Brian Kahn, Author at Gizmodo

This Is What Happens When Bad Policies Meet

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule that would, by its own admission, result in more Americans getting sick and dying. And the whole reason we know that is because of landmark public health studies the Trump administration is trying to limit access to. Buried deep down on page 172, Table 4-8 in…

Environmental Justice Brian Kahn

Hurricane Lane Could Make a Rare Landfall in Hawaii

In a year of supremely weird weather, we may be in for yet another very odd event: a landfalling Hawaiian hurricane. Hurricane Lane is currently the strongest storm on the planet with winds of 150 mph, making it a very potent Category 4 storm according to the latest National Hurricane Center advisory. Hurricane Hunter aircraft…

Earth Science Brian Kahn

Typhoon Headed for South Korea Has Freakishly Huge Eye

After a period of quiet, the tropics have again come alive. Multiple tropical cyclones are roaring across the Pacific, but the most freaky looking is easily Typhoon Soulik, currently a weak Category 4-equivalent storm that’s on a path toward South Korea. I mean, just look at that thing. The eye on Soulik is an estimated 57 miles…

Earth Science Brian Kahn

The Trump Administration Just Dropped Its Pro-Coal Alternative to Obama’s Clean Power Plan

On Tuesday, the Trump administration released a new rule proposal at the center of its environmental deregulatory frenzy. The long-anticipated rule would replace the Clean Power Plan, an Obama era initiative to rein in pollution from coal-fired power plant that was considered the former president’s signature policy for combatting climate change. The proposal is dubbed…

Climate Change Brian Kahn

Can We Afford to Keep Rebuilding in the Line of Wildfires?

Jessica Wentz escaped the concrete confines of New York for her childhood home of Santa Rosa, California last year. At the time, the decision seemed like a no brainer, leaving behind a landscape dominated by humans for one where homes mingled with the forest and rolling chaparral hills of Northern California. But the dream of…

Earth Science Brian Kahn

Canada’s Wildfires Have Turned Day Into Night

Just when you think this wildfire season can’t get worse, something new comes along to remind you this year is truly one of rare horrors. Residents of Prince George, British Columbia—a small city 325 miles north of Vancouver—awoke to a sky seemingly devoid of sunlight. The city sits just to the east of British Columbia’s…

Earth Science Brian Kahn

Ryan Zinke Has Taken His Rambling, Confused Thoughts on Climate Change and Wildfires All Over the Country

Park ranger cosplay enthusiast Ryan Zinke has had himself a couple of weeks. In the midst of a catastrophic summer of wildfires, the Secretary of the Interior has tied himself in knots trying to figure out how to talk about the role of climate change in driving those fires. Over the course of the past…

Climate Change Brian Kahn

Watch This Terrifying New Footage of California’s Fire Tornado

The Carr Fire is in the record books as one of California’s largest and most destructive fires. But it will also forever live in nightmares for unleashing one of the most terrifying spectacles on Earth in the form of a firenado. On Wednesday, CAL FIRE released three new videos that show the firenado ripping through…

Earth Science Brian Kahn

Trump’s Giant Offshore Oil and Gas Lease Sale Was a Flop

The Department of the Interior just held the biggest offshore oil and gas auction in U.S. history. Like all things Trumpian, the bluster beforehand didn’t quite match the results. Of the 78.1 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico offered up to oil and gas companies, 801,289, or just about one percent, were snapped up,…

Climate Change Brian Kahn

Companies Have Bought More Clean Energy Than Ever This Year, and It’s Only August

Our government is firmly controlled by fossil fuel interests that have turned federal climate action into a pipe dream. Thankfully, a scrappy band of multi-billion dollar corporations are keeping the renewable energy revolution alive. Plucky upstarts like Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and AT&T are part of a group fo nearly 60 companies making major investments in…

Energy Brian Kahn

Climate Change Is Cooking the Oceans

Heat waves aren’t just for land lubbers. Climate change has turned the oceans into cauldrons of scalding water, upending marine ecosystems around the world. A new paper in Nature shows how marine heat waves have become more common and intense in recent decades, largely due to climate change. What’s worse, it shows that even if…

Climate Change Brian Kahn

Great, Now Canadian Wildfire Smoke Is Crossing the Atlantic

Some personal news: I’m about done with wildfires. The western half of North America has turned into a funeral pyre for forests. We’ve heard a lot about California recently, but British Columbia is also in serious trouble. There are about 600 blazes currently turning the province into a smoldering morass, including 145 new fires that…

Earth Science Brian Kahn

Being an EPA Scientist Sounds Terrible

Some days, you may roll out of bed and wonder why the hell you’re working a job that doesn’t make a difference where your boss treats you like crap. You could come work at Gizmodo Media Group. Or you could wash that sense of ennui away by realizing it could be worse. You could be…

Earther Brian Kahn

The Mendocino Complex Fire Has Now Spawned the Biggest Single Blaze in California History

The Mendocino Complex Fire just keeps setting records. Last week, the combination of the Ranch and River fires set the record as the state’s largest fire complex in history. But now the Ranch Fire alone is the biggest single fire to ever scar the state. Together, the Ranch and River fires have scorched 344,890 acres.…

Earth Science Brian Kahn

Glacier National Park Is on Fire

Weeks after Yosemite Valley closed due to wildfires for the first time in decades, parts of Glacier National Park in Montana have been evacuated thanks to an explosive fire. The Howe Ridge Fire “grew significantly” on Sunday according to a Facebook post by the park, the same day Glacier hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the…

Earth Science Brian Kahn

The Fossil Fuel Propaganda Machine Is Still Playing the Victim

New Orleans, Louisiana—At Heartland Institute’s America First Energy Conference, unbridled growth is the only path forward and the only way to get down it is in a military-grade tank run on fossil fuels. Any policy that doesn’t help speed the U.S. down that road is a waste of time. Fuel efficiency standards? They’ll lead to…

Earther Brian Kahn

Aerial Photos Reveal the True Horror of the Carr Fire

New imagery puts the massive wildfire in context, revealing the both the power and capriciousness of one the most destructive fires in California history.

Earth Science Brian Kahn

Our First Good Weather News All Summer

It looks like we could be granted a reprieve from the fourth horseman of the weather apocalypse—hurricanes.

Earth Science Brian Kahn

Yet Another Reason Geoengineering Won’t Save Us

Geoengineering our planet to solve climate change is one of the riskiest propositions humanity has ever considered. That’s largely because there’s no way to know all the consequences that come with reflecting sunlight back into space, particularly when it comes to the agricultural system that has allowed humanity to flourish for millennia. That’s sent scientists…

Climate Change Brian Kahn

Trump’s Fuel Efficiency Rollback Could Start a Legal War

Every boneheaded Trump administration move has been met with a flurry of legal challenges. Thursday’s proposed rollback of future fuel efficiency standards will be no different. The administration has proposed freezing passenger car fuel efficiency at 2020 standard of of 43.7 miles per gallon (mpg) through 2026 rather than raising it to 54.5 mpg. In…

Climate Change Brian Kahn

Brian Kahn

This Is What Happens When Bad Policies Meet

Hurricane Lane Could Make a Rare Landfall in Hawaii

Typhoon Headed for South Korea Has Freakishly Huge Eye

The Trump Administration Just Dropped Its Pro-Coal Alternative to Obama’s Clean Power Plan

Can We Afford to Keep Rebuilding in the Line of Wildfires?

Canada’s Wildfires Have Turned Day Into Night

Ryan Zinke Has Taken His Rambling, Confused Thoughts on Climate Change and Wildfires All Over the Country

Watch This Terrifying New Footage of California’s Fire Tornado

Trump’s Giant Offshore Oil and Gas Lease Sale Was a Flop

Companies Have Bought More Clean Energy Than Ever This Year, and It’s Only August

Climate Change Is Cooking the Oceans

Great, Now Canadian Wildfire Smoke Is Crossing the Atlantic

Being an EPA Scientist Sounds Terrible

The Mendocino Complex Fire Has Now Spawned the Biggest Single Blaze in California History

Glacier National Park Is on Fire

The Fossil Fuel Propaganda Machine Is Still Playing the Victim

Aerial Photos Reveal the True Horror of the Carr Fire

Our First Good Weather News All Summer

Yet Another Reason Geoengineering Won’t Save Us

Trump’s Fuel Efficiency Rollback Could Start a Legal War

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