With world leaders meeting at the international climate change conference in Glasgow to negotiate urgent global action necessary to meet this greatest of challenges, many people still don’t know what must be done. Ever since the “code red” report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) this August, many people have been feeling shell-shocked. […]
News
Spending Bill Marks Largest U.S. Climate Investment, ‘But the Job Is Not Done’
In 2010, former President Obama pulled the plug on a cap-and-trade proposal to push through other parts of his domestic agenda. A decade passed before Congress tackled climate policy again. When it did, President Biden chose the opposite path of his former boss. The reconciliation package announced by Biden yesterday calls for $555 billion in […]
Will America Act to Address the Climate Crisis?
I witnessed Hurricane Sandy up close and personal. In Morris County, N.J., we were without power for 10 days following the superstorm’s main blast on Oct. 29, 2012. Other areas had it even worse, with the final cost to my home state reaching nearly $30 billion. Sandy still casts a long shadow in the eyes […]
How Climate Change Hurt this Year’s Apple Harvest
It’s been a tough season for U.S. apple growers. Climate change made it worse. From late-spring frosts in western Michigan to triple-digit heat in the Pacific Northwest, apple growers saw a nearly 19 percent drop in fresh-market apple holdings in June 2021 compared with June 2020, according to recent production statistics released by the Agriculture Department. In […]
Senate Debates Uncertain Future of U.S. Spaceflight
The risk of collisions in space, the fate of the United States in orbit after the space station retires and continuing debates over NASA’s path back to the moon dominated a two-hour hearing on Thursday (Oct. 21) held by a Senate committee focused on space and science. The wide-ranging conversation came as the Senate and […]
Fossil Fuel Development to Exceed Global Climate Targets
Fossil fuel-producing nations are on track to blow by their Paris Agreement pledges by developing coal, oil and natural gas through 2030 at levels that would fail to avoid dangerous temperature increases, according to new research. The so-called production gap between planned fossil fuel output and the goal of stopping temperature rise at 1.5 degrees […]
Meteorite Crashes into Woman’s Bed in Canada
A woman in Canada narrowly missed being struck by a meteorite that crashed through her roof and landed on her pillow. Ruth Hamilton, a resident of Golden, British Columbia, was asleep in her bed on the night of Oct. 3 when she was jolted awake by an explosive bang, as something plummeted through the roof […]
World Leaders Meet to Address Biodiversity Crisis, But U.S. Stays on Sidelines
World leaders moved forward this week with a global framework to stem the loss of biodiversity, but missing from the conversation was a critical potential partner—the United States. For three decades, the United States has failed to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity, a global treaty to tackle threats to the world’s plants, animals and […]
The NFL’s Racist ‘Race Norming’ Is an Afterlife of Slavery
Editor’s Note (10/12/21): This story from July on the use of “race norming” in the National Football League (NFL) is being republished following the resignation of Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden. Reports published in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times indicated that Gruden used racist, homophobic and misogynistic language in […]
Poem: ‘Earth’s Accidents (Over Wadi Qumran)’
Science in meter and verse Credit: Jean-Pierre Bouchard Getty Images Advertisement Edited by Dava Sobel The Dead Sea scrolls were mostly saved by bribe and threat: unmindful finders re-interred the rest in hopes of gain. It vanished or decayed. A trooper in the Greek campaign blown by Wehrmacht mortars down a limestone chute, glimpsed there […]