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‘It’s mindblowing’: US meteorologists face death threats as hurricane conspiracies surge
Storms Helene and Milton have triggered rise of misinformation stoked by Trump and fellow Republicans
Meteorologists tracking the advance of Hurricane Milton have been targeted by a deluge of conspiracy theories that they were controlling the weather, abuse and even death threats, amid what they say is an unprecedented surge in misinformation as two major hurricanes have hit the US.
A series of falsehoods and threats have swirled in the two weeks since Hurricane Helene tore through six states causing several hundred deaths, followed by Milton crashing into Florida on Wednesday.
Continue reading...The Problem With This Conspiracy Theory Is Reality
What Flying in a Wind Tunnel Reveals About Birds
Labour’s carbon-capture scheme will be Starmer’s white elephant: a terrible mistake costing billions | George Monbiot
The supposedly green project – brainchild of the previous Tory government – will increase emissions, not reduce them
This will be Keir Starmer’s HS2: a hugely expensive scheme that will either be abandoned, scaled back or require massive extra funding to continue, after many billions have been spent. The government’s plan for carbon capture and storage (CCS) – catching carbon dioxide from major industry and pumping it into rocks under the North Sea – is a fossil fuel-driven boondoggle that will accelerate climate breakdown. Its ticket price of £21.7bn is just the beginning of a phenomenal fiscal nightmare.
There might be a case for a CCS programme if the following conditions were met. First, that the money for cheaper and more effective projects had already been committed. The opposite has happened. Labour slashed its green prosperity plan from £28bn a year to £15bn, and with it a sensible and rational programme for insulating 19m homes.
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...Will Climate Change Transform the Florida Dream?
The Guardian view on Hurricane Milton and other disasters: extreme politics is worsening extreme weather | Editorial
Climate change deniers such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis lament the impact of such events but won’t acknowledge the underlying problem
The preparations for Hurricane Milton were on a mammoth scale, as the clean-up will be. The storm thankfully lost some of its force before it slammed into Florida, making landfall on Wednesday night as a category 3 hurricane. But many more lives would surely have been lost without the massive evacuation and the deployment of thousands of national guard troops and personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
This was the second direct hit on the state in less than a fortnight, after Hurricane Helene, which killed at least 225 people in the US. The hotter ocean temperatures which worsened these storms are hundreds of times likelier because of human-made global heating, a new analysis has shown. Climate change may have increased the rain dumped on parts of the south by Helene by 50%, scientists believe. Another study has suggested such double punches could arrive every three years thanks to the continuing burning of fossil fuels.
Continue reading...A visual guide to the damage caused by Hurricane Milton
Graphics show storm that made landfall as category 3 and ushered in intense rainfall, tornadoes and storm surge
Hurricane Milton made landfall as a category 3 hurricane on Wednesday night at around 8.30pm near Siesta Key in Florida. For about eight hours, the storm brought intense rainfall, flooding, tornadoes, storm surge and strong winds before moving off over the ocean just north of Cape Canaveral as a category 1 hurricane.
Some of the hardest-hit areas included Sarasota, Fort Myers, St Petersburg, St Lucie and other cities on the Gulf coast. Storm surge warnings were in effect along Florida’s east coast to Georgia’s Altamaha Sound.
Continue reading...Tornadoes, mass outages and deaths: what to know about Hurricane Milton’s impact
Tempest brought up to 10ft of storm surge and left millions at risk from flooding after hitting Florida on Wednesday
Hurricane Milton has killed at least nine people and left extensive property damage across Florida, hitting some areas previously affected by Hurricane Helene last month.
Here are the key takeaways from what we know about its impact and what experts are saying about a hurricane that it had been feared could be one of the worst in the state’s history.
Continue reading...Harvest in England the second worst on record because of wet weather
Wheat haul in England estimated to be down by 21%, with Britain’s wine producers also hit hard
England has suffered its second worst harvest on record – with fears growing for next year – after heavy rain last winter hit production of key crops including wheat and oats.
The cold, damp weather, stretching from last autumn through this spring and early summer, has hit the rapidly developing UK wine industry particularly hard, with producers saying harvests are down by between 75% and a third, depending on the region.
Continue reading...Hellish heat and primal fear: Croatian firefighters on frontline of climate crisis
Firefighters are stoic about the risks they face but say climate change has affected every part of the job
A short drive and a world away from the tourist-thronged old town of Split, past retirees clambering out of cruise ships and bachelor parties stumbling into beachside bars, Ivan Sanader studied a smouldering hillside that stank of smoke.
The night before, he had fought a fire that charred the slope and threatened to engulf a roadside restaurant. Now, the commander of a mobile firefighter centre in Croatia was issuing orders to stop it flaring back up.
Continue reading...NW Natural Added to Oregon Suit Over Climate Change
‘I think, boy, I’m a part of all this’: how local heroes reforested Rio’s green heart
A restoration project to revitalise the Atlantic forest is making the city a much more liveable place in the face of increasingly frequent heatwaves
From his vantage point at the top of the hill where he grew up, Luiz Alberto Nunes dos Santos gazes down at the city below. White apartment blocks are nestled among mountains covered with luxuriant vegetation. The statue of Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain appear through gaps in the trees. The sea is just about visible in the distance.
Rio de Janeiro’s striking blend of urban infrastructure and tropical jungle, cradled between granite peaks and the sea, earned the city Unesco world heritage status in 2012. Yet few people realise that the verdant forests cloaking Rio’s dramatic hills are largely the result of human intervention.
Continue reading...Hurricane Milton: nearly 3 million without power in Florida as category 3 storm makes landfall
Powerful cyclone slams into coast, bringing deadly storm surge to Sarasota, Tampa, St Petersburg and Fort Myers
A weakening but still tremendously powerful Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida’s west coast on Wednesday night as a category 3, leaving more than 2 million homes without power, while bringing “catastrophic” winds likely to cause significant property damage.
The cyclone, described earlier in the day by Joe Biden as “the storm of the century”, made landfall near Sarasota, Florida, just after 8:30pm ET, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said. The storm was bringing deadly storm surge to much of Florida’s Gulf coast, including densely populated areas such as Tampa, St Petersburg, Sarasota and Fort Myers.
Continue reading...Covering All the Corners of a Warming World
Collapsing wildlife populations near ‘points of no return’, report warns
As average population falls reach 95% in some regions, experts call for urgent action but insist ‘nature can recover’
Global wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 73% in 50 years, a new scientific assessment has found, as humans continue to push ecosystems to the brink of collapse.
Latin America and the Caribbean recorded the steepest average declines in recorded wildlife populations, with a 95% fall, according to the WWF and the Zoological Society of London’s (ZSL) biennial Living Planet report. They were followed by Africa with 76%, and Asia and the Pacific at 60%. Europe and North America recorded comparatively lower falls of 35% and 39% respectively since 1970.
Continue reading...En las altas montañas de Alaska, por fin se revela el secreto de un glaciar
On the climate crisis, housing and more, politicians avoid clarity because it demands action | Greg Jericho
Our leaders may prefer complexity because it means they can defer taking action – but doing something about emissions reduction or slow wage growth is actually not that complex
After spending any time analysing policy you quickly realise that politicians expend a supreme level of effort to avoid doing the obvious, and instead they do complex things that neither solve a problem nor appease their opponents.
For politicians, the problem with clarity is that it demands action. Complexity provides safety because action can more easily be avoided. And so the obvious and clear are painted as “extreme”, while the complex is regarded as “mature”.
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