By Stefanie Sekich-Quinn The Surfrider Foundation released the 2017 State of the Beach Report Card, which evaluates U.S. states and territories on their policies to protect our nation’s beaches from coastal erosion, haphazard development and sea level rise. The results reveal that 22 out of 30 states, and the territory of Puerto Rico, are performing […]
By Jane A. Flegal and Andrew Maynard Hollywood’s latest disaster flick, “Geostorm,” is premised on the idea that humans have figured out how to control the earth’s climate. A powerful satellite-based technology allows users to fine-tune the weather, overcoming the ravages of climate change. Everyone, everywhere can quite literally “have a nice day,” until—spoiler alert!—things […]
By Rice University Scientists from Rice University and Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies have discovered that Earth’s sea level did not rise steadily but rather in sharp, punctuated bursts when the planet’s glaciers melted during the period of global warming at the close of the last ice age. […]
By Paul Brown The hurricanes and wildfires that have severely damaged large areas of the U.S. in recent weeks have had no impact on President Donald Trump‘s determination to ignore the perils of climate change and support the coal industry. In a deliberate denial of mainstream science, the Trump administration has issued a strategic four-year […]
By Gary Griggs and Charles Lester The California coast is an edge. It’s the place where 1,100 miles of shoreline meets the largest ocean on the planet. Many different forces collide there, and a lot of exciting things happen. The coast is a geological edge, zippered to North America by 800 miles of the San […]
By Andrea Germanos A group of scientists said that the scope of human impact on planet Earth is so great that the “Anthropocene” warrants a formal place in the Geological Time Scale. “Our findings suggest that the Anthropocene should follow on from the Holocene Epoch that has seen 11.7 thousand years of relative environmental stability, […]
By Tim Radford Cities on the Atlantic coast are likely to see more flooding. It won’t just be catastrophic inundation, delivered by hurricane: it could also be routine, fine weather nuisance flooding. And that will happen not just because of sea level rise, driven by global warming, but by another factor: in Virginia, North Carolina […]
When the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlán in 1325, they built it on a large island on Lake Texcoco. Its eventual 200,000-plus inhabitants relied on canals, levees, dikes, floating gardens, aqueducts and bridges for defense, transportation, flood control, drinking water and food. After the Spaniards conquered the city in 1521, they drained the lake and built Mexico […]
By Alex Kirby Tropical storm Harvey is by any standard off the scale. Some parts of Texas have received in just over a week the rainfall they would normally expect in an entire year, and the storm is described as generating as much rain as would normally be seen only once in more than 1,000 […]