Your Top Science Stories This Week
Dear Reader,
Our series, "Living With Wildfire: California Reimagined" has brought you stories of people all around the state who are acting on and thinking about ways to help make their cities and towns more resilient to wildfire in a warming world. We dedicated two weeks to this series because you deserve to know what the state's recent years of profound devastation from wildfire mean for our future. As we talked with scientists, planners, firefighters and others, we didn't hear that this challenging past means the only possible future is more of the same. We learned there are solutions, actions, laws, and policies that maybe aren't enforced or enacted that can make it better. The most common recommendation we heard as we worked on these stories was that Californians have to start by changing the way they think. Wildfire, we heard, could be more like the weather—it sweeps through, it does its job, it goes, and we survive—if Californians are able to recognize that we can't keep doing the same thing and expect that to work. From how we build to how we landscape, from how we plan neighborhoods and subdivisions to how we map risk, from whether we enact safer new rules and enforce old ones—the variety of options is astonishing, really. Some of these ideas are things individuals can do, and some must be the work of people in official capacities—politicians, planners, foresters, firefighters—from the smallest town planning committee all the way up to the governor. What you choose to do is up to you and your neighbors, your communities, your values. We'd love to hear from you; tell us your thoughts and questions as you begin to imagine a California where fire is part of the landscape, not a recurring catastrophe. And we can't let this week go by without a big shout-out to the Deep Look team, whose gorgeous videos of big science questions in a very small world hit one million subscribers this week on YouTube. The team also just won an Emmy for their video, "Why the Male Black Widow is a Real Home Wrecker." | | |
Kat Snow
Senior Editor, Science
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| | | Almost as incendiary as wildfire itself is the idea that we shouldn't build—or in many cases rebuild—because of it. But some people are beginning to speak out that retreating from the 'Wildland-Urban Interface' needs to be on the table. | | |
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| | | A KQED investigation found homes and buildings in rural parts of Northern California, in some of the state's most fire-prone areas, are rarely inspected for brush and grass that can ignite and put whole neighborhoods in jeopardy. | | |
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| | | Despite an increase in insurance companies dropping coverage in fire-prone areas, nobody's ready to blow up the entire system yet. But some reforms may be on the way. | | |
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| | | Straight out of science fiction, the fearsome wormlion ambushes prey at the bottom of a tidy—and terrifying—sand pit, then flicks their carcasses out. These meals fuel its transformation into something unexpected. | | |
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| | | Researchers found high concentrations of tiny plastic particles, even at extreme depths. | | |
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| | | Scientists found confetti-sized bits of plastic in salt, sugar, ambient air, bottled water, honey, seafood and tap water -- one study even found it in beer. | | |
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| | | The Mars 2020 rover endures grueling tests of sound, vacuum, heat and cold before its July 2020 launch. | | |
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| FUNDING FOR KQED SCIENCE IS PROVIDED BY: The National Science Foundation, the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, the Dirk and Charlene Kabcenell Foundation, the Vadasz Family Foundation, the Fuhs Family Foundation, Campaign 21 and the members of KQED. | | | | KQED 2601 Mariposa St. San Francisco, CA 94110
Copyright © June 14, 2019 KQED. All Rights Reserved. |
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