"President Trump has tried to cut funding for virtually every federal program that addresses climate change. But Congress has been pushing back, sometimes with surprising bipartisan support."
"A new study of pesticide exposure in Peru finds a mechanistic association between exposure and cancer, and shows how “complex pesticide mixtures” can contribute to the development of cancer in people, even at exposure levels currently deemed safe."
"The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is failing to put warnings on pesticides linked to cancer — even when the agency itself determined a product’s ingredients are carcinogenic, according to two new analyses of federal data."
"The president was non-committal when asked Sunday night about Casey Means’s nomination, which has stalled in the Senate."
Reporting on species who are gone forever can be disheartening, but don’t let that stop you. After more than two decades on the extinction beat, John R. Platt has learned this work can also be deeply rewarding. He explains why he’s stuck with it and why other journalists should consider joining him in telling the stories of vanishing animals and plants.
"US and European regulators should take urgent action to more tightly regulate glyphosate, the world’s most widely used weed killer, in light of strong scientific evidence that the pesticide can cause cancer and other health problems, a group of international scientists said on Friday."
"U.S. President Donald Trump today unveiled a set of scientific advisers heavily skewed toward artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, topics his administration has emphasized. The roster, unlike previous iterations of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), features some of the world’s wealthiest people and several of Trump’s biggest political supporters from high-tech industry—but only one academic scientist."
The capacity to visualize Earth’s ecosystems in detail is an invaluable aid to reporting on the environment. That’s now being bolstered with an ongoing upgrade to NASA’s Earthdata program, fueled by its ranks of satellites. Reporter’s Toolbox says the refurbishment offers treasures for journalists ranging from oceans, groundwater and land surfaces to the biosphere and atmosphere.
Bugs may get a bad rap, but a serious possible global decline in their populations is making clearer what may be lost for ecosystems and human societies. Issue Backgrounder peers beneath the detritus to find what insects do, how we try to kill them and how they survive, and why it’s so hard to pin down the data around their shifting numbers.
"On Friday, March 20, eight states set an all-time March heat record, and the U.S. national March heat record was set or tied for the third consecutive day"
