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EartherClimate Change
This Is Why Carbon Is Now Called Pollution
Carbon dioxide is a funny molecule. Life as we know it wouldn’t exist without CO2. But when we pump too much of it into the atmosphere, it destroys our environment. That’s why the Clean Power Plan, announced yesterday by the Obama administration, has finally decided to call carbon what it is: Pollution. This comes over … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
EartherClimate Change
Four Technologies That Could Let Humans Survive Environmental Disaster
Scientists say we blew it. We bought too many plastic trinkets from Walmart; we drove too many gas-guzzling Broncos. We made babies like rabbits without questioning if the planet could handle so many people. Well, it looks like it couldn’t. Climate change is here to stay, and it’ll probably end up affecting nearly every aspect … Continued
Zoltan Istvan -
EartherClimate Change
Everything You Need to Know About Obama’s Clean Energy Plan
Last month, scientists at a UN conference delivered a sobering warning: To prevent catastrophic warming of the planet, we must reduce all carbon emissions to zero by the end of the 21st century. Today, the Obama administration announced its plan to get there. This afternoon Obama detailed a new clean energy plan that calls on … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
Watch Obama Talk About His Clean Power Plan, Live Right Now
Right now, US President Obama is discussing his new Clean Power Plan. He began by saying that climate change is a threat to national security and health. Here’s what he’s proposing. Watch it live, right here. Contact the author at [email protected]. Public PGP key PGP fingerprint: CA58 326B 1ACB 133B 0D15 5BCE 3FC6 9123 B2AA … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
Why Buffalo’s Dirty Snow Pile Still Hasn’t Melted Yet
Over the winter, the Eastern US was blanketed in blizzard after blizzard. As a stark reminder of Mother Nature’s bitchiness, two snow-plowed piles of that record snowfall in two different cities lingered well into summer. One of them is still frozen—a mud-caked sno-cone slowly oozing in the sun. The giant snow piles which have managed … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
Climate Change Doomed the Mammoths
Humans are pretty good at mucking up the Earth, whether we’re warming the climate, leveling the rainforest, or driving wild animals extinct. But climate change, at least, was wreaking havoc long before we got involved. For instance, it’s looking very likely that global warming, rather than human spears, doomed Earth’s wooly mammoths. There’s a popular … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
EartherClimate Change
Why Solving Murders Is Going to Get a Lot Harder
Carbon emissions aren’t just changing the climate — they’re making it harder to solve crimes. As our atmosphere fills with fossil carbon, scientists will have a tougher time using radiocarbon dating, a standard forensic technique, to analyze human remains and wildlife tissues. Radiocarbon dating is best known for its use in paleontology and archaeology, but … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
EartherClimate Change
Remember When 2014 Was the Hottest Year On Record? Now 2015 Is.
Doesn’t it seem like only last week scientists confirmed that 2014 was indeed the hottest year on record? Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore because scientists have now determined that the first half of 2015 has managed to break all those records—and 2015 will now likely be the hottest year recorded on … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
Australian Snow Is So Rare They Don’t Have Tools to Measure It
As a new climate report concluded this week, our planet is definitely getting warmer, which leads to more extreme temperatures around the world. Now Australia is seeing its coldest temperatures in decades, and last night, many Australians saw snow for the first time in their lives. The local Bureau of Meteorology forecaster Gorrdon Banks told … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
Climate Change Is Setting the World on Fire
What happens when you mix record-smashing heat and exceptional drought? Fire! Lots of fire! But climate change isn’t just bringing more fires to our doorstep, although it’s accomplishing that quite handily. It’s making fire seasons longer. That’s according to a study published this week in Nature Communications, which shows that fire weather seasons have, on … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
EartherClimate Change
6 Scary Charts That Prove 2014 Was Earth’s Warmest Year On Record
Do your recent weather memories include an unnaturally high number of heatwaves, droughts, and record-breaking temperatures? It wasn’t just your imagination: 2014 was one of the hottest years experienced by nearly everyone currently living on the planet. The many records set in 2014 included land temperatures, ocean temperatures, sea levels, and greenhouse gas levels, according … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
Why Airplane Flights Are Taking Slightly Longer Every Year
In the future, hopping on a plane from LA to Honolulu might take a minute longer than it does today. You probably won’t miss that lost moment, but the airline industry will: The tiny additional flight time could amount to thousands of extra hours and millions of dollars of additional jet fuel each year. That, … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
EartherClimate Change
Find Out What’s Really Warming the World With This Interactive Chart
Climate change is happening: global temperatures are rising. Unpicking why it’s happening is of course notoriously difficult, but this interactive chart correlates the observed temperature rises with the effects provided by various natural and man-made sources. The results are pretty damning. The chart was created by Bloomberg using data from NASA’s Goddard Institutes for Space … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
Meanwhile in the Future: What Happens When All Airplanes Are Grounded
Need to get from New York to Paris? Or San Diego? Chances are, you’re hopping on a plane. But commercial flights aren’t just annoying and expensive — they also input a ton of carbon into the environment, contributing to climate change. So what if we stopped flights to save the planet? What would happen next? … Continued
By Rose Eveleth -
EartherClimate Change
US Coastlines Will Change Dramatically When Earth Warms by 2°C
At a UNESCO climate conference last week, scientists declared (once again) that climate change is already happening. The evidence is our wacky weather—even Paris, where the conference was held, was broiling in a historic heatwave. But the biggest red flag is the rise in peak global mean temperatures: Which means rising sea levels will almost … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
The Global Warming “Pause” Never Actually Happened
There’s been much debate these past few years over the cause of the so-called global warming “hiatus”—a pause in the overall uptick up of Earth’s temperature due to cooling at the surface of the Pacific Ocean since the early 2000s. Did climate warming stop? Nope, we just weren’t looking deep enough. Earth’s extra heat, you … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
EartherClimate Change
The Biggest Danger From This Year’s Historic Wildfire Season
Wildfires are tearing across Alaska and western Canada at a record-breaking rate this summer. But stands of blackened trees and cross-continental plumes of smoke are only the most visible signs of damage from the 300 or more fires currently raging. The biggest concern may be what’s happening below ground. Globally, soils contain more carbon than … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
EartherClimate Change
So Many Fires Are Burning In Alaska the Midwest Is Covered In Smoke
The drought hitting the West is not just striking the continental US. That same weather pattern that’s sucking the life out of California is also making life hot, dry, and dangerous for the top third of North America: Alaska and Canada have seen little rainfall, soaring spring temperatures, and now, a record-breaking wildfire season. The … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
Bill Nye Explains Climate Change In a Language Everyone Knows: Emoji
Although climate change is a complicated topic, the basic nuances are fairly easy to understand. But in case you (or your Member of Congress) still needs help, here’s Bill Nye and some emoji to shed some light. In Nye’s explanation, it all sounds so simple: climate change is caused by overcrowding, at a very basic … Continued
By Chris Mills -
EartherClimate Change
The Internets Just Exploded with Pope Francis’ Climate Change Encyclical
Today Pope Francis unleashed a mighty call-to-action over climate change and other catastrophes caused by humans. This coalescence of faith and science is rare enough, but judging by the excited buzzing of social media, the Dope Pope has struck a major nerve. In the encyclical, or “teaching letter,” Francis single-handedly bitch-slapped the politicians and corporations … Continued