19 November 2018 (Desdemona Despair) – In August 2018, it was “environmental terrorist groups” causing California’s forest fires. Before that, it was water regulations. Now, California just needs to rake its forests and manage them like Finland.Anything to deny the obvious: global warming is causing California’s megafires.Throughout 2018, the Trump administration has undertaken a Stalinist […]
24 October 2018 (Silencing Science Tracker) – On 24 October 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a draft “Air and Energy Strategic Research Action Plan” (Action Plan) for the period from 2019 to 2022. The Action Plan identifies research needed to “address[] EPA priorities and mandates” with respect to air pollution. Unlike previous versions, […]
By Christie Aschwanden, Anna Maria Barry-Jester, Maggie Koerth-Baker, and Ella Koeze 16 November 2018 (FiveThirtyEight) – The Camp Fire in Northern California has already been the most lethal and most destructive in state history, and it continues to burn. The death toll, currently at 63, is expected to grow — more than 600 people are […]
By Amanda Mull 17 November 2018 (The Atlantic) – The particulates in smoke don’t destroy homes. They don’t down trees. But in the case of wildfires, smoke’s impacts—and dangers—can reach hundreds of miles further than the flames themselves. As of Friday evening, the Camp Fire raging in Butte County, north of the San Francisco Bay […]
By James Fernyhough 15 November 2018 (The Australian Financial Review) – Insurance giant IAG has warned a failure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions could result in a world that is “pretty much uninsurable”, with poorer communities likely to bear the brunt of the effects. In Australia, IAG said temperature increases of more than 3 degrees […]
By James McAuley 17 November 2018 PARIS (The Washington Post) – The French president is under fire again, this time over rising fuel prices. On Saturday, some 244,000 protesters, many clad in yellow vests, not only took to the streets, but in many places literally took the streets, according to the French Interior Ministry. The […]
By Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis 13 November 2018 (The Washington Post) – Scientists behind a major study that claimed the Earth’s oceans are warming faster than previously thought now say their work contained inadvertent errors that made their conclusions seem more certain than they actually are. [cf. Earth’s oceans have absorbed 60 percent more […]
16 November 2018 (BBC News) – Northern California’s air quality has become the worst in the world, according to monitoring groups, as the state battles devastating fires. Air quality network Purple Air said on Thursday the air is now worse than smoggy cities in India and China. Schools have cancelled classes, flights have been delayed, […]
16 November 2018 (CBS) – The number of people missing in California’s wildfires has soared to over 600, and the death toll has risen to 66. In the “Camp Fire” in Northern California, 631 people were unaccounted for after officials on Thursday added more than 500 names of people reported missing.Hundreds of others are living […]
By Christopher F. Schuetze 4 November 2018 KAUB, Germany (The New York Times) – Just after sunrise, Capt. Frank Sep turned to his ship’s radio for the defining news of his day: the water level in Kaub, the shallowest part of the middle section of the Rhine, Germany’s most important shipping route. The news was […]
