The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s first estimate for this season’s orange crop in Florida -- and its first since Hurricane Irma -- was made too soon, is too high and probably inaccurate, according to an unusual rebuke from the state’s largest growers organization.
A TEAM at the University of Bradford has mixed the latest computer technology with an old-fashioned sandpit to create a tool that can predict how climate change can transform civilisations.
“It is completely unsafe to be here at this moment,” said Jennifer Franco, a resident of Fairfield, California, on Wednesday afternoon, as massive wildfires ripped through Santa Rosa and Napa a few miles west. But she wasn’t talking about the flames—she was talking about the smoke. Accelerated by high-speed seasonal winds, ash-laden air was blowing eastward, directly into her neighborhood. “Since Tuesday morning, air quality is beyond terrible,” she said. “I’ve been having chest pain, and now I’m using a respirator.”
NO ONE KNOWS what sparked the violent fires ablaze in the hills of California wine country. In the last five days, the flames have torched more than 160,000 acres across Napa and Sonoma counties, reducing parts of Santa Rosa to piles of cinder and ash and leaving more than 20 dead and hundreds missing. And far from the white-hot embers of destruction, residents from San Francisco to Sacramento to Fresno have been waking up this week to choking fumes, commuting to work under skies tinged orange with dust and soot.
There is a growing awareness about water risk for businesses in the food and beverage industry. A new report from Ceres shows which companies are leading and lagging, writes Ceres’ Kirsten James.
In the wild, a predator that eats too much of its prey can drive that species toward extinction. But there are other, less understood influences that predators can have on their prey’s survival. Take, for instance, odor: New research shows that the very smell of predators may be enough to increase the chances of a whole population of animals going extinct. Fear alone, it suggests, can shape the fate of a species.
Like coral reefs, sea anemones—with their flashy, tentacle-like polyps that waggle and wave in vibrant reds, greens, pinks, and yellows—provide homes and hiding spots for dozens of fish species, most memorably the orange clownfish made famous in Finding Nemo. Also like coral, rising water temperatures associated with climate change can severely weaken these anemones, causing them to expel the tiny symbionts that keep them alive and lend them color, a process known as bleaching.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday released a detailed 198-page proposed analysis of the costs and benefits of its move to repeal the Clean Power Plan, suggesting the administration plans to greatly decrease the government’s estimates of the cost of climate change.
American industry, aided by federal regulators, is conducting a large-scale, consequential experiment with our hormones and the developing brains and reproductive systems of our children.
Jim Inhofe, the Senate's unwavering climate denier, turns 85 on Sunday. I requested a Q&A with him when he turns 100 to see how the "hoax" has turned out.
