“Danger days” aren’t too common now, for weather, but climate change is about to make them a lot more common over the next 15 years. A danger day is when the combination of heat and humidity (also known as the heat index) make it feel like it’s 105 degrees F or hotter. Warming temperatures are about to push U.S. cities into a …
EPA’s website allows you to search air by zip code, but what if it was as easy to assess air quality, block by block, as it is to find grocery stores? An experimental collaboration between Google and Aclima, a tech company that specializes in networking environmental sensors, has big dreams of doing just that. “It’s like a human body,” said Davida …
Algae blooms are becoming increasingly common in bodies of water around the globe, as warmer temperatures and increased nutrient runoff (largely from agriculture) fuel their growth. And they’re expected to get worse with climate change, as more frequent heavy storms wash fertilizer into bodies of water and overwhelm pipes that carry both storm water and sewage. A recent report conducted …
Earth Overshoot Day marks the day each year by which people have used more natural resources than the Earth can regenerate in a single year. It’s basically a balance sheet for global accounting. When you start to spend more than you earn, it does not become immediately apparent. But, eventually, you go bankrupt. carbon emissions are getting worse. “By putting carbon in …
While it is difficult to predict the flow of a stream and installing dams and generating hydropower can be environmentally degrading, the consistent flow in city water pipes presents a new frontier to be explored. City systems pump water daily at a fairly constant rate, which allows for a consistent flow of energy. It could also help safeguard cities’ hydropower …
Cody Murray, 38, and his father, wife, and four-year-old daughter were all burned by a “fireball” after methane built up in his pump house and exploded when Murray entered the shed to check on a water issue. The lawsuit, filed last week against EOG Resources, Fairway Resources LLC, and three subsidiaries of Fairway, alleges the methane was from the defendants’ …
Fewer than four hundred families are responsible for almost half the money raised in the 2016 presidential campaign, a concentration of political donors that is unprecedented in the modern era. To peruse the top donors in presidential politics is to take a cross section of the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. At least 67 are billionaires or married to one, …
Parts of the western United States and Mexico, Brazil, and East Africa now face wildfire seasons that are more than a month longer than they were 35 years ago. The longer season in the western United States is attributed to changes in the timing of snowmelt, vapor pressure, and the timing of spring rains — all of which have been …
Water use and energy demands are starting to collide, nationally, a crunch that National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) analysts are studying. Most people don’t recognize that the energy sector is the largest user of water in the nation, withdrawing more of this resource than any other industry. Given the effects of climate change—shifting historical weather and precipitation patterns—water is becoming an …
James L. Powell, director of the National Physical Sciences Consortium and whistleblower on climate change denial, has a mission to bring media and readers up to date on how many scientists believe people cause climate change. The anthropogenic climate change number is larger than you might think. Dr. Powell has examined titles and abstracts of more than 24,000 peer-reviewed scientific …