Tuesday, November 5

Tag: burning

Because of Climate Change Landfills Among Many Things Burning
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ENVIRONMENT

Because of Climate Change Landfills Among Many Things Burning

Extreme heat over 110°F in India and Pakistan continues to shatter records, threaten human health, cause landfills to combust, threaten power outages, and imperil Indian wheat crops struggling to make up for shortfalls caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “Why is it exceptionally warm this year? The only reason is global warming,” Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, told Bloomberg. Meanwhile, in the southwestern U.S., wildfires are ripping across drought-dried landscapes, especially in New Mexico. A million acres across the U.S. have burned already this year as, “Climate change is taking a situation that would be bad for us normally,” University of Arizona climatologist Gregg Garffin told The Guardian, “and turning the dial up.” (India...
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How The Wildfire Season Got So Extreme – 2020 The Year The West Was Burning
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ENVIRONMENT

How The Wildfire Season Got So Extreme – 2020 The Year The West Was Burning

More than 4 million acres of California went up in flames in 2020 – about 4% of the state’s land area and more than double its previous wildfire record. Five of the state’s six largest fires on record were burning this year. In Colorado, the Pine Gulch fire broke the record for that state’s largest wildfire, only to be surpassed by two larger blazes, the Cameron Peak and East Troublesome fires. Oregon saw one of the most destructive fire seasons in its recorded history, with more than 4,000 homes destroyed. What caused the 2020 fire season to become so extreme? Fires thrive on three elements: heat, dryness and wind. The 2020 season was dry, but the Western U.S. has seen worse droughts in the recent decade. It had several record-breaking heat waves, but the fires did not necessarily fol...
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A burning chemical plant may be just the tip of Hurricane Laura’s damage in this area of oil fields and industry
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ENVIRONMENT

A burning chemical plant may be just the tip of Hurricane Laura’s damage in this area of oil fields and industry

Hurricane Laura plowed through the heart of Louisiana’s oil and chemical industries as a powerful Category 4 storm, leaving a chlorine plant on fire and the potential for more hazardous damage in its wake. The burning BioLab facility sent dark smoke and chlorine gas into the air over the small community of Westlake, near Lake Charles, and shut down Interstate 10, officials said. The governor warned residents, already reeling from the hurricane’s damage, to stay in their homes, close their windows and doors, and turn off any air conditioning that might still be operating. While the full health impacts of the fire weren’t immediately known, a storm-driven chlorine gas release in a vulnerable community is the type of worst-case scenario that scientists and engineers like myself have warned ...
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We asked kids to send us their burning questions – here are 5 of our favorites from 2019
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Journalism

We asked kids to send us their burning questions – here are 5 of our favorites from 2019

But why? But why?Out of the mouths of babes… comes a never-ending stream of questions. So this year, The Conversation US jumped on a great idea dreamed up by our colleagues in Australia and launched a series of articles meant to answer questions kids ask, but that everyone probably wonders about. The Conversation’s editors collect children’s questions and then look for scholars who can provide clear answers based on their own research and expertise. Below are a few of our favorite “Curious Kids” articles from the past year. And whatever your age, if you have a question you’d like an expert to answer in 2020, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. Curiosity has no age limit! Why is money green? This one could only have come from an American kid. Marek, age 12, asked the question; ...
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BUSINESS

Burning retail market lights up Canada’s cannabis vape race

Canada's major tobacco companies are aiming high in the cannabis e-cigarette market. Ontario will triple its pot-store count beginning in October, just two months before the introduction of new product formats that are expected to significantly boost sales in Canada's most-populous province. While chatter about the next wave of legalization in Canada tends to focus on products like edibles and beverages, many of the biggest players entering the space say consumers will opt for the more conventional format of vapes. The Canadian market for vapes could be as big as C$600 million ($451 million) by 2021, according to Tim Pellerin, Pax Labs Inc.'s general manager of Canada. San Francisco-based Pax, which split from e-cigarette company Juul Labs Inc. in 2017 to focu...
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