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Firefighters perform structure protection against the Glass Fire in Napa County, California on Thursday, October 1, 2020. (Photo: Getty Images)
Scientists Warn 2020 on Pace to Become Hottest Year Ever as September Heat Smashes Previous Record
"This is a trend that will continue if we don't curb greenhouse gas emissions."
Oct 07, 2020
European Union scientists warned Wednesday that 2020 is on pace to overtake 2016 as the hottest year on record after last month was confirmed to be the warmest September ever, with the climate crisis driving temperatures to unprecedented highs, fueling devastating wildfires across the Western United States, and melting Arctic sea ice at an alarming rate.
"Globally and in Europe, September 2020 was the warmest September on record, with the global average 0.05degC warmer than the previous warmest September in 2019," the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in an analysis released Wednesday morning. "Temperatures were well above average in many regions across the globe, including off the coast of northern Siberia, in the Middle East, in parts of South America, and Australia."
Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist with C3S, toldNBC News that the record-shattering heat in September is yet another indication that immediate and ambitious cuts to carbon emissions are necessary to avert global climate catastrophe.
"The last five years have themselves been the five warmest on record," said Vamborg. "The world has already warmed at least one degree (1.8degF) above the pre-industrial era, and this is a trend that will continue if we don't curb greenhouse gas emissions."
\u201cThe latest #CopernicusClimate Change Service data show that this year continues to bring record-breaking temperatures. Globally & in Europe, it was the warmest September month on record.\nArctic sea ice extent was also notable, at the 2nd lowest on record\n\u27a1\ufe0fhttps://t.co/Ur7x68Tye3\u201d— Copernicus ECMWF (@Copernicus ECMWF) 1602072003
In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated that there is a 75% chance 2020 will end up being the hottest year on record--and a 99.9% chance it will rank in the top five warmest.
"As we go into an even warmer world, certain extremes are likely to happen more often and be more intense," said Vamborg. "The Earth has warmed a lot, and it will carry on warming if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the rate they are at the moment."
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European Union scientists warned Wednesday that 2020 is on pace to overtake 2016 as the hottest year on record after last month was confirmed to be the warmest September ever, with the climate crisis driving temperatures to unprecedented highs, fueling devastating wildfires across the Western United States, and melting Arctic sea ice at an alarming rate.
"Globally and in Europe, September 2020 was the warmest September on record, with the global average 0.05degC warmer than the previous warmest September in 2019," the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in an analysis released Wednesday morning. "Temperatures were well above average in many regions across the globe, including off the coast of northern Siberia, in the Middle East, in parts of South America, and Australia."
Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist with C3S, toldNBC News that the record-shattering heat in September is yet another indication that immediate and ambitious cuts to carbon emissions are necessary to avert global climate catastrophe.
"The last five years have themselves been the five warmest on record," said Vamborg. "The world has already warmed at least one degree (1.8degF) above the pre-industrial era, and this is a trend that will continue if we don't curb greenhouse gas emissions."
\u201cThe latest #CopernicusClimate Change Service data show that this year continues to bring record-breaking temperatures. Globally & in Europe, it was the warmest September month on record.\nArctic sea ice extent was also notable, at the 2nd lowest on record\n\u27a1\ufe0fhttps://t.co/Ur7x68Tye3\u201d— Copernicus ECMWF (@Copernicus ECMWF) 1602072003
In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated that there is a 75% chance 2020 will end up being the hottest year on record--and a 99.9% chance it will rank in the top five warmest.
"As we go into an even warmer world, certain extremes are likely to happen more often and be more intense," said Vamborg. "The Earth has warmed a lot, and it will carry on warming if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the rate they are at the moment."
European Union scientists warned Wednesday that 2020 is on pace to overtake 2016 as the hottest year on record after last month was confirmed to be the warmest September ever, with the climate crisis driving temperatures to unprecedented highs, fueling devastating wildfires across the Western United States, and melting Arctic sea ice at an alarming rate.
"Globally and in Europe, September 2020 was the warmest September on record, with the global average 0.05degC warmer than the previous warmest September in 2019," the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said in an analysis released Wednesday morning. "Temperatures were well above average in many regions across the globe, including off the coast of northern Siberia, in the Middle East, in parts of South America, and Australia."
Freja Vamborg, a senior scientist with C3S, toldNBC News that the record-shattering heat in September is yet another indication that immediate and ambitious cuts to carbon emissions are necessary to avert global climate catastrophe.
"The last five years have themselves been the five warmest on record," said Vamborg. "The world has already warmed at least one degree (1.8degF) above the pre-industrial era, and this is a trend that will continue if we don't curb greenhouse gas emissions."
\u201cThe latest #CopernicusClimate Change Service data show that this year continues to bring record-breaking temperatures. Globally & in Europe, it was the warmest September month on record.\nArctic sea ice extent was also notable, at the 2nd lowest on record\n\u27a1\ufe0fhttps://t.co/Ur7x68Tye3\u201d— Copernicus ECMWF (@Copernicus ECMWF) 1602072003
In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated that there is a 75% chance 2020 will end up being the hottest year on record--and a 99.9% chance it will rank in the top five warmest.
"As we go into an even warmer world, certain extremes are likely to happen more often and be more intense," said Vamborg. "The Earth has warmed a lot, and it will carry on warming if greenhouse gas emissions continue at the rate they are at the moment."
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'We're Turning Into a Dictatorship': Trump Tariffs Seen as Ploy to Further Consolidate Power
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy called President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs "a political weapon designed to collapse our democracy."
Apr 07, 2025
Analysts puzzling over the bizarre formula the Trump administration used to calculate its country-by-country tariff rates are wasting their time, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said in a response to the American president that has gone viral in recent days as global markets continue to nosedive.
"It's not economic policy, it's not trade policy," Murphy (D-Conn.) said in remarks recorded after Trump announced the sweeping tariffs last week. "It's a political weapon designed to collapse our democracy."
While President Donald Trump's universal tariffs on imports make no sense as an effort to rectify the failures of the status quo trade regime and bring back offshored U.S. jobs, they are comprehensible when viewed as "a tool to try to compel pledges of loyalty, this time from companies and industries in the United States," Murphy argued.
"You have to understand that everything Donald Trump is doing is in service of staying in power forever—either him or his family or his handpicked successors," the Democratic senator continued. "He's trying to destroy our democracy."
Murphy contended that the president designed the tariffs to be so widespread that corporations across private industry would have to come to the White House and "make an agreement with Trump in which he gives them tariff relief in exchange for a pledge of political loyalty."
"What could that pledge look like?" Murphy continued. "Well, maybe they agree to champion his economic policy publicly. Maybe they agree to make contributions to his political campaign. Maybe they agree to police their employees to make sure that nobody that works for that company works for the political opposition."
Politico reported late last week that businesses across corporate America "fear Trump's wrath" and are thus declining to criticize the president's tariff policies even as they wreak havoc worldwide and threaten to spark a devastating recession.
"There is zero incentive for any company or brand to be remotely critical of this administration," one unnamed public affairs operative told Politico. "It destroys your ability to work with the White House and advance your policies, period."
"While the United States has plenty of real problems to deal with, Trump is ignoring them to manufacture the fake emergencies he needs to further enlarge and centralize his power."
Murphy is hardly alone in seeing Trump's tariffs as an instrument of power consolidation.
Robert Reich, the former U.S. labor secretary, wrote Monday that "we're turning into a dictatorship" as Trump conjures "fake national emergencies" to jack up tariffs, deport people en masse without due process, gut efforts to combat the climate crisis, and dismantle large swaths of the federal government.
"As Trump declares emergency after emergency to justify his reign of terror, he's simultaneously eliminating America's capacity to respond to real emergencies," Reich wrote. "Make no mistake about what’s really going on here. While the United States has plenty of real problems to deal with, Trump is ignoring them to manufacture the fake emergencies he needs to further enlarge and centralize his power."
One analyst, Zack Beauchamp of Vox, argued the tariffs are more a symptom of the decline of U.S. democracy rather than a cause of it.
"Trump's tariffs will, if fully implemented, be remembered as their own cautionary tale. While he campaigned on them, he wouldn't have been able to implement the entire tariff package had he gone through the normal constitutionally prescribed procedure for raising taxes," Beauchamp wrote. "The fact that America isn't functioning like a normal democracy, with public deliberation and multiple checks on executive authority, is what allowed Trump to act on his idiosyncratic ideas in the manner of a Mao or Putin."
"It's still possible that Trump steps back from the brink," he added. "But even if he does, and the worst outcome is avoided, the lesson should be clear: The long decay of America's democratic system means that we are all living under an axe. And if this isn't the moment it falls, there will surely be another."
Trump Calls Tariff Madness a 'Beautiful Thing to Behold' as Global Markets Crater
"If the 4.8% fall in S&P 500 futures at the Asian opening isn't reversed, then it's on course for its worst three-day selloff since the Black Monday crash of October 1987."
Apr 07, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump late Sunday openly embraced the global chaos sparked by his sweeping tariffs, careening headlong into a potentially catastrophic trade war as worldwide financial markets plummeted and American retirees began to panic.
In a post on his social media platform, Trump declared that his tariffs are "already in effect, and a beautiful thing to behold."
"Some day people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing!" Trump wrote as recent retirees and people near retirement expressed fear and astonishment at the swift damage the president's policy decisions have done to their investment accounts.
One retiree, a 68-year-old former occupational health worker in New Jersey, told NBC News that she is "just kind of stunned, and with so much money in the market, we just sort of have to hope we have enough time to recover."
"What we've been doing is trying to enjoy the time that we have, but you want to be able to make it last," the retiree, identified as Paula, said on Friday. "I have no confidence here."
Trump's post doubling down on his tariff regime came as Asian markets cratered and U.S. stock futures opened bright red, signaling that Monday will bring another broad sell-off in equities. One of Trump's top economic advisers claimed in a Sunday interview that the president is not intentionally crashing the stock market, even as Trump—returning from a weekend golf outing in Florida—characterized the tariffs as "medicine."
"I don't want anything to go down," the president said. "But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something."
Bloomberg's John Authers wrote early Sunday that "if the 4.8% fall in S&P 500 futures at the Asian opening isn't reversed, then it's on course for its worst three-day selloff since the Black Monday crash of October 1987."
Though the stock market and the economy are not synonymous, economist Josh Bivens recently noted that they are currently "mirroring each other: Stock market weakness is reflecting broader economic weakness."
"While the stock market isn't the economy, the stock market declines we have seen in recent weeks are genuinely worrying," wrote Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "They are a symptom of much larger dysfunctional macroeconomic policy that will likely soon start showing up in higher unemployment and slower wage growth for the vast majority."
'Totally Lawless': Judge Orders Trump to Return Man Sent to El Salvador Prison in 'Error'
"This was an illegal act," said U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis.
Apr 06, 2025
A federal court judge on Sunday declared the Trump administration's refusal to return a man they sent to an El Salvadoran prison in "error" as "totally lawless" behavior and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to repatriate the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, within 24 hours.
In a 22-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis doubled down on an order issued Friday, which Department of Justice lawyers representing the administration said was an affront to his executive authority.
"This was an illegal act," Xinis said of DHS Secretary Krisi Noem's attack on Abrego Garcia's rights, including his deportation and imprisonment.
"Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or officer; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador in direct contravention of [immigration law]," the decision states.
Once imprisoned in El Salvador, the order continues, "U.S. officials secured his detention in a facility that, by design, deprives its detainees of adequate food, water, and shelter, fosters routine violence; and places him with his persecutors."
Trump's DOJ appealed Friday's order to 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Virginia, but that court has not yet ruled on the request to stay the order from Xinis, which says Abrego Garcia should be returned to the United States no later than Monday.
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