For most of the 21st century, putting a price on carbon dioxide emissions (either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system) has been seen as the serious person’s climate-change policy, preferred by economists, claimed to have bipartisan appeal, and backed relentlessly by tribunes of Beltway conventional wisdom like the Washington Post editorial board. In the…
Read moreThese Covid-19 vaccine candidates could change the way we make vaccines — if they work
As urgency mounts for a Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine, a key question for scientists is whether this pandemic will be the watershed moment for two new technologies that have never before seen widespread use in humans. If proven effective, these approaches could dramatically speed up the development of other new vaccines and drastically lower costs, heralding…
Read moreHurricane Laura hits Gulf Coast as an “extremely dangerous” storm
The National Hurricane Center warned that Hurricane Laura will cause “life-threatening storm surge” reaching up to 40 miles inland and rising up to 20 feet as the storm made landfall in Texas and Louisiana. Laura reached the Gulf Coast after midnight on Thursday morning at an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 strength, with winds reaching 140…
Read moreWhat makes California’s current major wildfires so unusual
Wildfires continue burning in California, with unhealthy air from smoke still cloaking some parts of the state. Combined with the Covid-19 pandemic, the fires are compounding risks that have been brewing for years. Fire officials have grouped some of the smaller fires in an area into complexes to coordinate their response. The largest of these…
Read moreHurricane Laura: The danger of storm surge, explained
Hurricane Laura made landfall at 1 am ET Thursday in Cameron, Louisiana, as a fierce Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds. It has since downgraded to a Category 1 hurricane, with wind speeds of 75 mph, and is moving north. But perhaps the most dangerous part of the storm may be the storm surge…
Read moreHurricane Laura was already a deadly storm before it reached the US
Before Hurricane Laura made landfall in the United States, it had already proved to be a deadly storm in three Caribbean countries, bringing torrential downpours, flooding, power outages, and other damage that killed over 20 people and has made life dangerous for millions more. As a tropical storm, Laura pummeled the Dominican Republic last weekend…
Read moreTrump asked for fewer Covid-19 tests. Now the CDC is recommending less testing.
A couple of months ago, President Donald Trump said he told federal officials to “slow the testing down, please.” Now the Trump administration is taking a step that would, in effect, slow down testing. On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its testing guidelines to no longer recommend people get tested…
Read moreRapid $1 Covid-19 tests exist. Why can’t we get them?
To get the US pandemic under control, a growing number of health and medical experts are making a clarion call for an additional testing approach to Covid-19. What we need, they argue, are at-home rapid tests that look for antigens, proteins the live virus makes. These kits would allow anyone to test themselves for the…
Read moreHow Trump let Covid-19 win
As America, and even his own administration, woke up to the threat of Covid-19, President Donald Trump still didn’t seem to get it. Within weeks of suggesting that people social distance in mid-March, the president went on national TV to argue that the US could reopen by Easter Sunday in April. “You’ll have packed churches…
Read moreTropical Storm Laura’s flooding and other impacts on the ground: What we know
Tropical Storm Laura, which has been downgraded from a hurricane, made landfall early Thursday morning in Cameron, Louisiana — just 35 miles east of the Texas-Louisiana border — as a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds. Already, pictures and videos of the storm from Lake Charles, Louisiana, a town about 50 miles north of…
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