By Daisy Simmons “It’s not easy to watch.” That was a recurring introductory remark at screenings during the recent 2020 Wild & Scenic Film Festival. Held each year in the bucolic foothills of the Sierra, the five-day festival screens more than 140 environmental films, from artful meditations on the beauty of nature, to distressing stories […]
Fifty two million years ago, crocodiles swam in the Arctic. Twenty thousand years ago, an ice sheet covered Manhattan. Earth’s ecosystems have changed dramatically as the climate has shifted, and now scientists are trying to determine how they might respond to the current era of human-caused climate change. Forty-two scientists contributed to a study published […]
In two recent studies, scientists have looked into the future and into the past to see what might happen to the global climate if we fail to curb greenhouse gas emissions in time. The results are frightening. A study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined how, once a certain threshold […]
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released the results of what it calls the “annual checkup for the planet” Wednesday, and the patient is not doing well. The 28th annual State of the Climate report, published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society and based on the work of more than 500 scientists […]
The Carr Fire, which blazed into the northern California town of Redding Thursday, has grown even larger and deadlier over the weekend, offering a fiery vision of California’s future. “This is climate change, for real and in real time. We were warned that the atmospheric buildup of man-made greenhouse gas would eventually be an existential […]
As a summer of record high temperatures continues, a sobering new study suggests that more summers like this could have serious mental health consequences. The study, published in Nature Climate Change Monday, found that, for every one degree Celsius increase in average monthly temperature, suicide rates go up by 0.7 percent in U.S. counties and […]
There are currently 11 wildfires blazing in the Arctic circle, The Guardian reported Wednesday. While fires are also raging in Russia, Norway and Finland, Sweden has seen the most extensive Arctic fires, which have forced four communities to evacuate, according to The Guardian. Two Italian water-bombing planes that answered Sweden’s call for help will begin […]
Wildfires continued to burn across California this weekend, abetted by record high temperatures that caused power outages affecting thousands of customers in Los Angeles, CNN reported Sunday. “Friday’s record-setting heat led to unprecedented peak electricity demand,” the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said, according to CNN. 34,500 customers lost power, about 2.5 percent […]
At least 109 people have died in Japan following historic flooding and mudslides over the weekend that prompted evacuation orders covering about five million people, The Guardian reported Monday. The flooding was prompted by Japan’s heaviest rainfall in decades. Parts of western Japan saw three times July’s regular rainfall since Thursday, BBC News reported. “We’ve […]