TheConversation

Images of orange groves and Spanish-themed hotels with palm tree gardens filled countless pamphlets and articles promoting Southern California and Florida in the late 19th century, promising escape from winter’s reach. This vision of an “American Italy” captured hearts and imaginations across the U.S. In it, Florida and California promised a place in the sun for industrious Americans to live the good life, with the perfect climate. But the very climates that made these semitropical playgrounds the American dream of the 20th century threaten to break their reputations in the 21st century. A postcard illustrates the latest style for Miami beach bathing around 1920. Asheville Post Card Co./Wikimedia In California, home owners now face dangerous heat waves, extended droughts that threaten the water supply, and uncontrollable wildfires. In Florida, sea level rise is worsening the risks...

Heat pumps can be used to both cool and heat homes. The 2022 federal Inflation Reduction Act provides financial incentives for installing one. SciLine interviewed Theresa Pistochini of the Energy Efficiency Institute and Western Cooling Efficiency Center at the University of California, Davis. She describes how home heat pumps work; how switching to a heat pump reduces your home’s environmental impact; and when to upgrade your heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. Theresa Pistochini discusses how home heat pumps affect indoor air quality. Below are some highlights from the discussion. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. What is a home heat pump, and how does it work? Theresa Pistochini: This decades-old technology is similar to an air conditioner, but a home heat pump also contains a reversing valve that switches the direction the refrigerant flows when you want heating instead of air conditioning. In hea...

On Sept. 3, 1973, a fire swept through the baghouse of the Bunker Hill mine in Idaho’s Silver Valley. The building was designed to filter pollutants produced by smelting, the melting of rocks that separates metal from its ore. The gases produced in this process carried poisons, including lead. At the time, the prices of lead and silver were climbing toward all-time highs. Rather than wait for new filters and repairs, company officials kept the mine running. They increased production, bypassed the filtration steps and, for eleven months, dumped noxious gases directly into the surrounding area. Then, horses in the area began dying. When data on children’s blood lead levels began to arrive in September 1974, one year after the fire, the results were shocking. The fire became one of the largest single lead-poisoning events in U.S. history. The Bunker Hill smelter in the 1970s. The mine closed in 1991, but planning is underway...

The U.S. government is investing over US$7 billion in the coming years to try to manage the nation’s escalating wildfire crisis. That includes a commitment to treat at least 60 million acres in the next 10 years by expanding forest-thinning efforts and controlled burns. While that sounds like a lot – 60 million acres is about the size of Wyoming – it’s nowhere close to enough to treat every acre that needs it. So, where can taxpayers get the biggest bang for the buck? I’m a fire ecologist in Montana. In a new study, my colleagues and I mapped out where forest treatments can do the most to simultaneously protect communities – by preventing wildfires from turning into disasters – and also protect the forests and the climate we rely on, by keeping carbon out of the atmosphere and stored in healthy soils and trees. Wildfires are becoming more severe Forests and fires have always been intertwined in the West. Fires in dry conifer forests...

Nearly 6,000 years ago, our ancestors climbed arid rocky outcrops in what is now the Nigerian Sahara and carved spectacularly intricate, larger-than-life renditions of giraffes into the exposed sandstone. The remarkably detailed Dabous giraffe rock art petroglyphs are among many ancient petroglyphs featuring giraffes across Africa – a testament to early humans’ fascination with these unique creatures. We are still captivated by giraffes today, but many of these animals are at risk, largely due to habitat loss and illegal hunting. Some are critically endangered. To understand how giraffes are faring across Africa, conservation ecologists like me are studying how they interact with their habitats across vast geographic scales. We use space-age technology and advanced statistical approaches that our ancient ancestors could have scarcely imagined to understand how giraffes can better coexist with people. Giraffes are featured...