MOTHER JONES CLIMATE DESK WEEKLY: The World Is Hitting the Point of No Return, Faked public comments could tank this Ohio solar farm, Bad wildfire risk data puts millions of homes in danger, The Olympics are ditching PFAS waxes—and the "ridiculous" speed they gave skiers, Climate crisis could crash the global economy, experts say, thanks to flawed economic models, Amid Arctic Hubbub, Narwhals Are Growing Quieter 8FEB26

 

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STORIES FROM MOTHER JONES AND ITS PARTNERS We have reached a critical moment for the climate. For the first time, a three-year temperature average—2023 through 2025—has exceeded the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming over pre-industrial levels set at the Paris climate conference a decade ago. Climate scientists are predicting devastating consequences, just as the world’s governments appear to have lost their appetite for tackling the emissions that cause the warming.    The 1.5-degree target was set to forestall severe weather impacts and potential runaway warming. But 10 years of weak action have followed. “Climate policy has failed. The 2015 landmark Paris Agreement is dead,” says atmospheric chemist Robert Watson, a former chair of the UN’s arbiters of climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Meanwhile, natural stores that soak up our carbon emissions—forests, permafrost, and the oceans—are turning from carbon sinks to carbon sources, accelerating warming. There’s a growing fear that climate change in this new era of overshoot will happen suddenly and unpredictably, as formerly stable planetary systems transgress tipping points that, according to British global-systems researcher Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter, “could transform our world with devastating consequences for people and nature.”   The Atlantic Ocean circulation system, which sustains the Gulf Stream, may be within 30 years of shutdown. The Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets may have already reached a point of no return. Yet “current policy thinking doesn’t usually take tipping points into account,” notes Manjana Milkoreit of the University of Oslo.   In an analysis for Climate Desk partner Yale Environment 360, I explain how hopes that we can engineer a temperature reset by drawing down carbon emissions after overshoot may prove fanciful. The truth is that the climate system may be about to unleash a period of accelerated warming that is impossible to halt. Overshoot will be permanent.   —Fred Pearce

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TOP STORY DAVID MCNEW/GETTY The World Is Hitting the Point of No Return With global heating set to overshoot a critical 1.5-degree limit, scientists are warning that humanity is on a catastrophic course. YALE E360

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TRENDING Faked public comments could tank this Ohio solar farm CANARY MEDIA Bad wildfire risk data puts millions of homes in danger VOX The Olympics are ditching PFAS waxes—and the "ridiculous" speed they gave skiers GRIST Climate crisis could crash the global economy, experts say, thanks to flawed economic models THE GUARDIAN

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EDITOR'S PICK DAVID FLEETHAM/VW PICS/UIG/GETTY Amid Arctic Hubbub, Narwhals Are Growing Quieter  Shipping traffic is messing with their ability to hunt and communicate. INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS

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Dow Tumbles 800 Points, Nearly 3%, As Bond Markets Signal Recession 14AUG19

PUTIN & #MOSCOWMITCH LIKE IT LIKE THAT
I am really glad I transferred 71% of my 401K to a safe, no loss portfolio about a month ago.  I have been reading and hearing all kinds of economist predicting a recession in 2020 for the past year and made the move to protect most of my retirement funds and I am thanking God I did! This probably isn't the beginning of the recession, hopefully is is just a really loud warning shot. From NPR

Dow Tumbles 800 Points As Bond Markets Signal Recession

August 14, 201912:53 PM ET

Heard on All Things Considered

CHRIS ARNOLD

Twitter

URI BERLINER

Updated at 4:06 p.m. ET

Stocks are falling sharply Wednesday on deepening worries over a slowdown in the global economy.

The Dow has dropped 800 points, or about 2.5%. Investors have been whipsawed in recent days from mixed signals emerging from the Trump administration about tariffs and the escalating trade war with China.

The jitters were exacerbated amid worrisome economic data from two big countries was announced. Germany posted negative growth in the latest quarter, and China's industrial output fell to a 17-year low.

An even bigger worry: The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell below 2-year Treasuries for the first time since 2007. In other words, you would get a higher interest rate for government debt that matures in two years than in 10 years.

Such an inversion in yields has a strong track record of predicting a recession, especially the longer it continues. Each of the last seven recessions, dating back to 1969, were preceded by the 10-year falling below the 2-year.

Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer for Independent Advisor Alliance, commented on today's bond market turmoil: "The periods when the yield curve inverts are when markets believe we are headed into a recession and either inflation will be lower and/or the Federal Reserve will be forced to lower short term interest rates."

On Tuesday, the Trump administration said it was postponing some of its new tariffs on Chinese imports. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative announced that 10% tariffs on certain popular consumer items — including cellphones, laptop computers, video game consoles, computer monitors and some toys, shoes and clothing — will be postponed until Dec. 15.

"What we've done is we've delayed it, so that they won't be relevant to the Christmas shopping season," President Trump told reporters.

The delays affect about $160 billion worth of imports, according to calculations by the advocacy group Tariffs Hurt the Heartland. Tariffs on another $112 billion worth of Chinese imports are still set to take effect on Sept. 1 as scheduled.

How Europe's Double Dip Could Become America's 25APR12

EUROPE'S double dip recession threatens our recovery. The fact that they are in recession again, after implementing the drastic, conservative fiscal policies of their right-wing political parties should be a warning to the American electorate of what will happen to our economy if the repiglicans and tea-baggers win the presidency and Congress this year. From HuffPost.....
Europe is in recession.
Britain's Office for National Statistics confirmed today (Wednesday) that in the first quarter of this year Britain's economy shrank .2 percent, after having contracted .3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011. (Officially, two quarters of shrinkage make a recession). On Monday Spain officially fell into recession, for the second time in three years. Portugal, Italy, and Greece are already basket cases. It seems highly likely France and Germany are also contracting.
Why should we care? Because a recession in the world's third-largest economy, combined with the current slowdown in the world's second-largest (China), spells trouble for the world's largest.
Remember -- it's a global economy. Money moves across borders at the speed of an electronic impulse. Wall Street banks are enmeshed into a global capital network extending from Frankfurt to Beijing. That means that notwithstanding their efforts to dress up balance sheets, the biggest U.S. banks are more fragile than they've been at any time since 2007.
Meanwhile, goods and services slosh across the globe. If there's not enough demand for them coming from the second and third-largest economies in the world, demand in the U.S. can't possibly make up the difference. That could mean higher unemployment here as well as elsewhere.
What's the problem with Europe? Don't blame it on the so-called "debt crisis." There was no debt crisis in Britain, for example, which is now experiencing its first double-dip recession since the 1970s.
Blame it on austerity economics -- the bizarre view that economic slowdowns are the products of excessive debt, so government should cut spending. Germany's insistence on cutting public budgets has led Europe into a recession swamp.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has led the austerity charge, and other European policy makers who have followed her, have forgotten two critical lessons.
First, that the real issue isn't debt per se but the ratio of the debt to the size of the economy.
In their haste to cut the public debt, Europeans have overlooked the denominator of the equation. By reducing public budgets they've removed a critical source of demand -- at a time when consumers and the private sector are still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession and can't make up the difference. The obvious result is a massive slowdown that has worsened the ratio of Europe's debt to its total GDP, and is plunging the continent into recession.
A large debt with faster growth is preferable to a smaller debt sitting atop no growth at all. And it's infinitely better than a smaller debt on top of a contracting economy.
The second lesson Merkel and others have overlooked is that the social costs of austerity economics can be huge. It's one thing to cut a government budget when unemployment is low and wages are rising. But if you cut spending during a time of high unemployment and stagnant or declining wages, you're not only causing unemployment to rise even further -- you're also removing the public services and safety nets people depend on, especially when times are tough.
And with high social costs comes political upheaval. On Monday, Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte was forced to resign. U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron is on the ropes. The upcoming election in France is now a tossup -- incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy might well be unseated by Francois Hollande, a Socialist. European fringe parties on the left and the right are gaining ground. Across Europe, record numbers of young people are unemployed -- including many recent college graduates -- and their anger and frustration is adding to the upheaval.
Social and political instability is itself a drag on growth, generating even more uncertainty about the future.
What European policy makers should do is set a target for growth and unemployment -- and continue to increase government spending until those targets are met. Only then should they adopt austerity.
What are the chances that Merkel et al will see the light before Europe plunges into an even deeper recession? Approximately zero.
The danger here for the United States is clear, but there's also a clear lesson. Republicans have become the U.S. party of Angela Merkel, demanding and getting spending cuts at the worst possible time -- and ignoring the economic and social consequences.
Even if the U.S. economy (as well as President Obama's reelection campaign) survives the global slowdown, we're heading for a big dose of austerity economics next January -- when drastic spending cuts are scheduled to kick in, as well as tax increases on the middle class. But the U.S. economy isn't nearly healthy enough to bear this burden.
If nothing is done to reverse course in the interim, we'll be following Europe into a double dip.
Robert Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at Berkeley and former
Secretary of Labor, is the author of Beyond Outrage. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/europe-recession-_b_1452743.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications