Topic
The likelihood and severity of fires igniting and spreading across landscapes, shaped by drought, heat, fuel buildup, and land management policy.
A study co-led by DRI's Bea Gordon finds cropland 1.3 to 5 times more associated with where nearly 10,000 Western fires stopped than other land types. Its authors want drought plans that idle irrigated land to count the lost buffer, though the moisture explanation is a proposal.
Reality
Supreme Court justices hear Boulder's suit against ExxonMobil and Suncor on Monday, a case that could settle dozens of similar local climate claims. At issue for producers is whether climate costs get fought jurisdiction by jurisdiction in state courts or left to federal regulators.
Reality
The proposal would open more than 44 million acres of national forest to roads and logging on a wildfire-risk argument that published ignition studies do not support.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishersReality
Ditches dug decades ago for a farming venture that was abandoned leave the tract emitting 130,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year. The plan to plug them rests on credit buyers whose price nobody has published.
Reality
A Science Advances study defines the spring heat waves that strip snowpack and finds they can roughly double melt rates. The affected area in the West has grown by about 40,000 square miles per century.
Reality
Cernavoda and Paks stopped for want of cooling water, not for faults. Thermal derating is turning into a July-August capacity line item rather than a weather story.
Reality