Tag: Climate change

California (USA) wildfire smoke over city

How wildfire smoke can harm human health, even when the fire is hundreds of miles away – a toxicologist explains

Intersections

Christopher T. Migliaccio, University of Montana (from The Conservation) Smoke from more than 100 wildfires burning across Canada has been turning skies hazy in North American cities far from the flames. We asked Chris Migliaccio, a toxicologist at the University of Montana who studies the impact of wildfire smoke on human health, about the health risks people can face when smoke blows in from distant…

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Dust storm in Texas (USA)

Dust storms in the United States: a mixture of corporate agriculture and climate change

Quick bibliographies

The Great Plains and Midwest regions of the Unted States are seeing more and larger dust storms and higher levels of dust in the atmosphere. The increase has corresponded to an intensification of corporate agricultural practices in these regions–an example is the plowing of grasslands and marginal agricultural land in order to grow more corn for the production of biofuels. Even modest corn production on…

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black and white thinking

The thinking error that makes people susceptible to climate change denial

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Jeremy P. Shapiro, Case Western Reserve University (The Conversation). Cold spells often bring climate change deniers out in force on social media, with hashtags like #ClimateHoax and #ClimateScam. Former President Donald Trump often chimes in, repeatedly claiming that each cold snap disproves the existence of global warming. From a scientific standpoint, these claims of disproof are absurd. Fluctuations in the weather don’t refute clear long-term…

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Nuclear power and climate change: update

Featured Article

There has been vigorous debate for more than 20 years about whether nuclear energy can be considered a viable option to help mitigate/prevent warming global temperatures as a result of a changing climate. Can nuclear power be considered a low-carbon energy source? In this featured article, Nikolaus Muellner, et al. evaluate “the climate protection potential of nuclear power” and also factor in “the needed uranium resources.”…

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What is a flash drought? An earth scientist explains

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Antonia Hadjimichael, Penn State, from The Conversation Many people are familiar with flash floods – torrents that develop quickly after heavy rainfall. But there’s also such a thing as a flash drought, and these sudden, extreme dry spells are becoming a big concern for farmers and water utilities. Flash droughts start and intensify quickly, over periods of weeks to months, compared to years or decades…

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Looking back on America’s summer of heat, floods and climate change: Welcome to the new abnormal

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Shuang-Ye Wu, University of Dayton (from The Conversation) The summer of 2022 started with a historic flood in Montana, brought on by heavy rain and melting snow, that tore up roads and caused large areas of Yellowstone National Park to be evacuated. It ended with a record-breaking heat wave in California and much of the West that pushed the power grid to the breaking point,…

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