Month: September 2018

By KUMI NAIDOO September 19, 2018 Exactly a year ago, on Sept. 20, 2017, one of the most violent storms ever to hit the Caribbean made landfall on the island of Puerto Rico. The storm, the likes of which Puerto Ricans had not seen in several generations, had gathered in intensity before tearing through Dominica and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and ending in Puerto Rico. No one can deny the devastation that Hurricane Maria brought on the population of Puerto Rico. Most people survived the hell of the storm but were then forced to live through the hell of the aftermath. Food and water shortages were pervasive throughout the island, power was virtually wiped out, hospitals were closed because of extensive damage, and basic services all but collapsed. No one…

A rescuer helped a resident of New Bern, N.C., from her home on Saturday.CreditCreditVictor J. Blue for The New York Times  When hurricane Florence struck the Carolinas last week, humanity played a role in the destruction. Human intervention is making natural disasters unnaturally harmful, both in causes and effects, and the number of ways our own influence is making things worse, taken together, is sobering. On a global scale, we are bolstering the destructive potential of hurricanes and other extreme weather events by driving climate change. At the local level, we remain reluctant to deal with the problems of our own making, building and rebuilding in risky areas even as we avoid the policies and investment that would help mitigate the threats. Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia…

  Flooded street in Houston after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 Credit: © Irina K. / Fotolia For the first time, researchers have developed a data set quantifying what the social cost of carbon -- the measure of the economic harm from carbon dioxide emissions -- will be for the globe's nearly 200 countries, and the results are surprising. Although much previous research has focused on how rich countries benefit from the fossil fuel economy, while damages accrue primarily to the developing world, the top three counties with the most to lose from climate change are the United States, India and Saudi Arabia -- three major world powers. The world's largest CO2emitter, China, also places in the top five countries with the highest losses. The findings, which appear in Nature Climate…