Climate Issues - Haggard Earth

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Issues; Hits: 88

Scientists breathe new life into climate website after shutdown under Trump. Climate.gov, which went dark this summer, to be revived by volunteers as climate.us with an expanded mission. Guardian Eric Holthaus Sat 30 Aug 2025 Earlier this summer, access to climate.gov – one of the most widely used portals of climate information on the internet – was thwarted by the Trump administration, and its production team was fired in the process. The website offered years’ worth of accessibly written material on climate science. The site is technically still online but has been intentionally buried by the team of political appointees who now run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Now, a team of climate communication experts – including many members of the former climate.gov team – is working to resurrect its content into a new organization with an expanded mission. Their effort’s new website, climate.us, would not only offer public-facing interpretations of climate science, but could also begin to directly offer climate-related services, such as assisting local governments with mapping increased flooding risk due to climate change. The effort is being led by climate.gov’s former managing editor, Rebecca Lindsey, who, although now unemployed, has recruited several of her former colleagues to volunteer their time in an attempt to build climate.us into a thriving non-profit organization.

“A lot of federal employees are grieving over the sense that they’ve not just lost a job, but a vocation,” said Lindsey. “None of us were ready to let go of climate.gov and the mission.” In the first few weeks after the Trump administration ended their work, Lindsey’s new team has received a steady flow of outside support, including legal support, and a short-term grant that has helped them develop a vision for what they’d like to do next. “The things that were most popular on climate.gov were things that basically just taught people about climate, both natural climate and climate change,” said Lindsey. “There is a need for content that helps people achieve basic climate literacy independent of an agency.” As multiyear veterans of the federal bureaucracy, at times they’ve been surprised by the possibilities that the new effort might offer.“We’re allowed to use TikTok now,” said Lindsey. “We’re allowed to have a little bit of fun. We have a group chat. We’re diving into things that are not part of our wheelhouse.” The climate.us team is also in the process of soft-launching a crowdsourced fundraising drive that Lindsey hopes they can leverage into more permanent support from a major foundation. Lindsey also set up an email address to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to offer in-kind support.

“Someone bought our domain name for us,” she said. “And we have somebody that’s volunteered web-hosting space for this phase. But we do not yet have the sort of large operational funding that we will need if we’re going to actually transition climate.gov operations to the non-profit space.” In the meantime, Lindsey and her team have found themselves spending the summer knee-deep in the logistics of building a major non-profit from scratch. “We’ve all had to let go of the 9-5 mentality and basically try to do things as quickly as possible,” said one member of Lindsey’s new team who previously worked with her at climate.gov but asked not to be named for fear of retribution.“By carrying on the legacy of climate.gov and actually trying to republish the most vital parts of climate.gov, we hope that we can be a cornerstone,” said Lindsey. “We hope that it will provide a critical mass that will attract other partners who want to be part of the effort.”.....read on https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/30/climate-gov-website-trump

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Issues; Hits: 80

Extreme weather cost $2tn globally over the past decade, report finds. US suffered greatest economic losses, report commissioned by International Chamber of Commerce finds, followed by China and India Guardian Ajit Niranan Mon 11 Nov 2024 Violent weather cost the world $2tn over the past decade, a report has found, as diplomats descend on the Cop29 climate summit for a tense fight over finance.The analysis of 4,000 climate-related extreme weather events, from flash floods that wash away homes in an instant to slow-burning droughts that ruin farms over years, found economic damages hit $451bn across the past two years alone.

The figures reflect the full cost of extreme weather rather than the share scientists can attribute to climate breakdown. They come as world leaders argue over how much rich countries should pay to help poor countries clean up their economies, adapt to a hotter world and deal with the damage done by increasingly violent weather.. The figures reflect the full cost of extreme weather rather than the share scientists can attribute to climate breakdown. They come as world leaders argue over how much rich countries should pay to help poor countries clean up their economies, adapt to a hotter world and deal with the damage done by increasingly violent weather. Climate breakdown was responsible for more than half of the 68,000 heat deaths during the scorching European summer of 2022, a study found last month, and doubled the chance of the extreme levels of rainfall that hammered central Europe this September, an early attribution study found. In some other cases, researchers found only mild effects or did not observe a climate link at all.....read on https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/11/extreme-weather-cost-2tn-globally-over-past-decade-report-finds

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Issues; Hits: 85

A new study explores three potential future scenarios and finds that, under current trends and policies, the situation is projected to worsen across all planetary boundaries by 2050, except for ozone depletion. But targeted interventions and ambitious policy measures can reduce the negative effects and steer humanity toward more sustainable futures.

The new study, recently published in Nature, includes Centre researchers Sarah Cornell and Johan Rockström as co-authors, alongside researchers from several Dutch environmental institutes and agencies."Human civilisation has reached a critical juncture, and using a novel methodology, we show how it can continue to develop without ruining its natural foundations," says Johan Rockström, who is also the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). "This is the most comprehensive coupling so far of the framework of planetary boundaries to data from model-based future scenarios." The authors used an Integrated Assessment Model to make projections for 2030 and 2050 for eight out of nine planetary boundaries, based on three different scenarios. While two scenarios showed bleak results, the third showed that with timely action, negative trends can be reversed. The encouraging news is that interventions - such as implementing the Paris Climate Agreement, adopting healthier diets, and improving the efficiency of food, water, and nutrient use - can significantly reduce planetary boundary overshoot. These actions can steer humanity toward a more sustainable trajectory, provided they are implemented in ways that are socially and institutionally feasible. "We can clearly quantify the danger of business as usual, while showing that ambitious change pays off", says Johan Rockström.

Three scenarios, one positive outcome......The scenarios used were based on three of the "Shared Socioeconomic Pathways" (SSP) scenarios from the IPPC's Sixth Assessment Report, with additional policy assumptions. SSP 2, assuming no major shift in current societal trends - that is, business-as-usual - was used as a baseline. It showed further degradation for nearly all indicators for the 2030 and 2050 projections......https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-stories/2025-06-03-new-quantifications-planetary-boundaries-in-the-future.html

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Issues; Hits: 97

"We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish"Dezeen Pooran Desai | 3 January 2025 A perfect storm is upon us, and to confront it we must this year help to lead a fundamental shift in the way we see the world, writes Pooran Desai."We have two years to save the world." So said Simon Stiell, United Nations climate chief, in April last year. We are now nine months – more than a third of the way – into those two years. We have run out of time. We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish. "Reimagine".......... Take this option and by 2050 we'll be enjoying a planet where the living systems on which we depend are regenerating and able to support a population of 10 billion. We are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points We will be improving our personal health and the health of our communities. We will have transformed from a consumer species, consuming the rest of nature, to a regenerated one, working as part of the rest of nature and returning the living planet to a healthy state. The second option is far less comforting. In this option we continue with our consumer economy with some incremental moves towards circularity and targets like net zero. They avoid saying it in public, but multiple scientists have told me they genuinely fear that if we follow this path, by the middle of the century we will be trying to survive on a planet only able to support maybe one or two billion people. A stark choice. Why two polar outcomes? It is because we are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points which interact and cascade in ways that move us away from a stable state. Climate change leads to drought, collapse in food production, mass migration and war.

The big question we need to ask ourselves: can we tip from a degenerating to a regenerating state? I think so, and I believe it is simple. The good news is that a paradigm shift in science, culture and consciousness is emerging. This rebalancing from reductionism to holism, from rationality to intuition, from science to art, and from materialism to a sense of the sacred will be essential for resolving the polycrisis. Leading scientists are calling for us to fundamentally change how we teach science Architects and designers work at the nexus of art and science, and so will be critical in manifesting the reimagining. In science the paradigm shift is a revolution every bit as dramatic as when Copernicus deposed the idea that our planet is the centre of the universe. There is a growing and profound dissatisfaction with reductionism and materialism. Focusing on the detail and the parts, we are realising, fails to explain how the world hangs together. In medicine, contradicting all reductionist hopes, we now know that genes predict only 5-10 per cent of disease at most, and that the whole planet. https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/03/reimagining-pooran-desai-opinion/

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Issues; Hits: 146

"We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish"Dezeen Pooran Desai | 3 January 2025 A perfect storm is upon us, and to confront it designers must this year help to lead a fundamental shift in the way we see the world, writes Pooran Desai."We have two years to save the world." So said Simon Stiell, United Nations climate chief, in April last year. We are now nine months – more than a third of the way – into those two years. We have run out of time. We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish. "Reimagine".......... Take this option and by 2050 we'll be enjoying a planet where the living systems on which we depend are regenerating and able to support a population of 10 billion. We are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points We will be improving our personal health and the health of our communities.

We will have transformed from a consumer species, consuming the rest of nature, to a regenerated one, working as part of the rest of nature and returning the living planet to a healthy state. The second option is far less comforting. In this option we continue with our consumer economy with some incremental moves towards circularity and targets like net zero. They avoid saying it in public, but multiple scientists have told me they genuinely fear that if we follow this path, by the middle of the century we will be trying to survive on a planet only able to support maybe one or two billion people. A stark choice. Why two polar outcomes? It is because we are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points which interact and cascade in ways that move us away from a stable state. Climate change leads to drought, collapse in food production, mass migration and war.

The big question we need to ask ourselves: can we tip from a degenerating to a regenerating state? I think so, and I believe it is simple. The good news is that a paradigm shift in science, culture and consciousness is emerging. This rebalancing from reductionism to holism, from rationality to intuition, from science to art, and from materialism to a sense of the sacred will be essential for resolving the polycrisis.

Leading scientists are calling for us to fundamentally change how we teach science Architects and designers work at the nexus of art and science, and so will be critical in manifesting the reimagining. In science the paradigm shift is a revolution every bit as dramatic as when Copernicus deposed the idea that our planet is the centre of the universe. There is a growing and profound dissatisfaction with reductionism and materialism. Focusing on the detail and the parts, we are realising, fails to explain how the world hangs together. https://www.dezeen.com/2025/01/03/reimagining-pooran-desai-opinion/

Scientists Breathe New Life Into Climate Website After Shutdown under Trump.

Extreme Weather cost $2tn Globally over the Past Decade

Climate- Situation is projected to Worsen across All planetary Boundaries by 2050, Except for Ozone Depletion.

"We have Only Two Options before us: Reimagine, or Perish"

Only two Options before us: Reimagine, or Perish" Must Fundamental Shift in the Way we See the World,

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