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Global Catastrophic Risk Assessment
Global catastrophic and existential risks hold the potential to threaten human civilization. Addressing these risks is crucial for ensuring humans’ long-term survival and flourishing.
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Can We Live on Our Planet without Destroying It?
With eight billion people, we use a lot of the Earth’s resources in ways that are likely unsustainable. How can we adapt our lifestyle to stay within the limits of what the Earth can give? Klaus Hubacek investigates planetary boundaries.
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3 Innovative Ways to Help Countries Hit by Climate Disasters, Beyond a Loss and Damage Fund
The usual sources of disaster aid funding haven’t come close to meeting the need in hard-hit countries in recent years. So, groups are developing new ways to meet the need more effectively. In some cases, they are getting aid to countries before the damage occurs.
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Amid Hurricane Milton’s Devastation, a Sliver of Good News
Earlier this month Hurricane Milton caused an estimated $50 billion in damage and claimed the lives of at least 14 people, yet didn’t deliver the scale of destruction some had feared. Cellphone data suggest evacuation mandates, warning systems worked.
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Climate-Fueled Extreme Weather Is Hiking Up Car Insurance Rates
As climate change accelerates, hurricanes, wildfires and hail storms pound the U.S. with growing vigor—and the insurance market is struggling to foot the bill of the damages they leave behind for customers. Home insurers have raised premiums after extreme weather events. Now car insurers in the U.S. are doing the same thing.
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Hybrid Reef-Mimicking Experiment Could Provide Protection from Storms and Coastal Flooding
The U.S. Air Force installed a new kind of structure in the waters of St. Andrew Bay on the shore of the Tyndall U.S. Air Force Base in Florida. The first section of the “self-healing” reef is made of custom-designed concrete modules and living oysters. The reef is designed to protect the base and its people from hurricanes and tidal surges.
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Tracking Flooding in Coastal Communities During Hurricanes Helene and Milton
A web-based application that gathers crowdsourced data to identify flooding and inform policy in coastal communities provided scientists with essential data from hurricanes Helene and Milton.
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Recent Hurricanes and Geoengineering
The recent back-to-back hurricanes that made landfall in the United States have sparked conspiracy theories about the government creating these disasters through geoengineering. While such theories are false, they have drawn attention to the risky idea of geoengineering, which typically refers to the large-scale, intentional manipulation of the earth’s processes to modify weather.
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Helene and Milton Upended a Key Part of the Nation’s Agriculture System
America depends on Southeastern agriculture. After two hurricanes and billions of dollars in damages, the US food supply chain faces an uncertain future.
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When Hurricane Evacuation Isn’t an Option
Those who remain to face a hurricane are often labeled brave or stubborn. Sometimes they feel the threat is overblown, the need to leave overstated. But some have no other choice. Not everyone rides out storms like Milton or Helene by choice. Some simply cannot afford to flee.
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What Happened When a Meteorite the size of Four Mount Everests Hit Earth?
Billions of years ago, long before anything resembling life as we know it existed, meteorites frequently pummeled the planet. One such space rock crashed down about 3.26 billion years ago. The giant impact had silver lining for life, according to new study.
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Why FEMA’s Disaster Relief Gets Political − Especially When Hurricane Season and Election Season Collide
Rumors and lies about government responses to natural disasters are not new, but they don’t usually come from former presidents. Yet, in the wake of hurricanes Helene and Milton, former President Donald Trump spread falsehoods about the federal government’s response to the disaster. Misinformation on the topic became so widespread that FEMA set up a webpage to debunk the rumors spawned by Trump.
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Autonomous Disaster Response Technology Successfully Applied to Fire Extinguishing System of a 3,200-ton Vessel
An innovative technology for autonomously responding, without crew intervention, to ruptures to the pipes within the fire extinguishing system of vessels has been successfully verified for the first time in Korea.
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Coastal Cities Have a Hidden Vulnerability to Storm-Surge and Tidal Flooding − Entirely Caused by Humans
Today, 80% to 90% of estuaries – areas where rivers meet the sea – such as New York Harbor, San Francisco Bay and Miami’s Biscayne Bay has been built over. The result has been the loss of buffer zones that helped protect cities from storm surge and sea-level rise. And below the surface of many of the remaining waterways, another form of urbanization has been slowly increasing the vulnerability of coastlines to extreme storms and sea-level rise.
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Efforts to Build Wildfire Resilience Are Heating Up
Stanford’s campus has become a living lab for testing innovative fire management techniques, from AI-powered environmental sensors to a firebreak-creating “BurnBot.”
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The long view
Strengthening School Violence Prevention
Violence by K-12 students is disturbingly common. Ensuring that schools have effective ways to identify and prevent such incidents is becoming increasingly important. Expanding intervention options and supporting K-12 school efforts in Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) would help.
Huge Areas May Face Possibly Fatal Heat Waves if Warming Continues
A new assessment warns that if Earth’s average temperature reaches 2 degrees C over the preindustrial average, widespread areas may become too hot during extreme heat events for many people to survive without artificial cooling.
Trump’s Cuts to Federal Wildfire Crews Could Have “Scary” Consequences
President Donald Trump’s moves to slash the federal workforce have gutted the ranks of wildland firefighters and support personnel, fire professionals warn, leaving communities to face deadly consequences when big blazes arrive this summer. States, tribes and fire chiefs are preparing for a fire season with minimal federal support.