Tag Archives: infrastructure

Debra Snell thought she did her research. Before she and her husband signed the paperwork on their new red Toyota Mirai last March, they went to a hydrogen fueling station near their home in Grass Valley, California, northeast of Sacramento. There, on two consecutive weekends, they interviewed members of a …

Stretching thousands upon thousands of miles under your feet, a web of fibrous ears is listening. Whether you walk over buried fiber optics or drive a car across them, above-ground activity creates a characteristic vibration that ever-so-slightly disturbs the way light travels through the cables. With the right equipment, scientists …

The plan for the first small-scale US nuclear reactor was exciting, ambitious, and unusual from the get-go. In 2015, a group of city- and county-run utilities across the Mountain West region announced that they were betting on a new frontier of nuclear technology: a mini version of a conventional plant …

Tolullah Oni has a challenge for you. Next time you’re in a city—especially one you don’t know well—go for a long run, bike ride, or walk. See if you can tell when you enter an affluent neighborhood. You should, she says, be able to guess. “Suddenly it’s a couple of …

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The Roman Empire fell more than 1,500 years ago, but its grip on the popular imagination is still strong, as evidenced by a recent trend on TikTok. Women started filming the men in their lives to …

Brunch tomorrow in Texas will take place under the eye of Sauron. From about 10:20 am local time in San Antonio, the sky will begin to darken with an annular solar eclipse, in which the moon crosses directly in front of the sun at a time the satellite is especially …

It’s been one of the wettest years in California since records began. From October 2022 to March 2023, the state was blasted by 31 atmospheric rivers—colossal bands of water vapor that form above the Pacific and become firehoses when they reach the West Coast. What surprised climate scientists wasn’t the …

Each time a driver in Seattle meets a red light, they wait about 20 seconds on average before it turns green again, according to vehicle and smartphone data collected by analytics company Inrix. The delays cause annoyance and expel in Seattle alone an estimated 1,000 metric tons or more of …

Two years after the remnants of Hurricane Ian dumped up to 10 inches of rain on New York City in just two hours, the metropolis is once again inundated today by extreme rainfall. It is one of the many cities worldwide grappling with a counterintuitive effect of climate change: Sometimes, …

Climate change is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, and the United States has begun mobilizing an army to fight it: the American Climate Corps. Formerly conceptualized as the Civilian Climate Corps, the new initiative will “put more than 20,000 young people on career pathways in the growing fields …