. The oldest floating ice in the Arctic appears in red on these maps comparing ice levels in 1985 and this year, from the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. Arctic ice levels reached their probable low for the year in mid-September. Data and images from Tschudi et al., [...]
1. The Sky Is Vast The dumbest moment at the Copenhagen Climate Conference came late on the night of Dec. 12, 2009, after 100,000 protestors had marched three miles from downtown Copenhagen to the Bella Center, site of COP 15, to demand climate action from 192 world leaders gathered there. That wasn’t the dumb part. [...]
Humans tend to view their health-care system in isolation, which can make it harder to optimize human health as the climate changes, according to a panel of “One Health” experts convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. As the Centers for Disease Control puts it, “One Health is a collaborative, multisectoral, and [...]
Five countries have expanded imports of Russian oil in the wake of the Ukraine invasion and refined it into products they are selling to countries that have sanctioned Russian oil, according to a report released today by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). Their “laundering” operation is undermining the price cap [...]
Solutions to the world’s converging environmental crises may not always align, the Biden Administration’s climate czar said last week. “There are a lot of hard conversations around the clean energy transition that we haven’t figured out yet, that there’s certainly not a global consensus on, let alone an American consensus on,” White House National Climate [...]
Fusion energy needs more than a sustained fusion reaction before it can help the world produce sufficient carbon-neutral energy. The U.S. Department of Energy has identified a research and development agenda for a suite of technologies and processes to enable fusion. Two DOE officials named five of those pressing technologies in a webinar Thursday hosted [...]
Investment in fusion energy is about to go mainstream, according to the lead fusion coordinator for the U.S. Department of Energy. “As the technology continues to mature, there will be a point where private investors feel that they must be invested in fusion, and I feel like we’re starting to reach that inflection point,” Scott [...]
Those unusual frozen Februaries in Texas may not be so unusual anymore. Early winter has been warming across North America, but late winter is another story. Scientists have documented a cooling trend over more than 40 Februaries, marked by dangerous and increasingly common intrusions of Arctic air deep into the United States. “December has certainly [...]
If nuclear power has a future, it will likely be small, modular and water cooled, according to an expert with global credentials in nuclear research. “There are plenty of technologies now—50 different models around the world. Once one of them gets into a financially viable equation, that will capture the entire market,” said Alfredo Caro, [...]
The number and range of mosquitoes has boomed across North America in recent years, and with it, the number and range of mosquito-borne diseases. Ticks and fleas are following their lead. “Between the period of 2004 to 2016, the number of diseases caused by these insects— mosquitoes, ticks and fleas—has nearly tripled during this time [...]
