Most recent 30 articles: VOX -Environment
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How to prepare for another season of wildfire smoke - VOX -Environment (May 14, 2024) |
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May 14, 2024 · Wildfire smoke can be hazardous, but there’s a lot you can do to protect yourself.
Several US states are again experiencing an influx of wildfire smoke as Canada’s summer fire season gets underway. Due to the scale of the wildfires and natural weather patterns, enormous amounts of smoke are drifting southward - much like last year.
North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Minnesota are among the earliest states to receive air quality warnings this week. Those alerts are a signal that it’s unhealthy for people, particularly vulnerable populations like children and the elderly, to go outside due to the pollution in the air.
More US states and cities could see similar ... Read more ...
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Something weird is happening with tornadoes - VOX -Environment (May 14, 2024) |
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May 14, 2024 · Tornado season is changing. That could have major consequences.
Tornado season is here again, with twisters striking in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Florida over the past few weeks. But while severe storms in spring are nothing new, there have been subtle changes in tornado patterns in recent years that portend a more dangerous future for communities across the country.
According to a preliminary count from the National Centers for Environmental Information, there have been 547 tornadoes documented from January through April 2024. That figure is higher than the year-to-date average - 338 - the organization calculated between 1991 and 2020 but in line with the number ... Read more ...
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Why Japan is struggling to kick its coal dependency - VOX -Environment (May 10, 2024) |
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May 10, 2024 · If a wealthy, advanced economy is having a hard time getting off coal, what does it mean for the rest of the world?
Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel by far, producing more particulate air pollution and global warming gasses than any other, per unit of energy. But for some countries - even ones with the money and the motivation to go green - coal can be hard to quit.
Last month in Italy, members of the G7 - a consortium of industrialized democracies that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union - agreed in a communiqué to “phase out existing unabated coal power generation” by 2035. Such a pledge, if ... Read more ...
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North America’s biggest city is running out of water - VOX -Environment (May 09, 2024) |
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May 09, 2024 · Mexico City is staring down a water crisis. It won’t be the last city to do so.
Mexico City is parched.
After abysmally low amounts of rainfall over the last few years, the reservoirs of the Cutzamala water system that supplies over 20 percent of the Mexican capital’s 22 million residents’ usable water are running out.
“If it doesn’t start raining soon, as it is supposed to, these [reservoirs] will run out of water by the end of June,” Oscar Ocampo, a public policy researcher on the environment, water, and energy, told my colleagues over on the Today, Explained podcast.
Already, some households receive unusably contaminated water; at times, others receive ... Read more ...
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How the world wastes hundreds of billions of meals in a year, in three charts - VOX -Environment (May 04, 2024) |
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May 04, 2024 · Think twice before throwing out your leftovers.
A billion meals are wasted every single day, according to a recent report from the United Nations. And that’s a conservative estimate.
It’s not just food down the drain, but money, too. The 2024 UN Food Waste Index report - which measured food waste at the consumer and retail level across more than 100 countries - found that over a trillion dollars worth of food gets thrown out every year, from households to grocery stores to farms, all across the globe.
Such waste takes a significant toll on the environment. The process of producing food - the raising of animals, the land and water use, and the subsequent pollution ... Read more ...
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How rioting farmers unraveled Europe’s ambitious climate plan - VOX -Environment (May 02, 2024) |
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May 02, 2024 · Road-clogging, manure-dumping farmers reveal the paradox at the heart of EU agriculture.
In February 2021, in the midst of the deadly second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grégory Doucet, mayor of Lyon, France, temporarily took red meat off the menus of the city’s school cafeterias. While the change was environmentally friendly, the decision was driven by social distancing protocols: Preparing one hot meal that could be served to meat-eaters, vegetarians, and those with religious restrictions rather than serving multiple options was safer and more efficient.
The response from the French agricultural establishment was hysterical. “We need to stop putting ideology on our ... Read more ...
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How La Niña will shape heat and hurricanes this year - VOX -Environment (May 01, 2024) |
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May 01, 2024 · Climate change and the outgoing El Niño will likely ignite more weather extremes.
The Pacific Ocean - Earth’s largest body of water - is an engine for weather around the planet, and it’s about to shift gears this year.
The warm phase of the Pacific Ocean’s temperature cycle, known as El Niño, is now winding down and is poised to move into its counterphase, La Niña. During an El Niño year, warm water starts to spread eastward across the surface of the equatorial Pacific. That warm water evaporates readily, adding moisture to the atmosphere and triggering a cascade that alters rainfall, heat waves, and drought patterns across the world.
The current El Niño is among ... Read more ...
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The reckless policies that helped fill our streets with ridiculously large cars - VOX -Environment (Apr 28, 2024) |
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Apr 28, 2024 · Cars, you might have noticed, have grown enormous.
Low-slung station wagons are all but extinct on American roads, and even sedans have become an endangered species. (Ford, producer of the iconic Model T a century ago, no longer sells any sedans in its home market.) Bulky SUVs and pickup trucks - which have themselves steadily added pounds and inches - now comprise more than four out of every five new cars sold in the US, up from just over half in 2013, even as national household size steadily declines.
The expanding size of automobiles - a phenomenon I call car bloat - has deepened a slew of national problems. Take road safety: Unlike peer nations, the US has endured a ... Read more ...
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The end of coral reefs as we know them - VOX -Environment (Apr 26, 2024) |
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Apr 26, 2024 · The biodiversity crisis, explained
More than five years ago, the world’s top climate scientists made a frightening prediction: If the planet warms by 1.5 degrees Celsius, relative to preindustrial times, 70 to 90 percent of coral reefs globally would die off. At 2°C, that number jumps to more than 99 percent.
In not so great news, the planet is now approaching that 1.5°C mark. In 2023, the hottest year ever measured, the average global temperature was 1.52°C above the preindustrial average, as my colleague Umair Irfan reported. That doesn’t mean Earth has officially blown past this important threshold - typically, scientists measure these sorts of averages over decades, ... Read more ...
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We might be closer to changing course on climate change than we realized - VOX -Environment (Apr 25, 2024) |
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Apr 25, 2024 · Greenhouse gas emissions might have already peaked. Now they need to fall - fast.
Earth is coming out of the hottest year on record, amplifying the destruction from hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, and drought. The oceans remain alarmingly warm, triggering the fourth global coral bleaching event in history. Concentrations of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere have reached levels not seen on this planet for millions of years, while humanity’s demand for the fossil fuels that produce this pollution is the highest it has ever been.
Yet at the same time, the world may be closer than ever to turning a corner in the effort to corral climate change.
Last year, more ... Read more ...
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Climate change is disrupting our sense of home - VOX -Environment (Apr 22, 2024) |
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Apr 22, 2024 · Climate change is personal. It is not abstract. The warming climate impacts our economies, influences our politics and culture, threatens the food we eat and the water we drink; it even affects our love lives.
As climate change accelerates and extreme heat and climate disasters displace more people around the world, the crisis is increasingly disrupting our fundamental sense of where we belong and what we consider home.
We saw that last summer, in Maui, Hawaii, when the deadliest wildfire in the US in more than a century leveled the historic town of Lahaina, killed more than 100 people, and displaced thousands of residents from their homes.
In the immediate wake of ... Read more ...
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How 2,000 elderly Swiss women won a landmark climate case - VOX -Environment (Apr 09, 2024) |
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Apr 09, 2024 · The European Court of Human Rights ruled Switzerland’s failures on climate are a human rights violation.
On Tuesday, a group of 2,000 Swiss women won a significant ruling on holding governments accountable for addressing climate change.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) found that Switzerland failed to implement sufficient climate policies - violating the women’s human rights.
The case could influence other European countries, as well as other international bodies, in their decisions about the legal ramifications of inadequate climate policies.
KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz, a group of women climate activists all over the age of 64, initially brought the ... Read more ...
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The solar eclipse is a critical test for the US power grid - VOX -Environment (Apr 05, 2024) |
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Apr 05, 2024 · US solar power has more than doubled since the last eclipse. What will happen during this one?
As the moon passes in front of the sun on April 8, its shadow will knock down solar power production in a sweeping band across the United States from Texas to Maine, home to more than 31 million people.
The United States currently has more than 139 gigawatts of solar electricity generation capacity. That’s more than two and a half times the amount of solar that was on the grid during the last total eclipse in 2017. The upcoming eclipse will also shade a path twice as wide as the last one. Though much of the country will see some decline in solar power production, the biggest ... Read more ...
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Are rainforests doomed? Not necessarily. - VOX -Environment (Apr 04, 2024) |
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Apr 04, 2024 · In a grim new analysis of tropical forests, there are a few important glimmers of hope.
The biodiversity crisis, explained
Last year, the planet lost 9.2 million acres of its tropical forest, an area a bit larger than the entire state of Maryland, according to new data from environmental group World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland. That’s like losing about 10 soccer fields of forest per minute - for an entire year.
Obviously, that sounds bad. It is bad.
For decades on end, the world has watched its rainforests disappear and give way to giant farms and cattle ranches that feed the public’s desire for meat and other food products. ... Read more ...
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Why fossil fuel producers are oddly optimistic in the climate change era - VOX -Environment (Mar 29, 2024) |
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Mar 29, 2024 · Coal, oil, and natural gas producers have found their vision for a low-carbon world.
HOUSTON, Texas - In a video message projected onto massive screens in a packed conference hall, Sultan al-Jaber, the president of the COP28 climate conference held in the United Arab Emirates last year, graciously accepted a leadership award from one of the world’s biggest energy industry conventions.
Al-Jaber, who when not running UN climate summits is also the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, faced criticism from environmental groups for inviting major oil and gas companies to participate in the international climate negotiations. He also faced scrutiny for his comments that ... Read more ...
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AI already uses as much energy as a small country. It’s only the beginning. - VOX -Environment (Mar 28, 2024) |
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Mar 28, 2024 · The energy needed to support data storage is expected to double by 2026. You can do something to stop it.
In January, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued its forecast for global energy use over the next two years. Included for the first time were projections for electricity consumption associated with data centers, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence.
The IEA estimates that, added together, this usage represented almost 2 percent of global energy demand in 2022 - and that demand for these uses could double by 2026, which would make it roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by the entire country of Japan.
We live in the digital age, where ... Read more ...
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Yes, even most temperate landscapes in the US can and will burn - VOX -Environment (Mar 28, 2024) |
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Mar 28, 2024 · Wildfire risk is increasing everywhere, especially in the East and South. Here’s a major reason why.
Last month, a heat wave persisted for days in the Chilean coastal city of Viña del Mar. The landscape, already affected by an El Niño-supercharged drought, was baked dry. So, when wildfires sparked, they ripped through densely populated and mountainous terrain. In just a few days, the fires - the deadliest in Chile’s history - burned 71,000 acres and killed at least 134 people.
Devastating wildfires like these are becoming increasingly common. Climate change is partly to blame - while research has found that both El Niño and climate change have contributed to intense ... Read more ...
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Meet the EPA’s new Choose Your Own Adventure! regulation for car pollution - VOX -Environment (Mar 21, 2024) |
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Mar 21, 2024 · Here’s what the federal rules mean for car companies, the climate, and you.
The Environmental Protection Agency has officially cemented new pollution rules for cars, pickup trucks, vans, and SUVs that the Biden administration called the US’s strongest-ever clean vehicle regulations. The EPA says the new rules will avert 7 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions and provide close to $100 billion in savings per year across the country in the form of fuel costs, lower maintenance needs, and health benefits.
The challenge for the government and carmakers, though, will be actually getting people to buy enough of these cleaner cars to move the needle. And that may be harder ... Read more ...
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The next big climate deadline is for meat and dairy - VOX -Environment (Mar 20, 2024) |
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Mar 20, 2024 · It’s a lot sooner than you think.
For years, climate scientists have called for a phase-out of fossil fuels to avoid catastrophic global warming. Now, according to a first-of-its-kind survey of more than 200 environmental and agricultural scientists, we must also drastically reduce meat and dairy production - and fast.
Global livestock emissions should peak by 2030 or sooner to meet the Paris climate agreement target of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the surveyed climate experts said. In high- and middle-income countries, which produce and consume the overwhelming majority of the global meat and dairy supply, livestock emissions should ... Read more ...
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Many coral reefs are dying. This one is exploding with life. - VOX -Environment (Mar 14, 2024) |
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Mar 14, 2024 · Scientists recently observed a rare phenomenon on a reef in Cambodia that left them in awe - and filled them with hope.
The biodiversity crisis, explained
Once a year, after dark, a bit of magic happens in the ocean.
In tropical waters worldwide, large chunks of coral - those colorful rocklike structures in shallow, coastal waters, each a colony of living animals - start puffing out hundreds of little pearl-sized balls. Some are pink. Others are red, orange, or yellow. For a few minutes, the ocean is a snow globe, and then the balls float away.
This phenomenon, known as spawning, is how many corals reproduce. Each ball is a bundle of eggs and sperm from an ... Read more ...
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Under Biden, US oil production is as high as it’s ever been - VOX -Environment (Mar 13, 2024) |
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Mar 13, 2024 · Biden is not “waging war” on American energy. He’s boosting it.
The US is the largest crude oil producer in the world, pumping out nearly 13 million barrels on average every day in 2023, an all-time record, according to new data from the US Energy Information Administration.
That’s an awkward milestone for President Joe Biden, who has arguably done more than any modern president to facilitate America’s transition away from fossil fuels to greener alternatives.
For the last six years, America has outstripped Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other OPEC countries in crude oil production. And it has picked up the pace under Biden, who had approved more permits for oil and gas ... Read more ...
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Spring is here very early. That’s not good. - VOX -Environment (Mar 12, 2024) |
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Mar 12, 2024 · Winter’s insanely early end, explained in one map.
Whether it’s fewer snow days or disconcertingly hot temperatures, people across the US are experiencing an increasingly common phenomenon: a winter that doesn’t feel wintry.
That’s the result of warmer conditions in many places driven both by climate change and a particularly strong El Nino phenomenon this year. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the 2023-2024 winter is the warmest one it’s seen in the 130 years it’s been tracking. And per the University of Arizona’s National Phenology Network, signs of spring in certain parts of the country - like the budding of the first lilac and ... Read more ...
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Why New York is suing the world’s biggest meat company - VOX -Environment (Mar 08, 2024) |
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Mar 08, 2024 · Meat giant JBS said it’ll reach net zero emissions by 2040. LOL.
As public concern about climate change grows, so does demand for lower-emissions consumer goods. And as major meat producers face the fact that their climate impacts may turn away conscientious consumers, they are increasingly claiming to offer low-carbon meat.
That includes the Brazilian multinational JBS, the world’s biggest meat company, which in 2021 began claiming that it will achieve net zero emissions by 2040, promising in a full-page New York Times ad that it could serve up “bacon, chicken wings and steak with net-zero emissions.”
This claim is, on its face, dubious. Meat, especially beef, is ... Read more ...
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Does climate change trigger earthquakes? - VOX -Environment (Mar 08, 2024) |
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Mar 08, 2024 · Climate change is complex and will play out differently depending on where you are (and who you are). It’s confusing! It’s contradictory! And what am I to do? EVs are expensive, my house leaks heat, and my AC is nonexistent. It’s hot, it’s freezing, it’s hot, aarrggggghgbkjdhfsj!
Our world’s climate is changing in ways that well-meaning scientists are trying hard to understand. But this stuff can be difficult to make sense of - even for those who are really plugged into the climate space. Plus, it’s become politicized and polarized, which obviously doesn’t help.
That’s why I think our culture needs more conversations in good faith about our warming climate. And that’s ... Read more ...
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Why is Biden blocking the cheapest, most popular EVs in the world? - VOX -Environment (Mar 04, 2024) |
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Mar 04, 2024 · Biden needs to decide if he likes the climate more than he hates China.
You can’t buy the Seagull in the US. But I bet you wish you could.
A small hatchback around the size of a Mini Cooper, the Seagull is a fast-charging electric car and claims a range of up to 250 miles (at least according to its home country’s generous tests); BYD, its Chinese manufacturer, claims it can go from 30 percent to 80 percent charged in a half-hour using a DC plug. It’s hardly a luxury car but it’s well-equipped, with a power driver’s seat and cruise control. “If I were looking for an inexpensive commuter car … this would be perfect,” veteran car journalist John McElroy said after taking a ... Read more ...
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Texas fires happen in the winter. Just never at this scale before. - VOX -Environment (Feb 29, 2024) |
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Feb 29, 2024 · The Smokehouse Creek Fire in the Texas Panhandle is the state’s largest blaze on record.
Dozens of wildfires are tearing through the Texas Panhandle and Oklahoma after igniting earlier this week, including what’s now the second-largest wildfire in US history.
Dubbed the Smokehouse Creek Fire, the massive blaze, the largest in Texas’s history, has engulfed more than 1.1 million acres and was 3 percent contained as of Thursday morning, spurred by dry weather and high winds. The fire has killed at least one person, triggered evacuations, and shrouded a swath of the country in smoke. The encroaching flames forced the Pantex nuclear weapons manufacturing plant in Amarillo to ... Read more ...
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This chart of ocean temperatures should really scare you - VOX -Environment (Feb 28, 2024) |
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Feb 28, 2024 · The Atlantic Ocean is unusually warm right now. Here’s why scientists say that’s “deeply troubling.”
If you were to dip your toes into the middle of the North Atlantic - say, somewhere between South Carolina and Spain - the water would feel frigid. You definitely wouldn’t want to swim. It’s winter.
Yet that water would, in fact, be very warm, relatively speaking. Right now, the North Atlantic ocean is, on average, warmer than any other time on record, running about 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the average temperature over the last three decades.
To understand just how unusual this is, take a look at the chart below. The wave of squiggly lines represents the sea ... Read more ...
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Winter heat waves are now a thing. Here’s how to make sense of them. - VOX -Environment (Feb 27, 2024) |
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Feb 27, 2024 · 2024 is already shattering heat records as temperatures soar around the world
After last year was the warmest on record, 2024 is already off to a ripping hot start.
January 2024 was the warmest January ever measured, and February is likely to follow.
Many parts of the world are experiencing unprecedented heat - both in the Southern Hemisphere, where it’s summer, and in the Northern Hemisphere, where it’s winter.
The list of countries is varied and far-reaching: Japan, Kenya, Nigeria, Brazil, Thailand, Australia, and Spain have all experienced extreme or record-breaking temperatures in the past few weeks. The US, which experienced a bitter cold snap across ... Read more ...
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What’s happening to our winters? - VOX -Environment (Feb 27, 2024) |
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Feb 27, 2024 · This winter has been unseasonably hot. In fact, last month the world experienced its warmest January ever measured, and February is likely to continue that streak.
This rise in temperatures is not isolated to any one part of the world. It’s happening everywhere, like in the Southern Hemisphere, where it’s summer, and in the Northern Hemisphere, where it’s winter. Even the oceans are at never-before-seen temperatures, which portends more danger for corals and could fuel more intense hurricanes and typhoons. As temperatures rise, ocean waters warm, providing fuel for storms. It’s a mix that makes hurricanes more intense and unpredictable.
The stories below reveal how our ... Read more ...
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We know how to save these beloved endangered whales. Yet we’re mindlessly killing them. - VOX -Environment (Feb 22, 2024) |
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Feb 22, 2024 · The biodiversity crisis, explained
The story of the North Atlantic right whale, an icon of the East Coast, should be one of hope - a tale of recovery.
Humanity’s strongest tools have been mobilized for their protection. For centuries, whalers hunted these graceful giants, which were once found throughout the North Atlantic, for their baleen and oily blubber. By the early 20th century, they were nearly extinct. But in 1935, alarmed by the shrinking number of right whales, international authorities banned commercial hunting of these animals. Decades later, as North Atlantic right whales were starting to recover, the US gave them another lifeline, listing them as endangered ... Read more ...
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