The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: New Paper Reminds Us that Rich Nations Are Responsible for Most Global Warming
Dear Diary. This week it has come to my attention that a new paper confirms that the richest nations and the rich inhabiting those nations are responsible for most of the global warming that has taken place since 1990. I’m actually a little surprised that another scientific study needed to be done on this because it already makes logical sense that the rich buy and use the most items generated from materials that are molded and transported via fossil fuels. The rich are the jet setters using high polluting fuel to fly many times during their lifetimes around the planet.
This means that the rich are mostly responsible for the climate crisis mess that we are in, and there’s the rub. Most of the rich did not get where they are without hording wealth, although I have known some very humble, generous wealthy people during my time. Over the last decade wealthy nations have pledged millions of dollars worth of climate aid to the poorer global south only to renege on payments. Tisk tisk….For Shame!
One big item that the rich use to justify not acting monetarily on climate is defending capitalism. I’ve known people to accuse climate and environmental people of being watermelons, green on the outside but red on the inside. That’s not fair and also keels the planet going down the spiral towards climate doom. The vast majority of climate activists are not communists. They would just like richer nations to pay their fair share to fix our main environmental problem.
Here is more from the Guardian:
Two-thirds of global heating caused by richest 10%, study suggests
Paper in Nature Climate Change journal reveals major role wealthy emitters play in driving climate extremes
Floods in Somalia in 2023 after torrential rainfall across east Africa. Photograph: Hassan Ali Elmi/AFP/Getty Images
Damien Gayle Environment correspondent
7 May 2025
While researchers have previously shown that higher income groups emit disproportionately large amounts of greenhouse gases, the latest survey is the first to try to pin down how that inequality translates into responsibility for climate breakdown. It offers a powerful argument for climate finance and wealth taxes by attempting to give an evidential basis for how many people in the developed world – including more than 50% of full-time employees in the UK – bear a heightened responsibility for the climate disasters affecting people who can least afford it.
“Our study shows that extreme climate impacts are not just the result of abstract global emissions; instead we can directly link them to our lifestyle and investment choices, which in turn are linked to wealth,” said Sarah Schöngart, a climate modelling analyst and the study’s lead author.
“We found that wealthy emitters play a major role in driving climate extremes, which provides strong support for climate policies that target the reduction of their emissions.”
It has been clearly established that wealthier individuals, through their consumption and investments, create more carbon emissions, while poorer countries located near the equator bear the brunt of the resulting extreme weather and rising temperatures.
The new research attempts to specifically quantify how much that inequality in emissions feeds into climate breakdown. To produce their analysis, the researchers fed wealth-based greenhouse gas emissions inequality assessments into climate modelling frameworks, allowing them to systematically attribute the changes in global temperatures and the frequency of extreme weather events that have taken place between 1990 and 2019.
By subtracting the emissions of the wealthiest 10%, 1% and 0.1%, they modelled the changes to the climate and frequency of extreme weather events that would have taken place without them. By comparing those with the changes that have occurred, they believed they would be able to calculate their responsibility for the crisis the world finds itself in today.
In 2020, the global mean temperature was 0.61C higher than 1990. The researchers found that about 65% of that increase could be attributed to emissions from the global richest 10%, a group they defined as including all those earning more than €42,980 (£36,472) a year. That includes all those on the UK median salary for full-time employees, which is £37,430.
Wealthier groups bore more disproportionate responsibility still, with the richest 1% – those with annual incomes of €147,200 – responsible for 20% of global heating, and the richest 0.1% – the 800,000 or so people in the world raking in more than €537,770 – responsible for 8%.
“We found that the wealthiest 10% contributed 6.5 times more to global warming than the average, with the top 1% and 0.1% contributing 20 and 76 times more, respectively,” the write in their paper, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Co-author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, said: “If everyone had emitted like the bottom 50% of the global population, the world would have seen minimal additional warming since 1990.” On the other hand, if the whole world population had emitted as the top 10%, 1% or 0.1% had, the temperature increase would have been 2.9C, 6.7C or a completely unsurvivable 12.2C.
The researchers said they hoped the analysis would inform policy interventions that recognise the unequal contributions to climate breakdown made by the world’s wealthiest, and foster social acceptance of climate action.
The research comes amid intense pushback from countries such as the US, and even cuts from the UK and other European countries, to providing finance for poorer countries to adapt to climate breakdown and mitigate its worst effects.
“This is not an academic discussion – it’s about the real impacts of the climate crisis today,” added Schleussner. “Climate action that doesn’t address the outsize responsibilities of the wealthiest members of society risks missing one of the most powerful levers we have to reduce future harm.”
Here are more “ET’s” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Thursday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)