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Clamoring for ivermectin, some turn to a pro-Trump telemedicine website

August 27, 2021

Much as the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine became an unproven remedy for Covid deniers, ivermectin has emerged in recent weeks as a new false cure.

Biden sets goal for 50% of new US vehicles to be electric by 2030

August 5, 2021

Joe Biden is setting a goal for half of all new US vehicle sales to be electric by 2030 while also tightening pollution standards for cars and trucks, in a barrage of action aimed at reducing the largest source of planet-heating gases in America.

NOAA’s updated hurricane outlook calls for even more storms in 2021

August 4, 2021

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Wednesday updated its 2021 Atlantic hurricane seasonal forecast, slightly increasing expectations for the number of named storms and powerful hurricanes.

Why it matters: With the U.S. already reeling from extreme heat and wildfires, disaster response agencies are overstretched. A particularly destructive and active hurricane season could overwhelm some of its response capacity.

Progress made but western wildfires continue to bring poor air quality across US

August 2, 2021

The Bootleg Fire in Oregon was up to 84% containment early Monday as firefighters made progress over the weekend battling the blaze, which is the nation’s largest at 646 square miles.

Elsewhere, authorities canceled evacuation orders near the Dixie Fire in Northern California and another on Hawaii’s Big Island.

Despite the good news, authorities warned that with unpredictable winds and extremely dry fuels across the West, the risk of flare-ups remained high. In addition, while predicted thunderstorms in many areas could bring welcome rainfall, the storms could also cause flash flooding.

CDC document warns Delta variant appears to spread as easily as chickenpox and cause more severe infection

July 30, 2021

The Delta coronavirus variant surging across the United States appears to cause more severe illness and spread as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal document from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The document — a slide presentation — outlines unpublished data that shows fully vaccinated people might spread the Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people.

Lauren Boebert’s Sarcastic Question To ‘Siri’ About Mask Mandates Didn’t Go Over As Planned

July 29, 2021

Rootin’ tootin’ Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) can’t (or refuses to) help herself. She’s only a congressional freshman and is nearly as good at self-owning as Sen. Ted Cruz, especially at the U.S.-Mexico border, where lectured a cardboard standee of VP Kamala Harris. Boebert’s latest mission, however, is to endlessly rage against Covid-19 protocols. Earlier this week, she reportedly threw a mask before (not reportedly) tweeting about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “anti-science, totalitarian mask mandate” with a GIF of ex-President Trump saying “bullsh*t.”

Crushing heat wave in Pacific Northwest and Canada cooked shellfish alive by the millions

July 8, 2021

Amid the crushing summer heat wave that has slammed the Pacific Northwest and parts of Canada, Alyssa Gehman, a marine ecologist who lives by the sea in Vancouver, B.C., walked down to the shore to go for a swim. As expected, the beach was packed with others looking to beat the heat.

She made her way to the edge of the water. It smelled like putrid shellfish – cooking.

EPA to expand clean water protections to smaller U.S. waterways, reversing Trump policy

June 9, 2021

The Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army on Wednesday announced their intent to expand the number of waterways that receive protection under the Clean Water Act.

The move would reverse a rule adopted last year by the Trump administration, which limited the bodies of water that could receive federal protection. The Biden administration wants to expand protections to smaller waterways like streams, ditches and wetlands that feed into bigger bodies of water.

Great white shark numbers increasing off Northern California coast

May 21, 2021

You’re still far more likely to see them in movies or TV shows than in person, but the number of great white sharks appears to be increasing along the Northern California coast, say scientists who spent years tracking hundreds of the toothy predators by their distinctive fins.

The exhaustive new study concluded there are nearly 300 adult and sub-adult white sharks living between Monterey Bay, the Farallon Islands and Bodega Bay, an area sometimes called “the red triangle.” Sub-adult sharks are not fully mature but still big enough to eat seals, sea lions and other marine mammals.

Dutch research funding agency, paralyzed by ransomware attack, refuses to pay up

February 25, 2021

Hackers published a batch of internal documents from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) on the dark web yesterday, after the agency refused to pay up in a ransomware attack. The attack, which began on 8 February, has completely knocked out the agency’s grant application and review process and cut off NWO’s communication with applicants, grantees, and universities.

The new politics of climate change

February 23, 2021

A billionaire, a novelist and a professor all write a book about climate change.

That may sound like the start of a joke but it is not, especially for philanthropist Bill Gates and author Jonathan Franzen. Their books have come out just as Michael E Mann, one of the world’s best known climate scientists, has published a book accusing each of abetting new forces of inactivism slowing efforts to tackle climate change.

Fauci says U.S. political divisions contributed to 500,000 dead from COVID-19

February 22, 2021

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said political divisiveness contributed significantly to the “stunning” U.S. COVID-19 death toll, which on Monday surpassed 500,000 lives lost.

Tracking QAnon: how Trump turned conspiracy-theory research upside down

February 4, 2021

By taking fringe ideas mainstream, the former US president taught new and dangerous lessons about manipulating social and mass media.

mRNA Technology Gave Us the First COVID-19 Vaccines. It Could Also Upend the Drug Industry

January 11, 2021

“No!” The doctor snapped. “Look at me!”

I had been staring her in the eyes, as she had ordered, but when a doctor on my other side began jabbing me with a needle, I started to turn my head. “Don’t look at it,” the first doctor said. I obeyed.