As you’ve no doubt noticed, our state, nation and planet are experiencing yet another summer of record heat and intense storms. As scientists have been explaining and predicting for decades, climate change resulting from carbon-pollution-driven global warming is altering weather patterns and spurring big and deeply problematic changes in the Earth’s environment.
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climate change
climate change
WASHINGTON — West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer struck an agreement Wednesday for a Democrats-only reconciliation package that would allow negotiations on some Medicare prescription drugs, end corporate tax loopholes and address climate change as well as invest in energy projects.
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Hotter summers spurred by climate change are likely making more and more bodies of water in NC unsafe There have been more than 300 public reports of algal blooms in North Carolina this year, 100 in June alone, according to the NC Department of Environmental Quality. And climate change could be at least partly responsible.
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The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants, siding with a group of Republican attorneys general and coal companies in a major blow to the executive branch’s power to curb climate change.
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Warm and wet in the west, steamy and wet in the middle, and hot and dry in the east: North Carolina's weather trends in May illustrated the effects of climate change. In addition to warmer than normal temperatures, North Carolina experienced at least five confirmed tornadoes in May: in Orange, Durham, Rockingham, Iredell and Cleveland counties.
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WASHINGTON — Another grueling summer disaster season is arriving, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is under intense pressure even as its portfolio balloons, it pleads for more money from Congress and criticism comes on several fronts. The agency manages more than 300 disaster declarations a year, a dramatic increase from the average of 108 disasters it responded to just a decade ago. For 2022, the disaster outlook is daunting.
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Duke Energy's proposed carbon reduction plan calls for steep cuts in carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, but does not decrease other types of emissions that drive climate change, according to filings with the state Utilities Commission. House Bill 951, now law, directed the state Utilities Commission to "take all reasonable steps" to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from Duke Energy: 70% from 2005 levels by the year 2030 and to achieve carbon neutrality by the year 2050.
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President Joe Biden’s climate agenda took a hit this month when the Interior Department said it would open 144,000 acres of federal land up for oil and gas development to comply with a court order to restart fossil fuel development. The announcement marked yet another setback for a presidential climate plan that was once seen as historically ambitious.
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A city block can make all the difference. On a sunny day last summer, the temperature in Nash Square, an urban oasis in Raleigh shaded by magnolia and oak trees, was two degrees cooler than the concrete jungle a block away. The Urban Heat Island Mapping Project released its first round of results earlier this month, which illustrated the stark differences in how land use affects not only the temperature, but people.
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Controversial Greenville facility proposal provides latest reminder that what’s good for business is not always good for society There’s no doubt that when it comes to the generation of wealth and innovation, the market economy is one of the great inventions of modern human history. Legitimate arguments can and must be had about how much longer humans can keep up the pace of economic growth to which they’ve become accustomed...
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Somewhere in Greenville — few know the precise location — dozens of shipping containers could soon appear on the landscape. These containers, known as “modular data-processing centers” — but which are actually cryptomining operations — will be jammed with lightning-fast computers whose blinking lights indicate they are thinking.
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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in North Carolina – or, at least, the Christmas we’ve come increasingly to expect. This week’s forecast shows high temperatures will average in the 70s on multiple days. Meanwhile, across the nation and the globe, similar weather events that would have been seen as extraordinary in past decades have, increasingly and worrisomely, become the norm.
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