Climate

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.

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Como escritor y artista me doy cuenta de que hay formas efectivas de transformar el modo en el que abordamos la emergencia climática.

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)

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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.

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Much of what’s still undeveloped offers some the best defenses against climate change.

A second Trump administration would be expected to shred climate polices. California officials are devising ways to insulate its environmental regulations.

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.

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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

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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

• Dramatic images show the first floods in the Sahara in half a century

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Greenhouse gas emissions added rain, intensified winds and doubled the storm’s potential property damage, scientists estimated.

Harris and White House criticize Donald Trump for attacks on federal response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton

• Tell us: how have you been affected by Hurricane 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:

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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.

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We cover each presidential candidate’s climate policies.

Storms Helene and Milton have triggered rise of misinformation stoked by Trump and fellow Republicans

• Hurricane Milton – latest updates

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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It’s not indoctrination that’s keeping a majority of younger voters out of the Republican column.

Some birds migrate thousands of miles every autumn. How exactly do they manage it? Scientists built a flight chamber to find out.

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

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Millions of Americans have moved to the Sunshine State over the last several decades, only to see Florida’s future collide with climate change.

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.

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Graphics show storm that made landfall as category 3 and ushered in intense rainfall, tornadoes and storm surge

• Hurricane Milton’s destructive power – in pictures

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.

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