Blogging the End of the World™
By Jessica Flores 3 December 2020 (USA TODAY) – Evacuations and search and rescue efforts were underway Wednesday after a record-breaking rainstorm swept across Southeast Alaska, triggering mudslides and widespread flooding. Multiple precipitation records were broken Tuesday across the region, including a single-day rainfall record from 1946, according to the National Weather Service in Juneau. […]
GENEVA, 2 December 2020 (WMO) – Climate change continued its relentless march in 2020, which is on track to be one of the three warmest years on record. 2011-2020 will be the warmest decade on record, with the warmest six years all being since 2015, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Ocean heat is at […]
By Jerry Schwartz 1 December 2020 (AP) – Behold, a world in distress: A 64-year-old woman weeps, hugging her husband as he lay dying in the COVID-19 unit of a California hospital. A crowded refugee camp in Lesbos, Greece, engulfed in flames, disgorges a string of migrants fleeing this hell on Earth. Rain-swept protesters, enraged […]
1 December 2020 (WMO) – The extremely active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season officially ended on 30 November with a record-breaking 30 named tropical storms, including 13 hurricanes and six major hurricanes. There were 12 landfalling storms in the continental United States. This is the most storms on record, surpassing the 28 from 2005, and the […]
By Thomas Frank 25 November 2020 (E&E News) – The county most at risk for coastal flooding is not in Florida, North Carolina or New Jersey, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It’s not even on a coast. It’s Cowlitz County, Washington, population 102,000, about 50 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean on the […]
29 November 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – Much has been made of Sweden’s tacit “herd immunity” policy, and people have argued both for and against its effectiveness. Now the data are in, and we can safely make a judgment about it, and the similar policies used in various other countries, like the UK, the US, and […]
18 September 2020 (NBC News) – A new report reveals the adult obesity rate in the United States now stands at more than 42 percent, the highest it’s ever been. Twelve states have an obesity rate of more than 35 percent. “That’s extremely alarming in terms of its medical implications,” says John Auerbach, president […]
By Jeff Masters, Ph.D. 15 September 2020 (Yale Climate Connections) – August 2020 was the second-warmest August since global record keeping began in 1880, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI, reported September 14. The month was just 0.04 degrees Celsius behind the record set in August 2016. NASA rated the month as the third-warmest August on […]
By Matthew Cappucci 12 September 2020 (The Washington Post) – More than 3.1 million acres have burned in California this year, part of a record fire season that still has four months to go. A suffocating cloud of smoke has veiled the West Coast for days, extending more than a thousand miles above the Pacific. And the […]
By John Sparks 12 September 2020 (Sky News) – Record rainfall across parts of Africa is stretching the resources of government officials and aid workers already struggling with COVID-19 outbreaks, regional conflicts, and other health-related emergencies. In Sudan, a three-month state of emergency has been declared after weeks of heavy rain caused the White and […]
