FastCompany: “As fire seasons in the U.S. gets hotter and drier, a new Twitterbot will show you if a wildfire is burning near your house, where the fire is headed, and if a plume of smoke is traveling in your direction by posting an updated time-lapse video and infrared images every six hours. The tool, called @WildfireSignal, went live on Twitter on July 18. Scientists and programmers at Descartes Labs, a startup that processes images from satellites, designed the tool to pull a list of active fires from a government database, then clean up near-real-time images from the GOES-16 satellite at each fire’s location. Using the massive amount of data generated by the satellite, it automatically builds a time-lapse video of each fire and embeds it in a tweet with a hashtag of the fire’s name…”
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Category Archives: Climate Change
Wildfires In The U.S. Are Getting Bigger
FiveThirtyeight: “A California wildfire that started on Friday doubled in size over the weekend, killing a firefighter and threatening Yosemite National Park. And it’s not the only blaze burning. It’s looking like 2018 could be another big year for wildfires in the United States: 3,362,431 acres have already burned to date in 2018 — an… Continue Reading
Study suggests buried Internet infrastructure at risk as sea levels rise
University of Wisconsin – Madison: “Thousands of miles of buried fiber optic cable in densely populated coastal regions of the United States may soon be inundated by rising seas, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Oregon. The study, presented here today (July 16, 2018) at… Continue Reading
Underwater: Rising Seas, Chronic Floods, and the Implications for US Coastal Real Estate
Union of Concerned Scientists – “Hundreds of thousands of homes are at risk of chronic flooding due to sea level rise over the coming decades. The implications for coastal residents, communities, and the economy are profound…Sea levels are rising. Tides are inching higher. High-tide floods are becoming more frequent and reaching farther inland. And hundreds… Continue Reading
How Brett Kavanaugh Could Reshape Environmental Law From the Supreme Court
The New York Times: “Long before President Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court on Monday, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh had already made a name for himself as an influential conservative critic of sweeping environmental regulations. During his 12 years on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, often regarded… Continue Reading
June 2018 ranks third warmest on record for U.S.
NOAA – Nation hit with 6 billion-dollar disasters so far this year “We’re halfway through 2018 and the U.S. has already experienced six billion-dollar weather disasters. These include four severe storms and two winter storms that were responsible for 36 deaths combined and caused significant and costly damage. The average June temperature across the contiguous U.S. was… Continue Reading
More Recycling Won’t Solve Plastic Pollution
Scientific American: “The only thing worse than being lied to is not knowing you’re being lied to. It’s true that plastic pollution is a huge problem, of planetary proportions. And it’s true we could all do more to reduce our plastic footprint. The lie is that blame for the plastic problem is wasteful consumers and… Continue Reading
Legacy of Scott Pruitt at the EPA
The Atlantic – “…There’s no doubt that Trump and Pruitt have already altered the EPA. More than 700 agency employees, including 200 scientists, resigned from the agency during 2017 alone, The New York Times. The agency is referring record-low numbers of environmental crime to the Department of Justice. And its science advisory board was also… Continue Reading
State rankings identify cost of electric bills
24/7 Wall St: Where You’ll Pay the Most in Electric Bills – From powering kitchen appliances to leaving a light on at night to getting on the internet, electricity is at the center of many of modern life’s most basic functions. However, the cost of electricity is not fixed nationwide and running a refrigerator could… Continue Reading
Scott Pruitt Resigns as EPA Administrator and judge orders document production on his climate change claims
Scientific American – Judge Orders EPA to Produce Science behind Pruitt’s Warming Claims – The EPA head [who resigned on July 5, 2018] has suggested humans are not the main cause of climate change: “EPA must produce the opposing body of science Administrator Scott Pruitt has relied upon to claim that humans are not the primary… Continue Reading
Climate Change Is Making Nighttime Clouds More Visible
Yale Environment 360: “Those wispy, iridescent, high-altitude clouds sometimes seen at dawn and dusk are becoming more visible due to climate change, according to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. Rising methane emissions have increased the amount of water vapor in the middle atmosphere, the study found, which then freezes around… Continue Reading
The Strawless Ocean Campaign
For a Strawless Ocean: “Plastic straws are really bad for the ocean. We use over 500 million every day in America, and most of those end up in our oceans, polluting the water and killing marine life. We want to encourage people to stop using plastic straws for good. If we don’t act now, by… Continue Reading
