If we can hit the most aggressive targets set by the Paris Agreement, we could stave off the worst health impacts for people living in one of the most climate-vulnerable areas on Earth. A study published Monday in Nature Geoscience projects that the tropics will stay habitable to humans if we can keep warming below…
If the Texas power crisis taught us anything, it’s that the state has some serious infrastructure issues that not even the state’s regulators are prepared to fix. Thankfully, everyone’s favorite high-profile Twitter troll, Elon Musk, might have a plan: a giant battery ready to plug more than 16,000 homes’ worth of…
As more states legalize weed, commercial production of it is increasing. These growing operations may not just be getting customers high—they may be getting the planet’s temperature higher, too.
It is easy to be pessimistic about the future. It is also easy to scientifically verify that pessimism through persuasive papers and charts. It is easier still to lose yourself in bleak visions of fires and floods, food and water shortages, widespread human suffering, violent apocalyptic cults, bad wi-fi, and from…
Unless you’re living in Huntersville, North Carolina, you may be blissfully unaware that the U.S.’s biggest gasoline spill since 1997 happened this past summer. The slowly-unfolding, little-reported-on saga in the state involves a company controlled by special interests like the Koch brothers and Shell, and a pipeline…
About 20 miles (32 kilometers) off the Californian coast, the 10,500-pound (4,7630-kilogram) remote submersible Doc Ricketts swept its strobe lights and sonar pulses across the seafloor like a transient silent disco. The vehicle wasn’t just putting on a show for the deep-sea denizens of the Pacific. It was mapping the…
Backroom deals, undemocratic processes, shutting out local voices in favor of industry interests. There’s soap-opera level drama happening in an unlikely space: the world of building codes. But the issues at hand are more than made-for-TV drama, and the outcome could have devastating effects on energy efficiency and…
If you’ve ever overstuffed your fridge and let some leftovers go bad in the back of it, you’re not alone. People toss more than 1 billion tons of food in the trash every year, according to a new United Nations report. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Meltwater from Antarctic glaciers is changing the makeup of the region’s oceans more than previously known, a new study finds. The measurements that made these findings possible were collected by an unusual group of researchers: seals.
Griddy, the Texas power supplier that’s made headlines recently for customers’ sky-high energy bills in the wake of widespread winter storm outages, has racked up another lawsuit. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the company for “false, misleading, and deceptive advertising and marketing practices” that he…
Right now, Calandra Davis’ water pressure is too low to take a shower. When she turns on her sinks, the water comes out at a slow trickle. For weeks, she’s had to bathe herself and her 6-year-old son with water from store-bought bottles. Like all residents of Jackson, Mississippi, she’s also been on a boil-water…
Sound travels faster and farther underwater because it’s denser than air, and that can make it harder for researchers trying to study marine life who get an early heads up to go into hiding. But a new underwater robot could move stealthily through the waves using a propulsion system that doesn’t rely on a propeller or…
Butterflies play essential role in pollinating wild plants and crops. Which makes a new study published in Science on Thursday such bad news. It shows the climate crisis is posing an existential threat to their survival, particularly in the American West.
A Texas power grid oversight official who held the spectacularly wishful belief that he could keep his job after the state’s grid sputtered last month, leading to dozens of deaths and utility bills Texans will be paying for decades, has been fired. On Wednesday night, Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) CEO…
Behold A-74, an enormous iceberg that broke away from the Brunt Ice Shelf in Antarctica late last month. Here’s what we know about the new ‘berg and what could happen next.
It could soon become a lot easier to take an electric car on some pretty cool road trips. A group of powerful utilities said Tuesday that they’re teaming up to make chargers for electric cars more accessible on highways.
Over the past decade, bitcoin has put increasing stress on the largely coal-powered grid of China’s Inner Mongolia. Now, the province is clamping down. Late last week, province officials announced plans to ban all new bitcoin and other cryptocurrency mining ventures and quickly phase out existing activity in order to…
The past year has been not great for oil companies. Between financial losses from the pandemic and increasing pressure from investors and the public at large to do something about how their product is messing up the planet, fossil fuel producers are feeling the heat.
Human fingerprints are all over the world’s freshwater. A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature shows that while human-controlled freshwater sources make up a minimal portion of the world’s ponds, lakes, and rivers, they are responsible more than half of all changes to the Earth’s water system.
The #resistance is growing. The American Petroleum Institute, which is the nation’s largest lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, is planning to endorse levying a price on carbon pollution, according to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal.
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