ICYMI: Osprey vs. Eagle, Climate Amnesia & Pooh’s Forest Burns

A weekly roundup for busy people

By Paul Rauber

March 1, 2019

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Illustration by Peter Arkle

tussle over a dead fish between an osprey and a bald eagle interrupts a college baseball game in Jacksonville, Florida. 

The Senate confirms former coal-industry lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as administrator of the EPA. 

Security footage supports an AP reporter’s claim that she was shoved out of the EPA lobby by a guard while attempting to cover a meeting on drinking-water contaminants. 

President Trump nominates Kelly Craft, currently US ambassador to Canada, to be ambassador to the United Nations. Kraft has said that she believes “both sides” of climate science; her husband, Joe Kraft, is a billionaire coal magnate.  

Sea level rise has already cost property owners on the East and Gulf Coasts nearly $16 billion since 2005. 

Typhoon Wutip is the first Category 5 storm ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere in February.  

An El Niño weather system weakens winds in the upper Midwest and Great Plains in late 2018, depressing output and earnings for wind-energy firms.  

On February 26, Kew Gardens in London records a temperature of 70ºF, the highest winter temperature ever recorded in Britain. A fire in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex burns part of Winnie the Pooh’s Hundred Acre Wood. 

An analysis of more than 2 billion tweets documents “climate amnesia,” wherein repeated exposure to extreme-weather events quickly leads people to consider them as normal. 

Atmospheric carbon dioxide at levels roughly three times those of today could lead to a world without clouds

Populations of Australian bogong moths are crashing due to extended drought, so endangered mountain pygmy possums are starving.

A tick bite can make you allergic to red meat.  

A dead humpback whale is discovered near the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil. Otters are spotted in downtown Milwaukee. A mountain lion wanders through Sacramento.  

The recent eruption of Kilauea volcano added 875 acres to the Big Island of Hawaii.

The island of Perlamutrovy in the Russian Arctic has vanished