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Global Floods Beckon Noah

Global Floods Beckon Noah

By Robert Hunziker

This image of a painting by Carl Bille is in the public domain.
This image of a painting by Carl Bille is in the public domain.

Devastating widespread flooding and flash floods are becoming normal. Try spinning a globe and stop at any continent, other than Antarctica, blindfolded, point a finger, spot a flood. There’s nothing fake about the global warming leviathan absorbing more moisture in a warming atmosphere, much more than ever before, feeding a frenzy of powerful thunderstorms and atmospheric rivers, erupting like waterfalls from the sky. Noah is beckoned.

“Our entire infrastructure and civilization are based around a climate that no longer exists,” John Marsham, professor of atmospheric science, University of Leeds, as numerous locations throughout the world become more difficult to insure against flood damage. (Flash Floods Are a Worsening Scourge Worldwide — Here’s Why, Business Insider, October 24, 2024)

Throughout the globe, flooding has turned spectacularly powerfully biblical in scope. In 2025 it’s everywhere all at once. It’s a destroyer of property and a killer of people, and it is intensifying like never before in human history because of the climate change monster, inspired by human activity burning fossil fuels, called global warming. Since 2000, the number of recorded flood-related disasters has risen by 134% compared with the two previous decades. (Global Assessment Report 2025 Hazards: Floods, UNDRR)

In America in the month of July alone 1,434 flash flood warnings and 17 flash flood emergencies nationwide, additionally, 2,000 official preliminary flood-related storm reports with the biggest in Texas with nearly two feet of rain in a couple of days. This data is provided by the National Centers for Environmental Information. However, forewarned, future reports will be difficult to find. The Trump administration has already significantly reduced NOAA’s staff, research capacity, and data-sharing capability, including weather forecasts. (The Lasting Threat of Trump’s Cuts to NOAA and NWS on American Communities, Center for American Progress, July 16, 2025).

Moreover, “the Trump administration’s 2026 budget appears to be actively working to eliminate the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research (OAR) along with all NOAA weather laboratories and cooperative institutes and laboratories, which provide weather forecasting data and research from 80 universities and work to improve NOAA’s warning and forecast capabilities,” Ibid.

Along those lines, similarly, it’s common knowledge that Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (publ. 1949) depicts science as a tool manipulated by the Party and not a tool of independent pursuit of knowledge. In fact, 1984’s Newspeak does not have an official word for “science.” Manipulation of truth has no room for objective, empirical science. Trump is honoring the Orwellian tradition. But so what? Who really cares and who really does anything to oppose it tells a despicable story of acquiescence within the confines of a weakened subservient infection-like plague crushing human spirit.

Nevertheless, worldwide flooding carries on, ignoring small minds, powering ahead. So far in 2025, a small sampling of real events: Five entire villages washed away in Baghlan Province Afghanistan; Queensland State 12 inches/24 hours; Kentucky 9 inches few hours; Nepal catastrophic flash flooding; Pakistan deathly relentless flash floods: East Cape Province, huge flood; Texas Hill Country, killer flash flood; Niger State, deadly flash flood; Kenya catastrophic flooding; Columbia widespread flooding; Venezuela enormous flooding; Brazil 127 municipalities displaced; China flood kills 30 in city of Beijing; fatal storms flood south of France, killer torrential rains Buidoso, New Mexico, 1,000-year rainfall Chicago, deadly pounding rain North Carolina, NYC subways under water, Kansas City flooded, etc.

This type of legendary flood destruction in the contemporary world is mysteriously reflected in precious holy writings by several cultures, forewarnings of what happens when the planet is out of kilter, like now: “The Bible (Genesis 6–9) describes a worldwide flood (the Noachian Flood) covering even the highest mountains of the earth and the construction of a huge boat (a rectangular box-like craft) that transported animals, at least two of a kind of all land animals on the earth. The Qur’an (Suras 11 and 71) has almost a duplicate story with a similar huge boat that transported animals and a worldwide flood. In addition, two older stories exist in ancient Babylonian epics that describe a huge flood. One is the Epic of Gilgamesh, describing a flood on the Euphrates River (Academy of Ancient Texts nd). The other is the Epic of Atrahasis, which has a huge flood on the Tigris River (Byers nd).” (Yes, Noah’s Flood May Have Happened, But Not Over the Whole Earth, National Center for Science Education, vol. 29, 2009)

What is the signal behind unprecedented flooding, which some claim as god’s message for human wickedness, other than enormous overpowering destructiveness? It’s climate change but not regular ole climate change. This is brand new stuff: Global warming from whacky climate change means more evaporation and more moisture in the atmosphere, which means rainfall intensified sparked by human-driven greenhouse gases. This is basic science 101, and as global warming increases thanks to excessive levels of fossil fuel burning CO2, Noah will be needed more than anybody can possibly imagine. Flooding has become a pop star on TV news.

Property insurance has become the world’s most conclusive barometer of how climate change affects society, turning into a big nuisance, threatening the basic structure of capitalism: “Insurers are responding to heightened losses by reducing coverage, exiting high-risk markets, and dramatically raising premiums. For many, insurance coverage is unavailable or unaffordable, leaving them unprotected from disaster. As former California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has warned, ‘We’re marching steadily toward an uninsurable future.” (Managing the Climate Change-Fueled Property Insurance Crisis, Center for American Progress, April 2, 2025)

Radical climate change, that’s well beyond human experience, has become prevalent on the face of the planet with massive storms disrupting nations throughout the world broadcast on TV evening news, making climate deniers appear foolish and childishly ignorant driven by sophomoric thinking. Climate denialism, which has spread across the world on the shoulders of right-wingers, is suffocated by actual events broadcast on nightly news. Now, the Orwellian crowd is challenged.

There is strong evidence that the public is fed up, pissed-off with climate denialism and baseless destruction of science as television broadcasts the harsh reality of major never-seen-before floods throughout the world, opening public eyes to a climate-change-world they’ve been told is fake. It’s not!

A sweeping nationwide study: “American Attitudes Toward Government Interventions in Science” survey of 31,062 Americans across 50 states is the most comprehensive study in 2025 of public opinion of recent federal efforts to suppress science, as conducted by the University of Rochester, Harvard, Northwestern, and Rutgers: “Across all demographics and political affiliations, disapproval of the administration’s actions outpaces approval by more than two to one.” Only 21% of Americans approve. (Study; Widespread Disapproval of Federal Interventions in Science, Public Health, University of Rochester, News Center, July 8, 2025) \

Based upon the “polling trend” and highly probable future public exposure to more insane flooding on TV, thereby making climate change appear so very real as to really be real, not fake, it’ll bring disappointment and disapproval at the polls, likely worse than two-to-one against MAGA hollowness by midterm 2026. No science, no vote!
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This article was originally published on August 22, 2025 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Global Warming in Vogue, Deal With It!

Image by Riffsyphon1024 is in the public domain.
Image by Riffsyphon1024 is in the public domain.

Global Warming in Vogue, Deal With It!

By Robert Hunziker

Global Warming (“GW”) is winning, and it is gaining. Obstacles to hotter temperatures are falling to the wayside, allowing GW to go for more intense heatwaves along with much, much higher sea levels. Alas, the greenest of green countries are turning tail and de-emphasizing commitments to fight climate change. Several of the 196 countries subject to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) at the Paris Agreement (2015) are behaving like they’re “okay with global warming”. Trump’s smiling.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO): “Extreme Heat is Breaking Records Worldwide.” (UN News August 7, 2025). But this current trend of killer heatwaves is likely only an early preview of much more to come.

Greta Thunberg’s “Sweden is falling back from its environmental progress. Last year, its fossil fuel emissions saw their biggest increase in 15 years.” (Sweden, an Early Climate Leader, is Retreating from Its Environmental Commitments, Part of an EU Trend, Inside Climate News, August 3, 2025).

Indeed, part of the reason for Sweden’s increasing emissions is global warming’s inexorable drought sequences and clearcutting and wildfires destroying forests, thus reducing carbon uptake, measurably, cut in half. Fifteen years ago, Sweden’s 87 billion trees, soils and wetlands stored almost 62 million tons of carbon each year, which was more than the country’s total fossil fuel emissions. In 2024, it fell by half to 31 million tons. Such a steep drop indicates increased clearcutting and years of severe drought, due to severe global warming, with wildfires, beetle infections and weak soil nutrition.

Additionally, Sweden’s political swing to the right has slashed investments in climate actionable projects. “Researchers say Sweden’s policy shifts, and its evolving role as a frontrunner indeed is now contributing to the weakening of Europe’s climate agenda,” Ibid.

Sweden’s EPA claims it will miss all national climate targets for the next 20 years.

The EU’s trumpeted “Green Sextet” nations driving climate action for the EU in a positive direction is collapsing. Five of the six nations are reducing their climate policy objectives: “Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Finland, and Austria — all appear to reduce their climate policy objectives. All of these countries have also shifted to the political right. Only Denmark, a leader in offshore wind, is mostly maintaining its aspirations to cut emissions and fight climate change.” Funding for climate action is plummeting. (Sweden, Once A Climate Action Leader, Now Lags Behind Its Peers in Europe, CleanTechnica, August 4, 2025).

Right wing populist policy wonks favor global warming over diminishment of carbon emissions’ fossil fuels. This counterintuitive policy behavior is concurrent with a sudden uplift of global temperatures circa 2023-24 with a jaw-dropping surprising 0.30°C increase, sustaining 1.5C above preindustrial for the full year. Climate scientists were, and still are, shocked as global warming took a 10-fold jump, in only one year: Egads! Climate normalizing hasn’t occurred to reduce this shocking uplift, meaning the climate system is adopting a new higher plateau for successive excessive heatwaves. This is bad, bad news… period!

Since the general elections in 2022 in Sweden, a conservative coalition, headed by the far-right Sweden Democrats, have focused on promoting cheaper fossil fuels (increasing subsidies) and public safety and of course (it goes without saying) anti-immigrant policies, while halting investment in high-speed rail, cancellation of subsidies for electric vehicles, increasing taxes on solar electricity, and cutting investments in green innovation funds. Along the way, Sweden’s carbon emissions rose by 7% last year.

Overall, it appears the EU may be tossing in the towel on climate change mitigation policies, like US policy under its ultra-right-wing fascists-inspired administration. They bathe in hot weather, the hotter, the better, but nobody explains why in plain language. Whispers, insider scoops, say they overconfidently believe that technology will bail us out of a global warming disaster, but they couldn’t be more wrong. Sorrowfully, carbon capture is ridiculously immature and as weak as a peashooter and nuclear (iffy) has issues beyond the scope of this short article, none meeting the timelines of a climate system just starting to run hot, and hotter. The best shot, based upon actual events, is renewables across the board worldwide, replacing fossil fuels. But is there enough time?

Global Heat Outlook to 2029

According to the WMO, average global mean temperatures between 2025 and 2029 could average up to 1.9°C higher than preindustrial. That’ll be one more ridiculously hard to believe plateau higher than the 2023 uplift to 1.5°C. In other words, if extreme heat levels are breaking all-time world records this year in 2025, records will be crushed in following years, guaranteeing new record higher sea levels (ouch! Miami Beach) and enhancing the record of +60% increase in worldwide droughts of the past couple of decades, whilst whacking forests with more intense wildfires than ever, following in the footsteps of hard-to-believe doubling of extreme wildfire events the past two decades. Will it double again as climate change’s hotter, drier conditions promote extreme wildfires, with ease. All mentions herein should put the 196 NDCs on sharp alert to fight climate change with everything they’ve got, but no!

Meanwhile, capitalism has a new voice in the debate as insurance companies now speak out about the dangers of climate change and its threat to the essence of capitalism, and as climate change severely undercuts the American dream with insurance rates and coverage a new wildcard inhibiting homeownership. Some regions in America becoming nearly uninsurable.

Data from researchers at the University of Maryland for the period 2001-2024 shows forest fires now burn more than twice as much tree cover as two decades ago. Nothing could be worse, absolutely nothing! As trees are one of the planet’s biggest storehouses of carbon. (The Latest Data Confirm Forest Fires Are Getting Worse, World Resources Institute, July 21, 2o25). So far, nobody has claimed this is fake news.

The Big Scary Monster Wildfire/Climate Feedback Loop

The stunning increase in forest wildfires, especially across the entire upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, has bred a gigantic feedback loop that turbo-charges global warming. The warming climate enhances forests wildfires, in turn, losing one of the planet’s significant offsets to CO2 as trees burn, emitting more CO2 and absorbing that much less CO2 in a vicious circle that feeds on itself. Severe Wildfires in Russia’s Siberia Region Rage Through 600,000 Hectares (1,500,000 acres) of Forests, CNN, May 14, 2025.

The overriding issue, for example, a UCLA-led study showed that California’s 2020 wildfires released double the amount of greenhouse gases the state had reduced in the previous 18 years through various initiatives. This horrifying statistic should shake world leadership to its core.

“The haunting orange skies over San Francisco in 2020. The devastating Black Summer of Australia in 2019-2020. The record-breaking Los Angeles wildfires of 2025. These aren’t isolated incidents, but rather stark indicators of a growing global crisis where climate change and wildfires form a devastating feedback loop.” (Climate Change Institute, The University of Maine, July 31, 2025)

Just imagine outrageously enormous out-of-control Canadian wildfires contributing to global warming! As of August 3, 2025, more than 16.3 million acres burned versus a 25-year normalized average of 5.4 million acres per fire season. (NASA Earth Observatory). Thankfully, NASA climate observatory satellites have not been decommissioned and destroyed, yet!

Oops! Why a NASA Satellite That Scientists and Farmers Rely on May be Destroyed on Purpose, NPR, August 4, 2025, per White House directions. This is why NPR must go.

Global warming, like fashion statements that change over time, has finally won over its strongest combatants in favor of mitigation measures but now unceremoniously promoting policies to increase global warming, to increase global heatwaves, to increase rising sea levels, to enhance massive wildfires that internally accelerate CO2 emissions, to expanding global droughts, to ensure bigger, faster, more intense flash flooding, especially China, and glacial lake outbursts that literally bury villages. These global events, exciting for nightly TV news coverage, are now assured of increasing in magnitude and scope as the Paris Agreement’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce greenhouse gases flutter midair, torn to shreds, drifting above Le Bourget superb of Paris where, 10 years ago, 196 nations shook hands, smiling and agreeing to tackle climate change amidst congratulatory backslapping and champagne toasts, now turned to vinegar!
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This article was originally published on August 15, 2025 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Massive Ocean Regime Shift, Alarming

Massive Ocean Regime Shift, Alarming

By Robert Hunziker

This figure shows changes in heat content of the top 700 meters of the world’s oceans between 1955 and 2023 (US EPA)
[This figure shows changes in heat content of the top 700 meters of the world’s oceans between 1955 and 2023 (US EPA)]

This figure shows changes in heat content of the top 700 meters of the world’s oceans between 1955 and 2023 (US EPA)

A new study published in ScienceDaily claims severe ocean overheating may be causing a fundamental climate shift. Ocean heatwaves over the past couple of years have been massive and extensive and intensive on a scale never seen before at times covering 96% of the world’s oceans, which should be impossible. (The Oceans are Overheating – and Scientists Say a Climate Tipping Point May be Here, ScienceDaily d/d July 26, 2025)

Starting in 2022-23, massive ocean heatwaves persisted for more than 500 days covering nearly the entire globe. This shocking event, never witnessed before, puts the entire global warming scenario on a new level that’s predictably negative. The message is as clear as a bell: World leadership should focus on removal of fossil fuel emissions as soon as possible. Global warming, especially in the ocean, is on a rapid upswing and not waiting around, as such, fully 2/3rds of the planet is suffering a very dangerous heat stroke that’s separate and apart from extreme heatwaves on land.

After all, Earth is basically a liquid planet, according to NASA: “Covering more than 70% of Earth’s surface, our global ocean has a very high heat capacity. It has absorbed 90% of the warming that has occurred in recent decades due to increasing greenhouse gases, and the top few meters of the ocean store as much heat as Earth’s entire atmosphere.” (Ocean Warming/ Vital Signs, NASA)

Scientists fear system-wide climate change may be in the works, threatening ocean marine ecosystems such corals, fisheries, and aquaculture, as well as goosing up terrestrial temperatures way too fast too soon across the planet. Marine heatwaves this decade have lasted four times (4x) longer than the historical record. Hot oceans accelerate climate change. As water temperatures rise, oceans lose ability to absorb excessive heat and land temperatures rise accordingly.

“According to the study’s researchers, the 2023 MHWs may mark a fundamental shift in ocean-atmosphere dynamics, potentially serving as an early warning of an approaching tipping point in Earth’s climate system,” Ibid.

Given the duration of the heatwave, which began in earnest in 2023 and continues today in some regions, Zhenzhong Zeng, PhD, co-author of the study, Earth systems scientist China Southern University of Science and Technology believes it is the start of a “new normal for the world’s oceans.” Emerging data indicates the heat in the oceans is accumulating exponentially, a trend that defies climate model predictions. It’ll accelerate heat on land, leading to more severe and widespread droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and storms, which are already seriously severe in today’s world.

Zhenzhong Zeng claims to be “very scared” by the potential regime shift in the oceans: “I think almost all of the Earth system model projections are wrong… Record marine heatwaves may signal a permanent shift in the oceans.”

Some impacts of the shift are starting to appear: “When Ocean temperatures rise dramatically, they trigger a cascade of effects that lead to mass fish deaths. The primary mechanism involves oxygen depletion, as warmer water holds less dissolved oxygen while simultaneously increasing fish’s metabolic rates and oxygen requirements. This double impact can lead to widespread suffocation. Additionally, fish are ectothermic (cold-blooded), making them particularly vulnerable to temperature changes.” (Marine Heatwaves Trigger Mass Fish Deaths in Australian Waters, Aussie Animals, 2025)

Devastating results hit western Australia early in 2025. Temperatures 5°C above normal killed tens of thousands of fish. Scientists agree this represents a broader global challenge as research shows climate change has multiplied the event of marine heat zones by 20 times. Now, it’s coming home to roost as the world’s oceans turn away from decades of absorbing excessive global heat.

Ocean Payback

According to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the ocean won’t hold its heat forever. Eventually, it’ll feed back into the climate system, causing acceleration of global warming beyond all expectations, as “it’s too late” becomes reality.

It’s not just oceans that are overheating: “Water temperatures have surged above 85 degrees in the Mediterranean Sea, where records have been broken every day for weeks.” (The Mediterranean Sea is Experiencing a Record-Smashing Heat Wave, The Washington Post, July 4, 2025) Scientists have expressed concern over the potential for sizeable losses of marine life.

Ocean Heat Impact – Antarctica & Greenland

The Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets represent the largest land store of freshwater, which, should they completely melt and flow into the ocean, would add a total of 7.5 and 58 m to global-mean sea level, respectively. Recent observations have shown the ice sheets melting at an accelerating rate. Now, ocean heat has become a bigger-than-expected threat to the stability of the major ice sheets much, much earlier than science expected.

The Greenland ice sheet is particularly vulnerable, as warm ocean currents undercut fjords and erode outlet glaciers, undercutting and destabilizing calving.

The leading cause of ice mass loss for the West Antarctica Ice Sheet is ocean heat. Only recently, under the auspices of the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership, 450 polar scientists held an emergency meeting to alert the world to clear evidence of instability of the ice sheet. They strongly suggest immediate halt to fossil fuels.

Statement of Polar scientists’ group: “The services of the Southern Ocean and Antarctica – oceanic carbon sink and planetary air-conditioner – have been taken for granted. Global warming-induced shifts observed in the region are immense. Recent research has shown record-low sea ice, extreme heatwaves exceeding 40°C [104°F] above average temperatures, and increased instability around key ice shelves. Shifting ecosystems on land and at sea underscore this sensitive region’s rapid and unprecedented transformations. Runaway ice loss causing rapid and catastrophic sea-level rise is possible within our lifetimes. Whether such irreversible tipping points have already passed is unknown.” (“Emergency” Warning for Antarctica Issued by Nearly 500 Polar Scientists, IFLScience, Nov. 22, 2024)

Unfortunately, climate change is not about to go away, rather, it is gaining momentum by the year as CO2 emissions from fossil fuels skyrocket into the atmosphere, as of June 2025 at 430 ppm, a new record high for atmospheric concentration. Moreover, the annual rate of CO2 increase in 2024 (also setting a new record) was 3.50 ppm, more than double the annual rate in 2000 at 1.24 ppm, when atmospheric CO2 concentration was at 37o ppm.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2015 an international group of scientists determined anything above 350 ppm atmospheric CO2 would be beyond the “safe zone.” Nobody has suggested the scientists have changed their minds. But that issue is now upstaged by the world’s property/casualty insurance industry as it screams, hollers, complains, rejects, doubles rates, drops coverage all because of climate change. Property insurers have brought to the fore in full public view a climate change monster that’s destroying the American dream of home ownership.

Based upon referenced sources herein, fossil fuel emissions must be stopped as soon as possible to hopefully mitigate a whacky climate system that is already threatening the very foundations of the current socio/economic system, unwittingly suggesting maybe ‘it should also go’ the way of fossil fuels.

As if out of the blue, within only a couple of years, climate change has become capitalism’s biggest nightmare. Maybe they should scramble to do whatever is scientifically necessary to try to mitigate whatever can be mitigated. Too bad CO2 capture and sequester is a decidedly weak, and inconsequential, solution. “It’s a fraud!” (Al Gore)
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This article was originally published on August 1, 2025 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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A Catastrophic New Normal Has Arrived

Image by NOAA is in the public domain.
Image by NOAA is in the public domain.

A Catastrophic New Normal Has Arrived

By Robert Hunziker

A new study published in Earth’s Future by researchers from Uppsala University with Belgian, French, and German universities have shown that climate change is morphing into a full blown ogre of destruction as several regions of the world are no longer affected by isolated events, instead, several different events occur concurrently or in quick succession. These multi-series events are a new phenomenon that typically overwhelms society with unparalleled suddenness, speed, and ferocity, increasingly striking urban areas as well as the hinterlands.

It’s happening more frequently with more ferocity than ever before, for example, massive LA Fires (Jan.2025); village of Blatten, Switzerland buried by collapsing glacier (May 2025); flash floods slam Vermont third year in a row (July 2025); Texas river rises 30 feet in one hour (July 2025), China real-life apocalypse 11-level winds, 4-story high flood, 150°F heat (July 2025); fatal storms flood south France (May 2025); glacial lake outburst washes away five villages, Afghanistan (June 2025); Queensland, one of worst floods of all time (2025); Kentucky flood kills eleven (Feb. 2025); glacial lake outburst kills 28, Nepal (July 2025); deadly flash floods kill 32 Pakistan (June 2025); northeastern India States devastated by massive flooding, landslides, buildings collapse, 34 dead (June 2025); Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, 49 dead flash flood (May 2025); villages washed away in seconds, Nigeria flash flood, killing 151 (May 2025); East Africa massive flood kills hundreds (March 2025) Balkans pounded by thunderous storms as wildfires break out in Türkiye, Greece, Spain, and France (July 2025); Massive flood, northeastern Spain (July 2025); severe drought, northern and western Europe, river transport and agriculture threatened under emergency drought alert (June 2025)

“We have long known, for example, that there will be more heat waves, forest fires and severe droughts in many regions—that in itself is no surprise. What surprised us is that the increase is so large that we see a clear paradigm shift with multiple coinciding extreme events becoming the new normal,” according to Professor Gabriele Messori, the study’s lead author.” (Heat Waves, Droughts, and Fires May Soon Hit Together as ‘New Normal’ Study Finds, Topics, Uppsala University, June 5, 2025)

As of July 15, 2025: Dangerous flooding has hit several locations in the United States. Water gushed into subways, New York City, roads flooded, New Jersey in a series of pounding thunderstorms. Flash floods hit a mountainous region, New Mexico. Massive downpour clobbered roads and homes, North Carolina. In every case, the flooding was caused by sudden extremely heavy pounding rainstorms. Global warming has turned into a monster of mass destruction on a biblical scale. It has hatched ‘Weather Whiplash’, a vicious cycle of sudden sizeable wet periods bringing on rapid vegetation growth followed by extreme dry hotness followed by ferocious wildfires as weather cocktails of catastrophic scale hit in quick succession.

The Messori study clearly identified this new phenomenon: “By analyzing postprocessed data from the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project, we provide a global mapping of future changes in the compound occurrence of six categories of hazards or impacts related to climate extremes. These are: river floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, tropical cyclone-induced winds and crop failures…  A striking change is projected for the future recurrence of compound hazards or impacts, with many locations experiencing specific compound occurrences at least once a year for several years, or even decades, in a row. In the absence of effective global climate mitigation actions, we may thus witness a qualitative regime shift from a world dominated by individual climate-related hazards and impacts to one where compound occurrences become the norm.” (Source: Earth’s Future)

Climate change has broadened its reach via temperatures climbing globally, which feeds into a series of increasingly powerful events. Insurance companies worldwide have been caught flat-footed, unable to turn left or right politically, as neither offers serious solutions. According to Gallagher Re, a major reinsurance company: World on Fire 2025: Impacts of an Expanding Wildfire Season: “As events during the past 12 months have demonstrated, every season is now wildfire season, and fires in urban areas are an increasingly growing concern.”

Out of control wildfires as well as flooding from sudden ‘atmospheric rivers’ are hitting cities, towns, and villages worldwide on a scale never seen before. This is climate change strutting its stuff on TV, nightly somewhere in the world. This new TV stardom brings to light, in every living room, the brutal truth of an obscenely crazed human-induced climate system flailing wildly on its own power that humans ignited. Now, nobody can turn it off.

Consequently, governments of the world are massively beefing up relief agencies to help their citizens. Trump is Gutting Weather Science and Reducing Disaster Relief, The New York Times, July 12, 2025, as he gooses up the wallets of billionaires via obscene tax cuts that will blow up America’s deficit like a hot air balloon. Watch for it to burst. This is presidential?

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This article was originally published on July 18, 2025 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

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Al Gore Puts Down ‘Climate Realism’

Photo of Al Gore is licensed by CC BY 2.0
Photo of Al Gore by GobalX is licensed by CC BY 2.0

Al Gore Puts Down ‘Climate Realism’

By Robert Hunziker

Al Gore, speaking in Nairobi, gave a TED speech that set the stage for where the world stands in its search for Net Zero by 2050: “Many of the oil, gas, and coal producers and their financial allies are now advocating a new approach that they call ‘climate realism.” (Al Gore, TED speech, Nairobi, Nigeria, June 2025)

The fossil fuels industry’s ‘climate realism’ displaces decades of science in the worldwide struggle with two likely outcomes for the climate system by 2050:

  1. Net Zero is achieved, resulting in a livable climate system.
  2. Global temperatures ramp up +2-3-4°C pre-industrial, resulting in hothouse Earth, much of the planet unlivable.

By all counts, the ‘B’ option has the highest probability because ‘A’ is based upon wishful thinking and a very bumpy record. Whereas ‘B’ is based upon factual data of the current trajectory of climate change, which is well ahead of scientist’s expectations, going in the wrong direction, with some claiming it may already be too late. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry pretends, and hopes for, the ‘A’ option with adaptation measures. This is the genesis of fossil fuel ‘Climate Realism’. In a soft-spoken manner, they claim they can fix what emissions harm.

It’s ten years since Paris ’15 when 195 nations agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to Net Zero by 2050. Yet, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), ten years later (2025) fossil fuels still account for roughly 80% of the world’s energy supply. This is the same percentage as Paris 2015. It also includes ten years of positive renewable energy development throughout the world, but it’s still 80% fossil fuels. Alas, Net Zero paradoxically looks farther away every year. Is it ever attainable?

Moreover, what is ‘climate realism’ in the eyes of the fossil fuel industry, and what’s the likelihood it’ll keep civilization humming along? The oil and gas industry’s ‘climate realism’ inherently provides for abandonment of efforts to deal with the principal cause of the climate crisis, which is burning of fossil fuels. This new genre calls for focusing on “adaptation” whilst burning more fossil fuels. According to their climate realism school of thought, energy transitions have taken place slowly over the past couple hundred years. So, it is simply unrealistic to expect it could change faster now. In fact, according to Al Gore, the new theory claims society has “no right” to expect anything other than a slow transition, or maybe no transition, like what history has shown to be true. But Gore takes issue: “According to ‘climate realism’, it is cheaper and more practical to continue using the sky as an open sewer than to rapidly reduce the principal cause of the climate crisis, or the burning of fossil fuels.”

In that regard, the United States, arguably the economic model for the world since WWII and seen as the fortress of some brand of capitalism, has literally tossed in the towel on fighting the climate crisis, wholeheartedly adopting “climate realism,” informing the world: Deal With It!

But Al Gore, in his TED talk, referencing current scientific research, challenges ‘Climate Realism’ by exposing real climate realism, to wit: (1) at current rates of change, scientists estimate two billion climate refugees by 2050 (2) the past ten years were the hottest ever recorded with recent readings in the Persian Gulf of 126.7°F and Pakistan 122.9°F and summer’s just started (3) already, a couple million climate refugees have prompted a political upheaval of authoritarianism and ultranationalism, what of 2 billion? (4) whole regions of the world are becoming property-uninsurable, especially in the US West and Deep South (5) mainstream sources’ estimates claim world housing could lose $25 trillion in value because of climate change (6) Deloitte claims climate inaction will cost the world economy $178 trillion but over the same time frame climate action would add $43 trillion (7) Greenland is losing 30 million tons of ice every hour, threatening coastal megacity sea levels (8) Antarctica’s acceleration of ice loss threatens sea levels more so than scientific models ever expected, as 450 polar climate scientists recently held an emergency meeting (9) sea level rise has doubled since 1990s satellite monitoring (10) the worst droughts in history have clobbered the Brazilian Amazon rainforest as 90% of Amazon River in Columbia went dry (11) third year in a row of massive apocalyptic scale wildfires in Canada (12) particulate air pollution from burning fossil fuels and petrochemicals kills nine million per year. Gore’s real climate realism list goes on and on, well beyond the items listed above because of the worldwide impact of a raging out of kilter global climate system principally caused by fossil fuels. And everybody knows it. Yes, everybody sees it on nightly news programs.

In China 200 million Gig Workers are eligible to receive a “heat wave allowance” or danger money when working in extreme heat conditions. (Bloomberg Green Daily) In 2024 China recorded the hottest year on record. According to The Lancet, heat-related deaths in China have doubled this century.

A Positive Trend Versus Fossil Fuel Emissions

Gore’s speech noted positives in the alternatives space. For example, the costs for renewables have plummeted to levels making fossil fuels unproductive in comparison. Exxon’s own predictions that solar capacity would only achieve 850GW by 2040 was dead wrong; as of year-end 2024, it is already at 2,280 GW, nearly triple the Exxon projection for 2040. Solar is now the least expensive source of electricity in human history. Since the Paris Agreement, solar electricity generation has soared by 732%. And electric vehicle sales have increased 34x since 2015.

In April 2025 China installed 45 gigawatts of new solar capacity. This is equivalent to 45 brand new giant nuclear reactors installed in one month. (ed. Technocrats in America want to build risky nuclear plants… why?) Regarding intermittence, the cost of utility-scale batteries has dropped a whopping 87%, making solar w. battery-back-up extremely attractive. Who needs expensive, risky nuclear?

Nevertheless, Gore claims: “In spite of this progress, we are still moving too slowly to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. We have got to accelerate it. We have the ability to do so. But the single biggest reason we have not been able to do so is because of ferocious opposition to virtually every policy proposal to speed up this transition and reduce the emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.”

The fossil fuel industry has been using sleight of hand to convince the public that fossil fuels are just great, no problem, e.g., carbon capture and storage and direct air capture and recycling of plastics will handle everything. Oh please! “These things are much better at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions!” (Gore)

They are also very adept at using politicians to fool the public, for example: Tony Blair, speaking on behalf of his foundation, which gets massive funding from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and other Middle East producers, in a speech claimed, “the center of the battle has to be carbon capture and direct air capture.” Gore: “He really should know better.” His foundation discovered a fountain of riches in the battle for how to approach climate change.

Carbon Capture – If inefficient, the ‘climate realism’ argument is destroyed.

Al Gore: “Carbon capture is a fraud.” It is like fool’s gold taken to the bank and not worth the costs to get it. Carbon capture cannot physically costs-effectively reduce emissions: Carbon Capture Has a Long History of Failure, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Sept. 1, 2022.

Carbon Capture Simply Won’t Work to Meet Net-Zero Targets, S&P Global, Sept. 2, 2022.

“If you spend $1 on carbon capture instead of on wind, water, and solar, you are increasing CO2, air pollution, energy requirements, energy costs, pipelines, and total social costs,” Researchers (Stanford) Uncover Major Flaw in Technology Used by Top Corporations: It Should be Abandoned, TCD, March 20, 2025.

Why Carbon Capture and Storage is Not the Solution, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, July 10, 2024: “Carbon capture and storage (CCS) continues to be hailed as a potential way to reduce emissions, even though it is more likely to increase them.”

If there’s any chance of hitting net zero, forget about carbon capture, instead, it’s imperative that funds be made available for developing countries. They are totally underfinanced and overlooked. For example, the entire continent of Africa has fewer solar panels than Florida. Yet, the continent has 60% of the world’s prime solar resource space. The potential for renewables is huge, but lo and behold, new plans for pipelines to remove fossil fuels from Africa to be shipped to developed countries have tripled as the fossil fuel industry ups the ante in Africa.

In the final analysis, Al Gore believes there is hope with renewables. Of all the new electricity installed in the world in 2024, 93% was renewables, mostly solar. This is a telltale sign of hope but still overpowered by a fossil fuel industry that is fighting for every last dollar by rebranding climate change as “climate realism” with shiny objects (carbon capture) falsely saving the day. Climate realism Newspeak promotes fossil fuel production, and it is winning to the tune of $7 trillion globally per year, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in government subsidies such as direct payments, tax breaks, subsidized loans, and the provision of resources at below market rates.

Just imagine $7 trillion per year invested in renewables. Visionary leaders would switch the $7T to renewables. According to Bloomberg NEF, renewable investments in 2024 amounted to 10% of fossil fuel subsidies or $728 billion. But the United States is cutting renewable subsidies at the very moment when record global temperatures and disruptive ecosystems are awakening people throughout the world to Al Gore’s real climate realism. It’s on TV, almost nightly.

Still, the “it’s already too late” core of climate scientists should prompt world leaders to fight back harder than ever and not allow doom and gloom to dictate the future, making US anti-science, anti-renewables policies seem devilishly out of sorts, flashing danger to the world.

P.S. An excellent 23-min. video that explains in detail the climate issue: The Ruling Class is Causing Climate Collapse, Our Changing Climate (Charlie Kilman – Creator), May 2025, link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G96PUbxxR2w

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This article was originally published on July 11, 2025 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

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Dangerous Books?

Image designed by freepic.
Image designed by freepic.

Dangerous Books?

By Robert Hunziker

The world of literature has turned purple, not knowing which color, blue or red, fits the current dilemma that’s causing serious students of the art to tear their hair out. The age of social media has opened the door to a cascade of new challenges to literary freedom that stifles creativity.

Answers for what ails literature in today’s complicated world can be found in an upcoming new book: That Book is Dangerous (The MIT Press, 2025) by Adam Szetela, PhD candidate in the Department of Literature in English at Cornell University.

That Book is Dangerous is scheduled to be published for purchase on August 12, 2025.

Szetela frames the current literature conundrum as follows: “At a moment when people are focused on the right’s moral panic over literature, it might seem strange that this book focuses on the left’s moral panic over literature. After all, right-wing panic has had more influence at the legislative level. That is true. But left-wing panic has had significantly more influence inside publishers, agencies, and other corners of literary culture. This is the reason why many of the progressives I interviewed are more concerned about the left than the right. While the right is remaking the world in its image, the left is standing in a circular firing squad.”

Szetela interviews people at the highest levels to discover massive self-censorship happening behind closed doors inside publishers, literary agents and other primary movers and shakers that publicly claim to be advocates of “free speech.” In contrast, he discovers a backhanded autocracy in publishing, making one wonder where the spirit of liberal democracy truly resides, if at all. Authors are subject to intimidation and dictates as to the meaning of content of their writing on a broad scale in this strange new breed of censorship hidden from public view.

Szetela gives an example of the horrors of trying to get a book published in chapter one, a YA author’s unpublished book caused an uproar on Twitter by people who had never read the book claiming it was racist because the ‘setting’ of the book was a fantastical world where oppression was not based upon skin color, therefore considering it anti-black by depicting slavery that was not African American slavery. The distressed, horribly harassed author canceled publication. The New York Times, at a later date, reported the book was to be published, but only after scrutiny by “sensitivity readers” to check for potentially offensive material.

According to the Szetela’s investigations, there’s an epidemic of mandatory sensitivity readings, plus demands to sign morality clauses in contracts as well as outright censorship of “dangerous” books in the name of antiracism, antifeminism, and other social norms affecting social justice. Much of this is an outgrowth of the new world of open internet exchanges of public outcries on X, Goodreads, Change.org, and other online platforms where authors are accused of racism, sexism, and homophobia, whether truly justified or not, whether reading the book or not, harsh consequences follow in the footsteps of clues as to content of a proposed book. It’s a form of mass public censorship based upon inuendo, guesswork, and misdirected testosterone.

Szetela’s book describes a national “moral panic” within the clutches of a moral crusade not all that different from the 1950s crusade to censure those who wrote and illustrated comic books as concerned adults pressured publishers and the U.S. Senate to censure distasteful material. Comic book burnings ensued in Chicago, Memphis, Port Huron, Cape Girardeau, and Binghamton, among others. Szetela’s simile explains it best: “When literature is treated as an immoral disease that is spreading like the plague, censorship is the only answer.”

This Orwellian intervention into YA and children’s literature appears to be now leaking into adult literary culture. for example, journalists at The New York Times have demanded sensitivity readers to ensure they do not offend readers; this shocker, as footnoted in the book, described in an article by Glenn Greenwald: “The New York Times Guild Once Again Demands Censorship of Colleagues.”

This bastardized moral crusade cruising throughout society is a piece of cake for anybody willing to get involved. Anyone with internet can be a moral crusader. No credentials necessary. Disturbingly, “research shows that expressions of moral anger and disgust, two emotions central to moral crusades, are associated with more retweets.” Even the most uniformed readers have an audience. The world of book reviews has turned into whack-a-mole amateur hour, as explained by one publisher: “People like a sensationalized story in our new world. An opinion can spread so quickly. I had a conversation last week about what we can do about Goodreads. How do we even know a review is real? It’s crazy. If it’s a negative response, it could kill a book.”

Open platforms have placed the world of intellect, of professional study, of publishing, of teaching in a strange new world that diminishes, sometimes obliterates, the search for true truthfulness. “The prevalence with which people freely admit they never read, nor have any intention of ever reading, books they passionately criticize is another indicator of how decrepitly anti-intellectual literary culture has become… the decline of reading — through skim reading, rushed reading, or not reading at all— is a perennial feature of the dystopian genre.” Ignorant, idiotic, silly, lunatic, stupid blabbering fools all have an official platform in today’s upside-down world.

The moral crusade has created a monstrosity of checks and balances that homogenizes literature while downsizing authors. A large cadre of sensitivity readers has sprung forth within only a few years. These are self-declared experts who ensure literature is not offensive, now being hired by Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and other major publishers.

Additionally, publishers now include “morality clauses” in contracts. These contracts specify that the publisher may terminate a contract if the author’s conduct evidences a lack of due regard for public conventions and morals. Taking matters to the highest road, The Times has established a ‘sensitivity hotline’ for journalists to report on one another like tattletales found in children’s literature. And writers for The New Yorker have discovered morality clauses in their contracts that are wide open for abuse as the clauses state writers can be terminated if the writer “becomes the subject of public disrepute, contempt, complaints or scandals.” What’s missing, if anything, from this list of misdemeanors? According to “Jeannie Suk Gersen, a law professor at Harvard University: ‘No person who is engaged in creative expressive activity should be signing one of these.” (pg. 185)

As described by Szetela: “The left’s approach to literature looks like the right’s approach to crime. On both sides, adults see themselves as punitive moral leaders who protect the rest of us from harm.” Fascinatingly, “there is a culture war between the punitive moral framework of the right and the compassionate moral framework of the left… These liberals are a real problem for the progressive movement.”

In the final analysis, Szetela emphasizes people must stand up to this cultural flap and resist: “In Fahrenheit 451, a retired English professor warns us: ‘I saw the way things were going, a long way back. I said nothing. I’m one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the ‘guilty,’ but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And when finally, they set the structure to burn the books, using the firemen, I grunted a few times and subsided, for there were no others grunting or yelling with me. By then, it’s too late.” (pg. 195)

Adam Szetela:

”A deluge of books have been canceled, rewritten, and otherwise censored in the past decade. My goal was to expose the current threats to literary freedom; where they came from, how they have reshaped publishing, and so on. That said, my book shows that much of this censorship occurs because people are scared to stand up to the censors. That culture of acquiescence needs to end.”

World State (Brave New World, 1932)

Ministry of Truth (Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949)

Truth Social (Trump Media, 2022)

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This article was originally published on July 4, 2025 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

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The Wobbling Planet – It’s Destabilizing!

The Wobbling Planet – It’s Destabilizing!

By Robert Hunziker

Photo by Elena Mozhvilo is licensed by Unsplash
Photo by Elena Mozhvilo is licensed by Unsplash

Science is under attack throughout the world. Meanwhile, there’s substantial scientific evidence that the planetary system is turning unstable. This may not strike most people as a big problem because ‘life goes on,’ an attitude that’s more, and more, prevalent and one of the factors behind anti-science attitudes. But, if in fact the planetary system is becoming unstable, if it is true, life will be hell.

Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research/Germany, internationally recognized for his work on global sustainability, recently gave a 30-minute speech that specifically addresses stability of the Earth system. This is a synopsis of his remarks, including some editorial comment.

“We are facing, undoubtably, in all forms of risk assessment, a decisive moment for humanity’s future on planet Earth… I’m talking about for the first time in human history on planet Earth that we are forced to seriously consider the risks we are destabilizing the stability of the entire planet.” (Johan Rockström, Potsdam Institute speech Publica 25: Decisive Decade: From Global Promises to Planetary Action)

“We are hitting the ceiling of the biophysical processes, the hardwired process that regulates the very functioning of the Earth’s system,” Ibid.

All parameters of planetary health for human well-being have similar trajectories, sharply upwards. Until the 1950s we had a linear system (relatively stable and predictable but unsustainable exploitation) and starting in 1955 with 3.5 billion people, and going forward, an exponential rise suddenly took off with overexploitation of biodiversity, and acid rain, and massive deforestation. All forms of pressure on the planet took off to the point where today we are in an entirely new geological epoch, and it’s happening within only one generation, remarkably, in the context of a stable planetary system ever since humans first huddled together around fires. It’s potentially the most momentous happening in all of human history, period!

Civilization is exiting the Holocene, entering the Anthropocene. Humans are now the dominating “force of change.” This is too new, too quick for a 4.5-billion-year-old planet system accustomed to old-fashioned ways. In fact, we’re already hitting the ceiling of stable planetary processes and starting to push through. For example. for the first time, last year was a full year to exceed 1.5°C pre-industrial, the warmest temperature on Earth over the last 100,000 years. We’re starting to feel it, see it, smell it, and taste it, record wildfires, record floods, record hurricanes, record tornados, record coral bleaching, record glacial melt, record droughts, record sea level rise, record dry riverbeds, record heat deaths, record ocean acidification, record insect loss, and record marine loss. Humans are the only gainers.

The 2023 Watershed Year

According to Rockström: “We are already outside of the Holocene range of variability… let me bring you to why we are so nervous today. Why we have over the past 12 months heard scientific language that I’ve never experienced in my whole career, mind-boggling, shocking data, observations that we never thought was possible, that we would never be able to predict in our models… it’s the observation of air temperature and sea surface temperatures”:

“We have a global climate crisis.”

“We are in a situation of dire need of change.”

In 2023, a 0.3°C jump in global temperature occurred. The planet experienced a sudden 10-times increase in only 12 months; it’s unheard of.

Under normal circumstances, with the 2023 watershed year, when global temperature suddenly spikes up, it stabilizes for a period of time, but it demonstrated an alarming change in behavior and serious cause for concern because El Niño (natural warming phase) and La Niña (natural cooling phase) cycles that always influence the climate system are not having any impact, none!. This has never happened before.

Rockström: “There is something wrong. What is happening?” Honest answer: “We do not know yet.”

The rapid escalation of planetary instability has sparked unprecedented concern as the interplay of human activity with natural systems has created a volatile environment, thunderstorms become more severe, rainstorms more powerfully destructive as atmospheric rivers suddenly bring flash floods, and droughts longer, hotter.

Increasingly, feedback mechanisms include the accelerated release of methane from thawing permafrost, which is a potent greenhouse gas, and the retreat of polar ice, which diminishes the planet’s reflection of solar radiation and further intensifies warming. The urgency of the situation has led to calls for systemic change, not only in reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also in restructuring economies and societies to prioritize sustainability over short-term gains. Yet, global emissions continue, and international agreements fall short of binding commitments or fail altogether in implementation.

The risks are glaring, for example, the latest data on the Brazilian Amazon rainforest tells the story, as Earth’s richest ecosystem, the Brazilian portion of the rainforest, which is the largest part, has already tipped. It’s no longer a carbon sink. It’s a carbon source. This has ominous warning signs written all over it. For the first time, we are seeing signs of the planet losing its resilience, losing its buffering capacity, which the science community refers to as “climate sensitivity.”

We now have the evidence of what occurs as certain limits are exceeded. For example, coincident with 1.5°C, “we’ve never before seen the frequency, amplitude, and strength of droughts, fires, floods, heat waves… There’s been a 60% increase in droughts.” The signs are everywhere. The planet is leaving the all-important “corridor of life.” The planet, for over one million years, never exceeded +2°C during warm interglacial and never below -5°C deep ice age. It’s the biogeochemical system that we depend on. It is threatened.

It’s already approaching the high end of that range. There are 16 tipping elements that regulate the Earth system. Six of those are in the Arctic, which is ground zero for Earth: 1) Greenland ice sheet 2) boreal forest 3) Arctic winter ice 4) permafrost system 5) connected by North Atlantic and AMOC. Also impacting, the Amazon rainforest, all three big systems, Antarctica, and tropical coral reef systems. These regulate the stability of the climate system.

Risk of Domino Effect

Temperatures at which a system tips from a state that helps us survive to a state of self-amplified warming include threats to the Greenland Ice Sheet, West Antarctica Ice Sheet, abrupt permafrost thawing, tropical coral systems, collapse of Labrador Sea ice and collapse of Barren Sea ice. These are all at risk. There is strong evidence that these systems interact with each other, meaning, there’s a risk of cascading impacts. Where one system triggers several others. These six systems are already outside the boundary of safe space. This is an extremely significant development for the first time in human history.

We’re at a point where we need to buckle up for a challenging journey. The probability of not exceeding 1.5°C on a sustained 10-yr basis is no longer possible. No matter what course is taken going forward, “it will get worse before it gets better.” And every tenth of a degree warming has big impact going forward. Along those lines, science has identified big costs to the global economy based upon current economics with up to 20% costs over the next decades as a result of loss of planetary stability.

The amount of time remaining to take mitigation measures is running short. Based upon analyses by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we only have 200 Gt CO2 remaining in the global carbon budget to achieve a 50/50 chance of holding to 1.5°C, after an expected upcoming overshoot to 1.7°C. That’s five years of global emissions. Five years to accomplish “decades of work” to hopefully hold the line.

Positive Signs Within a Narrow Window of Opportunity

Efforts are being made to harness innovative technologies and traditional ecological knowledge to mitigate. From reforestation projects aimed at sequestering carbon to advancements in renewable energy, the pathways for resilience are there. However, time is running out; incremental progress will no longer suffice to prevent catastrophic outcomes. A lot needs to squeeze into the next five years, or all bets are off.

There are some favorable signs, for example, renewables are on a strong pathway in parts of the world economy, 90% of vehicle sales in Norway today are fully electric. In Denmark the EV market share is almost 60%.

Rockström: “As of today, we are in a danger zone. But we still have an opportunity to turn this around.”

Or does the strong anti-science political movement, emanating throughout the world from the United States, throw a wet blanket on the crucial five years ahead?

Useful link: Resources for Researchers and Scholars Under Threat in the United States, National Academies, Sciences, Engineering, Medicine.
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This article was originally published on June 27, 2025 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

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Swiss Re SONAR 2025 Report: Global Heat Kills 480,000/Year

Photo by Raimond Klavins is licensed by Unsplash
Photo by Raimond Klavins is licensed by Unsplash

Swiss Re SONAR 2025 Report: Global Heat Kills 480,000/Year

By Robert Hunziker

Extreme heat is one of the world’s leading killers, outdistancing worldwide conflicts of 233,000 deaths in 2024 by more than double the count at 480,000 people dead from extreme heat. All indications suggest the death count via extreme heat is headed much higher because global warming is not appreciably slowing down as global CO2 emissions in the atmosphere increase every year like clockwork, setting new record levels every year, blanketing/retaining more heat every year. It’s stifling.

Current CO2 readings at Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii, as of June 15th, 2025: 430.07 ppm, which is the highest daily average on record. Excessive atmospheric CO2 is the primary source of extreme heat. One needs to go back millions of years to find higher levels. In 2016, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) a global body of climate scientists stated: “CO2 at 430 ppm would push the world beyond its target for avoiding dangerous climate change.” We are there!

No business or government on Earth is impacted by climate change more so than the insurance industry. It’s the biggest canary in the coal mine. Swiss Re Ltd (founded 1863) is one of the world’s largest reinsurers. The company’s 2025 SONAR Report essentially puts the world on notice that global warming has become one of the world’s biggest killers.

Swiss Re says “extreme heat,” is the designated killer, to wit: “Extreme heat events can have a large impact on human health. Recent data show that around 480, 000 deaths per year can be attributed to extreme heat events.” (Source: Extreme Heat More Deadly Than Floods, Earthquakes and Hurricanes Combined, Finds Swiss Re’s SONAR Report, Swiss Re Group, Media, Press Release, June 12, 2025)

According to Jérôme Haegeli, Swiss Re Group Chief Economist: “Extreme heat used to be considered the ‘invisible peril’ because the impacts are not as obvious as other natural perils… With a clear trend to longer, hotter heatwaves, it is important we shine a light on the true cost to human life, our economy, infrastructure, agriculture and healthcare system,” Ibid.

The SONAR 2025 Report claims extreme heat threatens industry as well as human life. For example, “the telecommunications industry faces significant risks from failing cooling systems in data centers or damage to terrestrial cables.”

Trump Administration re Extreme Heat

According to Time Magazine: What’s At Stake This Summer As Trump Targets Heat and Climate Experts, June 16, 2025: “Heat experts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) were told in early April that their positions would be eliminated as part of the cuts made by the Trump Administration’s Department of Governmental Efficiency. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) entire environmental health unit was cut, though some jobs were restored … What was lost there is just a giant value to communities, according to V. Kelly Turner, associate professor of urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles.”

Trump does not recognize climate change as a threat to humanity, dropping out of the Paris Agreement of 2015, cutting $4 billion in prior pledges, no longer submitting carbon-cutting plans to the UN, removing electric vehicle mandates, and destroying Biden administration climate change mitigation plans while over-emphasizing and directing national attention to burning fossil fuels. These are sure-fire ways to increase the global warming hazard, in turn, leading to more severe extreme heat, thus, putting Trump in opposition to Swiss Re’s warnings about the death count of “extreme heat.”

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center, the entire country will see above-normal temperatures—with the only difference being in severity. Across the contiguous United States, average temperatures have already risen about 60% more than the global average since 1970 (US EPA). In due course, the American South and Southeast will feel like the Persian Gulf countries of today, where it is currently too hot to safely work outside during the day for much of the summer.

On a global basis, America’s extraordinary push for fossil fuel emissions contributes to atmospheric CO2 build up, thus impacting the world climate system by trapping more planetary heat. This direct relationship between increasing CO2 emissions and increased global warming is established scientific fact. According to WMO (World Meteorological Organization) Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett: “We have just experienced the ten warmest years on record. Unfortunately, this WMO report provides no sign of respite over the coming years, and this means that there will be a growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.”

Richard Betts, head of Climate Impacts Research at the UK Met Office and a professor at the University of Exeter, May 28, 2025, informed the Associated Press. “With the next five years forecast to be more than 1.5 degrees C warmer than preindustrial levels on average, this will put more people than ever at risk of severe heat waves, bringing more deaths and severe health impacts unless people can be better protected from the effects of heat. Also, we can expect more severe wildfires as the hotter atmosphere dries out the landscape.”

Swiss Re’s SONAR Report warns the world of existential dangers of climate change by focusing, in part, on deaths caused by extreme heat, but the report goes on to suggest a threat to the entire infrastructure of economies. Swiss Re endorses policies to limit climate change, which are diametrically opposite Trump policies, to wit: Swiss Re suggests a multi-pronged approach to climate change mitigation: (1) reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (2) investing in carbon removal technologies (3) increasing climate resilience through adaptation measures (4) emphasize the importance of the Paris-aligned carbon reduction path (5) complemented by carbon removal strategies, and (6) advocate for collaboration and knowledge sharing to accelerate action.

Trump’s policies don’t jive with any, not even one, of the six suggestions by one of the world’s oldest most prestigious insurance companies. If his administration is not listening to one of the world’s leading providers of insurance coverage that’s on the front line of climate change, then who?

It’s shameful that the US government fails to recognize the most rapidly developing threat to existence, especially in the face of alarms set off by the staid insurance industry, as premiums go sky-high with claims choking the biggest players. The economy can’t handle it; homeowners can’t handle it; businesses can’t handle it. Solution: Stop burning fossil fuels oil, gas, and coal.

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This article was originally published on June 20, 2025 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

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Plummeting Insects

Image by Alvesgaspar of a male hoverfly is licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0
Image by Alvesgaspar of a male hoverfly is licensed by CC BY-SA 3.0

Plummeting Insects

By Robert Hunziker

Insects are vanishing from pristine rainforests. “Around the world many insect populations are crashing.” (Natural History Museum, April 2025)

Insects are crucial for the health of nature, whereas humans are not. And since insects are ‘dropping like flies’, does loss of insects mean nature is collapsing? That question of whether nature is collapsing because of insect armageddon is found in many articles and upscale publications with some claiming that nature is collapsing, some are not so sure, but some question all analyses because of the vast scope of the subject.

It’s an important subject because, if insects truly disappear, it leaves humans standing all alone, naked in the biosphere!

According to the Royal Entomological Society: Insects are the dominant species on the planet. For every person on Earth, there are approximately 1.4 billion insects that, combined, weigh 70-times more than all humans bunched together. (We Know Next to Nothing About 99 Percent of the World’s Insects: Here’s Why That’s a Problem, Euro News, 04/04/2025)

Yet, science has identified massive drop-offs of insect populations across the planet. Indeed, as shall be explained herein, there are regions where dense populations of insects are now basically gone. They’ve vanished. Some ecologists are claiming a new point in history has been reached: A New Era of Ecological Collapse.

The all-important food web doesn’t thrive without insects. This is scientific fact. The health of insect populations is the single most critical measurement of the health of nature. Concern about nature collapsing has become prominent because of insects vanishing from protected, isolated, free-of-human-influence regions of the planet as well as several studies showing extremely high percentages of insect collapse in well-developed areas.

In the field, in the hinterlands, ecologist Daniel Janzen spent the last 50+ years living in the Costa Rican protected national rainforest, monitoring insects: “The real show was at night: for two hours each evening, the site got power, and a 25-watt bulb flickered on above the porch. Out of the forest darkness, a tornado of insects would flock to its glow, spinning and dancing before the light. Lit up, the side of the house would be “absolutely plastered with moths – tens of thousands of them”, Janzen says.” (‘Half the Tree of Life’” Ecologists Horror as Nature Reserves are Emptied of Insects, The Guardian, June 3, 2025)

“Now 86, Janzen still works in the same research hut in the Guanacaste conservation area, alongside his longtime collaborator, spouse and fellow ecologist, Winnie Hallwachs. But in the forest that surrounds them, something has changed. Trees that once crawled with insects lie uncannily still,” Ibid. They are gone! In the Costa Rican rainforest ecologists now find emaciated dead bats and the flowers they suck for nectar no longer bloom.

When Costa Rica was hit by pesticides, insects were completely wiped out. But now the new concern deals with protected preserved areas that are free of insecticides and pesticides and free of the human footprint with insect populations going down for the count in horrifying numbers. This may be a worldwide phenomenon, but the jury is still out.

For example, in Germany flying insects in 63 separate protected reserves collapsed by 75% in a 30-year study, and a U.S. 45-year study showed 83% drop of bettles. A study in Puerto Rico’s rainforest found a 60% die-off. All three studies were in protected ecosystems. And a 20-year UK study showed a collapse of 80% of flying insects. According to researchers interviewed by Le Monde: “The destruction of habitats, climate warming, and widespread presence of pesticides in all environments are the culprits.”

In the State of Texas, David Wagner, Professor of Ecology (Univ. of Connecticut): “I just got back from Texas, and it was the most unsuccessful trip I’ve ever taken. There just wasn’t any insect life to speak of ,.. It was not only the insects missing, but it was also everything. Everything was crispy, fried; the lizard numbers were down to the lowest numbers I can ever remember. And then the things that eat lizards were not present – I didn’t see a single snake the entire time,” Ibid.

According to Dr. Wagner: “We’re at a new point in human history.”

The worldwide food web is under attack, moving up the food chain. Scientists in the US, Brazil, Ecuador and Panama have now reported catastrophic declines of birds in “untouched regions,” including reserves inside millions of hectares of pristine forest. In each case, the worst losses were among insectivorous birds.

For example: 75 Percent of North America’s Bird Species are in Decline, Study Says (The Washington Post, May 1, 2025) “Locations where species were once thriving, and where the environment and habitat was once really suitable for them, are now the places where they’re suffering the most.” Within the next 4 years 75% may look like a very low number: “The federal government under President Donald Trump is pushing forward with regulatory changes that weaken a century-old law protecting migratory birds and permit more mining, construction and other activities even if they destroy the habitats of endangered birds and other species,” Ibid.

Global heat has become the major culprit in tropical forests, which ecosystems are highly sensitive to changes in season with every element interconnected, the humidity, the rainfall, the heat, drought sequences, length of seasons dictate the start and stop of life cycles. In Costa Rica the dry season is now six (6) months versus four (4) months fifty (50) years ago. Moreover, insects can’t hold water; a brief drought lasting just a few days can wipe out millions of humidity-dependent insects. Alas, droughts are no longer ‘brief’.

According to Rob Cooke, an ecological modeler at UKCEH: “We need to find out whether insect declines are widespread and what’s causing them… The challenge is like a giant jigsaw puzzle where there are thousands of missing pieces, but we do not have decades to wait to fill these gaps and then act. The major drivers of biodiversity losses around the planet were really land degradation and land loss, habitat loss. But I think now climate change is by far exceeding that,” Ibid

“A team of ecologists from The University of Hong Kong (HKU) are leading an international initiative to investigate the decline of insect populations in the world’s tropical forests. Insects, the most abundant and diverse group of animals on Earth, are experiencing alarming declines, prompting this research effort.” (Declining Biodiversity in the Tropics, Science Daily, April 8, 2025)

Recent research indicates climate change, especially increasing global heat, is destroying insect populations in the planet’s most sensitive ‘protected’ nature reserves. As a result, burning fossil fuels can now check one more box of the extinction scorecard.

Solution: Stop burning fossil fuels. Insects can’t handle the repercussions, and the food web desperately needs them.

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This article was originally published on June 13, 2025 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

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Nightmare of Nightmares – New (Big) CO2 Emissions

Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash
Photo by Marek Piwnicki on Unsplash

Nightmare of Nightmares – New (Big) CO2 Emissions

By Robert Hunziker

Global warming just got a brand-new source for trapping heat as Arctic tundra turns up the dial on CO2 emissions. It’s now in the ranks of cars, trains, and planes as an official emitter of carbon dioxide, CO2. But it distinguishes itself in one critical way. There’s no “on/off” switch. Once turned on, it’ll self-reinforce continued growth, meaning ever-increasing levels of CO2 emissions year-over-year.

The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, made the official announcement only recently: 2024 Arctic Report Card: The Arctic Tundra is Now a Net Source of Carbon Dioxide. climate.gov .

Arctic tundra covers a significant portion of the Northern Hemisphere, accounting for approximately 20% of the Earth’s surface, and nearly 25% of the land surface in the Northern Hemisphere. Obviously, this has big impact on global CO2 emissions and the many dangers attendant to rising global temperatures, e.g. BBC News d/d May 31, 2025: “The village of Blatten has stood for centuries, then in seconds it was gone.”

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure this one out, i.e., it means the planet is going to get a lot hotter a lot sooner as vital ecosystems wilt/melt/thaw and disintegrate. Already, one of Arctic tundra’s distant cousins, the Amazon rainforest, joined the CO2 Net-Emissions Club a couple of years ago. The magnificent rainforest is net-emitting CO2 in portions of the forest in harmony with cars, planes and trains. For example, The Economist recognized his unsettling event 3 years ago: The Brazilian Amazon Has Been a Net Carbon Emitter Since 2016, The Economist, May 21st, 2022.

As for the rainforest, there are several contributing factors to CO2 emissions, for example:  Conversion of rainforest to agriculture has caused a 17 percent decrease in forest extent in the Amazon, which stretches over an area almost as large as the continental U.S.  Replacing dense, humid forest canopies with drier pastures and cropland has increased local temperatures and decreased evaporation of water from the rainforest, which deprives downwind locations of rainfall. (NOAA)

Now, the planet’s two largest warehouses, serving as carbon sinks for millions of years, over 10 million years for the Amazon, have opened business with the Anthropocene (era of human domination). Although, in all fairness, the Anthropocene doesn’t really need help in heating up the planet. It’s doing a spectacular job on its own. Earth Shattered Heat Records in 2023 and 2024; Is Global Warming Speeding Up? Nature, January 6, 2025.

In the case of Arctic tundra, NOAA says: “The land areas of the Arctic have been a carbon sink for thousands of years, meaning there has been a net removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by plants, with long-term storage in the soil and permafrost. However, increasing surface air temperatures are causing permafrost to warm and thaw, allowing stored carbon dioxide and methane to be released into the atmosphere. Wildfires and other disturbances are adding pulse releases of carbon dioxide and methane. These changes together have shifted the Arctic tundra from a net carbon sink into a source.” (2024 Arctic Report Card).

A New Regime – Insurance/Homeowners Replace Dinosaurs

The Anthropocene has pushed the Arctic into a new, dangerous regime. Studies over the decades show that it has dramatically changed from even a decade or two ago. All of this is spearheaded by its new role as a net emitter of carbon dioxide CO2 and methane CH4. Arctic tundra stores 1,600 billion metric tons of organic carbon, mostly in permafrost. This is double the amount currently in the planet’s atmosphere, which is already causing the planet to heat up. The Amazon rainforest holds another 124 billion tons of carbon. This tandem, by increasing carbon emissions above and beyond cars, trains and planes, and industry, is likely zeroing out all of the saved CO2 via electric vehicles, and then some.

The new regime has the earmarks of a big troublemaker. It’s reminiscent of that last big encounter with climate change 65 million years ago when the villain was an asteroid, the victim, dinosaurs. Poof! Gone after 165 million years living on Earth.

Today’s version has fossil fuel playing the role of the asteroid and the property/casualty insurance industry with homeowners the victims. This sorrowful arrangement is likely how things stretch out over time because world leadership has never taken climate change seriously enough to head it off at the pass. As such, as global temperatures increase, over time, more people are displaced by repetitive high tide flooding, unlivable regions of recurring temperatures too high for survival, desertification, loss of glacial potable water, major rivers seasonally drying up, etc. It’s a long list.

For example: Will Flooding Force Seattle’s South Park Residents to Leave? The Seattle Times, June 1, 2025: “Sea-level rise, which globally is linked to fossil fuel emissions, is expected to worsen all types of flooding in South Park and climate change is expected to make storms — and storm surges — worse. The average high tide in Elliott Bay has already risen about 10 inches since 1899, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,” Ibid.

The property/casualty insurance industry is already de facto declaring some regions uninsurable and/or so costly as to cause people flight. For Example: “Florida has lost more than 30 home insurance companies in recent years. Most recently, AAA, Farmers and Progressive made headlines for rolling back coverage availability in Florida. As of May 2024, there are 11 Florida home insurance companies in liquidation.” (Home Insurance ‘Crisis’: First Florida, Now California — is my State Next? Bankrate, Sept. 16, 2024)

“Florida and California may receive the most press for their home insurance problems, but the future of home insurance in other states also looks grim. Across the country, home insurance rates are on the rise,” Ibid.

And, even worse yet: Map Shows 9 States Where Homeowners Are Losing Their Insurance, Newsweek, March 1, 2024. In all cases of insurance crises, climate change is the villain.

The disinformed who believe climate change a hoax or no big deal should do a reality check with a casual search on Google using only six words: “homeownership and climate change insurance crisis.” They’ll spend hours and hours, likely days, reading articles about climate change ruining the property insurance industry while undermining homeownership. Then, maybe pass along findings to representatives in Congress and asked them what to do about it. Several articles already show Congress informed of climate change endangering homeownership insurance, for example: (New Data Reveal Climate Change-Driven Insurance Crisis is Spreading, Senate Committee on the Budget)

When conservatively managed property/casualty insurance companies complain about the damage caused by excessive global heat uprooting ecosystems that support life and structure for homeownership, you know for certain climate change is not regular ole climate change of the ages; it’s something much worse, and most certainly, it’s not a hoax! Ask y0ur insurance agent for confirmation of this obvious fact.

In fact, more to the point: Risk of extinction of the entire fabric of the capitalist system goes to the heart of a recent article written by Gunther Thallinger, Member of the Board of Management of Allianz Group (est. 1889, Munich) the world’s largest insurance company: Climate, Risk, Insurance: The Future of Capitalism d/d March 25, 2025.

Solution: It’s all about burning fossil fuels. Figure it out!

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This article was originally published on June 6, 2025 © Counterpunch
Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

Note: This article will also be posted on the Facing Future Now! Facebook group. If you would like to comment on this article, please go to the Facebook group and post your comments there under the article posting.

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