Category: Climate

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Every spring, Forest Service fire leaders meet to plan for the upcoming fire season. This year, some employees were shocked by the blunt remarks made during a meeting with forest supervisors and fire staff officers…

A cattle feedlot in Kansas. | Michael Hall/Getty Images Perhaps the most crucial idea for understanding our species’ future on this planet boils down to two boring words: land use. To mitigate climate change, humans will need to extract critical minerals to build vast numbers of photovoltaic cells and wind turbines. We’ll need millions of…

On summer evenings in the Midwest, the muggy air comes alive with a chorus of crickets, cicadas, and frogs — especially bullfrogs. Their booming mating calls sound like something between a foghorn and a didgeridoo.  As far as we know, summer here has always sounded like this. Bullfrogs are native to most of the Eastern…

Solar panels on the roof of a home in Pasadena, California, on February 25, 2025. | Mario Tama/Getty Images This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: The Trump administration plans to claw back…

Adult sunflower sea stars feeding on mussels at UW Friday Harbor Laboratories. The stars suck out and ingest the soft tissues of mussels, then discard the shells, which collect at the bottom of the tank. The sea star on the bottom, “Charlotte,” is the mother of the lab’s stars grown in captivity. “It was like…

Torrential rain soaking northern China triggered a deadly landslide, burst riverbanks, and washed away cars on July 28, 2025, with thousands of people forced to evacuate the days-long deluge. | Jade Gao/AFP via Getty Images From the wildfires that torched Los Angeles in January to the record-setting heat waves that cooked much of Europe in…

Humans are the dominant species on a dying planet, and we’re still clinging to the idea that we can think our way out, invent our way out, maybe even upload our way out.  But what if the solution isn’t more mastery or more control? What if the only way to survive is to become something…

Collections of microbes at the bottom of a trench in the Pacific Ocean. | Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering, CAS The Titanic lies about 12,500 feet under the ocean. The pressure down there is so immense that even submersibles supposedly built for those conditions can, as we know, tragically fail.   Now imagine taking a…

If you’ve found yourself thinking this summer feels hotter than normal, you’re right. It’s not just the occasional heat dome trapping most of the nation in 90-degree heat; the summers have been steadily getting hotter on average because of climate change. That extreme heat is extremely dangerous to vulnerable populations like children, pregnant people, older…

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin attends a meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on March 13, 2025. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here. Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald…