Aerial view of Runit Dome, in Enewetak Atoll, the Marshall Islands, where more than 3.1 million cubic feet of U.S.-produced radioactive soil and debris, including lethal amounts of plutonium, are buried. The so-called “Tomb” now bobs with the tide, sucking in and flushing out radioactive water into nearby coral reefs, contaminating marine life. Video: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

How the U.S. betrayed the Marshall Islands, kindling the next nuclear disaster – “More than any other place, the Marshall Islands is a victim of the two greatest threats facing humanity: nuclear weapons and climate change”

By Susanne Rust 10 November 2019 MAJURO, Marshall Islands (Los Angeles Times) – Five thousand miles west of Los Angeles and 500 miles north of the equator, on a far-flung spit of white coral sand in the central Pacific, a massive, aging and weathered concrete dome bobs up and down with the tide. Here in […]

The home of Edward and Stella O’Neal is torn down due to damage caused by flooding during Hurricane Dorian in Ocracoke, North Carolina. Photo: Daniel Pullen / The Washington Post

Amid flooding and rising sea levels, residents of one barrier island wonder if it’s time to retreat – “Is this really sustainable? The answer is pretty clearly no.”

By Frances Stead Sellers 9 November 2019 OCRACOKE, North Carolina (The Washington Post) – On any normal late-fall day, the ferries that ply the 30 miles between Swan Quarter and this barrier island might carry vacationing retirees, sports fishermen and residents enjoying mainland getaways after the busy summer tourist season. But two months ago, Hurricane […]

Former HSBC employees protest about unfair cuts, or “clawbacks”, to their pensions outside of the HSBC annual general meeting at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham, England, 13 April 2019. Photo: The Telegraph

“Their house is on fire”: the pension crisis sweeping the world – “We just have to explain to millennials that their parents might have to move back in with them”

By Josephine Cumbo and Robin Wigglesworth 16 November 2019 LONDON/OSLO (Financial Times) – Jan-Pieter Jansen, a 77-year-old retiree from the Netherlands, had high hopes for a worry-free retirement after having saved diligently into a pension during his working life. But Mr Jansen, a former manager in the metal industry, has been forced to reappraise his […]

Wild cows lounge on North Carolina’s Cedar Island in May 2019. On 6 September 2019, Hurricane Dorian blasted the island with Category 1 force winds and rain, creating what locals described as a “mini tsunami”. The low-lying marshlands were soon inundated with an estimated eight feet of water, and the cows were swept out to sea by the storm surge. They got lucky when they washed up at Cape Lookout National Seashore. Photo: Paula O'Malley Photography

Three cows swept away by Hurricane Dorian found on island miles from shore – “Who knows exactly, but the cows certainly have a gripping story to share”

By Antonia Noori Farzan 14 November 2019 (The Washington Post) – The only way to get to Cape Lookout National Seashore, a 56-mile chain of undeveloped barrier islands in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, is by boat. It’s not uncommon for visitors to spot bottlenose dolphins, or even the occasional seal. But last month, park officials […]

Projected (a) mean winter (Oct-April) soil temperature, (b) mean winter air temperature, (c) mean leaf area index (July-August), (d) annual gross primary productivity (GPP), (e) mean non-summer (NS; September - May) unfrozen soil moisture, (f) mean summer soil moisture (June-August), and (g) cumulative summer precipitation (June-August) for the northern permafrost region from 2018 through 2100 under RCP 4.5 (blue) and 8.5 (red) based on ESM ensemble outputs. Graphic: Natali, et al., 2019 / Nature Climate Change

Arctic shifts to a carbon source due to winter soil emissions – “The warmer it gets, the more carbon will be released into the atmosphere from the permafrost region, which will add to further warming”

By Samson Reiny 8 November 2019 (NASA) – A NASA-funded study suggests winter carbon emissions in the Arctic may be adding more carbon into the atmosphere each year than is taken up by Arctic vegetation, marking a stark reversal for a region that has captured and stored carbon for tens of thousands of years. The […]

Trump holds an early projection map of Hurricane Dorian in the Oval Office on 4 September 2019. The projected path of the hurricane has been extended into Alabama with a Sharpie pen, almost certainly by Trump himself. Photo: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Internal NOAA emails detail blowback to Trump attacks on hurricane weather forecasters: “This has really gotten out of hand”

By Allan Smith 7 November 2019 (NBC News) – Internal emails at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released Thursday showed how the agency scrambled to respond to President Donald Trump’s inaccurate claims about Hurricane Dorian and Alabama. The emails, dozens of which were obtained by NBC News in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, […]

A firefighter passes a burning home as the Hillside fire burns in San Bernardino, California, on Thursday, 31 October 2019. The blaze, which ignited during red flag fire danger warnings, destroyed multiple residences. Photo: Noah Berger / AP Photo

California is becoming unlivable – Wildfires and lack of affordable housing exacerbate each other

By Annie Lowrey 30 October 2019 (The Atlantic) – Right now, wildfires are scorching tens of thousands of acres in California, choking the air with smoke, spurring widespread prophylactic blackouts, and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people. Right now, roughly 130,000 Californians are homeless, and millions more are shelling out far more in […]

A house burns in the Kincade Fire on 23 October 2019 as a metal sculpture of an animal looks on. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / SF Chronicle

U.S. formally begins to leave the Paris climate agreement

By Rebecca Hersher 4 November 2019 (NPR) – The Trump administration has formally notified the United Nations that the U.S. is withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement. The withdrawal will be complete this time next year, after a one-year waiting period has elapsed. “We will continue to work with our global partners to enhance resilience […]

Shell’s “cracker” plant under construction in Pennsylvania. Photo: Keith Srakocic / AP

Will a push for plastics turn Appalachia into next “Cancer Alley”? – “It’s so obvious that they are trying to lock us into fossil fuels”

By Emily Holden 11 October 2019 MONACA, Pennsylvania (The Guardian) – Construction cranes climb into the sky and sprawl across the massive petrochemical facility that will turn a byproduct of fracked gas into plastic on the banks of the Ohio River, just outside Pittsburgh. Even at a distance, from the car park of a cancer […]

Comparison of weekly U.S. Drought Monitor for 30 July 2019 and 1 October 2019 shows the rapid progression of drought across the south-central and southeast U.S. Graph: National Drought Mitigation Center

October 2019: A month of extreme weather for the U.S. – “This early-October heat wave appears to the most intense and anomalous on record for such a large region of the U.S.”

By Christopher C. Burt 1 November 2019 (Weather Underground) – October is a month of transition weatherwise for the contiguous U.S. Some years it is a gentle transition from early fall to late fall, and some years an extreme transition from late summer to early winter—as has been the case this year. In fact, it […]

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