IoES in the News
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Bradley Shaffer in UCLA Newsroom: UCLA draws record $1.4 billion in research funding
UCLA attracted record support for its wide-ranging research in the 2019–20 fiscal year, receiving $1.427 billion in research funding. The UCLA College, home to the university’s divisions of life and…
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Glen MacDonald in Le Devoir: California, a state on the fringes of American politics
On the environmental level, California does indeed stand out with, among other things, stricter rules on air quality, as well as a carbon exchange system that it shares with Quebec,…
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Daniel Swain in USA Today: Fact check: Some of viral post’s facts that ‘stand up for the Golden State’ lack context
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California-Los Angeles, fact-checked Melissa Hillman’s viral post and said that fire is common in…
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Daniel Swain in The Los Angeles Times: Fire-dampening rain for California fizzles; more heat and possible Santa Ana winds are on the way
Chances of beneficial rain in Northern California have largely done a vanishing act, the National Weather Service said. After a brief respite, Southern California returns to temperatures that are well…
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Ann Carlson in The American Prospect: Four More Years of Trump Would Be an Environmental ‘Fiasco’
By weakening clean air and water standards, rolling back regulations, and allowing more drilling on both federal lands and waters, Trump’s EPA is just making it easier for polluters to…
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Deepak Rajagopal in BBC: Can Peru’s beloved dish help save Machu Picchu?
Unesco threatened to place Machu Picchu on its List of World Heritage in Danger in 2016 because of the unsustainable ways in which the site was being run. Prof. Deepak…
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Sean Hecht in Bloomberg Law: Supreme Court’s Climate Case Focuses on Procedure, Not Policy
Baltimore sued oil companies over local climate impacts and the U.S. Supreme Court last week added an important climate change case to its docket, giving oil and gas companies another…
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Pritzker Finalist Leah Penniman in Yahoo! Finance: America’s Black farmers work to uproot racism
Soul Fire Farm, is a “BIPoC-centered community farm” — the acronym standing for Black, Indigenous and People of Color. The 80-acre (32-hectare) farm was founded in 2011 by an African-American…
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Daniel Swain in The New York Times: What Made This a Record Fire Season? It Started With Lightning
An unusual confluence of weather conditions sent nearly 14,000 bolts of lightning into the dry, hot forests of Northern California in August. But that was only the beginning.
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Alex Hall in The Guardian: Smoke choking California again as dangerous fire conditions continue
Smoke from nearly two dozen wildfires burning across California will continue to darken skies across the west this weekend, as residents prepare for more heat, toxic air and conditions that…
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Video: Pritzker Finalist Leah Penniman in Yahoo! New: This Farmer Is Determined To Use Food To Help End Racism & Injustice
Soul Fire Farm manager & co-director and 2020 Pritzker Award finalist Leah Penniman explains how the community training farm educates young people + delivers food to people in need.
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Daniel Swain in KQED: Rain Next Week? Forecast Models Give Some Hope, But Too Early to Count on It
Moisture for a low-pressure system expected to arrive in Northern California late next week. UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, a weather nerd and Twitter must-follow, made much the same point about…
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Ann Carlson in The Hill: Supreme Court to decide whether climate suit can be moved to federal court
The Supreme Court says it will hear arguments over whether the city of Baltimore’s lawsuit against several oil companies can be moved to federal court. Ann Carlson, a professor at…
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Daniel Swain on KCRW’s “Press Play:” California fires have burned some 4 million acres. How to protect people and property
This year has been full of natural disasters for California: record temperatures, hazardous air, and the worst fire season ever. The fires have collectively burned nearly 4 million acres in…
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Daniel Blumstein in The Scientist: Wielding Fear
Harnessing fear can lead to responsible behavior & sound thinking. UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability animal behavior researcher Daniel Blumstein discusses the ecological power &evolutionary history of fear, an…
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Tom Smith in World War Zero: The Congo Basin in an Era of Climate Change
World War Zero, a coalition fighting the climate crisis, features an op-ed by CBI’s Founding Co-Executive Director Tom Smith discussing the effects of climate change on Congo Basin biodiversity. “Climate…
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Daniel Swain in WIRED: The Debate Was a Disaster. But Hey, Climate Change Came Up
The good news: The presidential debate addressed global warming. The bad news: Trump dodged it, especially when it came to wildfires. “It was kind of interesting that that was the…
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Daniel Swain in Desert Sun: Tired of triple-digit heat? Palm Springs set to break record for most 100-degree days in a year
Thursday will be the city’s 136th day with triple-digit temperatures in 2020, surpassing the previous record of 135 days set in 1958, according to the National Weather Service. Moving forward, 2020’s…
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Daniel Swain in San Francisco Chronicle: Wine Country fires burn homes, force evacuations from Santa Rosa to Napa Valley
The Wine Country awoke in flames Monday as windblown wildfires closed in on the Napa Valley from the east and west and swept into Santa Rosa, forcing thousands of North…
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Daniel Swain in The Washington Post: Wildfire danger in West to escalate as intense heat dome builds this weekend
Record highs and dry land-to-sea winds are in the forecast yet again. According to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, the fire weather…
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Daniel Swain in The New York Times: Record Wildfires on the West Coast Are Capping a Disastrous Decade
“We’ve broken almost every record there is to break,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, referring to his home state, where catastrophic fires…
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2020 Pritzker Finalist Leah Penniman in Mic: Our food system is broken and racist. Meet the farmers trying to change the way we eat
“You have to wonder how we as a society justify that approximately 98% of the farmable land in this country is white-owned,’ says 2020 Pritzker finalist and co-founder of Soul…
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Daniel Swain in The Los Angeles Times — ‘If you think it’s bad now, just wait’: California faces new fire threats, further straining resources
The forecast is not encouraging. This upcoming heat event is on track to be “major, prolonged and potentially record-breaking,” according to UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. It appears Central California…
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CBI field station featured in Travel Africa
Travel Africa Magazine featured the Congo Basin Institute’s Bouamir Field Station located in the Dja Faunal Reserve of Cameroon. Aided by local researchers and guides, visitors conducting field research in…
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Daniel Swain in The New York Times: Heat and Drought Team Up More Frequently, With Disastrous Results
A new study finds that what used to be a rare weather double whammy has been occurring more frequently in recent decades because of climate change. A climate scientist who…