#climate-change

#climate-change

Since at least 2008, scientists have warned that unchecked groundwater pumping for the city and for agriculture was rapidly draining the country's aquifers. The overuse did not just deplete underground reservesit destroyed them, as the land compressed and sank irreversibly. One recent study found that Iran's central plateau, where most of the country's aquifers are located, is sinking by more than 35 centimeters each year.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground.

I began by trying to discover whether or not a widespread belief was true. In doing so, I tripped across something even bigger: an index of the world's indifference. I already knew that by burning fossil fuels, gorging on meat and dairy, and failing to make even simple changes, the rich world imposes a massive burden of disaster, displacement and death on people whose responsibility for the climate crisis is minimal.

In 1995, when the first conference of the parties (Cop) of the UN's climate change convention met in Berlin, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration was approximately 360.67 parts per million. The then German chancellor, Helmut Kohl, gave a passionate speech about how greenhouse gases must be reduced to save the planet from overheating. There was a relatively unknown East German woman, the environment minister, Angela Merkel, chairing the conference. She was red hot at keeping order.

Papua New Guinea has voiced frustration after Australia ditched a bid to co-host next year's UN climate talks with its Pacific island neighbours. We are all not happy. And disappointed it's ended up like this, foreign minister Justin Tkatchenko told Agence France-Presse after Australia ceded hosting rights to Turkey. Australia had been pushing to host Cop31 next year alongside south Pacific nations which are increasingly threatened by rising seas and climate-fuelled disasters.

If tropical cyclone Fina crosses the Northern Territory coast on Friday, it could equal the earliest cyclone to make landfall in Australia. Fina, a category one cyclone about 370km north-east of Darwin, was moving east and expected to intensify to category two before turning south on Thursday. The latest Bureau of Meteorology update (issued at 10.30am local time on Wednesday) anticipated the cyclone would reach the NT coast for potential impact on Friday or Saturday.

"One in three people live in great vulnerability because of these climate changes," Leo said. "To them, climate change is not a distant threat, and to ignore these people is to deny our shared humanity."

Monty Don has shared dramatic photos of his Herefordshire garden underwater after a storm dumped a month's worth of rain in just 24 hours. The presenter of Gardeners' World reflected on life on a flood plain and the challenges of extreme weather. Despite the disruption, he emphasised gratitude that the flooding affected only his garden and fields, not homes or businesses.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

At least two people have been killed and 21 remain unaccounted for following a landslide in Indonesia, according to officials, as rescuers continue to search for the missing. Several days of heavy rainfall in the region led to landslides that hit dozens of houses in three villages in the Cilacap district, Central Java province, on Thursday evening, officials said in a statement released on Friday.

Scientists have warned that the Gulf Stream is on the verge of collapsing - a disastrous event that could plunge the northern hemisphere into a new ice age. The researchers from China and San Diego have uncovered a 'key fingerprint' hidden below the ocean's surface that suggests it has been weakening for decades. The 'distinctive temperature fingerprint' is at 'mid-depth' - 3,280ft to 6,560ft (1,000-2,000 metres) below the ocean's surface - and it could point to a collapse later this century.

"The risk of many weather-related extreme events is growing as the planet warms, and some of those impacts are coming fast and furious now," says Carolyn Kousky, an economic policy expert at the Environmental Defense Fund and longtime property insurance researcher. Disaster costs are also rising because people continue to move to coastal regions vulnerable to hurricanes and to forested areas prone to wildfires.

In August, 2005, Anand Irimpen, a cardiologist and a professor at Tulane University, evacuated New Orleans during the approach of Hurricane Katrina. He and his family watched it make landfall from a hotel room in Dallas. "The storm passed by and I was ready to go home," Irimpen told me. "But then my wife said, 'The levees broke. We can't go back.'" The damage to New Orleans lingered; they ended up staying in Dallas for months.

ALL THAT YOU TOUCH, YOU CHANGE. ALL THAT YOU CHANGE, CHANGES YOU.

The country's weather bureau said Fung-wong was carrying maximum sustained winds of 185 kilometers (115 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 230 kph as it passed close to the eastern province of Catanduanes on Sunday morning. The massive storm the biggest to threaten the Philippines so far this year spans 1,600 kilometers (994 miles), which ould cover two-thirds of the archipelago nation.

Surangel Whipps, president of the tiny Pacific nation of Palau, was sitting in the front row of the UN's general assembly in New York when Donald Trump made a long and rambling speech, his first to the UN since his re-election, on 23 September. Whipps was prepared for fury and bombast from the US president, but what followed was shocking.

As workplaces have evolved, billionaire executives have quickly upgraded their luxury travel options to be fully equipped for remote work. This has included dedicated office space, high-speed satellite internet connections, board rooms, and even additional desk areas for support staff on yachts. "After Covid, working remotely became easy for everyone, and there's no reason you couldn't do it from a yacht," said yacht charterer Dimitris Angelakos, per the Wall Street Journal.

"Au 8ème Jour," which translates to "On the 8th Day" in French, uses CG, or computer-generated animation techniques to create a three-dimensional world in a stop-motion style. A multitude of vibrant animals and landscapes appear sewn from fabric in the film's otherworldly realm, each tethered to a single piece of yarn that connects it to a kind of central energy force-a vibrant, tightly-wrapped skein in the sky. But when mysteriously dark tendrils of black fiber begin to leech into this idyllic world, families and herds must run for their lives.

Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist, said climate change's doomsday scenario is wrong, and advocated for continuing reductions in carbon emissions while accelerating aid to countries most affected by the Earth's warming climate, he said during a talk at Caltech on Monday, Nov. 3. Fortunately, although climate is an extremely serious problem, it is not of that nature: it will not end civilization. It's a very serious threat to human welfare but in most locations it is not the biggest, he said.

To produce enough 'critical metals' such as copper, lithium and nickel to support the green-energy transition, the mining industry needs to boost operations two-to-fivefold worldwide by 2050. Geopolitical tensions, environmental damage and social conflicts will constrain this growth. But another threat needs much more attention: climate change. Extraction of the very metals needed to address global warming will be increasingly impeded by the extreme weather that accompanies climate change.

In 1988, the United States entered into its worst drought since the Dust Bowl. Crops withered in fields nationwide, part of an estimated $60bn in damage ($160bn in 2025). Dust storms swept the midwest and northern Great Plains. Cities instituted water restrictions. That summer, unrelentingly hot temperatures killed between 5,000 and 10,000 people, and Yellowstone national park suffered the worst wildfire in its history.

Although the U.S. and China have agreed not to escalate their trade war, Trump's blanket tariffs and the rest of his America First agenda remain in place, and many economists are despairing about the demise of an open trading system that they regard as a key driver of prosperity. But Rodrik, who shot to prominence in the nineteen-nineties as a critic of the untrammelled globalization that helped give Trump his start in Presidential politics, is more upbeat.

Roberts, who is forty-two and grew up in Miami, joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre at nineteen and danced there for nearly two decades, until 2021. He began to make dances in 2016, and his early choreography-astonishingly original and powerful-was inextricably tied to his own dancing and the ways he could morph his majestic six-foot-four body as if it were molten.

Two fatty acids often used in dairy products might help to give civet coffee its distinctive flavour. The unusual brew, otherwise known as Kopi Luwak, is made by roasting coffee beans that have been eaten and excreted by Asian palm civets ( Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). Researchers found that these fatty acids appeared at a higher concentration in beans taken from civet faeces than in those taken directly from the plant. This difference is probably caused by fermentation in the civet guts, with Gluconobacter gut bacteria and their enzymes playing a key part, the team says.