Climate Change

The worst drought of the last 1,000 years was in 1934

The current drought in the U.S. certainly feels like it’s one for the history books. But it’s likely not the worst North America has seen in the last millennium. A new study from NASA shows that a drought in 1934 was by far the worst to strike the continent in 1000 years. Scientists from NASA…

The Arctic is losing 300 percent more ice than the Antarctic’s gaining

A common argument made by climate change deniers is the fact that the antarctic ice shelf hit a record high earlier this year. But that argument doesn’t hold water (so to speak). Nobody is disputing that the antarctic ice shelf has posted record gains over the last couple of seasons, because it has. In fact,…

Antarctica Is Losing So Much Ice It’s Throwing Off Earth’s Gravity

Rising sea levels inundating coastal cities are the least of our global warming problems. According to a new report by the European Space Agency, the loss of snowpack along the antarctic ice shelf is throwing off Earth’s gravitational field. Yeah, pretty sure that’s bad. For the last four years, the ESA’s GOCE satellite has circled…

A 1000-Foot Tower Is Being Built in the Amazon to Track Climate Change

In a remote stretch of the Amazon rainforest, a skinny steel tower will soon rise over 1,000 feet into the sky—higher than the Eiffel Tower, way higher than the trees. The Amazon Tall Tower Observatory is a joint effort by Brazil and Germany to figure out exactly how carbon dioxide fluctuates inside the South American…

Ship Lost in the Arctic 160 Years Ago Found Thanks to Climate Change

In 1845, the explorer John Franklin set off to sail the fabled Northwest Passage, an Arctic sea route that would hypothetically connect the Atlantic and the Pacific. He never returned. His ship was lost to the ice. But now, thanks to the obsession of Canada’s prime minister, an expedition has located one of Franklin’s two…

This Mosaic of Satellite Images Shows Antarctica Like Never Before

The picture above shows a top-down view of Antarctica, the freezing southern end of our planet. Except that it’s not a single picture. It’s a mosaic of 3,150 satellite images mashed together to form one giant image. The images were created by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, which manages the RADARSAT-2 satellite on behalf of the…

Louisiana loses a football field of land every hour to the ocean

If you compare a map of the Louisiana coastline in the 1920s to today, the difference is striking. About 1,883 square miles of land has just disappeared — swallowed into the Gulf of Mexico. And each year Louisiana loses more. In fact, roughly a football field’s worth of land is lost every hour. From ProPublica:…

UN Climate Report: Large-Scale Climate Shifts Are Inevitable

A new draft report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been seen by the New York Times, and the message seems to be clear: our planet is at risk of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” and current attempts to curb it are futile. The report, intended to be the final one of…

Is Saving The Whales Key To Mitigating Climate Change?

The great whales, once under the threat of death from most seafaring nations (and now only a scant few), are some of the largest creatures to ever grace our planet. The group includes all the aptly named Mysteceti, the whales who filter plankton and krill through the plates of baleen that line their jaws, and…

Redheads aren’t going extinct because of climate change

Whether it’s blondes or blue eyes or redheads, every generation seems to have a panic over what trait is going to go “extinct” sometime in the future. But it’s nonsense. Below, an explanation from Gawker’s Antiviral about why redheads aren’t going extinct because of climate change. Factually is Gizmodo’s new blog of fun facts, interesting…

How Hot Your City Could Be By 2100 If Climate Change Goes Unchecked

It’s a sorry truth that hits you mid-July: Average summer temperatures have been rising since the 1970s. If we continue down this path, according to a new study by Climate Central, in 2100, summers in Boston will feel more like sticky Miami—and summers in Miami will feel like toasty Harlingen, Texas. Simply type where you…

A Tantalizingly Brief Glimpse Inside Fabien Cousteau’s Underwater Lab

Fabien Cousteau just concluded his 31-day underwater research mission, where six scientists studied coral reefs in a small chamber 63 feet underwater off the coast of Key Largo. The long-term underwater residence gave them a firsthand glimpse of some never-before-seen underwater phenomena, as Cousteau told PBS’s Hari Sreenivasan in this all-too-short interview from the ocean…

Sea Level Rise Is Forcing This Island Nation To Buy Land 1200 Miles Away

The nation of Kiribati is a string of 30 or so tiny islands in the Pacific, each just a few feet above the sea. Thanks to climate change and rising seas, it’s officially screwed. So Kiribati’s government has come up with a drastic and unprecedented decision: buy 5,460 acres of land that is 1,200 miles…

Wyoming Says Teaching Climate Change Would Wreck The State’s Economy

The Wyoming legislature is afraid that if you teach students about climate change, their state economy will crumble and die. I don’t know how “Ignorance is bliss!” became a pedological theory, but it’s not alright. In related news, the cost in increased energy prices from requiring power companies embrace renewable energy sources is so minuscule,…

Melting Arctic Ice Is Drastically Changing National Geographic’s Atlas

When the the 10th edition of the National Geographic world atlas is released this fall, it will look markedly different from previous versions. That field of endless white usually covering the very north of the planet will be dramatically reduced to reflect the real-life shrinkage of the Arctic ice sheet. The map will show a…

Swim, Eat, Mate: Life Through the Eyes of a Polar Bear

Last April, US Geological Survey researchers collared four female polar bears north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Those collars were outfitted with small video cameras, and the USGS has just released the first videos they collected. They show a female eating, swimming, and socializing with a potential mate. Despite the bear’s unrepentent shaky-cam approach to filmmaking,…

A Brief Cartoon History of Planet Earth

Climate change is no laughing matter—but maybe it should be. Here, you can read an excerpt Yoram Bauman and Grady Klein’s new book The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change—an entertaining overview of climate science, predictions, and policy. The above is an excerpt from The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change by Yoram Bauman and Grady Klein.…

How Obama’s Power Plant Regulations Will Transform Our Electric Grid

President Obama and the EPA have just taken their biggest and boldest step ever to fight climate change. The Clean Power Plan, unveiled by the EPA today, is far more important than the Keystone XL pipeline—if also far less sexy to slap on a poster. But these carbon-cutting regulations have the potential to transform energy…

Why exactly does the melting of the West Antarctica ice sheet matter? (Hint: look at that image.) What’s the secret to seamless driving in Google’s automated car? Why are we racing slime molds? Catch up in this week’s Landscape Reads! The Race of the Slime Molds “The race set off late in the afternoon on…

Rising Waters Are Spawning a New Breed of Cyborg Architecture

× Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, a masterpiece on the banks of the Fox River, has been hit by three different “100-year-floods” in the last 20 years. Now, preservationists are considering putting the home on permanent hydraulic jacks to lift it above floodwaters. The Farnsworth House would become a cyborg building—and it’s far from…