Jun 27, 2024 | Salon.com
Like a magnifying glass on an anthill, excessive emissions from burning fossil fuels is melting the Antarctic ice sheet. The faster it liquefies, the more we’re faced with the dire prospect of extreme sea level rise. Scientists have debated whether a “tipping point” exists for this ice sheet, or a moment when the effects of this melting would be suddenly both irreversible and catastrophic....
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Jun 26, 2024 | Salon.com
Last summer, an unhoused man attempting to jump over a school fence to reach shade broke both his legs and died. In another case, a 73-year-old man fell while hanging his laundry and his body was found covered in burns and with a core temperature of 107 degrees. A woman also died in her $1 million Scottsdale home when the AC malfunctioned while a 33-year-old man collapsed and died while on a Saturday hike....
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Jun 24, 2024 | Salon.com
Viral illnesses don’t just hurt their hosts, but sometimes can indirectly devastate other animals. Take for example the the endangered European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus), which is paradoxically invasive in some parts of the world, but is on the verge of extinction in its native Iberian Pennisula. One of the primary drivers killing it is rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus, which can trigger a deadly fever that kills within 36 hours....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 22, 2024 | Salon.com
Like many successful screenwriters and directors, Jeffrey Nachmanoff resides in Southern California. As a result, Nachmanoff has lived through much of the extreme weather caused by climate change: record-breaking wildfires, surreal red skies, suffocating smoke and deadly heat waves.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that it feels apocalyptic,” Nachmanoff said about life in the Golden State....
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Jun 21, 2024 | Salon.com
The ongoing heat wave gripping the Northern Hemisphere hasn’t just triggered triple-digit temperatures, but also a sizeable death toll. From India to Saudi Arabia to Massachusetts, many regions across the globe have buckled under extreme heat — but while such phenomena is normal during the summer months, the degree to which things are cooking is not....
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Jun 21, 2024 | Salon.com
We typically think of black holes as monstrous entities that destroy everything. But while they do have incredibly destructive power, they really only rip apart things that get too close. Most galaxies have a supermassive black hole in their center. Ours in the Milky Way is called Sagittarius A*. But scientists caught some never before seen footage of a black hole, as described in a recent study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics....
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Jun 18, 2024 | Salon.com
Perhaps the cruelest aspect of climate change is that it disproportionately impacts those least responsible for planet-cooking emissions, especially the poorest among us. Among many other things, experts predict that global heating will expose 70% of the working population to health risks and could ultimately kill roughly 1 billion people, most of them poor....
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Jun 18, 2024 | Salon.com
During a sweltering rally in Las Vegas on Sunday, June 9, former President Donald Trump complained to his supporters about “sweating like a dog” in the triple-digit heat. Because climate change is breaking temperature records all over the world, one might have assumed that the aspiring leader’s next act would have been to express concern for the other people at his event....
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Jun 14, 2024 | Salon.com
Days after being pummeled with eight inches of rainfall in only just hours — the kind of extreme downpour that supposedly occurs once every 500 years — South Florida continues to be deluged with historic storms and flooding.
The region of the state remains under a flood advisory on Friday after a series of storms dumped between eight and 20 inches of rain over large sections of Florida over the previous three days....
Originally posted on salon.com
Jun 13, 2024 | Salon.com
On September 16, 1987, the international community did something almost unheard of, especially in today’s world: It worked together to protect the planet.
Ultimately ratified by 198 nations, including every country in the United Nations, the so-called “Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer” vowed to phase out pollutants that had been eroding Earth’s ozone layer....
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