No, Dubai’s Floods Weren’t Caused By Cloud Seeding

Dubai is underwater. Heavy storms have caused flash flooding across the United Arab Emirates, leading to shocking scenes circulating on social media: Cars abandoned by the roadside, planes sloshing through flooded runways. Hundreds of flights have been canceled at Dubai’s busy international airport, and at least 18 people have died in neighboring Oman. News reports […]

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US Infrastructure Is Broken. Here’s an $830 Million Plan to Fix It

There’s one word that will get any American fuming, regardless of their political inclination: infrastructure. Pothole-pocked roads, creaky bridges, and half-baked public transportation bind us nationally like little else can. And that was before climate change’s coastal flooding, extreme heat, and supercharged wildfires came around to make things even worse. US infrastructure was designed for […]

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The Paradox That’s Supercharging Climate Change

No good deed goes unpunished—and that includes trying to slow climate change. By cutting greenhouse gas emissions, humanity will spew out fewer planet-cooling aerosols—small particles of pollution that act like tiny umbrellas to bounce some of the sun’s energy back into space. “Even more important than this direct reflection effect, they alter the properties of […]

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Toronto Wants to Manage Storms and Floods—With a Rain Tax

This story originally appeared on Canada’s National Observer and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. A plan to charge Toronto homeowners and businesses for paved surfaces on their properties is creating a public backlash, a deluge of negative international media attention, and even derisive comments from Donald Trump Jr. The outcry reached such a […]

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Mexico City’s Metro System Is Sinking Fast. Yours Could Be Next

Solano‐Rojas and his colleagues found subsidence in the area of an overpass near the Olivos station, which collapsed in 2021 while a Metro train was traveling over it. “We did part of this analysis before 2021, and we detected that that area was having differential displacements,” says Solano‐Rojas. “We were like, ‘Oh, yeah, it looks […]

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The Honeybees Versus the Murder Hornets

Teams of volunteers now hunt Asian hornets landing on British soil, but detection is only the tip of the iceberg, says Elmes. The true challenge is tracing the hornet back to its nest, to destroy the colony. “If something can automate and help us, it will shave off time,” he says. This is the rationale […]

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Europe Rules That Insufficient Climate Change Action Is a Human Rights Violation

Despite this, the positive ruling for the KlimaSeniorinnen is being touted as hugely significant by legal experts. In this case, the court did not accept complaints from individuals within the group, but it did accept complaints made by the group itself as an organization—a distinction that could influence how people collectivize and approach European courts […]

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Searching for ‘Forever Chemicals’ From an Endless Landfill Fire

Testing done by ADEM, Butler said, also did not assess water samples taken from sites closest to the dump. And while PFAS compounds are certainly common, he said, experts have concluded that elevated levels in the human body can be a warranted health concern. At this month’s meeting, many residents agreed with Butler, expressing a […]

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Why the East Coast Earthquake Covered So Much Ground

Friday morning at around 10:30 local time, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake popped three miles below Whitehouse Station, New Jersey. Though nowhere near the magnitude of the West Coast’s monster quakes, the seismic waves traveled hundreds of miles, jostling not just nearby New York City, but Philadelphia and Boston and Washington, DC. The United States Geological […]

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These Women Came to Antarctica for Science. Then the Predators Emerged

On April 12, 2019, Boston University finally fired David Marchant for sexually harassing Willenbring. (The university said it could not corroborate her claims of physical and psychological abuse.) Marchant released a statement, which the journal Science quoted as vowing that he had “never” sexually harassed anyone, “not in 1998 or 1999 in Antarctica or at […]

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One Couple’s Quest to Ditch Natural Gas

Of course, the new ductwork and wiring will outlive the heat pumps; that’s money we won’t have to spend again. And eventually, heat pumps allow us to get rid of the baseboard heaters, which I find unsightly and limit how we arrange our furniture. Heat pumps also provide air conditioning, which we’d been poised to […]

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The Next Heat Pump Frontier? NYC Apartment Windows

“There’s a massive difference in the amount of heat that our system is putting out when a user asks for heat to be comfortable versus a radiator which dumps tons of extra heat into the room,” says Vince Romanin, CEO of Gradient. “If they’re able to set that temperature on a per-room basis, not a […]

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The Earth Will Feast on Dead Cicadas

Much like an unexpected free dinner will distract you from the leftovers sitting in your fridge, this summer’s cicada emergence will turn predators away from their usual prey. During the 2021 Brood X emergence, Zoe Getman-Pickering, a scientist in Lill’s research group, found that as birds swooped in on cicadas, caterpillar populations exploded. Spared from […]

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Enjoy Your Favorite Wine Before Climate Change Destroys It

More subtly, heat influences volatile compounds that turn into gas—that’s the “nose” you get when tasting wine—which break down under higher temperatures. “The profiles tend to get pushed to what sensory scientists would call the ‘cooked’ side of the spectrum: more jammy, or like cooked fruit,” says Gambetta. “This can be a good thing. Some […]

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The US Is About to Drown in a Sea of Kittens

Scientists, conservationists, and cat advocates all agree that unchecked outdoor cat populations are a problem, but they remain deeply divided on solutions. While some conservationists propose the targeted killing of cats, known as culling, cat populations have been observed to bounce back quickly, and a single female cat and her offspring can produce at least […]

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The Feds Are Trying to Get Plants to Mine Metal Through Their Roots

“Just like we do research with corn, wheat, soybean, getting these plants to be more efficient in taking up nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium—well, there needs to be this research that goes into understanding the mechanisms of metal hyperaccumulation,” says McNear. “And then enhancing that, whether it be through gene editing or whatever.” ARPA-E is eying a […]

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Europe Is Struggling to Coexist With Wild Bears

It was around 5 pm on March 15, and the light was fading fast, when Constantin and Tatiana were attacked by the bear. The young couple, aged 29 and 31 and identified in local media reports only by their first names, were Belarusians living in Poland. But Constantin had been working for the winter as […]

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The World’s E-Waste Has Reached a Crisis Point

The phone or computer you’re reading this on may not be long for this world. Maybe you’ll drop it in water, or your dog will make a chew toy of it, or it’ll reach obsolescence. If you can’t repair it and have to discard it, the device will become e-waste, joining an alarmingly large mountain […]

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