The Trump administration inked a plan to repeal and replace the centerpiece of former president Barack Obama’s climate change initiatives on Monday night, in a major blow to the US’s ability to meaningfully curtail its impact on advancing climate change.
All along the 1,250 miles of border between Texas and Mexico, hidden under hundreds of feet of soil and rock, lie more than a dozen underground aquifers—areas of permeable earth that hold water—that crisscross the national boundaries. They might be the only sources of water the region will have left when the Rio Grande, hit by a one-two punch of climate change and a booming population, inevitably dries up. And yet there is no binational agreement for all this shared groundwater.
The US Environmental Protection Agency is moving to open new avenues to approve asbestos products, and at least one Russian asbestos producer seems thrilled about it. Earlier this summer, Uralasbest posted a photo on Facebook of pallets of its product wrapped in film stamped with an image of Donald Trump.
Asbestos is indisputably a carcinogen. But the US has never fully banned it, unlike more than 60 other countries. Instead, the US opted to restrict many common uses of it; spray-on asbestos, used to insulate or fireproof buildings, has been illegal since the 1970s, for example. But other uses are still legal, a fact which the Trump administration is using to open up new avenues for asbestos products to be approved.
Sixteen wildfires are burning in California right now. One is so ferocious that it has killed eight people. In the state, no month has passed without a wildfire since 2012, “a stark contrast to previous decades, when fire officials saw the fall and winter as a time to plan and regroup,” according to the New York Times (paywall).
Pyrocumulus clouds, also known as “fire clouds,” are extremely rare cloud formations caused by rising heat and smoke from volcanoes, or as in the case in California right now, by raging wildfires. These fire clouds extremely fast-forming, can host their own lightning storms, and cause devastating wind.
Jacquelyn Gill, an ice age ecologist and professor at the University of Maine, asked science twitter if they ever named their kids after the things they study, using the hashtag #nerdynames.
Salmonella in crackers and cereal? We’re quite used to outbreaks in raw poultry or eggs. Now a month after a Kellogg’s pulled its Honey Smacks cereal from shelves, a range of Ritz Cracker products that could be tainted with the dangerous bacteria has been recalled.
Donald Trump selected a new head of scientific research for the US Department of Agriculture this week: Scott Hutchins, an entomologist who has spent his career at Dow Agroscience’s pesticide and seed division. His work focuses on chemical solutions to farm pests. The unit became known as Corteva Agriscience in 2017, after Dow merged with DuPont.
A steam pipe exploded as the work day began in New York City today (July 19), opening a hole in the busy Flatiron District of Manhattan and sending steam spewing several stories into the sky.
Richard Vogt, a prominent herpetologist who studies turtles, used photos of scantily clad women doing field work in his slides during an acceptance presentation last week for a major award. An audiovisual organizer at the conference put blue censorship boxes over parts of the women’s bodies. The Herpetologists’ League rescinded the award Friday (July 13) after outcry over the presentation.
In an ancient fireplace in a parched Jordanian desert, archeologists found the remains of the oldest known bread in the world: Charred bits of a multigrain pita-like flatbread.
The tiny fern known as Azolla filiculoides is adorable by any measure. First of all, it is very small. Each of its leaves is the size of a gnat, those tiny black dots that fly like dust motes around fruit left out too long. Second, it grows in lovely scalloped layers, like a flapper’s dress (for a very tiny flapper).
It’s become clear that sunscreen is yet another modern invention that benefits humans while simultaneously wreaking havoc on the delicate balance of a part of the natural world. In this case, the casualty is coral reefs.
In a major upset on Tuesday night, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Latina democratic socialist from the Bronx, beat out the longtime US representative Joe Crowley in the New York primaries. In the overwhelmingly Democratic district, she is practically certain to win a seat in Congress during the general election in November.
The debate over whether a vegetarian diet is better for the planet is top of mind for many as news of water scarcity, climate change, and deforestation seem to worsen by the day. Sarah Taber, a US-based agricultural scientist who works as a consultant for aquaculture and greenhouse food safety, added another angle to the debate earlier this month.
Between 1992 and 2017, the Antarctic ice sheet shed roughly 3 trillion metric tons of ice—causing the global average sea level to rise nearly a third of an inch (7.6 millimeters).
Right now, there are roughly 16 sextillion liters of water suspended in the atmosphere. The air around you is a river, you just can’t see it.
German pharmaceutical giant Bayer will officially buy US agriculture giant Monsanto on Thursday (June 7) for $63 billion, after securing approval for the deal from US and European regulators. Bayer announced they will immediately retire the 117-year-old Monsanto name.
Pilot whales normally eat squid, though they’re also known to munch on jellyfish when there aren’t many of its preferred meal around. It isn’t hard to imagine why a pilot whale might swallow a a submerged plastic bag, mistaking it for a jellyfish.
Antarctica, the Earth’s landmass now most synonymous with bad news, has a new feature for us to worry about.
In 2016, roughly 10% of the planet’s energy use went towards air conditioning. Figures vary wildly from country to country, though, and some of the hottest regions on Earth use the least A/C—for now.
PFAS should be a household name by now. They’re a group chemicals likely contaminating the water supplies of tens of millions of people in the US.
