Climate Control

Most recent stories in Climate Control

• You might think that British Columbia’s oldest forests are protected from commercial interests. You’re wrong.

  

  Outside Magazine

  

  The Mystery Behind a Photo of a Logged Old-Growth Tree

  Outside Magazine - Jayme Moye

  n May, a photo of a massive tree trunk in the back of a logging truck on a Vancouver Island highway went viral, sparking outrage and disbelief from as far away as Japan. Canadian news outlets raced to confirm whether the photo was real and to report the tree’s backstory—which remains a mystery.

• As the mountains thaw, rocks are coming loose from the ice, increasing the risk of injury or death for even the most experienced mountaineers.

  

  Outside Magazine

  

  How Climate Change Is Making the Alps More Dangerous

  Outside Magazine - Agostino Petroni

  n July, Lorenzo Pernigotti, a seasoned mountain climber who has summited over 100 peaks in the Alps, scaled Aiguilles du Diable—“devil’s horns” in English—a set of rock towers on one of 11 major high points in the Mont Blanc massif, which straddles the border of Italy and France. The climb grew more difficult as he and his partner, Davide Iacchini, neared the top. At 13,000 feet, they reached the final leg, where they would climb out of a narrow corridor and onto the jagged ridge. Pernigotti, 30, took the lead on the wall of the corridor, scanning for knobs and crannies where he could place his hands and feet while bound to his partner by a short length of rope. Above him, he spied a large rock jutting from the wall, like a handle, that he could use to hoist himself up. He pulled on it with one hand, then two, testing to see if it would hold his weight. After a couple of sharp tugs, he hung from it. But as he dangled there, the rock gave way. It slid down a few inches, and Pernigotti yelled at Iacchini to shorten the rope connecting them. As the rock began crashing down into the corridor, Pernigotti let go, falling 30 feet before the rope went taut, with other rocks, snow, and ice tumbling into the chasm all around him.

• Yes, things are very bad, but there are some glimmers of hope for making meaningful progress.

  

  Outside Magazine

  

  Everything You Need to Know About the State of the Environment in 2022

  Outside Magazine - Heather Hansman

  ecently, a few friends and I stood around a patio for a makeshift holiday party. We were outside and socially distancing again, and one friend had their new baby with them. Perhaps because there was a tiny human present, with her whole life in front of her, we got to talking about the future and how so many of the scary things we imagined about what climate change would look like became reality in 2021.

• As the country's second most popular park turns 100, Grand Canyon faces an unprecedented number of existential threats. Eight experts weigh in on the major changes it will undergo during the next century.

  

  Outside Magazine

  

  How Grand Canyon National Park Will Look in 100 Years

  Outside Magazine - Katherine LaGrave

  In May 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt visited Grand Canyon for the first time. He was, in a word, gobsmacked. “It is beyond comparison—beyond description; absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world,” he wrote. “Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimity, and loveliness. You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see.” Roosevelt’s wishes, in a sense, have come true. Since Grand Canyon’s inception as a national park in 1919, the 1,904-square-mile preserve has seen more than 212 million visitors who come to hike its trails, spot its 373 species of birds and 91 types of mammals, observe the rock formations, raft the Colorado River, and, of course, post to Instagram.

• Here’s what to do when your little one brings up sea-level rise, extinction, wildfires, and other ecological griefs.

  

  Outside Magazine

  

  How to Talk to Your Kids About Climate Change

  Outside Magazine - Krista Langlois

  Drought and wildfires are intensifying as the climate warms, and scientists say they’ll only get worse. According to the most recent federal climate report, just under half of the United States is experiencing some degree of drought, including 88 percent of the West, which is seeing record-breaking heat waves and water shortages. The same types of unsustainable human behaviors driving climate change are also polluting the world with plastic, wreaking havoc in our oceans, and pushing roughly a million plant and animal species toward extinction. A colleague recently told me that her five-year-old was “seriously bereft” after learning about extinction; she grieved the loss of animals she’d never seen as acutely as she might grieve the loss of a pet. Clearly, our children are affected both physically and emotionally by the mess we’ve made of our planet. So how do we talk to them about climate change, wildfires, extinction, and other sources of ecological grief? How do we explain these issues in ways that are honest and easy to grasp but don’t leave our children mired in despair?

• New research places a short timeline on the future of snow across the western United States.

  

  Outside Magazine

  

  Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Could Disappear by 2050

  Outside Magazine - Jake Stern

  n September 2020 I moved to Mammoth Lakes, California, and stood by for the first snowfall. I waited as thick clouds of wildfire smoke climbed over Mammoth Pass from the west and choked the town for months on end. Winter storms eventually pushed the smoke back, but when spring came, the thin snowpack evaporated into what the California Department of Water Resources determined to be the driest water year since 1924.