This story originally appeared in Hakai Magazine and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A new video appears on the social media network Telegram: footage of the smoking area aboard a large vessel. The curtains are ripped, the lights are broken, and ash and glass litter the floor. “This …
Read More »The Titan Submersible Disaster Shocked the World. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing Than Anyone Imagined
The Ocean Sciences Building at the University of Washington in Seattle is a brightly modern, four-story structure, with large glass windows reflecting the bay across the street. On the afternoon of July 7, 2016, it was being slowly locked down. Red lights began flashing at the entrances as students and …
Read More »The End of El Niño Might Make the Weather Even More Extreme
This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Summers keep getting hotter, and the consequences are impossible to miss: In the summer of 2023, the northern hemisphere experienced its hottest season in 2,000 years. Canada’s deadliest wildfires on record bathed skylines in smoke from …
Read More »The World’s Largest Fungus Collection May Unlock the Mysteries of Carbon Capture
It’s hard to miss the headliners at Kew Gardens. The botanical collection in London is home to towering redwoods and giant Amazonian water lilies capable of holding up a small child. Each spring, its huge greenhouses pop with the Technicolor displays of multiple orchid species. But for the really good …
Read More »Each of the Past 12 Months Broke Temperature Records
June 2023 did not seem like an exceptional month at the time. It was the warmest June in the instrumental temperature record, but monthly records haven't exactly been unusual in a period where the top 10 warmest years on record all occurred in the past 15 years. And monthly records …
Read More »Zombie Fire Season Is Here in the Arctic
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. So-called zombie fires in the peatlands of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia disappear from the Earth’s surface and smolder underground during the winter before coming back to life the following spring. These fires puzzle scientists because they appear in …
Read More »Who Wants to Have Children in a Warming World?
This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Jade S. Sasser has been studying reproductive choices in the context of climate change for a quarter century. Her 2018 book, Infertile Ground, explored how population growth in the Global South has been misguidedly …
Read More »Ecuador Is Literally Powerless in the Face of Drought
Ecuador is in trouble: Drought has shrunk its reservoirs, and its hydroelectric dams have had to power down. The government has been forced to cut electricity to homes for hours at a stretch, and in mid-April, President Daniel Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency. Since then, homeowners have been …
Read More »The Sea Is Swallowing This Mexican Town
This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español, and has been translated from Spanish. "Wake up! The sea is taking it all away, it's taking it all away!" were the first cries Claudia Ramón heard that night, when a fierce wave lashed her town. "It was my cousin who warned …
Read More »US Offshore Wind Farms Are Being Strangled With Red Tape
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. America’s first large-scale offshore wind farms began sending power to the Northeast in early 2024, but a wave of wind farm project cancellations and rising costs have left many people with doubts about the industry’s future in the …
Read More »