Climate
Scorched Earth
Can Burning Man Pull Out of Its Climate Death Spiral?
Excessive heat, ever fiercer storms, and a reliance on fossil fuels are becoming an existential crisis for the yearly festival in the Nevada desert.
Alden Wicker
Regulations and Solutions
Zendure’s Portable Power Station Is an Impressive Workhorse
This expandable, modular power station can help you go off-grid and stay powered up during outages.
Simon Hill
These Angry Dutch Farmers Really Hate Microsoft
Tech giants want to build massive, “hyperscale” data centers in the Netherlands. A popular political movement wants them stopped.
Morgan Meaker
The Chemical Menace Inside Glaciers and Icebergs
Ice can trap pollutants and accelerate their breakdown, with troubling environmental consequences.
Sophia Chen
To Fight Coastal Erosion, Design a Bespoke Artificial Reef
Reefy, a startup in the Netherlands, makes modular reefs that double as living breakwaters for coastal areas suffering the effects of the climate crisis.
Elissaveta M. Brandon
Oceans and Waterways
California’s Atmospheric Rivers Are Getting Worse
As climate change makes storms warmer and wetter, the state’s flood control system is struggling to keep up.
Jake Bittle
Can You Really Pump Water Without Any Electricity?
To see if those videos of people conjuring liquid without any external power actually hold water, you’ll need physics—and a straw.
Rhett Allain
The Filthy Truth About Your Tap Water
The US is proposing bold action to clean thousands of “forever chemicals” out of drinking water. It’s long overdue.
Amanda Hoover
Europe Is Drying Up
After unusually low amounts of rain and snow this winter, the continent faces a severe water shortage.
Chris Baraniuk
Extreme Heat
A Looming El Niño Could Dry the Amazon
When a warm band of water develops in the Pacific, drought grips the rainforest. The Amazon, devastated by deforestation and fires, is especially vulnerable.
Matt Simon
The Mesopotamian Marshes Are Disappearing, Again
The World Heritage site in southern Iraq survived Saddam Hussein’s campaign to drain the wetlands. Now they’re drying up, and biodiversity is collapsing.
Wil Crisp
Americans Are Moving Into Danger Zones
Folks are flocking to areas plagued with wildfires and extreme heat. Climate change will only make things worse.
Matt Simon
New Mexico’s Beloved Pinyon Jay Is Losing Its Pine Habitat
A Western landscape’s namesake bird is threatened by climate change, and perhaps by wildfire prevention tactics that thin out the trees they rely on.
Sara Van Note