Climate Cast

There are many ways to measure how much climate change is costing us. One method: tracking billion-dollar extreme weather events that have clear climate change links. Deke Arndt, chief of the monitoring section at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, explains why on this week's Climate Cast. Then, we hear a Climate Story from Molly Reichert and John Kim, whose "Phase II" art piece will be part of a conversation focusing on art and climate change on Saturday in St. Anthony, Minn.

Nearly 15,000 Northern Hemisphere lakes already have only intermittent winter ice cover, a new study notes, and further loss of ice threatens freshwater availability, economies and culture in the world's north, including Minnesota and Wisconsin.

MPR News chief meteorologist Paul Huttner visited Cuba last week and got a lesson on how climate change is affecting the country.

Will Steger has been to the top and bottom of the world. He has seen climate change first hand in places most of us will never set foot. The famed Minnesota explorer and climate activist is just back from a return to Antarctica. He sat down with MPR News chief meteorologist Paul Huttner to discuss what has changed since his last trip to the continent, plus his outlook for the climate's future.

The world's biggest insurers say climate change is costing us billions.

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar told Climate Cast about why she supports broad new climate change legislation known as the Green New Deal.

President Trump recently got the internet talking when he suggested, inaccurately, that recent cold and snow in the northeastern U.S. somehow negated modern climate science.

A major California electric utility is filing for bankruptcy, and climate change may be the culprit. Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) could face up to $30 billion in liabilities from recent wildfires in California, the LA Times reports. Hotter conditions make for more wildfires, and that's exactly what is happening in the western U.S., as Climate Cast has previously reported. Now, some analysts see PG&E -- a Fortune 500 company -- as the first economic casualty of climate change. Research scholar Michael Wara, who focuses on climate and energy policy at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, joined Climate Cast to explain.

Germany produced 40 percent of its electric power from renewables in 2018. Emissions are on pace to fall 62-percent from 1990 levels by 2050. That's an unthinkable greenhouse gas reduction pace here in the U.S. But in Germany, many say that's not fast enough. Toby Couture, founder and director of Berlin-based energy consultant E3 Analytics, catches us up on power and emissions trends in Germany. Then, we hear a Climate Story from Shannon Mortensen from Warren, Minn.

Harmony's 2018 rain totals are common for a Gulf Coast city, not Minnesota. But massive rainfalls are the new normal as the climate changes. A state climatologist expects Minnesota's precipitation record to be broken again soon.