No one likes a surprise void. Especially not a void where ice is supposed to be. Especially not in the glacier that already plays the largest role of any single glacier’s in sea-level rise.
Oil major Royal Dutch Shell says it knows what the world needs to meet the Paris climate goals: hydrogen-powered airplanes by 2070, carbon capture deployed on a grand scale, and reforesting an area the size of Brazil.
Today, an estimated 3.6 billion people live in places where access to water isn’t guaranteed for at least one month every year, according to a UN report released in 2018. This problem is not going to get better in the future: The world’s population is expected to grow by another 3 billion people by 2050, increasing water demand by a third. At the same time, climate change will have dried up some watersheds and caused contamination by flooding in others. The combination of population growth and diminished water access means that the number of people who don’t have a reliable water supply for at least a month per year could grow to as much as 5.7 billion.
A Tesla charging station in St. George, Utah was allegedly vandalized this week, a Tesla owner reported on Twitter.
Japan’s Naomi Osaka won the Australian Open on Saturday, becoming the world’s top-ranked athlete in women’s tennis.
A dam collapsed Friday near Brumadinho, Brazil, leaving at least 60 people dead and hundreds missing. About a hundred survivors were found as of Saturday afternoon, but the possibility of finding more beneath feet of mud had grown “minimal,” according to the governor of the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, where Brumadinho is located, the Guardian reports.
For 35 days, the US government was partially shut down. During that time, 800,000 federal workers went without pay, national parks were vandalized, federal small-business loans were suspended, initial public offerings were delayed, Native American tribes lost assistance, and subsidized rent checks went unpaid, along with numerous other impacts.
Humans exist on a short leash. A person can only last around three days without drinking water. Put that way, human life is absurdly fragile; plenty of other organisms can go far longer. Just think of your houseplant. To make matters more precarious, that essential substance is growing harder to come by. You’ve heard about this: climate change and population growth is a devastating twofer.
Billions of years ago, the air on Earth was dominated by carbon dioxide. This was great for plants; they had evolved photosynthesis to snatch carbon dioxide from the air, combine it with sunlight, and convert it into sugars they could use as energy. And conveniently for future humans and other animals, the plants spit back out oxygen when the process is done.
Carbon emissions in the US are up for the first time in four years—a change that’s likely been driven by economic growth.
The family of Jakelin Caal Maquin, who died in US custody, said goodbye to the 7-year-old girl in a funeral in San Antonio Secortez, Guatemala on Christmas Day (Dec. 25).
South Korea’s sex-education program is notoriously sexist. Students are required to receive 15 hours of sex ed per year, starting in elementary school and continuing through high school.
There will be no raises for government employees next year, Donald Trump has declared.
Five undocumented workers at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey say they were given fake Social Security numbers and green cards by golf club employees, the New York Daily News reported Saturday (Dec. 29).
Cold weather is usually good for ice and the Earth’s cryosphere. Except it’s just not cold enough anymore.
Kemp’s ridley sea turtles are a tropical species, spending most of their time in the Gulf of Mexico and traveling north only to nest. That is, until climate change started confusing the hell out of them.
In 2018, at least 4.1 million children in the US sat huddled in closets or standing in corners as their schools went through lockdowns. The incidents took place during safety drills, gun threats, and active-shooter scenarios, and left many students traumatized. According to an investigation by the Washington Post, a typical 2018 day in the US included at least 16 school campuses in lockdown.
Whales will once again be commercially hunted in Japan’s waters, the country’s chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga announced today (Dec. 26).
In 2016, vehicle crashes were the leading cause of death for children between 1 and 19 years of age. The next-most frequent: guns.
In three years, the European Union could be a no-straw zone.
Scientists already know that plants are highly sensitive to touch of any kind, and even have a word for this phenomenon, “thigmomorphogenesis.” If you’ve ever touched a Mimosa pudica (also known as the “sensitive plant”) you have already witnessed this phenomenon first hand—the Mimosa’s fan-like leaves close up like, well, an old-school handheld fan.
Seafood mislabeling is “rampant” across New York, according to a study released by the state attorney general’s office on Friday (Dec. 14).
Colin Kroll, the cofounder of Vine and HQ Trivia, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment late Saturday (Dec. 15), the Daily Beast reports. He was 34.
Nearly 400,000 acres of ocean between Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard sold on Friday (Dec. 14) for the most money ever paid for wind-lease plots in the United States. The high prices are spurred by Massachusetts’ commitment to buy more renewable energy as it ratchets up its pledge to cut emissions statewide.
