and China for the first time in two generations. Global clean energy investment was 50 percent higher than fossil fuel investment. Still, the United States has clearly ceded leadership in the climate fight. These seven charts reflect a year with implications that will be felt for a long time to come. The first year of Trump 2.0 brought sweeping changes to Washington’s view of electric vehicles, and American automakers felt the squeeze. President Donald Trump and Congress took several steps to eliminate federal support for it, including eliminating the $7,500 consumer tax credits. .......read on https://grist.org/politics/the-consequences-of-trumps-war-on-climate-in-7-charts/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Crisis; Hits: 79

‘Collapse of Civilisation is the Most Likely Outcome’: Top Climate Scientist Asher Moses, originally published by Voice of Action Australia’s top climate scientist says “we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse” of civilisation, which may now be inevitable because 9 of the 15 known global climate tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have been activated. Australian National University emeritus professor Will Steffen (pictured) told Voice of Action that there was already a chance we have triggered a “global tipping cascade” that would take us to a less habitable “Hothouse Earth” climate, regardless of whether we reduced emissions.

Steffen says it would take 30 years at best (more likely 40-60 years) to transition to net zero emissions, but when it comes to tipping points such as Arctic sea ice we could have already run out of time. Evidence shows we will also lose control of the tipping points for the Amazon rainforest, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the Greenland ice sheet in much less time than it’s going to take us to get to net zero emissions, Steffen says. “Given the momentum in both the Earth and human systems, and the growing difference between the ‘reaction time’ needed to steer humanity towards a more sustainable future, and the ‘intervention time’ left to avert a range of catastrophes in both the physical climate system (e.g., melting of Arctic sea ice) and the biosphere (e.g., loss of the Great Barrier Reef), we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse,” said Steffen. “That is, the intervention time we have left has, in many cases, shrunk to levels that are shorter than the time it would take to transition to a more sustainable system.

“The fact that many of the features of the Earth System that are being damaged or lost constitute ‘tipping points’ that could well link to form a ‘tipping cascade’ raises the ultimate question: Have we already lost control of the system? Is collapse now inevitable?” This is not a unique view – leading Stanford University biologists, who were first to reveal that we are already experiencing the sixth mass extinction on Earth, released new research this week showing species extinctions are accelerating in an unprecedented manner, which may be a tipping point for the collapse of human civilisation. Also in the past week research emerged showing the world’s major food baskets will experience more extreme droughts than previously forecast, with southern Australia among the worst hit globally. Steffen used the metaphor of the Titanic in one of his recent talks to describe how we may cross tipping points faster than the time it would take us to react to get our impact on the climate under control. “If the Titanic realises that it’s in trouble and it has about 5km that it needs to slow and steer the ship, but it’s only 3km away from the iceberg, it’s already doomed,” he said.

‘This is an existential threat to civilization’.......Steffen, along with some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists, laid out our predicament in the starkest possible terms in a piece for the journal Nature at the end of last year.They found that 9 of the 15 known Earth tipping elements that regulate the state of the planet had been activated, and there was now scientific support for declaring a state of planetary emergency. These tipping points can trigger abrupt carbon release back into the atmosphere, such as the release of carbon dioxide and methane caused by the irreversible thawing of the Arctic permafrost.

9 of 15 known Earth tipping points have been activated....“If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization,” they wrote. “No amount of economic cost–benefit analysis is going to help us. We need to change our approach to the climate problem. “The evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute.” Steffen is also the lead author of the heavily cited 2018 paper, Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, where he found that “even if the Paris Accord target of a 1.5°C to 2°C rise in temperature is met, we cannot exclude the risk that a cascade of feedbacks could push the Earth System irreversibly onto a ‘Hothouse Earth’ pathway.” Steffen is a global authority on the subject of tipping points, which are prone to sudden shifts if they get pushed hard enough by a changing climate, and could take the trajectory of the system out of human control. Further warming would become self-sustaining due to system feedbacks and their mutual interaction. Steffen describes it like a row of dominos and his concern is that we are already at the point of no return, knocking over the first couple of dominos which could lead to a cascade knocking over the whole row......(ed. This was published five years ago and the situation now is even more dire!).....read on https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-06-08/collapse-of-civilisation-is-the-most-likely-outcome-top-climate-scientists/

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Crisis; Hits: 95

The story of the world’s tropical forests in 2025 was not one of dramatic reversal, but one shaped by accumulated pressure. In several regions, deforestation slowed. In others, loss continued in less visible forms, shaped by fire, degradation, and political choices not limited to large-scale clearing alone. Governments continued to speak the language of protection, even as infrastructure, extraction, and energy projects advanced into forest landscapes. Progress was real, though uneven, and the distance between policy commitments and conditions on the ground remained substantial...........

What distinguished the year was the growing influence of indirect forces, rather than a single driver of loss. Heat, drought, and past damage increasingly shaped forest outcomes, even where new clearing slowed. Commodity markets rewarded persistence more than short-lived price spikes. Finance shifted away from individual projects toward broader fiscal tools. Enforcement mattered, alongside institutional credibility and the ability to operate consistently over time. Taken together, 2025 underscored that tropical forests are now shaped more by interacting systems rather than single policies. Finance, science, enforcement, conflict, and climate stress increasingly operate together, often reinforcing one another. This review traces where those systems functioned, where they faltered, and what that means for the forests caught within them.

Previous year-in-reviews:

2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | The 2010s | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2009

AND.......At the global level, climate diplomacy continued, with limited appetite for binding decisions. COP30 avoided collapse and deferred the hardest choices. Forests remained prominent in rhetoric while enforceable outcomes remained limited. Market-based tools—carbon credits, trade regulation, and conservation finance—advanced unevenly, shaped as much by political confidence and capacity as by technical design........

HOWEVER.....The first amphibian to halt a hydroelectric dam now takes on the climate crisis Mongabay News Dec 28, 2025

Known in Brazil as the admirable little red-bellied toad, the rare Melanophryniscus admirabilis is endemic to a stretch of the Forqueta River in Rio Grande do Sul state. It made history in 2014 when it halted the construction of a hydroelectric dam that would have destroyed its only habitat.
After the 2024 floods, researchers returned to the area to assess the impacts of the state’s biggest climate catastrophe on its environment.
With just over a thousand individuals in the wild, the species is listed as “critically endangered”; in addition to climate change, the little toad suffers from the advance of monocultures and the threat of wildlife trafficking.

ARVOREZINHA, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil — The admirable little red-bellied toad is the size of a thumb, but it has achieved giant feats: In 2014, it prevented the construction of a small hydroelectric dam that threatened to alter its only habitat forever. Endemic to a small stretch of the Forqueta River, in the municipality of Arvorezinha, Rio Grande do Sul, Melanophryniscus admirabilis is one of the rarest and most threatened species on the planet. Recently, after the floods that devastated the state in 2024, researchers returned to this refuge to assess whether the little toad that once halted the construction of a dam has survived the force of the waters.In October 2025, almost a year and a half after the biggest climate disaster in Rio Grande do Sul, I joined a team of researchers that would document what remained of the small habitat where just over a thousand little red-bellied toads used to live. The destination was Perau de Janeiro, a hidden fold of rocks and humid forest. Seen from above, the place, which is surrounded by tobacco plantations and pastures, looks like a common forest scene. But as we go down a steep trail, the atmosphere changes immediately. The smell of moss, the shining wet outcrop, the sound of the powerful flow of the river that ends in a waterfall: It was there that the little toad halted progress. And it was there where we wanted to find out if it still vocalized.

Described by science in 2006, the little toad belongs to the Bufonidae family, and, despite being able to jump, it prefers to walk slowly as if measuring the ground before taking each step. Its green back and its little colorful legs and belly form an unlikely contrast for someone who prefers not to be seen but insists on being remembered. These warning colors serve as an alert to visually oriented predators that the animal is toxic, dangerous or unpalatable — a defense mechanism known as aposematism.The eyes that observe them quickly jump to the light green dots that form patterns on the bottom of their abdominal area. “I say that when we observe these little spots, they are like constellations. So we can see some patterns, as if we were looking at the stars,” says Michelle Abadie, a biologist and the leader of the research team, comparing the toad’s macroglands to dots in the sky. The glands release toxins as a defense mechanism but also serve as individual identification similar to a human fingerprint.Abadie has been working with the species for 15 years, and since the beginning of her research, she has faced challenges when it comes to keeping the toad population stable.......read on https://mongabay1.substack.com/p/the-first-amphibian-to-halt-a-hydroelectric?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=5165423&post_id=182554890&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=mwxsy&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Winds, Blizzards and Triple-digit Heat put over Half of the US in the Path of Extreme Weather.

Economic Growth is Still Heating the Planet. Is there Any Way Out?

The Consequences of Trump’s War on Climate in 7 Charts.

‘Collapse of Civilisation is the Most Likely Outcome’: saysTop Climate Scientist Asher Moses,

Tropical forests in 2025 shaped by Accumulated Pressures.... Deforestation Slowed, Loss Continued Shaped by Fire, Degradation, and Politics.....and the Amazing Little Toad

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