When frozen ground known as permafrost degrades, it can fail catastrophically. That could spell serious trouble for the whole planet.

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. A single glacier sitting at the bottom of the world may be all that is holding back catastrophic amounts of sea level rise. As it melts away faster than ever, scientists are racing to get a better understanding of when it might fail. Unfortunately, they’ve recently found more bad news. The Antarctic bulwark known as Thwaites, or the “Doomsday Glacier,” is gargantuan—roughly the size of Florida—and holds enough ice to push the planet’s coastlines up two feet. But the edge of Thwaites also acts as a cork, holding up the rim of the West Antarctic ice sheet, much of which sits below sea level. As Thwaites deteriorates, more ice in this bowl becomes exposed to the ocean, creating a feedback loop that makes it melt faster. And if Thwaites were to succumb entirely, the whole interior of the sheet might follow suit, raising sea levels by as much as 10 feet. It’s easy to track Thwaites’ demise from space, but predicting its future has been much trickier. For years, computer models used to simulate Thwaites’ retreat weren’t able to pass the simple test of accurately re-creating...

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World is critical reading for anyone seeking to understand and push back against the far-right coalitions wielding considerable state and corporate power around the world. Klein and Taylor posit that today’s fascists believe that end times have arrived, and have made it their mission to profit from cascading global crises, while hunkering down and protecting themselves as the world burns around them. The book details three factions of end times fascists, united by their shared apocalypticism. The religious fundamentalists believe end times are upon us, but they will be saved by their messiah. The Silicon Valley technologists are building technologies they say could be world-ending, that in the meantime are killing jobs, consuming vast resources, and polluting communities. The ethno-nationalists espouse conspiratorial ideas about cultural replacement and treat immigration as an existential threat. DeSmog Canada editor/reporter Mary Stuart spoke with Astra Taylor about how climate change fits into end times fascism, the importance of AI data centre fights, and how we can understand Canadian Prime Minister Carney’s neoliberal moves in response to U.S. President Donald Trump. Taylor is a writer, documentarian, and activist. She co-founded the...

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. A single glacier sitting at the bottom of the world may be all that is holding back catastrophic amounts of sea level rise. As it melts away faster than ever, scientists are racing to get a better understanding of when it might fail. Unfortunately, they’ve recently found more bad news. The Antarctic bulwark known as Thwaites, or the “Doomsday Glacier,” is gargantuan—roughly the size of Florida—and holds enough ice to push the planet’s coastlines up two feet. But the edge of Thwaites also acts as a cork, holding up the rim of the West Antarctic ice sheet, much of which sits below sea level. As Thwaites deteriorates, more ice in this bowl becomes exposed to the ocean, creating a feedback loop that makes it melt faster. And if Thwaites were to succumb entirely, the whole interior of the sheet might follow suit, raising sea levels by as much as 10 feet. It’s easy to track Thwaites’ demise from space, but predicting its future has been much trickier. For years, computer models used to simulate Thwaites’ retreat weren’t able to pass the simple test of accurately re-creating...

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World is critical reading for anyone seeking to understand and push back against the far-right coalitions wielding considerable state and corporate power around the world. Klein and Taylor posit that today’s fascists believe that end times have arrived, and have made it their mission to profit from cascading global crises, while hunkering down and protecting themselves as the world burns around them. The book details three factions of end times fascists, united by their shared apocalypticism. The religious fundamentalists believe end times are upon us, but they will be saved by their messiah. The Silicon Valley technologists are building technologies they say could be world-ending, that in the meantime are killing jobs, consuming vast resources, and polluting communities. The ethno-nationalists espouse conspiratorial ideas about cultural replacement and treat immigration as an existential threat. DeSmog Canada editor/reporter Mary Stuart spoke with Astra Taylor about how climate change fits into end times fascism, the importance of AI data centre fights, and how we can understand Canadian Prime Minister Carney’s neoliberal moves in response to U.S. President Donald Trump. Taylor is a writer, documentarian, and activist. She co-founded the...

In the direct wake of an extreme weather event, information systems are scrambled and chaos reigns, providing a unique opportunity for misinformation and conspiracies to spread. It is a phenomenon that Grist reporters have witnessed with increasing alarm in recent years: After a winter storm hit Virginia in January, rumors swirled online that the event was caused by the Leviathan waking up. NOAA scientists have long had to fact-check false claims that geoengineering or the U.S. government creates and steers hurricanes. People often refuse to evacuate a storm because they’ve heard that the FEMA will steal their property. And after Hurricane Helene in 2024, federal disaster response efforts were disrupted by rumors of a militia attack on FEMA employees. The swarm of untruths has gotten so bad that FEMA now often puts out anti-misinformation bulletins after disasters. As climate change fuels more extreme weather events, this problem is only getting worse. Today, Grist launched a new series, “Distorted: Truth and Trust in an Age of Climate Disasters,” that aims to understand and combat this trend. The project is made possible thanks to support from the CO2 Foundation. “Having your life upended due to extreme weather is destabilizing, confusing, and devastating,”...

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Oxfam says investing by rich in disaster recovery widens inequality and gives incentive to delay climate action

In the direct wake of an extreme weather event, information systems are scrambled and chaos reigns, providing a unique opportunity for misinformation and conspiracies to spread. It is a phenomenon that Grist reporters have witnessed with increasing alarm in recent years: After a winter storm hit Virginia in January, rumors swirled online that the event was caused by the Leviathan waking up. NOAA scientists have long had to fact-check false claims that geoengineering or the U.S. government creates and steers hurricanes. People often refuse to evacuate a storm because they’ve heard that the FEMA will steal their property. And after Hurricane Helene in 2024, federal disaster response efforts were disrupted by rumors of a militia attack on FEMA employees. The swarm of untruths has gotten so bad that FEMA now often puts out anti-misinformation bulletins after disasters. As climate change fuels more extreme weather events, this problem is only getting worse. Today, Grist launched a new series, “Distorted: Truth and Trust in an Age of Climate Disasters,” that aims to understand and combat this trend. The project is made possible thanks to support from the CO2 Foundation. “Having your life upended due to extreme weather is destabilizing, confusing, and devastating,”...

The richest 0.1 per cent of the world’s population produces more greenhouse gas emissions than the poorest 44 per cent combined, research for Oxfam shows. It means each of those 8 million billionaires and millionaires is responsible for carbon pollution equivalent to more than 437 low-income people. Oxfam’s Disaster Divide report analyses the outsize emissions and impacts of the super-rich on the wider world. It finds that while the rich are responsible for a disproportionate share of carbon pollution, it is ordinary people who bear the brunt of the resulting floods, fires and famine. The rich escape the consequences personally because they can afford to protect themselves and their properties and have the luxury of mobility. It also finds the rich often benefit from climate disasters because prices of the commodities they control rise in a crisis. Jim Clarken, chief executive of Oxfam Ireland, said the statistics “should shake world leaders into action”. “The brutal unfairness of this reality should be a rallying call to protest, to urgently demand legislative change and to fight for this planet and its people,” he said. He said the fight was not just global but already on Ireland’s doorstep. “Climate inequality is a mirror...

A single glacier sitting at the bottom of the world may be all that is holding back catastrophic amounts of sea level rise. As it melts away faster than ever, scientists are racing to get a better understanding of when it might fail. Unfortunately, they’ve recently found more bad news. This Antarctic bulwark known as Thwaites, or the “Doomsday Glacier,” is gargantuan – roughly the size of Florida – and holds enough ice to push the planet’s coastlines up two feet. But the edge of Thwaites also acts as a cork, holding up the rim of the West Antarctic ice sheet, much of which sits below sea level. As Thwaites deteriorates, more ice in this bowl becomes exposed to the ocean a, creating a feedback loop that makes it melt faster. And if Thwaites were to succumb entirely, the whole interior of the sheet might follow suit, rising sea levels by as much as 10 feet. It’s easy to track Thwaites’ demise from space, but predicting its future has been much trickier. For years, computer models used to simulate Thwaites’ retreat weren’t able to pass the simple test of accurately recreating the retreat that satellites have captured over the last...

The world has lost the opportunity to prevent global warming significantly exceeding the critical threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to a United Nations report.

Homer City, Pa. — a tiny borough of just 1,746 people about 50 miles east of Pittsburgh in Western Pennsylvania, named for the Greek bard and home to a museum that fits inside an old railroad caboose — is not a place you’d expect would get much attention from the president of the United States … or his avaricious family. But this remote outpost in Indiana County has been on Donald Trump’s radar since his 2024 campaign, when he bemoaned the looming implosion of the towering 100-foot smokestacks that has once made a massive coal-fired power plant the region’s most prominent landmark. In July 2025, the now-47th president returned to Pennsylvania with news. Trump said a global fund called Knighthead Capital would spend some $15 billion in Homer City to build a massive new power plant — now to be fueled by natural gas from fracking — and a data center at the abandoned coal plant. “They’re going to spend billions of dollars on rebuilding it,” he said. “It’s going to be the largest plant of its kind in the world, I believe. It’s going to be great.” Just over three months later, a Bombardier Challenger private jet touched down...

I helicoptered into the Alaskan wilderness with scientists on the frontlines of permafrost research.

Andrew Haverdink, a tall grad student in a rain bib and rubber boots, wrenched a double-handed drill from the frozen soil that underlies much of Alaska’s Denali National Park and then unclipped the hollow barrel from the end of the bit. He knelt in front of a blue tarp, lined the barrel up with a plastic tray, and pushed a rod through the opposite end. A perfect solid, cylindrical core of ancient soil emerged—dark, rich permafrost at least a foot long. On that late morning in early July, Haverdink was among a team of Northern Arizona University students and staff gathering samples and data from a research plot, divided by surveyor’s tape unspooled atop tussocks, alders, and fireweed. In late June of 2013, a lightning strike sparked a fire in this stretch of mostly treeless tundra, in the northern backcountry of the park. Whipped by the Chinooks, intense downslope winds created as moist ocean air surmounts and then descends the Alaska Range, the fire ripped across nearly 35,000 acres. It burned through much of the vegetation and deep into the topsoil, stripping away the insulating layer that preserves the frozen permafrost, a massive storehouse of carbon that underlies 85% of...

Natural disasters in America are increasing 2-3x from previous standards, but program launched in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 provides valuable aerial imagery to help governments, insurance and broader industry respond effectively. ROCHESTER, N.Y., Oct. 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- In the past five years, the U.S. has experienced a yearly rise in major climate disasters. 2023 had 28. 2024 was 17. 2025 was 21. That is roughly 2-3x more than the long-term average, which is approximately nine, according to NOAA. These major climate disasters cost roughly a billion dollars. Many, including forest fires, far exceed that billion-dollar price tag. Even in years with fewer predicted weather events, organizations are still at elevated risk from any single event. EagleView's Disaster Response Program (DRP) provides rapid post-disaster aerial imagery and property data to customers. Often recovery is hampered by the capacity of responders, insurers, and other industry partners to understand the true severity of the damage. In those instances, aerial imagery determines the picture of risk for a professional, by showcasing how likely a roof is to fail, or how much storm damage a property has incurred, or the real condition of an asset. Without that information, wrong or unverifiable risk...

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