Here’s yet another sign that in the age of President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, the foxes are feasting in the coop. According to a report in the New York Times on Saturday, former George W. Bush administration official Dr. Nancy Beck has returned from a stretch with chemical…
We’ve got nine long days to wait until the sequel to the BBC’s spectacular 2001 nature documentary, Blue Planet, airs on October 29 in the UK. Fortunately, the BBC has blessed us with a second trailer for Planet Earth II, which looks like it will make even the most extravagant Hollywood blockbusters pale in comparison.
It’s been nearly six months since the Environmental Protection Agency unceremoniously axed its climate change webpages under the auspices of updating the site to reflect the Trump administration’s priorities.
It’s understandable that UAV enthusiasts might be tempted to grab amazing footage of ongoing disasters like the northern California wildfires—providing a unique perspective of a climate change-fueled catastrophe which has now killed at least 41 people, burned down thousands of buildings and laid waste to hundreds of…
The extraordinary 2017 hurricane season continues apace this week, as Ireland braces against the remnants of hurricane—yes, hurricane—Ophelia, whose fierce winds reached the country’s southern coast Monday morning. Ophelia astounded meteorologists on Saturday when it intensified into a Category 3 hurricane farther…
The 15 separate wildfires ravaging northern California over the past week have now claimed 38 lives, the L.A. Times reported on Saturday, and scorched an astonishing 220,000 acres.
Earth’s tropical forests hoard huge amounts of carbon, but as temperatures rise and weather patterns shift due to climate change, scientists worry that their lush green canopies will start leaking more CO2. That concern got some serious validation this week, when a new study concluded that the recent El Niño period…
On Wednesday, President Trump announced his intent to nominate AccuWeather CEO Barry Myers to run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a position that would put the private weather executive in charge of the nation’s public weather forecasting efforts. The appointment of Myers, who unlike most…
PITTSBURGH—Transitioning to clean energy, particularly in a city built on steel and surrounded by defunct coal mines, is always politically tricky. But Pittsburgh is trying to create its own equitable, bipartisan approach to what’s traditionally been a far-left ideal: decarbonization and emissions reductions.
Fire season is becoming longer and more intense worldwide, a reality which Americans were painfully reminded of this week, when a spate of wildfires sparked Sunday night and Monday morning turned vast swaths of northern California into an apocalyptic hellscape. As of 8am Pacific time today, the so-called North Bay…
ATLANTA—Two to three times a year, heavy rain and backed-up raw sewage flood a block of Peoplestown, Atlanta. Stormwater collects on the highly-impervious concrete buildup of the intersecting interstates 20 and 75/85 just north and flows downhill where it pools on the residential street. Enough rain can bring foul…
UTQIAĠVIK, ALASKA—Arnold Brower Jr., a 70-year-old Iñupiat whaling captain, can recall his first encounter with scientists clearly. It was 1977, and the International Whaling Commission (IWC) had just placed a moratorium on bowhead whale hunting, after a US government-led population survey determined the marine…
A night of wildfire-induced terror in Napa has given way to a morning hellscape.
Tropical Depression Nate, the former hurricane which pummeled the Gulf Coast near Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama at Category 1 status early Sunday, has made the 2017 hurricane season one of the worst on record since 1893 and possibly earlier.
Air travel is awful, and it’s only going to get worse in the future. But it’s not just that airlines are going to keep jacking up fees, canceling your flights at the last minute, and passing out bags of sand-flavored pretzels that exacerbate your dehydration-fueled headache. Rising global temperatures could make…
Following a pattern of everything being terrible in 2017, two volcanoes are primed to erupt along the western edge of the Ring of Fire.
An enormous hole in the the wintertime sea ice surrounding Antarctica is attracting considerable scientific attention. Researchers think the so-called Weddell polynya is part of a natural cycle, but its present size—the biggest it’s been since it was first spotted in the 1970s—could help us understand the processes…
Astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson had some seriously weird thoughts on hurricanes in an interview on Sunday, telling Sunday TODAY he believes man should harness the power of hurricanes for good rather than run from them, as one tends to do when 155mph winds and catastrophic storm surge are heading towards one’s beach…
A new NASA-sponsored study shows that global methane emissions produced by livestock are 11 percent higher than estimates made last decade. Because methane is a particularly nasty greenhouse gas, the new finding means it’s going to be even tougher to combat climate change than we realized.
There are around 26,000 polar bears on the planet out there doing their best as the ice caps melt. We’ve all seen the infamous starving polar bear picture, which has become a symbol (rightfully or not) of the impact of climate change on vulnerable species. But last week, instead of starvation came a story of glut.
