severe weather
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Oldest Utah newspaper: Bark-beetle driven wildfires comprise a vicious climate cycle
Deseret News, owned by the Mormon Church and “usually described as moderate to conservative” may have begun the slow march toward climate reality. A story this month titled, “Bark beetles are feasting on Utah forests” begins: A vicious cycle is brewing in Utah: Bark beetles are killing a lot of trees in the state. Dead […]
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Nature: Hurricanes are getting fiercer
Nature has published a major analysis that supports my recent two–parter. As Nature explains: … scientists have come up with the firmest evidence so far that global warming will significantly increase the intensity of the most extreme storms worldwide. The maximum wind speeds of the strongest tropical cyclones have increased significantly since 1981, according to […]
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Why future Katrinas and Gustavs will be much worse, part 2
A lot of knee-jerk deniers (please don’t write in — I know that is redundant) misread “part 1,” as I knew they would. I was not wading into the issue of whether global warming has already made intense tropical storms more common. That remains a great subject of debate, mostly because of the inadequacy of […]
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Should environmentalists jump on climate disasters?
There’s a heated debate going on about whether environmentalists should jump on breaking climate disasters like Gustav and frame them in terms of global warming and other environmental issues. Open Left’s Matt Stoller and Center for American Progress’s Joseph Romm say yes, and “anonymous environmental leader” says no (all are must-reads). In my recent book, […]
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Why global warming means killer storms worse than Katrina and Gustav, part 1
Hurricanes can get much, much bigger and stronger than we have so far seen in the Atlantic. The most intense Pacific storm on record was Super Typhoon Tip in 1979, which reached maximum sustained winds of 190 mph near the center. On its wide rim, gale-force winds (39 mph) extended over a diameter of an […]
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How did so much water get into a New Orleans canal?
Here’s a question I’d like to know the answer to. Hurricane Gustav dealt New Orleans a glancing blow, passing it by to the west. Yet as the world saw, the city’s Industrial Canal — a large ship channel running north-south close to neighborhoods — filled nearly to the top, and there was some alarming, if […]
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Oil platforms off La. fare OK under hurricane; wetlands, not so much
Louisiana’s people and property fared better under Hurricane Gustav than had been feared, but acres of valuable wetlands were likely irrevocably destroyed. “The last thing on anyone’s mind during a hurricane is how the wetlands are going to do,” says activist Aaron Giles. But since happy and healthy wetlands act as storm barriers, “wetlands are […]
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Some enviros self-censor, but should progressives?
A friend forwarded me an email titled "Gustav and Hannah" that was written to environmental activists by one of the top environmental leaders in this country. I am going to write on it at length because it is illustrative of the catastrophic messaging failure of the environmental community on issues of climate, government action, and […]