A safe haven sounds like a good idea right about now.

Somewhere that's warm but not too warm, free from hurricanes and flood-causing downpours, and close to a body of water yet far enough to avoid the threat of sea-level rise.

Which places does that leave? According to climate scientists and urban planners, not a lot.

"The bottom line is it's going to be bad everywhere,"Bruce Riordan, the director of the Climate Readiness Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, told Business Insider. "It's a matter of who gets organized around this."

Still, some areas have a better chance of surviving the onslaught of a warmer planet than others, Vivek Shandas, an urban-planning professor at Portland State University, told Business Insider.

"There are places that might at least temper the effects of climate change," he said.

All of them are cities, which tend to be less isolated than rural areas, and most are in the Pacific Northwest.

"Much of the Pacific Northwest is really well-positioned for being one of the better places for climate change," Shandas said.

Urban parts of that region tend to be newer, meaning that their infrastructure — which includes water systems, the power grid, and public transportation — is more modern and "more resilient to major shocks," Shandas said. That's key when it comes to coping with heat and rising water. It also gives the Pacific Northwest an advantage over cities whose infrastructure is badly in need of updates. 

"Generally speaking, the US gets about a D+ for things like this," Shandas said. "Much of our infrastructure was built in the late 1800s, and it's beginning to fall apart."

Riordan agreed. "A lot of places are running into real maintenance issues which lead to delays and overcrowding and operational issues because of aging systems," he said.

Geographically speaking, cities in the Pacific Northwest are also conveniently situated near natural resources like water — an integral buffer against drought — and hills, which provide access to higher elevations with cooler temperatures. The region's temperature is naturally fairly mild, making it a good candidate for those hoping to avoid the heat waves that are already becoming more common. 

"What we’re seeing is longer durations of heat waves every year since 2012," Shandas said. "So one of the key questions is 'How is this area going to cope for the next one?'"

Episodes of intense heat can be exacerbated by a phenomenon called the urban heat island effect, wherein cities essentially act as furnaces, generating so much heat that they become significantly warmer than the areas surrounding them.

One of the largest studies on the effects of heat waves took place in Chicago in the 1990s. That study revealed another important measure of a city's ability to cope with climate change: how involved, enfranchised, and well-organized its populations are. The Chicago residents who fared worst during the heat wave were those who were isolated — typically, people with lower incomes and less access to resources. Those who did better, on the other hand, had historically benefited more from social policies that had incorporated them into society.

"Neighborhoods that are connected do better when these things happen," Riordan said.

That's why Shandas and his team assess social inequity when evaluating how prepared a city is for the future.

"What climate change does is it amplifies these inequities," Shandas said. "It's usually people with resources that have things like air-conditioning units, or cars to escape a hurricane. If a city has a lot of inequity, we can begin to speculate that any event — be it a flood, a heat wave, whatever — will really have a lot of impact and make things worse."

Cities like Seattle and Portland score well on measures of social equality or have plans in place to help distribute resources more fairly. Portland, for example, is one of the only cities with a working group tasked with reducing racial and economic inequality as it relates to potential climate-action policies.

San Francisco also scores well on these measures (though it's not in the Pacific Northwest), since 98% of its population lives within a half-mile of regularly operating transportation. That makes wealth or income  less of a factor when it comes to accessing transit during an emergency.

However, it's important to remember that climate change is not going to act selectively, and a stark impact felt in one part of the planet will have far-reaching implications elsewhere.

"We’re headed into a world that's going to look very different for everybody," Riordan said. "That’s not at the end of the century. That's pretty damn soon."

SEE ALSO: The best US cities to live in to escape the worst effects of climate change

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NOW WATCH: 6 major US cities could be underwater within 80 years — here are the disturbing ‘after’ images

Running fans hoped to see history made in Berlin on Sunday, when Eliud Kipchoge, widely regarded as the world’s top marathoner, set out to break a world record. But the Kenyan, who took gold in the men’s marathon in Rio, fell 35 seconds short of making history.

His brush with greatness would not be notable but for the circumstances of the race. Kipchoge was hampered by heat, humidity and rain, symptoms of a problem that’s growing worse by the day — climate change.

Historically, Berlin has boasted uncommonly favorable conditions — a flat course, cool weather and overcast skies. The German capital was the scene of seven of the ten fastest marathons ever run, including the world record, claimed by Dennis Kimetto of Kenya, who completed the 2014 Berlin marathon in 2:02:57. Kipchoge, while he placed first on Sunday, failed to catch Kimetto’s ghost, clocking in at 2:03:32.

“The conditions were not friendly because of the rain,” Kipchoge told reporters after the race. He gave up hope of a record-setting performance after just five kilometers. “That’s when I realized that the world record was not possible.” Perhaps more troublesome than the rain were the heat and humidity. At the start of the race, it was unusually warm and oppressively humid.

A 2007 study showed that the fastest marathoners run about 1 percent slower for every 9 degree temperature increase above 40 degrees F. The average starting temperature of the Berlin marathon is 50 degrees F. At the start of Sunday’s race, the temperature was 58 degrees F, meaning Kipchoge could expect to run almost 1 percent slower than he would have in a typical year.

According to the study, the extra heat added around 70 seconds to Kipchoge’s total time. He was just 35 seconds shy of a new world record.

Of course, Kipchoge also had to contend with humidity, which makes heat even worse. Under dry conditions, sweat evaporates, cooling off the body. When it’s humid outside, sweat clings to the skin and athletes stay warm. On top of that, rain made roads slippery, slowing down runners even more. If it had just been a little cooler or a little dryer, Kipchoge might have made history.

Here’s where climate change comes in. The Earth has warmed by around 2 degrees F in a little more than a century. Rising temperatures have caused the atmosphere to hold more moisture, producing more humid weather. The greater volume of water in the atmosphere has also led to more frequent and intense rainfall in many parts of the world, including Germany. All of this put together is enough to slow down even the most finely tuned human machine.

Kipchoge said he still has his sights on the world record, but he is running out of time. Marathoners tend to peak in their late twenties and then see a gradual decline in performance. At 32, Kipchoge was the oldest runner to finish in the top ten at Sunday’s marathon. He is in the twilight of his reign as the world’s greatest distance runner. He won’t make too many more attempts at a world record.

Marathon running is a matter of both luck and preparation. Anyone trying to run the fastest race of all time needs to catch every break. They need to walk up to the starting line full of confidence and free of injuries. They need a flat course and cool, crisp weather. Rising temperatures mean that organizers will need to plan races for later in the fall and earlier in the spring. This is crucial for fast courses, like the London, Chicago and Berlin marathons, where elite runners attempt to break records.

When asked about the scheduling or races, a spokesperson for the Chicago marathon said organizers “consistently target the early October timeframe given the global running and Chicago calendar of events,” but she made no mention of climate change. Spokespeople for the London and New York marathons gave similar answers. Organizers of the Berlin marathon did not respond to a request for comment.

If organizers continue to overlook the effect of rising temperatures in race planning, there will be fewer records broken at marquee races, like Berlin. That’s sad for Kipchoge, who has dedicated his life to testing the limits of the human body, and for the fans who can only wonder what might have been.

SEE ALSO: The first woman to ever run the Boston Marathon just did it again 50 years later

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello reported progress in getting fuel supplies to the island's 3.4 million inhabitants on Monday as they faced a 13th day largely without power after the U.S. territory was devastated by Hurricane Maria.

"We've been increasing the number of gas stations that are open," Rossello said at a news briefing, with more than 720 gas stations now up and running.

Puerto Rico relies on fuel supplies shipped from the mainland United States and distribution has been disrupted by the bad state of roads.

"We will be receiving more fuel supplies in the coming days," said Rossello, who is expecting some 300,000 barrels of diesel on Wednesday and 100,000 barrels of gasoline. Within the next couple of days, he expects 500,000 barrels of diesel and close to 1 million of gasoline to arrive on the island.

"The flow is coming, gasoline is getting here," he said. "We have been able to reduce the time that it takes to get gasoline and diesel at different stations."

Food and drinking water still are in short supply and power remains down for most of Puerto Rico's inhabitants nearly two weeks after the fiercest hurricane to hit the island in 90 years.

Some islanders got their cell phone service back on Sunday while others gathered at bars for drinking and dancing after the dry law was lifted this weekend.

Rossello said 8,800 people now were housed in 140 shelters. There were as many as 500 shelters in operation 10 days ago.

He said 47 percent of water and sewer service is up but there is variation across the island.

Federal and local authorities were working together to keep 50 hospitals operational and Rossello added that the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort would arrive in Puerto Rico between Tuesday and Wednesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who plans to go to Puerto Rico on Tuesday, defended his administration's handling of the disaster on Sunday.

"We have done a great job with the almost impossible situation in Puerto Rico," he posted on Twitter. "Outside of the Fake News or politically motivated ingrates people are now starting to recognize the amazing work that has been done by FEMA and our great Military."

Earlier, Trump attacked San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz on Twitter after she criticized the administrations response to Maria.

Insurers and reinsurers continued to count the cost of hurricanes this season. Lloyd's of London underwriter Hiscox Ltd estimated on Monday that it would face net claims of about $225 million from hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

The Lloyd's of London [SOLYD.UL] insurance market has forecast that it expects net losses for the market of $4.5 billion from the two hurricanes.

Maria alone could ultimately cause $15 billion to $30 billion in insured losses, including business interruption, according to risk modeling firm RMS. AIR Worldwide put the number at $40 billion to $85 billion.

With another two months of the Atlantic hurricane season to go, 2017 could end up as the most expensive year ever for insurers and reinsurers, if the final tally exceeds the $143 billion in losses from 2011, the year a massive earthquake and tsunami hit Japan.

(Reporting by Robin Respaut, Gabriel Stargardter, Nicholas Brown and Carolos Barria in SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico, Doina Chiacu and Makini Brice in WASHINGTON, Esha Vaish in BENGALURU; Writing by Bill Rigby; Editing by Bill Trott)

SEE ALSO: Here's why hurricane season has been exceptionally disastrous — and why there’s probably more to come

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There's a 76% chance that the Bay Area will experience a more severe earthquake than 1989's Loma Prieta temblor in the next three decades.

"It could happen tomorrow or in 30 years,"Mary Comerio, an architect who specializes in earthquake engineering research and a professor of disaster recovery and reconstruction at the University of California, Berkeley, told Business Insider.

The potential impacts of this quake on San Francisco are severe. Heavy, dense apartments built above cavernous garages (also known as soft-story housing), will buckle as the marshy soil beneath them — added in the latter half of the 19th century by zealous developers wanting to extend the peninsula's real estate — behaves like a liquid.

This phenomenon, which seismologists refer to as liquefaction, is one of the region's biggest threats. It plagues the majority of neighborhoods on San Francisco's eastern shoreline as well as a slice of land along its western edge. Essentially, anything along the water is at significant risk — something that Comerio said has heavily influenced her decisions about where to live.

As a result, she said she'd never consider moving to a place near the waterfront.

"I don’t want to live on soft soil. I'd love to be able to walk along the bay but I don’t want to live in that setting because I know it's going to be highly damaged," Comerio said.

The fact that she so ardently considers the soil conditions in an area has become something of an inside joke to her friends and family, Comerio said.

"It’s become a family joke that I always say, 'Honey, I like the soil conditions here.'"

SEE ALSO: Mexico is in the worst possible place for earthquakes — here's why it keeps getting hit

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NOW WATCH: The only right way to pop your pimples

A team of 32 scientists from 12 countries returned last week from a nine-week voyage to study the once-lost continent of Zealandia in the South Pacific.

This mostly submerged or hidden continent is an elevated part of the ocean floor, about two-thirds the size of Australia, located between New Zealand and New Caledonia. Scientists said earlier this year they thought Zealandia should be recognized as a full-fledged Earth continent.

This was one of the first extensive surveys of the region, and the scientists who carried it out – affiliated with the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) at Texas A&M University – have just arrived back in Hobart, Tasmania, aboard the research vessel JOIDES Resolution. They said their work has already revealed that Zealandia might once have been much closer to land level than previously thought, providing pathways for animals and plants to cross between continents.

Little is known about Zealandia because it’s submerged about two-thirds of a miles (more than a kilometer) under the sea. Until now, the region has been sparsely surveyed and sampled.

Scientists taking part in the 2017 expedition drilled deep into Zealandia’s seabed at six sites in water depths of more than 4,000 feet (1,250 meters). They collected 8,000 feet (2,500 meters) of sediment cores from layers that record how the geography, volcanism and climate of the region have changed over millions of years.

According to expedition co-chief scientist Gerald Dickens of Rice University in Houston, Texas, Zealandia expedition scientists made significant new fossil discoveries, proving that Zealandia was not always as deep beneath the waves as it is today. He said:

"More than 8,000 specimens were studied, and several hundred fossil species were identified. The discovery of microscopic shells of organisms that lived in warm shallow seas, and of spores and pollen from land plants, reveal that the geography and climate of Zealandia were dramatically different in the past."

He also said that the new discoveries show that the Pacific Ocean’s encircling Ring of Fire – where there are frequent earthquakes and powerful volcanic eruptions – had a role in causing Zealandia’s submersion beneath the ocean waves. That is, he said, the formation of the Ring of Fire caused dramatic changes in ocean depth and volcanic activity, which buckled the seabed of Zealandia.

Expedition co-chief scientist Rupert Sutherland of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand said researchers had believed that Zealandia was submerged when it separated from Australia and Antarctica about 80 million years ago:

"That is still probably accurate, but it is now clear that dramatic later events shaped the continent we explored on this voyage. Big geographic changes across northern Zealandia, which is about the same size as India, have implications for understanding questions such as how plants and animals dispersed and evolved in the South Pacific. The discovery of past land and shallow seas now provides an explanation. There were pathways for animals and plants to move along."

The sediment cores obtained during the expedition will be studied by scientists long after the expedition’s end. The scientists said they expect the cores to help them understand how Earth’s tectonic plates move and how the global climate system works.

These scientists also said that records of Zealandia’s history will provide a sensitive test for computer models used to predict future changes in climate.

Bottom line: An international team of scientists has just returned from the first major expedition to Zealandia, which some believed should be recognized as a full-fledged Earth continent, now submerged beneath the ocean in the South Pacific. 

SEE ALSO: An expedition has launched to investigate a sunken lost continent near Australia

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NOW WATCH: There's only one place in the world where you can swim in the tectonic plates between 2 continents

The world is changing fast. Farmable land is shrinking, storms are strengthening, and temperatures are rising. Across the US, cities aren't all equally equipped to handle these threats.

"Climate change is going to be the biggest thing we have to deal with, but it's never going to be the only problem,"Bruce Riordan, who leads the Climate Readiness Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, told Business Insider. "If your city is already suffering from other problems — subways that get flooded whenever there's a big storm, a faulty power grid — it's going to be a lot harder. How do you muster the resources to plan for sea-level rise when you're just trying to keep your city, pardon the pun, afloat?"

Still, some American cities have a slightly better chance of surviving the onslaught of climate change, Vivek Shandas, an urban-planning professor at Portland State University, told Business Insider. These areas are your best bet for avoiding the worst effects of a warmer planet.

SEE ALSO: Why these are the best US cities to live in to escape the worst effects of climate change

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NOW WATCH: 6 major US cities could be underwater within 80 years — here are the disturbing ‘after’ images

• Nate strengthened to a Category 1 hurricane on Friday night, according to the National Hurricane Center.
• The storm has killed at least 22 people in Central America.
• Hurricane warnings are in effect in New Orleans and across parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. A mandatory curfew is in effect for New Orleans on Saturday night.

The storms just keep coming.

Hurricane Nate became a Category 1 storm while moving into the southern Gulf of Mexico on Friday night, according to the National Hurricane Center's update at 10:30 p.m. CDT.

Nate has already been blamed for at least 22 deaths across Nicaragua and Costa Rica, The Associated Press reported, and it's causing dangerous flooding and landslides.

The storm has been getting stronger and becoming more well-organized on satellite images. 

The NHC's latest forecast suggests Nate will skim the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula Friday night, then make landfall somewhere near New Orleans late Saturday night or Sunday. Hurricane and storm surge warnings have been issued for the US Gulf Coast.

SEE ALSO: Why hurricane season has been exceptionally disastrous this year

In preparation, officials in Louisiana have ordered residents living along part of the east coast of New Orleans and in other areas near the coast to evacuate. States of emergency have been declared for New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana and for parts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu declared a mandatory curfew from 6 p.m. Saturday night through Sunday morning.

The biggest question for those in the US is how strong Nate will get between now and Saturday night.

Bracing for flooding

As of Friday night, Nate's hurricane-force winds had maximum sustained speeds of 75 mph, with gusts going higher than that.

Hurricane warnings have been issued for the Gulf Coast from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to Alabama's border with Florida and for metropolitan New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain.

Hurricane watches — meaning hurricane conditions may arrive within two days — are in effect from east of Alabama's border with Florida to the Okaloosa/Walton County line in Florida; from west of Grand Isle to Morgan City in Louisiana; and Lake Maurepas.

Storm surge warnings — meaning the storm is likely to raise water levels significantly — are in effect from Morgan City, Louisiana, to the Okaloosa/Walton county line in Florida, and for the northern and western shores of Lake Pontchartrain.

The New Orleans branch of the National Weather Service said the "storm surge warning indicates the danger of life threatening inundation."

Nate was expected to pour 15 to 20 inches of rain onto much of Nicaragua, with isolated locations getting 30 inches. Authorities closed all schools and placed the entire country on alert, according to the AP. In Costa Rica, 5,000 people fled to emergency shelters.

On much of the Gulf Coast, Nate is expected to dump three to six inches of rain, with some areas getting 10 inches.

Rapid strengthening possible

It's hard to predict the exact path and intensity that Nate will have by the time it nears the Gulf Coast, especially since the storm is still relatively disorganized. But the water that Nate is moving over now is extremely warm, which means conditions are ripe for rapid strengthening.

Nate is expected to become a hurricane before it reaches the northern Gulf of Mexico. Forecasters caution that the strength and category of a storm are not necessarily reflective of the damage it can cause, as heavy rainfall and storm surge can be destructive even without extreme winds.

Nate adds yet another threat to what has already been an extremely active Atlantic hurricane season. It's the 14th named storm of the season, which doesn't end until late November.

So far this season, we've had eight hurricanes, five of which were major hurricanes — classified as Category 3 or above. If Nate's wind speeds pick up, it will be the ninth.

The western Caribbean, where Nate formed, is one of the main spots to watch for storms at this point in the season, according to Phil Klotzbach, a meteorologist at Colorado State University. Since 1851, 25% of Atlantic tropical storms, 33% of hurricanes, and 60% of major hurricanes in October have formed in that region.

SEE ALSO: Here's why hurricane season has been exceptionally disastrous — and why there’s probably more to come

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NOW WATCH: Here's why all hurricanes, like Irma and Harvey, spin counterclockwise

The Trump administration plans to try to repeal the Clean Power Plan, the Obama administration's main initiative to fight climate change by lowering emissions, according to news reports.

At the same time, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has reportedly spent much of his term meeting with executives and lobbyists from companies and industries regulated by the EPA. Many reports also suggest that Pruitt's primary aim is to eliminate environmental protections and dismantle much of the regulatory agency.

Under Pruitt, the EPA has already reversed a ban on a pesticide that can harm children's brains, and moved to rescind the Clean Water Rule, which clarified the Clean Water Act to prohibit industries from dumping pollutants into streams and wetlands. The agency has also reportedly begun an initiative to challenge climate science, among other rollbacks. Some of these moves have been legally challenged, but others are already in effect.

If Pruitt succeeds in his goal to roll back a significant portion of the rules that protect air and water, we'd return to the state the US was in before these things were regulated.

The EPA was founded in 1970, and soon thereafter began a photo project called Documerica that captured more than 81,000 images showing what the US looked like from 1971 to 1977. More than 20,000 photos were archived and at least 15,000 have been digitized by the National Archives.

Here's a selection of those photos, many of which show what the US looked like without the air and water protections that exist today.

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Many of these photos simply show life in America at the time, but a number also document concerning environmental issues.

Smog, like that seen here obscuring the George Washington Bridge in New York, was a far bigger problem.

Factories burned discarded automobile batteries in the 1970s, releasing pollutants into the air. Current regulations require the batteries to be recycled without contaminating the surrounding area, although some get exported.

When asked about major threats to their country, Europeans are more likely than Americans to cite global climate change, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

Just 56 percent of Americans see climate change as a major threat, versus an average of 64 percent of Europeans surveyed.

Why the difference? Like climate data itself, data regarding public concern for climate change are “noisy.” Public response can vary depending on what’s going on in the news that week. Surveys of these types of surveys find no single explanation for how the public perceives the threat of climate change.

Of course, many explanations exist. As a climatologist who has taught university classes and given public lectures on global climate change for 30 years, I find it clear that public concern about climate change has evolved dramatically over the past three decades. In the U.S., now more than ever, it seems tied to ideology.

Knowing the facts

Does scientific literacy influence responses? Some psychologists think so. Indeed, some surveys show that Europeans have significantly greater scientific knowledge about the causes of climate change than Americans.

It’s possible that such knowledge translates into a sense of responsibility for mitigating climate change. But having more general scientific knowledge is not as relevant as knowing specifically about climate change.

A person’s outlook on the world can also complicate matters. Another recent Pew survey found that Americans are more likely to believe they control their own destiny and that they “tend to prioritize individual liberty, while Europeans tend to value the role of the state to ensure no one in society is in need.”

Research on the respective roles of scientific literacy and worldview reaches different conclusions. Psychologist Sophie Guy and colleagues argue that knowing the causes of climate change makes people more willing to accept the reality of climate change or to moderate their ideological opposition to it.

By contrast, Yale scholar Dan Kahan and colleagues find that people with the highest level of scientific literacy often use that literacy to retain and justify prior beliefs – what they call the “polarizing impact of science literacy.” In other words: “I’m smart, I’ve read the evidence and it confirms my prior understanding.” Climate change reflects a threat not only to one’s local environment, but also to one’s worldview.

Political affiliation

When you look more closely at recent survey responses in the U.S., the most striking and consistent finding is that political affiliation influences perceptions of climate change.

In the U.S., Democrats report, at consistently higher rates than Republicans, that climate change exists. Merely substituting the term “global warming” – now a politically charged catchword – for “climate change” makes the differences larger.

The divide between parties within the U.S. far exceeds the divide found between the U.S. as a whole and Europe. Political divisions also exist in Europe, and public opinion polls in the U.K. and Norway show that party similarly influences the perceived threat of climate change. However, there’s some evidence that the U.S. Republican Party is anomalous among conservative parties internationally. In other words, U.S. Republicans are more starkly anti-climate change than other conservative parties internationally.

It’s possible that the strong two-party system in the U.S. leads to a more binary mode of thinking on this issue that does not accurately represent that of the scientific community. Sociologist Aaron McCright and his colleagues argue that the high number of Americans identifying with the political right explains why the U.S., unlike other wealthy countries, is less concerned about climate change.

Closing the gap

Some suggest that the political divide has fueled an industry of climate change deniers and skeptics, distorting public perception about climate change science. Science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway argue in their book “Merchants of Doubt” that denial is about more than the science. It’s about political and economic systems that individuals hold dear. It also can result from differences in professional culture or personal values.

In the U.S., many of the most vocal skeptics and deniers of climate change emerge from conservative think tanks that revere the industrial capitalist system.

In Europe, differences between countries can also be explained by the voices of conservative think tanks and the media, but these voices are more influential in the U.S. than anywhere else because of the two-party system. Partisan clashes about climate change emerge from influential, well-funded sources that wield great influence on Congress, the media and ultimately the public. By contrast, most European countries have more than two parties, and arguably the political influence of corporations is lower.

Given the political divide on climate change in the U.S., addressing this 21st-century threat will require creative thinking that recognizes different worldviews and “beliefs” in climate change. The U.S. House Climate Solutions Caucus is a step in the right direction.

SEE ALSO: Why one region of the US will survive climate change better than any other, according to urban planners

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President Donald Trump's administration plans to kill the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's climate-change action.

The Environmental Protection Agency administrator, Scott Pruitt, on Monday said he would sign a proposed rule Tuesday rescinding Obama's Clean Power Plan, established in 2015 to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions.

Pruitt spoke at an event with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Hazard, Kentucky — coal country.

"Here's the president's message: The war on coal is over," Pruitt said. "Regulatory power should not be used by any regulatory body to pick winners and losers."

On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to bring back coal-mining jobs and dismantle Obama's environmental policy, declaring climate change a "hoax." Back in March, Trump signed an executive order ordering the EPA to review the Clean Power Plan.

Obama enacted the plan to cap pollution from power plants. It targeted power plants in 47 states (Hawaii, Alaska, and Vermont don't have power plants covered by the regulation and were exempt), aiming to cut their carbon emissions to 32% below 2005 levels by 2030.

The plan was supposed to be instrumental in helping the US reach its goals for the Paris climate agreement, which Obama signed with nearly every other country in 2015 but which Trump in June said he would pull the US out of.

On Monday, a link that formerly went to an EPA web page describing the Clean Power Plan redirected viewers to a page titled "Energy Independence."

"The EPA and no federal agency should ever use its authority to say to you we are going to declare war on any sector of our economy," Pruitt said Monday.

As administrator, Pruitt has refocused the EPA to get "back to basics," homing in on the agency's "core mission" of protecting the nation's air, land, and water. While attorney general for Oklahoma, Pruitt sued the EPA 14 times for what he described as "overreach."

Many of Obama's actions were remarkably complex, however, so it may take Trump a while to reverse them.

While coal jobs are unlikely to come back in droves with this or other actions the administration is taking, the move would make good on Trump's promise to rescind regulations that "unduly burden the development of domestic energy resources."

Democrats, environmentalists, and other protesters demonstrated outside the White House after Trump signed the executive order in March, declaring it would lead to runaway climate change, while many Republican members of Congress applauded the action for promoting energy independence. The same played out after Pruitt's comments on Monday.

The Natural Resources Defense Council threatened to sue the EPA if Pruitt were to rescind the plan. Democratic lawmakers decried the move.

Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware said he was "deeply disappointed" with Pruitt's decision. "The @EPA has a clear obligation to address carbon emissions & the Clean Power Plan was helping to achieve that goal," he tweeted, adding that the decision "undermines our commitment to fight climate change & embrace a clean energy future."

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia tweeted: "This would erode US leadership in tackling climate change & set us back years in hastening clean energy & job creation. Woefully misguided."

SEE ALSO: Vintage photos taken by the EPA reveal what America looked like before pollution was regulated

DON'T MISS: Pruitt's EPA isn't collecting millions of dollars from polluters — here's how it could land him in court

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Hurricane Nate flooded the Gulf Coast as it made landfall in the US over the weekend.

The center of the storm first hit land at the mouth of the Mississippi River, then again near Biloxi, Mississippi.

Before that, the storm killed at least 22 and caused heavy flooding in Central America.

Nate was the ninth hurricane of what has already been an extremely active Atlantic hurricane season. There have been 15 named storms in the Atlantic this season, counting the newly formed storm Ophelia, which is likely to become the tenth hurricane — though that one is no threat to land.

Even though Nate didn't hit with the destructive force of storms like Harvey, Irma, and Maria — all of which made landfall as major hurricanes — it still caused heavy devastation, showing just how destructive the forces of nature can be.

Here are a few images that show Hurricane Nate's impact.

SEE ALSO: Here's why hurricane season has been exceptionally disastrous — and why new storms are still showing up

Nate formed as a tropical storm in the western Caribbean, a common location for storms to develop at this time of year.

Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras took the brunt of Nate's initial force.

Heavy rains caused destructive landslides and flash flooding across much of Central America. Nate dropped up to 30 inches of rain in isolated locations.

SANTA ROSA, California — Wildfires whipped by powerful winds swept through California wine country Monday, killing at least 10 people, destroying 1,500 homes and businesses, and sending thousands fleeing as flames raged unchecked through high-end resorts, grocery stores, and tree-lined neighborhoods.

As he fled through the ember-strewn streets of his neighborhood in Santa Rosa, Jeff Okrepkie knew it was probably the last time he would see his home of the past five years standing.

His worst fears were confirmed Monday morning, when a friend sent him a photo of what was left: a smoldering heap of burnt metal and debris.

"We live in the valley, where it's concrete and strip malls and hotels and supermarkets," Okrepkie said. "The last thing you think is a forest fire is going to come and wipe us out."

At least 10 people died and two were seriously injured in the blazes that started Sunday, fire officials said.

The flames were burning "at explosive rates" because of 50-mph winds, said Ken Pimlott, the director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

Fourteen large fires were burning, spread over a 200-mile region north of San Francisco from Napa in the south to Redding in the north. Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency in Napa, Sonoma, and Yuba counties.

It was unusual to have so many fires take off at the same time, fire officials said, though October has generally been the most destructive time of year for California wildfires.

The ferocity of the flames forced authorities to focus primarily on getting people out safely, even if it meant abandoning structures to the fire. The fire area covered more than 100 square miles over eight counties.

Elsewhere in the state, a fire churning through canyons in hilly neighborhoods of Orange County burned multiple homes and forced residents of about 1,000 homes to evacuate.

Some of the largest blazes were in Napa and Sonoma counties, home to dozens of wineries that attract tourists from around the world. They sent smoke as far south as San Francisco, about 60 miles away. What caused the blazes was not known.

Fires also burned in Yuba, Butte, and Nevada counties — all north of the state capital.

The inferno blackened miles along one of the main gateways into wine country, State Highway 12 into Sonoma County. Wooden fence posts and guard rails burned fiercely. Thick smoke roiled from one winery, JR Cohn.

The fires also damaged the Silverado Resort in Napa and a Hilton hotel in Santa Rosa, the largest city in the fire area, with a population of about 175,000.

Kim Hoe, a 33-year-old tech worker from Penang, Malaysia, was staying at the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country, which was gutted by flames. He said the power went out about 1 a.m., and he and his colleagues started packing up when someone knocked on the door and told them to run.

"We just had to run and run. It was full of smoke. We could barely breathe. It was dangerous," Hoe said.

They returned in the morning to find the hotel had been destroyed along with most of their possessions. Hoe was relieved he had taken his passport and a few essential items.

Santa Rosa lost a Kmart, restaurants, and an unknown number of businesses and homes. The blaze shut down schools and forced more than 200 patients at two city hospitals to evacuate.

Firefighters rushed to a state home for the severely disabled when flames reached one side of the center's sprawling campus in the historic Sonoma County town of Glen Ellen. Emergency workers leapt from their cars to aid in the evacuation. Crews got the more than 200 patients from the threatened buildings, one firefighter said, as flames closed within a few dozen feet.

Residents throughout the area described a headlong flight to safety through smoke and flames.

Mike Turpen, 38, was at a bar in Glen Ellen early Monday when a stranger wearing a smoke mask ran in and yelled that there was a fire. Turpen raced home through flames in his Ford F-250.

"It was like Armageddon was on," Turpen said. "Every branch of every tree was on fire."

He woke later to find all his neighbors' homes on fire but stayed behind to try to defend his own rental home.

By late morning, Turpen, wearing shorts, a kerchief mask, and goggles, was the last man standing for miles along one abandoned road. His yard and all those around him were burned, smoking and still flaming in a few spots. But his home was still standing.

___

Knickmeyer reported from Sonoma, California. Associated Press writers Paul Elias, Jocelyn Gecker, Sudhin Thanawala and Juliet Williams in San Francisco, John Antczak in Los Angeles and Martha Bellisle in Seattle contributed to this report.

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DON'T MISS: Before-and-after photo shows the devastation of fires raging through California's wine country

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It's peak wildfire season in California, where more than a dozen blazes ignited on Sunday.

Officials have yet to determine the origin of these fires, most of which are in Northern California. But dry, powerful "Diablo winds" that blew in overnight likely stoked and further spread the infernos.

Satellites in space are looking down on the disaster, which has left more than 10 people dead. Several large and as-yet uncontained wildfires have burned 1,500 homes and more than 53,000 acres in Napa County, as well as thousands of additional acres in Sonoma County — both of which comprise California's wine country.

This animation shows the California region from late Sunday night through Monday afternoon, which is the latest available image data, using three different satellite instruments.

Blue dots and red blobs (middle) show the fires growing, while daytime views reveal extensive clouds of smoke billowing over parts of San Francisco and out over the Pacific Ocean.

The animation comes via an interactive satellite-image-and-mapping tool built by Colorado State University's Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere.

While the tool can summon data from multiple satellites and instruments, the images shown here come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's powerful new GOES-16 weather satellite.

The satellite captures a full view of the western world every few minutes (shown below during the same time period). The images can be taken in visible light, as well as near-infrared and infrared light — wavelengths that can take thermal images of fires even when it's dark.

Melia Robinson contributed reporting to this post.

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DON'T MISS: Photos show how wildfires are ravaging parts of California's wine country

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NOW WATCH: Meet the badass fire fighters who parachute directly into the flames

Subtle changes in recent Apple packaging has significantly reduced the amount of plastic that ends up in the trash — and most iPhone buyers probably didn't even notice. 

Apple was able to redesign iPhone 7 packaging to use 84% less plastic, the company revealed in a new report on its forestry operations. 

Because Apple sells over 200 million iPhones per year — and each one has bits of plastic packaging, which usually go straight into the trash — these tweaks have prevented tons of plastic from ending up in landfills. 

Apple did this in two ways: First, iPhones used to use two stacked plastic trays inside the box, one for the actual iPhone and one for its charger and EarPods. The iPhone 7 packaging only has one tray — and it's made out of a kind of paper, not a plastic. 

Apple also simplified how it wraps its headphones. Before, your new white earbuds came wrapped in a plastic case. The case wasn't reusable, though, it was only to get the earbuds to the customer safely. 

Now, Apple's headphones come wrapped around a stiff cardboard holder that's been folded and cut to perfectly fit into the iPhone box. 

Here's a chart about the material reduction: 

'Paper and packaging strategy'

These details come from a larger report on Apple's "paper and packaging strategy."

Since Apple hired former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in 2013 to run its environmental programs, the company has put significant emphasis on renewable energy, even discussing its progress at product launch events. Al Gore, the subject of "An Inconvenient Truth," is on Apple's board of directors. 

Apple says that 100% of the power for its data centers and 96% of its facilities worldwide come from solar, hydro, and wind power. Last year, Apple said its goal was to make products completely out of recycled materials from older products.

Apple's latest report also includes new information on its programs to identify how much paper it uses as well as its efforts to fund the protection of forests. You can read it here.

Here's a promo video on its forestry programs Apple released earlier this year:

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Since late Sunday, a series of wildfires has torched more than 115,000 acres in Northern California. The situation is being called one of the worst firestorms in state history.

On Tuesday, a clearer picture of the devastation began to come together.

The blaze began on Sunday evening and strengthened as strong, dry winds pulled many separate fires across large swaths of fields and freeways. Officials estimate that more than 2,000 homes, businesses, and other structures in eight counties have now been devastated by the fires.

At least 15 people are dead, and the death toll is expected to rise as rescue workers clear through the rubble. More than 200 people have been reported missing as of Tuesday afternoon.

These before-and-after photos give us a glimpse of the destruction.

SEE ALSO: How to help people affected by the massive fires burning California's wine country

Signorello Estate winery, located on Silverado Trail, has been destroyed. Flames climbed the ivy-covered walls of the winery headquarters on Monday, and it eventually collapsed.

Source: Wine Spectator

Here's the entrance to the fire-ravaged Signorello Estate winery as seen on Monday.

A photo taken inside a tasting room at Signorello Estate winery shows a circular window.

Most of San Francisco rests on trash.

It was added during the latter half of the 19th century, when zealous settlers loaded the bay with landfill as a way to widen the peninsula. When shaken by an earthquake, this terrain essentially turns into liquid — leaving the structures above in peril.

Many of those structures are top-heavy homes and apartments built above cavernous garages that buckle when a tremor strikes. During the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, the bottom floors of hundreds of these apartments collapsed. Many of them are slated to begin retrofits, but hundreds have yet to start construction.

Meanwhile, another big quake is coming. There's a 76% chance that the Bay Area will experience a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in the next three decades.

"It could happen tomorrow or in 30 years,"Mary Comerio, an architect who specializes in earthquake engineering research and a professor of disaster recovery and reconstruction at the University of California, Berkeley, told Business Insider.

Here are the neighborhoods most at risk.

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Hurricane Ophelia is the latest weather system to whip up winds and rain in the Atlantic. But the storm is heading east toward the northwest coast of Spain instead of crossing the Atlantic toward the hurricane-ravaged Caribbean.

Ophelia officially gained hurricane status on Wednesday evening, according to the National Hurricane Center.

As of Wednesday evening, Ophelia was moving east at about 3 mph and was expected to gradually turn northeast. Its sustained wind speeds are 75 mph with higher gusts. The storm may still strengthen over the next two days.

Some of Ophelia's rain bands are likely to hit the Azores islands over the weekend. Ophelia's projected path then takes it close to Spain and Portugal on the Iberian Peninsula, but current forecasts suggest the storm will most likely remain offshore. It's still early, though, and the path could change.

Only two known storms have hit the Iberian Peninsula — one in 1842, and one in 2005. The most recent was a tropical depression that was previously Hurricane Vince.

After Ophelia moves past Spain, forecasters say it could hit the Irish coast on Monday as an extra-tropical storm, potentially still with close to hurricane-strength winds.

This is the 10th consecutive storm to reach hurricane strength in the Atlantic this season, which ties the record also met in 1878, 1886 and 1893.

There are a couple of caveats to that record, however, as Brian Donegan, a Weather Channel meteorologist, recently wrote: A streak-disrupting tropical storm could easily have been missed in those 19th-century years, and this season's Hurricane Lee might be reevaluated to count as two storms.

There have been 15 named storms so far this hurricane season, including Ophelia. That stat — combined with the number of major hurricanes we've seen and the overall cyclone energy generated by the storms — make this an extremely active Atlantic hurricane season by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's standards. Hurricane season continues until November 30.

SEE ALSO: Here's why hurricane season has been exceptionally disastrous — and why new storms are still showing up

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• A massive hole called a polynya recently appeared in Antarctica's frozen sea ice.
• The hole is unusual because it's huge and far from the coast where such open water patches more frequently appear.
• Another larger version of this polynya was observed in the mid 1970s.

A massive hole opened in the middle of the frozen Weddell Sea of Antarctica last month.

Persistent areas of open water in places where you'd expect sea ice, such as in the Arctic and Antarctic, are known as polynyas, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

This Weddell polynya, however, is somewhat remarkable.

No one knows why it formed, and the hole is located quite far from the sea ice coastline, where such openings more frequently appear. And despite being exposed to freezing wintry winds over the past month, the polynya has persisted — so whatever force caused it to form is strong enough to keep it from refreezing.

But it's not the first time this particular hole has appeared. Scientists observed a similar polynya in the same area of Antarctica in 1974, according to NASA Earth Observatory. It reappeared during the austral winters of 1975 and 1976, then disappeared and it didn't re-emerge for decades. It re-appeared again in August 2016, though significantly smaller than it had been in the 1970s.

Now it's back and bigger than last year. The largest estimates of the hole's current size put it around 80,000 square kilometers or just over 30,000 square miles — almost as big as South Carolina. That's still far smaller than the 1970s version, which reached 300,000 square kilometers, about the size of Arizona.

It's easy to assume that a massive hole in sea ice is related to climate change, but that may not be the case. Some scientists speculate that the formation of the Weddell polynya is part of a cyclical process, though the details are unclear.

"Why was the Weddell polynya present in the 1970s, and then absent until its recent reappearance?" Willy Weeks, a retired sea ice geophysicist from University of Alaska in Fairbanks told NASA Earth Observatory when the hole first re-emerged in 2016. "Did the Weddell polynya occur before 1970, and we are looking at a periodic process that shows itself about every 40 years? If there were earlier occurrences, there is no record of them."

Polynyas allow heat to escape the ocean, cooling the top layer of water. As that water becomes colder and denser, it sinks, allowing more warm water to rise and keep the hole open. That sinking water contributes to the cold water mass known as Antarctic Bottom Water, according to NASA, which feeds into deep ocean currents and contributes to ocean circulation around the globe.

It's possible that the phenomenon is a key part of the process that supplies Antarctic Bottom Water, according to Earther's in-depth look at the polynya.

Part of the reason this polynya remains so mysterious is that it's hard to explore sites like this. Winter air temperatures there are thought to be about negative 20 degrees Celsius and there are few flights or expeditions in Antarctica during the winter months.

But scientists might now have a better shot at figuring out what's happening, thanks to a key new source of data from a National Science Foundation-sponsored group studying climate in the Southern Ocean. A robotic float that was meant to be sending data from the Weddell Sea surprisingly surfaced inside the polynya last month, according to a news release from the Southern Ocean Carbon and Climate Observations and Modeling project at Princeton.

That robot began sending data that's now being processed, after which the group may be able to report new findings.

The information could help reveal answers about what triggers the formation of these mysterious holes.

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More than a dozen wildfires ignited on Sunday in Northern California, a region at its driest this time of year.

Flames have consumed more than 170,000 acres of land, killed at least 23 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate. Napa and Sonoma counties — the heart of California wine country— are especially hard-hit.

Officials have yet to determine the origin of the Santa Rosa wildfires. However, dry and powerful "Diablo winds" that blow in overnight may have stoked and spread the infernos.

Satellites in space are recording shocking views of the disaster, an event that some experts are calling one of the worst firestorms in the state's history.

On Wednesday night, DigitalGlobe — a satellite imaging company that captures 100 terabytes' worth of new photos of Earth each day — released some of the first close-up views of the disaster from orbit.

"Although there is a lot of smoke in the area, shortwave infrared (SWIR) can penetrate the smoke and detect heat beneath," DigitalGlobe wrote on its website.

The company took the following images on October 10 and 11 with its WorldView-3 and GeoEye-1 satellites.

"Some of these are natural color, while others are shown in the Very Near Infrared (VNIR), where burned areas appear gray and black and healthy vegetation is red," DigitalGlobe told Business Insider in an emailed statement.

Melia Robinson contributed reporting to this post.

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This image, taken by WorldView-3 on Tuesday, shows the Santa Rosa area of Northern California burning.

These images were taken in infrared, which can travel from the ground, pierce the veil of thick smoke, and be detected by the satellite's SWIR sensor.

Gray areas are burned, and red areas are vegetation. The bright line snaking through the hills of the area is the fire line burning through new material.

This zoomed-out view shows northwest Santa Rosa and Coffey Park — parts of which were decimated by the flames.

Yellowstone National Park may be best known for its Old Faithful geyser and its stunning wildlife, but the national park also sits atop a supervolcano that simmers just under the surface.

You can see evidence of the volcano's active state in the park's famous hydrothermal activity, including Old Faithful, which shoots water every few hours.

Because the area's still active, researchers have been trying to determine when it might erupt again. And according to new research presented at the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior conference, it might take much less time for the supervolcano to go from not a problem to erupting than experts realized. Based on minerals from the last major eruption, the researchers found that the changes leading up to an eruption may happen in a matter of decades rather than thousands of years in advance as previously thought.  

"It’s shocking how little time is required to take a volcanic system from being quiet and sitting there to the edge of an eruption," Hannah Shamloo, a graduate student at Arizona State University who conducted the research told The New York Times. 

Even so, she said, it's still too early to determine an exact time scale of when the supervolcano will erupt. And scientists still don't think Yellowstone's supervolcano will erupt anytime soon (at least not in the next thousand years).

What constitutes a supervolcano

Supervolcanoes are characterized as volcanic centers that have had eruptions that covered more than 240 cubic miles. The US has two: one in Yellowstone and another in California's Long Valley.

Yellowstone has had three major volcanic events in the past 2.1 million years, which led to the creation of the calderas, or large craters.

The last volcanic eruption there happened about 174,000 years ago, and it led to the formation of the West Thumb Geyser Basin, which extended the Yellowstone Lake.

The impact of an eruption

The odds of the supervolcano erupting within a given year are one in 730,000, according to the US Geological Survey. But if it did blow, it could have extreme effects on surrounding areas.

For starters, the eruption could emit ash that would expand over 500 miles. For comparison, this map shows the area that the ash reached in the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption in Washington.

The eruption would likely cover the ground with as much as 4 inches of gray ash, which could be detrimental to crops growing in the Midwest.

Molten lava at temperatures up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit could also ooze out, though that'd be less of a concern than the ash. And the supervolcano would spew a whole bunch of gasses as well, including sulfur dioxide, which can lead to acid rain as well as global cooling as it reflects sunlight away from the Earth.

The explosion likely wouldn't wipe out human life, but it certainly would be destructive, especially to the western half of the US.

In the meantime, researchers are keeping a close watch on Yellowstone to check for warning signs that an eruption might be underway.

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NOW WATCH: There’s a live supervolcano underneath Yellowstone National Park — here’s what would happen if it erupted