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A problem is coming for global timekeeping, according to a paper published in the March 27, 2024 issue of Nature by Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, and global warming is influencing when that problem might arrive. Worldwide coordination of timekeeping is how all smartphones and computers can keep the same time. This timekeeping includes, every so often, an extra second, called a leap second, which makes a particular minute last for 61 seconds. Anyone who has forgotten the change to or from daylight saving time and found themselves an hour early (or...

President Biden will touch on a wide range of issues and policy priorities in his State of the Union address Thursday night, and he will need to thread the needle on his track record of climate change legislation, environmental protection and energy policy. The stakes for climate change couldn't be higher than they are in the 2024 presidential election, and Mr. Biden and former President Donald Trump couldn't stand farther apart on the issue if they tried. While climate change may not be the most pressing concern for voters, research has found that the issue can influence the outcome of...

California is bracing for a powerful winter storm that could bring up to 10 feet of snow and high winds to the Sierra Nevada. “A second winter storm will impact the West Coast on Thursday and Friday,” the National Weather Service’s (NWS) Weather Prediction Center said in a forecast discussion Thursday. “The storm will create heavy mountain snow that will affect many passes. Multiple feet of snow are likely (over 80% chance) for higher elevations, especially above 5000 feet, including many Cascade and Sierra Nevada Mountain passes,” the notice added. “Extremely heavy snow rates surpassing 3 inches per hour are...

White House adviser John Podesta will replace John Kerry as the nation’s lead climate diplomat, the White House announced on Wednesday. “We need to keep meeting the gravity of this moment, and there is no one better than John Podesta to make sure we do,” White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, in a written statement shared with reporters. Podesta will remain at the White House and will get the title of senior advisor to the president for international climate policy. In that role, he will lead the Biden administration’s international climate policy agenda and will coordinate with other officials...

Scientists have discovered that 75 percent of the US - home to hundreds of millions of Americans - is at risk of damaging earthquakes. The US Geological Survey (USGS) released the latest National Seismic Hazard Model that included 350 newly discovered fault lines since the previous model in 2018 - bringing the total to about 1,000 faults. The updates increased chances of disastrous earthquakes in the central and northeastern 'Atlantic Coastal corridor' that is home to Washington DC, Philadelphia, New York and Boston.

The White House has opened the door to an audacious plan to block sunlight from hitting the surface of the Earth in a bid to halt global warming. Despite some scientists warning the effort could have untold side effects from altering the chemical makeup of the atmosphere, President Joe Biden's administration have admitted they're open to the idea, which has never been attempted before. In a report released Friday by the White House, officials suggested limiting sunlight to rapidly cool the planet, a process known as solar radiation modification (SRM). The administration added a note of skepticism to the report...

A research document published on the White House's website reveals the Biden administration is open to studying how to block sunlight to save the earth from climate change. The congressionally mandated report released by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy on Friday shows that the team has been researching "geoengineering" methods to keep the sun rays from accelerating global warming. As the University of Oxford notes in its entry on the subject, "geoengineering" is "the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s natural systems to counteract climate change." According to the report, titled "Congressionally-Mandated Report on Solar Radiation...

Snow on Mount Washington in June is not rare. This year, however, snow totals are the highest on record for the summer month and forecasters say more is on the way. On June 11, the Mount Washington Observatory announced 8.4 inches of snow for the month, a new record for the highest peak in the Northeast. The observatory began keeping track of snow totals beginning in 1932. Weather experts predict even more snow in the days ahead. ... Statistically speaking, our last snowfall of the season typically occurs in early to mid-June most years,” the observatory wrote in a Twitter...

The study used rock samples to show that ice near Thwaites Glacier was at least 35 meters thinner in the last 5000 years and took a minimum of 3000 years to reach its current size... The team discovered that the rocks they collected were not always covered by ice. Their measurements showed that, during the past 5000 years, ice near Thwaites Glacier was at least 35 meters thinner than it is now. Furthermore, their models demonstrated that its growth since then – making the ice sheet the size it is today – took at least 3000 years. This discovery reveals...

A loud group of demonstrators stormed the Tennessee State Capitol on Thursday to protest a vote in the state House to remove three lawmakers for disrupting the state House floor in Nashville last week during protests for stricter gun control measures. The protesters, gathered both inside and outside the capitol in Nashville, chanted to urge the lawmakers to take action on gun control, as well as vote against expelling the three lawmakers from their positions in the House. "No more silence, end gun violence," those in attendance chanted. As lawmakers made their way into the chamber, several of the protesters...

Human activities have transformed the planet at a pace and scale unmatched in recorded history, causing irreversible damage to communities and ecosystems, according to one of the most definitive reports ever published about climate change. Leading scientists warned that the world’s plans to combat these changes are inadequate and that more aggressive actions must be taken to avert catastrophic warming. The report released Monday from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found the world is likely to miss its most ambitious climate target. With few nations on track to fulfill their climate commitments and with the developing world...

The chance to secure a livable future for everyone on Earth is slipping away. That was the dire message from a United Nations report released Monday, the culmination of more than six years of work by thousands of climate scientists contributing to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all,” the report’s authors wrote. Still, there’s hope. The technology needed to adapt to climate change and keep harmful emissions at bay is available, the report says, arguing that a clear path exists...

It wasn’t until America’s crooked fact-checkers said Joe Biden had no intention of banning gas stoves that I was certain Joe Biden would ban gas stoves. And now we know he is — 96 percent of them. “Yes, the Biden administration is coming for your gas stove,” writes Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) in the Washington Examiner. It’s a backdoor ban by way of outrageous regulations only four percent of gas stoves will meet. And it’s being done, not through democracy and our elected representatives, but by fascist bureaucrats in the Department of Energy. Yes, Virginia, the Deep State is real…...

California regulators voted Wednesday to ban gas furnaces and water heaters in one of the state’s most populated regions, a move that will likely require locals to undergo costly home renovations.

Former Vice President Al Gore said Friday on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” that he is “sure” Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Department of Justice, and the FBI acted totally appropriately in the investigation and raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, FL. Copper asked, “I do briefly want to ask you about just what we learned today from the Department of Justice. They removed 11 sets of classified documents from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence while executing a search warrant. What is your reaction to all we’ve learned? Does this make sense to you why a...

Former Vice President Al Gore said on Sunday that climate change deniers were the same as the Uvalde, Texas law enforcement men and women who did nothing as school children were being slaughtered under their watch. "Climate deniers are really in some ways similar to all of those almost 400 law enforcement officers in Uvalde, Texas, who were waiting outside an unlocked door while the children were being massacred," said Gore. The remarks were released as part of a pre-recorded segment of NBC's "Meet the Press." The failed presidential candidate continued, "And confronted with this global emergency, what we're doing...

Former Vice President Al Gore said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that the January 6 House Select Committee was having a significant impact on public opinion. Anchor Jonathan Karl asked, “What’s your reaction been watching these hearings, and what kind of impact do you think they’re going have?” Gore said, “I’d like to say that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney and every single member of that committee have performed an amazing service to our democracy. I think these hearings have been the most persuasive and effective since the Watergate hearings so long ago. And I think we’re seeing a huge...

Jon Reeves first realized that treating climate anxiety would become a regular part of his job in 2016. He was then working in Massachusetts as a student counselor at Boston College, and the country was about to elect noted climate-change denier Donald Trump to the highest office in the land. “I definitely noticed that students were bringing climate change up as part of their overall concerns,” Reeves, a psychologist, told Yahoo News. “I think there was some stress that came along with the presidential election and concerns that the U.S. government wouldn’t do as much to mitigate climate change with...

Dozens of customers who stopped for a drink at Britain’s highest altitude pub got a longer stay than they bargained for, after the building was cut off by a blizzard. Sixty-one people woke up Monday after their third night at the Tan Hill Inn in the Yorkshire Dales, 270 miles (435 kilometers) north of London. They have been unable to leave since Friday, when a late autumn storm brought snow and heavy winds that felled power cables and blocked roads. The pub sits 1,732 feet (528 meters) above sea level and is used to being cut off by bad weather....

Researchers have found evidence that a coronavirus epidemic swept East Asia some 20,000 years ago and was devastating enough to leave an evolutionary imprint on the DNA of people alive today. The new study suggests that an ancient coronavirus plagued the region for many years, researchers say. The finding could have dire implications for the Covid-19 pandemic if it’s not brought under control soon through vaccination. Four other coronaviruses can also infect people, but they usually cause only mild colds. Scientists did not directly observe these coronaviruses becoming human pathogens, so they have relied on indirect clues to estimate when...