2 Weeks After Hurricane Dorian, a New Disaster Threatens the Bahamas
Joseph Darville of Waterkeepers Bahamas surveys damage.Waterkeepers Bahamas Joseph Darville lives on Grand Bahama Island, and when he first heard there was an oil spill there after Hurricane Dorian what came to mind, he says, was “our pristine, beautiful beach and shallow waters.” The grassy banks are home to turtles and bonefish. And there’s the…
Today’s Special: Grilled Salmon Laced With Plastic
Andrii Zastrozhnov/Getty Nearly 50 years ago, scientists studying the North Atlantic Ocean started noticing that tiny fragments of plastic were turning up in their plankton and seaweed samples. The microparticles, they found, absorbed toxic chemicals and were then eaten by flounder, perch, and other fish. Until recently, though, researchers thought these ingested plastics stayed in…
Trump Tried to Bully NOAA. Its Chief Scientist Just Released a Remarkable Letter to Fight Back.
Evan Vucci/AP NOAA Acting Chief Scientist Craig McLean sent a letter over the weekend to the agency’s staff to address the controversy that ensued after President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Hurricane Dorian was headed for Alabama. On Tuesday, NOAA publicly released that letter, following a wild week when the normally understated agency was in…
Democrats Are Afraid to Say It: Climate Change Also Means Retreat
Scott Olson/Getty This story was originally published by Wired and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. “Retreat, hell!” Major General Oliver Prince Smith once said during the Korean War. “We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction.” Retreat is not a concept Americans take lightly, whether in wartime or during CNN’s climate town hall Wednesday night. There the…
We Have Some Bad News About Trees
Frans Lemmens/ Corbis Unreleased/Getty This story was originally published by Undark. It appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Bob Marra navigated his way to the back of a dusty barn in Hamden, Connecticut, belonging to the state’s Agricultural Experiment Station. There, past piles of empty beehives, on a wall of metal shelves, were stacks of wooden…
You Don’t Need a President to Know Which Way the Wind Blows
Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post/Getty This story was originally published by Slate and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Official warnings about Hurricane Dorian, which continues on its tight-spinning crawl along the Southeastern US coast, have now been supplemented, underscored, and bungled by the nation’s president. Amid the chaotic weather reports emanating from his mouth and Twitter feed, Trump has already mistakenly declared…