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The Guardian Climate Change
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...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.
Continue reading...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...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...‘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...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...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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Continue reading...Some Floridians choose to stay despite warnings of life risk: ‘We have faith in the Lord’
As Hurricane Milton approaches many cities were largely deserted but some people decided to shelter in place
Most left when they were told to. But some chose to stay, even though officials warned Hurricane Milton would turn their homes into coffins.
Along Florida’s Gulf coast, where millions of people were urged to get out of harm’s way, cities were largely deserted on Wednesday afternoon as time ran out to evacuate. Those who remained were advised to shelter in place as best they could. Others who fled spoke of their dread at what, if anything, they would return to once the storm had passed.
Continue reading...‘Florida isn’t safe’: Ron DeSantis is unfit for hurricane response, activists say
Advocates believe governor is unfit for emergency planning due to policies that fuel the crisis worsening storms
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, is back in the spotlight as he briefs residents on the arrival of Hurricane Milton, amid warnings it could be one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the state.
DeSantis, who dropped his presidential campaign in January, is as governor responsible for implementing Florida’s emergency plan by coordinating agencies, marshaling resources and urging residents to follow evacuation orders.
Continue reading...Our dystopian climate isn’t just about fires and floods. It’s about society fracturing | Bill McKibben
Climate disasters risk pulling society apart. To survive we need solidarity – and only one ticket in the US election offers that
Even as the good people of Florida’s west coast pulled the soggy mattresses from Helene out to the curb, Milton appeared on the horizon this week – a double blast of destruction from the Gulf of Mexico that’s a reminder that physics takes no time off, not even in the weeks before a crucial election. My sense is that those storms will help turn the voting on 5 November into a climate election of sorts, even if – as is likely – neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump spend much time in the next 25 days talking about CO2 or solar power.
That’s because these storms show not only the power of global heating (Helene’s record rains, and Milton’s almost unprecedented intensification, were reminders of what it means to have extremely hot ocean temperatures). More, they show what we’re going to need to survive the now inevitable train of such disasters. Which is solidarity. Which is something only one ticket offers.
Continue reading...Andrew Forrest says net zero is ‘fantasy’ so his goal is ‘real zero’. What does he mean – and can he achieve it? | Temperature Check
The mining tycoon says his iron ore business will stop using fossil fuels by the end of the decade without carbon offsets or carbon capture and storage
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About $45tn of global business revenue is covered by corporate “net zero emissions” pledges but the iron ore billionaire Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest thinks the whole net zero thing is “fantasy”.
“Now is the time to walk away from net zero 2050, that hasn’t been anything really but a con to maintain fossil fuels,” Forrest said last week.
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Continue reading...US emergency crews struggle as climate crisis fuels ‘unprecedented’ competing disasters
Resources are stretched thin as the south-east grapples with hurricanes and the west swelters in high temperatures
It’s been a brutal week in weather-related disasters across the US. Large parts of the south-east are still grappling with the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, and another potentially catastrophic storm is barreling towards Florida. At the same time, much of the west has been sweltering amid scorching temperatures, which have elevated fire risks and fueled extreme fire behavior.
Hurricanes and fires aren’t abnormal in early autumn. But the climate crisis has turned up the dial and created more opportunities for catastrophes to overlap, ultimately adding strain on relief resources, emergency response, and those who have been impacted by the dangerous and destructive events.
Continue reading...Anger at UK’s ‘bonkers’ plan to reach net zero by importing fuel from North Korea
Government criticised over list of potential countries for sourcing biomass, which also includes Afghanistan
A plan by the British government to burn biomass imported from countries including North Korea and Afghanistan has been described as “bonkers”, with critics saying it undermines the credibility of the UK’s climate strategy.
A bioenergy resource model, published in late summer, calculates that only a big expansion in the import of energy crops and wood from a surprising list of nations would satisfy the UK’s plan to meet net zero.
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