ICYMI: Yosemite Fire Fights Back, Plastic Fertilizer & Joe Manchin Does It Again

A weekly roundup for busy people

By Paul Rauber

July 15, 2022

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Illustration by Peter Arkle

Updrafts caused by the Washburn Fire near California’s Yosemite National Park suck tree limbs high enough into the air to rain down on tanker airplanes fighting the fire. 

The famed giant sequoias of Yosemite’s Mariposa Grove escape damage from the Washburn Fire due to years of prescribed burns that reduced undergrowth in the area. 

A Michigan tourist, hiking on a closed trail in an attempt to retrace the path of the California family who died of hyperthermia while hiking near Yosemite, gets lost and requires a helicopter rescue

A British tourist trekking in Kyrgyzstan narrowly escapes the enormous avalanche caused by a collapsing glacier, yet still manages to film it.

Invasive iridescent-green emerald ash borer beetles are discovered in Oregon, the first time they have been found in the western US. In some eastern forests, the beetles have killed 99 percent of ash trees there

In order to delay the release of pesticides and fertilizers, the agrochemical industry is increasingly encasing them in microplastics.

A study released by the Centers for Disease Control finds glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s weed killer Roundup, in 80 percent of human urine samples

A study by the National Institutes of Health links pregnant people’s exposure to phthalates, a nearly ubiquitous class of plastic softeners, to pre-term births.  

The Bureau of Land Management okays the 500-megawatt Oberon project, a 2,600-acre solar power facility in a designated “renewable energy zone” in the Southern California desert. 

Energy from UK offshore wind turbines is one-quarter the price of electricity from gas. 

A Republican state representative in North Carolina proposes a bill to outlaw free public EV chargers unless they also provide free gas and diesel.

Donald Trump dismisses climate change: “We’ll have a little more beachfront property. That’s not the worst thing in the world.” 

Georgia Republican senatorial candidate Herschel Walker says that climate change is when “China’s bad air . . . moves over to our good-air space.”

Senator Joe Manchin torpedoes a Democratic economic package over its spending to prevent climate disaster.