Tag Archives: climate change risks

Atmospheric CO2 Reaches Highest Level in Nearly a Million Years

According to the World Meteorological Organization, atmospheric CO2 levels have reached the highest level in 800,000 years – a gain that took just a few decades. The agency warns that urgent action is needed to reverse this worrying trend — and notes that we have the technology, but perhaps not the political will.

This announcement is especially alarming, given that the Trump administration has adopted aggressively anti-environmental policies, including placing climate change deniers in key policymaking positions.

https://www.care2.com/causes/atmospheric-co2-reaches-highest-level-in-nearly-a-million-years.html

Costs of 2017 US Weather Disasters Demolish Previous Record

2017 saw the US scorched by record-breaking wildfires in California, record-breaking rainfall events like Hurricane Harvey in Houston (just one of the three most expensive hurricanes to ever hit the US, which all occurred in 2017), damaging hail events, tornadoes, and extreme droughts that wiped out crops.

These extreme weather events, most of which were fueled at least in part by anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), cost the US nearly a third of a trillion dollars ($306 billion) over the past year.

That is more money than the US government spent on transportation, housing and community, international affairs, energy and the environment, and science, combined, in 2015.

The total cost of these extreme weather events was, by nearly $100 billion, a US record.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/43178-costs-of-2017-us-weather-disasters-demolish-previous-record