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Climate
Climate Disasters Are Shattering the Lives of People Who Live in Mobile Homes
We Need to Hear More About Food Issues From Harris and Trump
Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature’s carbon sink failing?
The sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models – and could rapidly accelerate global heating
It begins each day at nightfall. As the light disappears, billions of zooplankton, crustaceans and other marine organisms rise to the ocean surface to feed on microscopic algae, returning to the depths at sunrise. The waste from this frenzy – Earth’s largest migration of creatures – sinks to the ocean floor, removing millions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere each year.
This activity is one of thousands of natural processes that regulate the Earth’s climate. Together, the planet’s oceans, forests, soils and other natural carbon sinks absorb about half of all human emissions.
Continue reading...Europe’s medical schools to give more training on diseases linked to climate crisis
New climate network will teach trainee doctors more about heatstroke, dengue and malaria and role of global warming in health
Mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria will become a bigger part of the curriculum at medical schools across Europe in the face of the climate crisis.
Future doctors will also have more training on how to recognise and treat heatstroke, and be expected to take the climate impact of treatments such as inhalers for asthma into account, medical school leaders said, announcing the formation of the European Network on Climate & Health Education (Enche).
Continue reading...‘Vengeful’ Trump withheld disaster aid and will do so again, ex-officials warn
Former administration officials say Trump deliberately denied funds to states he deemed politically hostile
Donald Trump deliberately withheld disaster aid to states he deemed politically hostile to him as US president and will do so again unimpeded if he returns to the White House, several former Trump administration officials have warned.
As Hurricane Helene and then Hurricane Milton have ravaged much of the south-eastern US in the past two weeks, Trump has sought to pin blame upon Joe Biden’s administration for a ponderous response to the disasters, even suggesting that this was deliberate due to the number of Republican voters affected by the storms.
Continue reading...Debemos cambiar nuestra forma de contar la historia del cambio climático
The big picture: Khashayar Javanmardi explores the decline of the Caspian Sea
The Iranian photographer reveals the dangers posed to fishermen and farmers by the polluted water in which he used to swim
The world’s largest enclosed body of water, the Caspian Sea, is surrounded by jeopardies. Declining water levels from global heating have been exacerbated by increasing levels of extraction from the Volga and the Ural, the Russian rivers that flow into it. Satellite photographs show the sea shrinking at a dramatic rate. And each year increasing levels of pollutants from the five coastal states that border the Caspian contaminate it with spills from growing numbers of oil and gas fields, and with industrial and domestic waste from expanding coastal towns and cities, a magnet for internal migration.
The Iranian photographer Khashayar Javanmardi grew up on the shores of the Caspian Sea in northern Iran and used to count the hours at school before he could return to swim in it. He has spent the past few years, however, documenting the environmental decline along its coastline.
Caspian: A Southern Reflection is published by Loose Joints (£44)
Continue reading...The Observer view on climate change: Hurricane Milton is a portent – but it’s not too late | Observer editorial
We are losing in the fight against global warming, it is time to put effort into controlling what we pump into the atmosphere
The havoc unleashed by Hurricane Milton provided unambiguous evidence that we are entering a critical and alarming new phase in the planet’s climate crisis. Rising fossil fuel emissions have triggered increases in ocean temperatures and sea levels to such an extent they are generating some of the most destructive storms ever experienced in Florida. Together with Hurricane Helene earlier, the lives of about 250 people have been claimed and thousands of homes destroyed. Florida has been left reeling and forecasters have warned there is more to come – a lot more.
It is a grim prognosis that should be galvanising Florida’s political leaders into taking urgent action to protect the state. Extraordinarily, this has not been the case. Despite the intensification of hurricanes and worsening flooding over the past decade, governor Ron DeSantis has consistently rejected the idea that global warming poses a threat to Florida or that the phenomenon exists at all. A few weeks ago, he signed a law erasing the words “climate change” from state statutes and effectively pledged the state’s future to burning fossil fuels. Such behaviour is disturbing.
Continue reading...Nations Must Protect What Is Still Wild
California Prepares to Defend Its Climate Laws Against a Second Trump Term
Fears for future of ski tourism as resorts adapt to thawing snow season
While some embrace technological innovations, others are forced to close as global heating causes lack of snowfall
Sitting at his window in Västerås, central Sweden, Thomas Ohlander is wondering when the winter season might start for his outdoor adventure business, Do The North. “To schedule a trip we have to be sure of snow,” he says, “And that start date is going backwards at a crazy speed.”
Each year, Ohlander’s local ice-skating club has recorded the first date on which its members managed to get out on the frozen lakes. In 1988, that date was 4 November; this year the prediction is 4 December.
Continue reading...The week around the world in 20 pictures
Hurrican Milton, the Middle East crisis, forest fires in Brasília and the Northern Lights: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists
Continue reading...Drone footage shows rare flooding in the Sahara desert – video
Drone footage from 2 October shows how more than a year’s worth of rain fell in two days in September in south-east Morocco, filling up lakes that had been dry for decades
Continue reading...How Global Warming Made Hurricane Milton More Intense and Destructive
Hurricane Milton live: Harris accuses Trump of ‘playing politics’ with hurricane comments
Harris and White House criticize Donald Trump for attacks on federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton
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.
Our visual team have put together this visual guide to the damage caused:
Continue reading...Dramatic images show the first floods in the Sahara in half a century
More than year’s worth of rain fell in two days in south-east Morocco, filling up lake that had been dry for decades
Dramatic pictures have emerged of the first floods in the Sahara in half a century.
Two days of rainfall in September exceeded yearly averages in several areas of south-eastMorocco and caused a deluge, officials of the country’s meteorology agency said in early October. In Tagounite, a village about 450km(280 miles) south of the capital, Rabat, more than 100mm (3.9 inches) was recorded in a 24-hour period.
Continue reading...‘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.
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