Around this time last year, news outlets blared alarming headlines: Breathing the air outside was as bad as smoking several cigarettes. Wildfire haze blotted out the sun and turned the moon orange. Weather apps simply listed the forecast as “smoke.”
Just because this summer has been clear, though, doesn’t mean that the environment is doing just fine.
Sometimes you have to spend money to save money — and a major new report finds that spending $1.8 trillion on climate adaptation projects would result in $7.1 trillion in total net benefits. The report predicts that the most impressive returns will come from investments that strengthen early warning systems for disasters like storms and floods.
This year’s catastrophic flooding has created hard times for many people in Midwest, but it’s created a nirvana for mosquitoes.
Kansas City and the surrounding region could potentially become a hotbed for mosquito-borne viruses like West Nile virus in the coming years due to increasing temperatures and more frequent flooding, which are predicted by climate experts.
Cory Morin, an Acting Assistant Professor in the Department of Global Health, is quoted in this story.
Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington state, has said climate change is the “driving motivation” for his presidential campaign; some of his opponents agree, particularly after an April CNN/SSRS poll found that 82 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters described the issue as “very important.” One of these candidates will face off in the general election against a president who ran on the assurance that “I believe in clean air. Immaculate air.
by Oliver Milman, The Guardian
Deaths are predicted for any year that was the warmest for 30 years, a dire scenario that would be avoided if the world stuck to Paris climate agreement
Thousands of heat-related deaths in major US cities could be avoided if rising global temperatures are curbed, new research has found.
New research is shedding light on the correlations between climate change, social instability, and health.
Fast Company - We know that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are raising global temperatures and creating unstable and extreme weather patterns that will continue to threaten communities across the globe.
By Hannah Hickey / UW News
By Disha Shetty / NewsDeeply
Officials are increasingly looking to climate data to predict droughts, famines and heat waves and to help plan for – and prevent – the rising rates of moderate and severe malnutrition that have been shown to follow.
By Brad Plumer / The New York Times
Carbon dioxide helps plants grow. But a new study shows that rice grown in higher levels of carbon dioxide has lower amounts of several important nutrients.