How’s the Steel Industry Doing?
I wonder how the steel industry is doing these days. Why? Just curious, I guess. Here are the basic stats for production and capacity utilization: This looks OK. It’s nothing to write home about, but production has increased moderately over the past couple of years and is now about where it was in 2015. But…
Elizabeth Warren Raises the Pressure on the Military to Take Climate Change Seriously
Spencer Platt/Getty Images Of all the federal agencies in Trump’s Washington, the Department of Defense might be the one least equipped to dismiss climate change given its obvious danger to the safety of coastal bases and troops. But the military’s tendency to prioritize more immediate threats has been a recurring problem, especially when the current…
Here’s My Underinformed Take on the Democratic Field
Tracy Barbutes/ZUMA I am deliberately not following the Democratic primary race closely yet. I figure there’s no point in getting too worked up at this early stage, and I’ll be better able to make a reasoned judgment later if I try to avoid making strong judgments now. However, I do have gut feelings about what…
It’s Time to Start Ignoring Loudmouthed Assholes on Social Media
Harvard postdoc Katie Bouman at the moment when the first image of a black hole was processed.MIT CSAIL Brian Resnick writes about what happened after a picture of black-hole imager Katie Bouman went viral: But then all the attention became a catalyst for an incredibly sexist backlash on social media and YouTube. It set off…
A Shocking Discovery Shows Just How Far Wind Can Carry Microplastics
Eric Cabanis/Getty Images This story was originally published by Wired and is shared here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. At the top of the French Pyrenees, not far from the border with Spain, is a virtually pristine clearing, home to snow and a weather station—but mostly feet upon feet of snow. The nearest road closes in…
A California Lawmaker Has a Plan to Prevent Shady Doctors From Helping Parents Get Out of Vaccinating Their Kids
Getty When public health officials began investigating a Bay Area measles outbreak last year, the case led them to two boys who were supposed to be medically exempt from vaccinations. But neither of the boys had cancer, nor were they recent transplant recipients, nor did they have any number of medical concerns that would make…