New data: Adult obesity rates top 35 percent in seven U.S. states – As recently as 2012, no state was over 35 percent

WASHINGTON, DC, 12 September 2018 (Trust for America’s Health) – Seven U. S. states had adult obesity rates at or above 35 percent in 2017, up from five states in 2016, and no state had a statistically significant improvement in its obesity rate over the past year, according to new national data reported in the […]

Global debt soars to $169 trillion, along with fears of crisis ahead – “We were supposed to correct a debt bubble. What we did instead was create more debt.”

By David J. Lynch 3 September 2018 (The Washington Post) – Ten years after the worst financial panic since the 1930s, growing debt burdens in key developing economies are fueling fears of a new crisis that could spread far beyond the disruption sweeping Turkey. The loss of investor confidence in the Turkish lira, which has […]

As carbon dioxide levels climb, millions at risk of nutritional deficiencies – “We cannot disrupt most of the biophysical conditions to which we have adapted over millions of years without unanticipated impacts on our own health and wellbeing”

BOSTON, Massachusetts, 27 August 2018 (Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) – Rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) from human activity are making staple crops such as rice and wheat less nutritious and could result in 175 million people becoming zinc deficient and 122 million people becoming protein deficient by 2050, according to new […]

Air conditioning use emerges as one of the key drivers of global electricity-demand growth

15 May 2018 (IEA) – The growing use of air conditioners in homes and offices around the world will be one of the top drivers of global electricity demand over the next three decades, according to new analysis by the International Energy Agency that stresses the urgent need for policy action to improve cooling efficiency. […]

North China Plain could face killer heat due to global warming – “This is just going to be the hottest spot for deadly heat waves in the future”

By David L. Chandler 31 July 2018 (MIT News) – A region that holds one of the biggest concentrations of people on Earth could be pushing against the boundaries of habitability by the latter part of this century, a new study shows. Research has shown that beyond a certain threshold of temperature and humidity, a […]

The junk debt that tanked the economy? It’s back in a big way.

By Steven Pearlstein 27 July 2018(The Washington Post) – Like most people, you probably assume that the level of lending done by banks at any moment is largely driven by how much demand there is from borrowers. But in the world of modern finance, that’s only part of the story. For just as important is […]

(a) ERA-Interim wet bulb temperature (T) in India on 21 May 2016. (b) Monthly maximum of the wet bulb temperature in May 2016 (◦C). (c) Anomalies of the maximum wet bulb temperature in May 2016 (K), see text for details on the very high wet bulb temperatures in May 2016. (d–f) Same as (a–c) but for 22 May 2015. Graphic: Oldenborgh, et al., 2018 / Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences

Graph of the Day: Wet bulb temperature in India during record heat wave, May 2016

24 January 2018 (Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences) – On 19 May 2016 the afternoon temperature reached 51.0◦C in Phalodi in the northwest of India – a new record for the highest observed maximum temperature in India. The previous year, a widely reported very lethal heat wave occurred in the southeast, in Andhra Pradesh […]

Decadal mean changes of maximum near-surface air temperature (ΔTx) and wet-bulb temperature (ΔTW) for 30-year future periods in the Middle East and North Africa. The figure is generated using the results of the ensemble mean of 17 RCMs. Graphic: Ahmadalipour Moradkhani, 2018 / Environment International

Deadly heat waves in Middle East and North Africa to increase by 8–20 times if global warming isn’t slowed

By Ali Ahmadalipour and Hamid Moradkhani 12 May 2018 (Environment International) – Climate change will substantially exacerbate extreme temperature and heatwaves. The impacts will be more intense across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region mostly characterized by hot and arid climate, already intolerable for human beings in many parts. In this study, daily […]

Standing perfectly still: no progress in replacing fossil fuels for the past twenty years

15 July 2018 (Desdemona Despair) – It’s well known that human population is increasing relentlessly, with no peak in sight for at least the next century. Various projections estimate that the population will be somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twelve billion by the year 2100 (cf. New projection shows human population could reach […]

How the 2008 financial crash made cities unaffordable worldwide – Property markets in the world’s major cities have “synchronised”, leaving behind nations and citizens

By Nathan Brooker 14 March 2018 (Financial Times) –  In the stormy spring of 2008, the UK’s worsening property downturn was yet to hit Sloane Street in central London. A full year after the start of the credit crunch and the run on Northern Rock — which started a slide that would see more than 20 […]

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