Image-of-the-Week: Forecast: Weird


Credit: Scotto Bear via Wikimedia Commons.Credit: Scotto Bear via Wikimedia Commons.If the weather’s seemed bizarre lately, the future’s likely to get really strange. This according to the latest IPCC summary report (pdf), released today, which predicts all kinds of additional weather weirdness in the years ahead: heavier rains, more extreme high temperatures, fewer low temperature extremes, longer-lasting heat waves, stronger hurricanes and typhoons, intensifying droughts, and extreme sea levels. The report summarizes trends in disaster costs in recent decades as: way more expensive in dollars for the developed world; way more expensive in lost lives in the developing world.

Today’s report reflects more accurately the true level of scientific uncertainty ahead—more hurricanes or just stronger hurricanes? more rain plus more floods?—and notes that many ares of the globe are still data impoverished. Nature News points out the gap between today’s release of the summary and the release of the full report due in February—it’s: ‘”unfortunate,” says Stefan Rahmstorf, an ocean and climate researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “Governments have in the past considerably weakened the language of IPCC summaries for policymakers… As long as the full report is not available it is hard to say if, and to what extent, this may have happened again.”‘

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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