The gist: Climate change itself is increasingly fueling climate change. Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases are driving up global temperatures, setting off dangerous feedback loops that we have not fully accounted for in our climate models—or our emissions-reduction goals. Scientists have long warned that warming would pro
The gist: Andrew Haverdink, a tall grad student in a rain bib and rubber boots, wrenched a double-handed drill from the frozen soil that underlies much of Alaska’s Denali National Park and then unclipped the hollow barrel from the end of the bit. He knelt in front of a blue tarp, lined the barrel up with a…
The gist: In the middle of an especially warm July in 2021, a wildfire ignited in a thick forest of black spruce and peeling paper birch trees on the northern campus of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. The blaze, possibly sparked by lightning, burned across the dry carpet of feather mosses and lichen before climbing into th
The gist: Brimstone is making strides on two industrial problems, reducing the emissions from cement and providing a way to produce more critical minerals within the US. If the company can do both, with the same rocks in the same plant, it would unlock a cleaner and more efficient process for manufacturing building materials, al
The gist: Earlier this month, the UN announced the planet will tip past 1.5 ˚C of warming, “likely within the next few years,” squashing any lingering hope that nations would cut emissions fast enough to achieve the loftiest goal of the Paris climate agreement. In the US, the world’s second-largest-emitting country, its leader c
The gist: A San Francisco nonprofit has published a detailed road map of the experiments, studies, and infrastructure that it says would be needed to make informed decisions about the use of solar geoengineering, MIT Technology Review can reveal. Scientists have now spent half a century exploring the possibility that we could co
