Stability diagram of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), rate R versus duration T of mass addition with unstable regime in red and stable regime in blue. Interpolation of the field is based on the conducted ensemble of stabilization experiments (gray circles). The critical threshold Rc (white curve) of stabilization is approximated by function given at the top right corner. White stars highlight simulations that share the same total amount of deposited mass (M = 8000 Gt), added at differing rate and duration, showing that the combination of both determines potential stabilization. Graphic: Feldmann, et al., 2019 / Science Advances

Adding 8 trillion tons of artificial snow to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could stop it from collapsing – “The fundamental trade-off is whether we as humanity want to sacrifice Antarctica to save the currently inhabited coastal regions”

By Katherine J. Wu 17 July 2019 (PBS) – Gird your loins, humans: The time has come to turn part of the South Pole into our own giant snow globe. Or has it? In a study published today in the journal Science Advances, a team of German researchers suggests that dumping 8 trillion tons of artificial snow onto […]

Temperature forecast for Europe, 25 July 2019. Graphic: Wetterzentrale

Germany braces for fourth heatwave of summer – “That is not normal anymore. It’s everything other than normal.”

22 July 2019 (The Local) – Temperatures could exceed 38C in some parts of the Bundesrepublik this week during a record fourth summer heat wave. On Thursday temperatures around Germany will spike to up 38C – reigning in the fourth heat wave of the summer. Due to climate change, says Latif, there is double the […]

Puddles are seen in farm fields as heavy rains caused unprecedented delays in U.S. corn planting in the spring of 2019, near Sheffield, Illinois, 13 June 2019. Photo: Tom Polansek / REUTERS

U.S. farmers now face extreme heat wave after floods and trade war – “We’ve never seen a year like this”

By Emma Newburger 20 July 2019 (CNBC) – In the past year, torrential rains have dumped water on U.S. farmlands, destroying acreage and delaying crops from getting planted on time. Now, farmers face another hurdle: a stifling heat wave that’s spreading across the United States and is expected to be the worst in the farm […]

An array of Direct Air Capture (DAC) fans for capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Photo: Carbon Engineering, Ltd

Can direct air capture technology save us from global warming? “By the end of the century, DAC could require the equivalent of over half of today’s global energy needs”

By Simon Levey 22 July 2019 (Grantham Institute) – “We’ve fallen in and out of love with outlandish technologies in the hope that they might save us from climate change,” says Dr Ajay Gambhir, Senior Research Fellow at the Grantham Institute – Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London. “Some are just unicorns; […]

Caricature of Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy in 2009. Graphic: Ian Murphy

14 Most Heinous Climate Villains

By Mike Roddy and Ian Murphy 29 December 2009 (The Buffalo Beast) – The science of climate change is pretty basic: humans dig up fossilized carbon to fuel power plants and internal combustion machines, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Result: greenhouse effect global heating. Around 50% of all the species on the planet are predicted […]

A young man looks for mud crabs and snakehead fish as he walks on the parched bed of Chembarambakkam Lake, on the outskirts of Chennai, on 21 May 2019. Photo: Arun Sankar / AFP / Getty Images

In Chennai, water is now more expensive than petrol – 600 million people dealing with high to extreme water shortages – “I know what I am doing is wrong, but we are in a situation where you have to do what you can to survive”

By Karim Raslan 21 July 2019 (The Star) – Nearly four years ago, the south Indian city of Chennai (capital of Tamil Nadu) was under water. The worst floods in living history – the result of cyclones from the Bay of Bengal – had reduced this manufacturing and services powerhouse of eleven million to a […]

Lion population in Yankari National Park, 2006-2014, model fitted to time series (black squares are data, white circles are medians of the model-inferred true population sizes μt, and gray areas between dashes lines are 95 percent credible intervals). Graphic: Bauer, et al., 2015 / PNAS

Where lions once ruled, they are now quietly disappearing – Lion population has declined by 50 percent in 25 years

By Olivia Prentzel 18 July 2019 (National Geographic) – For every lion in the wild, there are 14 African elephants, and there are 15 Western lowland gorillas. There are more rhinos than lions, too. The iconic species has disappeared from 94 percent of its historic range, which once included almost the entire African continent but […]

Map showing the locations of Thompson and Chilcotin River steelhead trout in B.C. Graphic: G. Wilson / B.C. Ministry of Environment / COSEWIC

Canada rejects scientists’ emergency call to protect endangered trout on oil pipeline path – “They are mismanaging our fish right into extinction”

By Stephanie Wood 18 July 2019 (National Observer) – The federal government has turned down an emergency recommendation from scientists to use a federal law to protect endangered trout that live along the path of the existing Trans Mountain oil pipeline and its expansion project. The decision — described by one First Nations chief, Lee […]

Biggest opioid manufacturers, 2006-2012. Three companies manufactured 88 percent of the opioids: SpecGx, a subsidiary of Mallinckrodt; Actavis Pharma; and Par Pharmaceutical, a subsidiary of Endo Pharmaceuticals. Data: DEA. Graphic: The Washington Post

76 billion opioid pills: Newly released federal data unmasks the epidemic – “America should brace itself for the harsh reality of the scope of the opioid epidemic”

By Scott Higham, Sari Horwitz, and Steven Rich 16 July 2019 (The Washington Post) – America’s largest drug companies saturated the country with 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pain pills from 2006 through 2012 as the nation’s deadliest drug epidemic spun out of control, according to previously undisclosed company data released as part of the […]

One of sixty-six giraffes arrives in central China’s Henan Province in the early hours of Sunday, 15 October 2017, on a chartered flight from Johannesburg, South Africa. Photo: Henan Daily

Scientists declare Masai giraffes “Endangered” – “We have to regulate the international giraffe trade or risk losing one of our planet’s most remarkable animals”

WASHINGTON, 11 July 2019 (Center for Biological Diversity) – Highlighting the need for global action to fight giraffes’ silent extinction, a body of scientific experts today declared giraffes in Kenya and Tanzania — called Masai giraffes — endangered. Masai giraffes, one of nine giraffe subspecies, had long been considered a key population for the species. But […]

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