The Volt lighter uses an electric current to burn things, so it's rechargeable and doesn't use gas.
It is made from recycled products and has gained more than 200% of its funding goal on Indiegogo and can be bought for around £22.
Produced by Leon Siciliano
These gadgets are perfect examples of when technology successfully meets consumer needs. They are not only cool-looking products but also very practical ones that you can use everyday. The innovating gadgets are developed by Ruggie, Fontus, Avegant, Tapplock, and Nebia.
Produced by Gene Kim. Original reporting by Maya Dangerfield, Rob Ludacer, Kevin Reilly, Will Wei.
Follow Tech Insider: On Facebook
A technology called the molten-salt reactor first went online in 1965 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but was scrapped in the 1970s because it wasn't good for making nuclear weapons. If entrepreneurs can revive the technology, it could safely and cleanly power billions of people for millions of years using a common element: thorium.
Listen for more about thorium plus Bill Nye and more in the latest episode of our podcast, Codebreaker, produced with Marketplace. Subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
Follow Tech Insider:On Facebook
A company has designed a light-reflective spray that can be used to keep cyclists safer while riding at night.
The Albedo100 spray can make your clothing, bike, and helmet high-vis in seconds. It lasts for a week once sprayed on and comes off easily in the wash.
The products can be bought online now for £10 to £18.
Produced by Leon Siciliano
Hundreds of thousands of mackerel and pilchard have covered a beach in Cornwall "as far as the eye can see", witnesses have said.
The fish were washed up on Saturday (17 December) night on the beach at Marazion at St Michael's Mount in the south-west of Cornwall.
Katrina Slack had gone down to the beach to take pictures of starlings early on Sunday morning, but ended up photographing the mass of dead fish instead.
"I was astonished. It was almost as if the waves were made up of thousands of shimmering fish,"she told the Plymouth Herald.
Slack said that as well as the fish, she found a dead dolphin rotting on the beach.
Hundreds of dead #fish#cornwall washed up! What's happening!?? pic.twitter.com/BiZJU3d75n
— purl-design.com (@PurlDesign) December 17, 2016"The closer I got I realised the beach was just covered in dead fish and more and more were coming in with every wave. It was a horrible but breath-taking scene."
Other people on the beach were also puzzled, Slack said, particularly because the dead fish were not attracting gulls.
Slack's husband Shaun Plumb, who also saw the fish, said: "I've never seen anything like it in my life. It's just dead fish as far as the eye can see."
This is the second mass of dead fish on Cornish beaches this month. The first incident occurred on 3 December at Pentewan at St Austell, discovered by dog walker Edward Bol from Mevagissey, who posted images of the beach covered in fish on Twitter.
Pentewan Beach, covered in dead fish... Why? #cornwall#beach#fishpic.twitter.com/6ZeXrycQLl
— Edwardeeey (@edbol) December 3, 2016One possible cause for such events is that it was a bycatch, where fishing trawlers cast off unwanted fish, which sometimes wash up on beaches. Another explanation could be that the fish were attempting to escape large predators and beached themselves.
However, no definitive cause for the blanket of dead fish has been identified so far.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Japanese ice skating rink closed for including 5,000 decorative dead fish
The Interior Department announced on Monday that it had finalized a rule designed to protect water sources in the US from hazardous chemicals released by coal mining.
The Stream Protection Rule, as it is called, limits the impact mines are allowed to have on streams, rivers, groundwater, and forests in their surrounding areas. It will go into effect 30 days after its publication in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for Tuesday, December 20. That means the rule will become enforceable January 19, 2017 — one day before the start of the Trump administration.
That's significant, because Donald Trump's transition team has already promised to kill the rule.
A passage on the transition team website, GreatAgain.gov, says (emphasis added), "We will end the war on coal, and rescind the coal mining lease moratorium, the excessive Interior Department stream rule, and conduct a top-down review of all anti-coal regulations issued by the Obama Administration."
In states with heavy coal mining activity, like West Virginia, contaminants and runoff from coal mines can enter water sources that lead to the taps in people's homes, posing a risk to human safety as well as wildlife.
The rule would ban mining practices that permanently pollute streams and other sources of drinking water, increase flood risk, and threaten forests. Mines would also be required to measure the health of water in their surrounding areas before, during, and after extracting coal from the ground, restore mined land to its previous use, and replant native trees.
The rule has been perceived as anti-coal because it increases the cost of doing business for corporations that make their profits extracting coal from the ground, processing it, and selling it.
Donald Trump is expected to nominate Ryan Zinke, a Montana Republican, to lead the Interior Department.
It is uncertain what The Stream Rule's fate will be under his leadership. Typically, rules and regulations of this sort are somewhat more difficult to reverse that simple executive orders, because they have to go through a series of mandated procedures. But because they aren't the product of acts of Congress, the president doesn't need legislative approval to repeal them. And newer rules are more vulnerable.
Of course, Trump could always decide not to follow through on the transition team's promise. But given the Trump transition's stance on the issue, the Stream Protection Rule's future is up in the air.
DON'T MISS: This beautiful photo shows the snow-covered Midwest moonlit from space
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: This startling animation shows how much Arctic sea ice has thinned in just 26 years
What should we be thinking about when we think about the future of biodiversity, conservation and the environment? An international team of experts in horizon scanning, science communication and conservation recently asked that question as participants in the eighth annual Horizon Scan of Emerging Issues for Global Conservation and Biological Diversity. The answers they came up, just published in the scientific journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution and summarized below, portend both risks and opportunities for species and ecosystems around the world.
“Our aim has been to focus attention and stimulate debate about these subjects, potentially leading to new research foci, policy developments, or business innovations,” the authors wrote in introducing their list of top trends to watch in 2017. “These responses should help facilitate better-informed forward-planning.”
SEE ALSO: Forget what you heard: Jupiter does not orbit the sun
Around the world, coral reefs are bleaching and dying as ocean temperatures warm beyond those tolerated by bacteria that live in partnership with the corals. Scientists are eyeing the option of replacing bacteria forced out by heat with other strains more tolerant of the new temperatures — either naturally occurring or genetically engineered. Although the practice holds promise for rescuing or resurrecting damaged reefs, there are concerns about unintended consequences such as introduction of disease or disruption of ecosystems.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/L-cAwubAfSU?rel=0&showinfo=0
Width: 800px
Height: 450px
If you think getting rid of invasive species on land is a challenge, you haven’t tried doing it in the depths of the ocean. Robots that can crawl across the seafloor dispatching invaders with poisons or electric shock are being investigated as a potential tool for combating such species. The technology is now being tested to control crown-of-thorns starfish, which have devastated Great Barrier Reef corals in recent years, and invasive lionfish, which are competing with native species in the Caribbean Sea.
The technology behind electronic sensors that detect odors has advanced markedly in recent years, leading biologists to ponder applications to conservation. Possibilities include using the devices to sniff out illegally traded wildlife at checkpoints along transportation routes and to detect the presence of DNA from rare species in the environment.
The extreme warmth of 2016 has changed so much for the people of the Arctic that even their language is becoming unmoored from the conditions in which they now live.
The Yupik, an indigenous people of western Alaska, have dozens of words for the vagaries of sea ice, which is not surprising given the crucial role it plays in subsistence hunting and transportation. But researchers have noted that some of these words, such as “tagneghneq” (thick, dark, weathered ice), are becoming obsolete.
After thousands of years of use, words are vanishing as quickly as the ice they describe due to climate change. The native inhabitants are also in peril – there are 31 Alaskan towns and cities at imminent risk from the melting ice and coastal erosion. Many will have to relocate or somehow adapt.
“In December, we normally have waters covered in ice but right now we have open water out there,” said Vera Metcalf, director of the Eskimo Walrus Commission, which represents 19 native communities stretching along Alaska’s western coast. “We are so dependent upon sea ice conditions. It’s our life, our culture.”
Arctic sea ice extent slumped to a record low in November, winnowed away by the warming air, warming seas and unhelpful wind patterns. The region’s 2016 temperature has been 3.5C warmer than a century ago. In some locations the divergence from the long-term average has been an eye-watering 20C.
On 21 November, the decline on the long-term average of sea ice extent for that day was 888,000 sq miles (2.3m sq km) – an area 10 times larger than the UK, but smaller than the long-term average. “Almost every year now we look at the record of sea ice and say ‘wow’, but this year it was like 'three times wow,'" said Tad Pfeffer, a geophysicist at the University of Colorado. “This year has been a big exaggeration on the trends we’ve already been seeing.”
These numbers have resonance for people who require dependable rhythms in the environment in order to survive. In remote Alaskan communities, the stores sell goods priced to reflect their journey – $20 for a pizza, $15 for a gallon of milk. If you can’t butcher a 1,000-pound walrus because there is no sea ice to support both of you, then you might well be left hungry.
“The window of opportunity for hunting continues to shrink,” Metcalf said. “The communities are worried about this because food insecurity is something we are now having to tackle every single day.”
Metcalf grew up on St Lawrence island, a far-flung piece of the US that sits just 36 miles from Russia in the Bering Sea. The island is thought to be one of the last exposed fragments of a land bridge that connected North America to Asia during the last ice age.
In 2013, the island’s two main communities managed to catch just a third of the walruses they normally do. Last year, Gambell, the largest settlement, snared just 36 – down from the 600 it could expect just a few years ago.
Sea ice is further out from land than it once was and is becoming treacherously thin for hunters to traverse. Walruses, which require sea ice for resting and giving birth, often have to resort to heaving themselves on to crowded strips of land. These grand tusked beasts can trample each other to death in such conditions.
“It’s not like the walrus populations are changing, it’s that the climate is changing the conditions,” Metcalf said. “We are trying to plan better but we can’t go out every day and hunt. We can try to adapt and hunt caribou or moose but it’s not easy. It comes at a cost to us.”
The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and there are “early signs” that this temperature increase is speeding up, according to Jeremy Mathis, director of the Arctic program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Mathis moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, in 2007 and even in that time he has seen startling changes – the -40C winters he endured in the first few years have almost completely disappeared.
“For people who live in the Arctic, there is no debate over whether their environment is changing,” he said. “We are seeing a destabilization of the environment in the Arctic. The ice is melting earlier and earlier and coming back later and later in the year. For people here that means a clear impact upon food security and their way of life.”
Frost locked deep in the soils is melting, causing buildings to subside. Communities are seeing their coastlines erode and are increasingly exposed to lashing storms without the protective barrier of sea ice.
Several Alaskan towns and villages are wrestling over whether to fight these changes or retreat to relative safety. Two coastal villages, Shishmaref and Kivalina, have voted to relocate while a third, Newtok, has taken the first tentative steps to do so.
The warmth of 2016 – almost certain to be a global record– has added to the sense of haste. The regrowth of sea ice as Alaska enters winter has been so painfully slow that many communities will be left without a buffer to storms next year. Should a large storm hit, it could prove disastrous.
Such a calamity would at least free up money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). The cost of relocating a village of just a few hundred people is around $200m – a bill that neither the federal nor Alaskan government is keen to pick up. Some people in remote communities note, darkly, that a ruinous storm would at least be followed by federal dollars that would allow them to fortify or move.
“These communities need to be moved as soon as possible before a large storm hits,” said Victoria Herrmann, managing director of the Arctic Institute. “There hasn’t been much guidance as to whether they can move or who will pay for it. There are around 230 villages affected by sea level rise and they will all need a plan over the next few years as sea ice continues to retreat.”
It takes a certain stoic hardiness to live in a place of such frigid cold. But Herrmann said that even those who have had to adapt to changes in the past have found the unravelling of 2016 “very scary”. She added: “What we are seeing is incredible. It’s quite frightening in terms of what it means for the future.”
A solution doesn’t appear imminent. The US has no national sea level rise plan, no system to deal with displaced people. Even as the country’s first climate change refugees emerge from within its own borders, the issue is very much on the sidelines. The incoming president isn’t sure what the fuss is about, vacillating between calling climate change a “hoax” concocted by the Chinese or simply claiming that “nobody really knows” if it exists.
While the politics plays out, wrenching decisions will have to be made.
“Having to move elsewhere is unimaginable,” said Metcalf. “As an elder told me the other day, we are not going anywhere. We’ve been here for centuries. But we may have to consider it, for the sake of our children and grandchildren.”
SEE ALSO: These island nations could be underwater in as little as 50 years
DON'T MISS: Thousands of 'climate refugees' could soon be heading to this Middle America town
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Here's how much you need to make to be in the top 1% of every state
A new type of large, prehistoric bird has just been unearthed in the Canadian arctic.
A team of geologists from the University of Rochester discovered the new species, which is approximately 90 million years old, and published their findings this week in the journal Scientific Reports. The discovery places the bird among the oldest avian records ever found in the Northern hemisphere.
The bones of the bird, named Tingmiatornis arctica, show that it probably looked a bit like a cross between a large seagull and a cormorant, a large equatic bird, and was likely a similar size with a wingspan of over a meter.
The name of the genus Tingmiatornis loosely translates to "those that fly" from the word " Tingmiat" in the Inuktitut language, which is spoken in the central and eastern Canadian Arctic. Tingmiatornis arctica also had sharp teeth and features that allowed it to dive.
Along with other fossils from previous expeditions, the new bird helps paint a clearer picture of the ecosystem that would have existed some 93.9 to 89.8 million years ago in the Canadian Arctic. It could also provide further evidence of the intense global warming that scientists think may have taken place over that time — and even help us paint a clearer picture of the future of climate change.
Building historic climate records helps scientists determine how different species and ecosystems are affected by climate change. The way different species are distributed around countries can help predict the effects too.
"Before our fossil, people were suggesting that it was warm, but you still would have had seasonal ice," said John Tarduno, the chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Rochester and the leading scientist on the expedition, in a statement. "We're suggesting that's not even the case, and that it's one of these hyper-warm intervals because the bird's food sources and the whole part of the ecosystem could not have survived in ice."
By looking at fossil and sediment records, the team determined that Tingmiatornis arctica would have lived in a volcanic environment which would have been busy with turtles, champsosaurs and crocodile-like reptiles. This is very different to the Arctic temperatures you find there now.
"The fossils tell us what that world could look like, a world without ice at the arctic," said Richard Bono, another member of the team who is a PhD candidate in earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester.
Tingmiatornis arctica fossils were found above lava fields, which would have formed from a series of volcanic eruptions. When these volcanoes pumped carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere, it caused a greenhouse effect, which allowed large birds like Tingmiatornis arctica to thrive.
The environmental clues are the biggest indicators the team has to explain why the bird was found where it was.
"It's there because everything is right," Tarduno said. "The food supply was there, there was a freshwater environment, and the climate became so warm that all of the background ecological factors were established to make it a great place."
SEE ALSO: A scientist snuck into a disputed region of Myanmar to discover the first feathered dinosaur tail
DON'T MISS: We tried the miracle fruit that some scientists say could end world hunger as 'carnitas' — and it was unreal
OSLO (Reuters) - Temperatures around the North Pole surged close to melting point on Thursday as a freak blast of warm air blanketed an Arctic region usually deep frozen in mid-winter darkness, scientists said.
Air temperatures at the North Pole were an estimated minus 4 degrees Celsius (24.8 Fahrenheit) around midday with light snow, according to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, against a more usual temperature close to -30 degrees Celsius (-22F).
There are no weather stations at the Pole itself but a buoy floating in the Arctic Ocean north of the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen was reporting zero degrees (32F) on Thursday.
Worldwide, this year is set to be the warmest on record, driven up by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and a powerful El Nino weather event in the Pacific Ocean.
"There's a low pressure between Greenland and Spitsbergen, with a very powerful air current" driving warm air north, said Justyna Wodziczko, a Norwegian Meteorological Institute forecaster.
Such spikes in Arctic temperatures "are becoming more frequent because we have a declining sea ice cover - the water below is warmer," said Jesper Eriksen, a forecaster at the Danish Meteorological Institute.
Arctic sea ice is at a record low for the time of year, according to December 20 measurements by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.
The Arctic region is warming at twice the global average, disrupting the hunting livelihoods of indigenous people and threatening creatures such as polar bears while opening the region to more shipping and exploration for oil and gas.
The temperatures are expected to fall in coming days. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute issued a Tweet this week showing that Father Christmas's sleigh would be able to take off without a risk of getting bogged down in slush.
In late December a year ago, temperatures also briefly rose to around freezing point.
Such winter temperature surges have typically happened once or twice a decade stretching back to a first recorded event in 1959, according to a study in the journal Scientific Reports this month by G.W.K. Moore of the University of Toronto.
Such events were expected to happen more often "as the region transitions towards the occurrence of warmer and wetter winters," he wrote.
A U.N. panel of climate scientists says it is at least 95 percent likely that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are the main cause of climate change, disrupting food and water supplies with more floods, heat waves and rising sea levels.
SEE ALSO: Humans are on track to trigger Arctic 'tipping points' — with catastrophic consequences
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: This startling animation shows how much Arctic sea ice has thinned in just 26 years
A 1km (0.6-mile) route in the small village of Tourouvre-au-Perche covered with 2,800 sq m of electricity-generating panels, was inaugurated on Thursday by the ecology minister, Ségolène Royal.
It cost €5m (£4.2m) to construct and will be used by about 2,000 motorists a day during a two-year test period to establish if it can generate enough energy to power street lighting in the village of 3,400 residents.
In 2014, a solar-powered cycle path opened in Krommenie in the Netherlands and, despite teething problems, has generated 3,000kWh of energy – enough to power an average family home for a year. The cost of building the cycle path, however, could have paid for 520,000kWh.
Before the solar-powered road – called Wattway– was opened on the RD5 road, the panels were tested at four car parks across France. The constructor was Colas, part of giant telecoms group Bouygues, and financed by the state.
Normandy is not known for its surfeit of sunshine: Caen, the region’s political capital, enjoys just 44 days of strong sunshine a year compared with 170 in Marseilles.
Royal has said she would like to see solar panels installed on one in every 1,000km of French highway – France has a total of 1m km of roads – but panels laid on flat surfaces have been found to be less efficient than those installed on sloping areas such as roofs.
Critics say it is not a cost-effective use of public money. Marc Jedliczka, vice-president of Network for Energetic Transition (CLER) told Le Monde: "It’s without doubt a technical advance, but in order to develop renewables there are other priorities than a gadget of which we are more certain that it’s very expensive than the fact it works."
Jean-Louis Bal, president of renewable energy union SER, said: "We have to look at the cost, the production [of electricity] and its lifespan. For now I don’t have the answers."
Colas said the panels have been covered with a resin containing fine sheets of silicon, making them tough enough to withstand all traffic, including HGVs. The company says it hopes to reduce the costs of producing the solar panels and has about 100 other projects for solar-panelled roads – half in France and half abroad.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Tesla is powering an entire island with clean energy
President-elect Donald Trump has nominated former Texas Governor Rick Perry to lead the Department of Energy. The position entails guiding research and policy around energy production in the US, handling radioactive waste disposal, building nuclear reactors, and running the US system of national laboratories, as well as overseeing grants that fund a great deal of cutting-edge scientific research.
That's all in addition, of course, to maintaining the nation's nuclear arsenal.
Unlike those who've filled the role before him for the last decade, Perry has no scientific background. He also once forgot the name of the Energy Department on a debate stage, the now-famous "Oops" gaffe that helped end his 2011 bid for the Republican presidential nomination.
Still, Perry wouldn't be the first non-scientist to head the department. From the 1970s until 2005 the post was held by people without a science or engineering degree (mostly politicians and lawyers). After that, all Secretaries of Energy have held science or engineering PhDs (and one held a Nobel Prize). Take a look:
DON'T MISS: California governor: 'If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite'
James Schlesinger was the first US Secretary of Energy, a Republican picked by President Jimmy Carter to head the department just after it was formed. Schlesinger had served in the presidential cabinet before, leading the Department of Defense from 1973-1975 and playing a significant role in national nuclear policy. As Secretary of Energy he worked to consolidate the department's functions, which had previously been distributed across several agencies, and funded several research efforts, including one of the first federal investigations of the impact of carbon dioxide on our atmosphere.
The second Secretary of Energy nominated under Carter, Duncan had also previously served as Secretary of Defense. Carter was nonetheless criticized for the selection because Duncan, a former executive in the coffee industry, had no direct experience with oil. As secretary, Duncan worked on negotiations with OPEC during a tough period in the global oil economy.
James Edwards was President Ronald Reagan's first, briefly-serving Secretary of Energy. A former governor of South Carolina with a background in oral surgery, Edwards was known as a proponent of nuclear energy, and, like Perry, was implicated in a promise to dismantle the Department of Energy (he didn't).
The New York Times reports that he "struggled" in the post, criticized for his lack of expertise in the field and hamstrung by the Reagan administration's distaste for the department.
A 12-km wide cauldron that forms a vast supervolcano on the coast of Italy is showing signs of reawakening after almost 500 years of inactivity.
Not only is this site rumoured to be responsible for the extinction of the Neanderthals, it’s got 500,000 people living around it right now, and researchers say it appears to be approaching a critical pressure point that could lead to an eruption.
You might imagine a supervolcano as like a regular volcano, only supersized, rising up out of the ground and puffing whirls of menacing smoke from its gaping maw.
But in reality, supervolcanos are extensive fields of volcanic activity, formed when a volcano ejects so much magma from its centre, it collapses in on itself, leaving behind a vast crater, and a landscape littered with geysers, hydrothermal activity, and sulphuric acid.
Think Yellowstone, where lava eruptions and swelling steam vents make up a constantly bubbling, otherworldly landscape.
Campi Flegrei - or "burning fields" in Italian - is another extensive volcanic area, located to the west of Naples, Italy.
Boasting 24 craters and large volcanic edifices, mostly hidden under the Mediterranean Sea, this ancient 'caldera' - or cauldron-like depression - formed 39,000 years ago, as part of the biggest eruption Europe has seen in the past 200,000 years.
Since its formation, Campi Flegrei has only had two major eruptions - 35,000 years ago and 12,000 years ago - and a smaller eruption that occurred in 1538.
But when we say "smaller", it’s all relative, because the 1538 eruption lasted for eight days straight, and spewed so much material into the surrounding area, it formed a new mountain, Monte Nuovo.
It’s the whole site that’s a concern though - the eruption that occurred 200,000 years ago is thought to have been so cataclysmic, a 2010 study suggests that it triggered a 'volcanic winter', that ultimately led to the extinction of the Neanderthals.
While the connection of the demise of the Neanderthals remains purely speculative until further evidence can be found, the eruption, which is thought to have spewed almost 1 trillion gallons (3.7 trillion litres) of molten rock onto the surface - along and with just as much sulphur into the atmosphere - is not.
"These areas can give rise to the only eruptions that can have global catastrophic effects comparable to major meteorite impacts," Giuseppe De Natale from Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology, told Reuters back in 2012.
Now a team led by volcanologist Giovanni Chiodini from the Italian National Institute of Geophysics in Rome reports that Campi Flegrei appears to be approaching a critical pressure point that could trigger another eruption.
This critical pressure point - referred to as critical degassing pressure (CDP) - could drive volcanic unrest towards a critical state, the team reports, by releasing jets of super-hot gas into the atmosphere, heating the surrounding hydrothermal fluids and rocks, and causing rock failure and possibly an eruption.
"Hydrothermal rocks, if heated, can ultimately lose their mechanical resistance, causing an acceleration towards critical conditions,"Chiodini told the AFP.
Over the past decade, Campi Flegrei has be experiencing an 'uplift', which suggests that the volatile gases beneath it are rising to the surface at an accelerating rate.
In response to this uplift, Italy raised the supervolcano's alert level from green to yellow - or from "quiet" to "requires scientific monitoring".
Two other active volcanoes, Rabaul in Papua New Guinea and Sierra Negra in the Galapagos, "both showed acceleration in ground deformation before eruption with a pattern similar to that observed at Campi Flegrei", Chiodini said.
So should the nearby residents panic? Not just yet, because at this stage, it's pretty much impossible to predict what the Campi Flegrei caldera will do - if it does anything at all.
"In general, unfortunately, volcanology is not a precise science,"Chiodini told Sarah Kaplan at The Washington Post.
"We have many uncertainties and long-term previsions are at the moment not possible! For example, the process that we describe could evolve in both directions: toward pre-eruptive conditions or to the finish of the volcanic unrest."
The researchers are hoping that their latest observations of the supervolcano will urge more researchers to monitor the site in the coming years, because it looks like something is rumbling below - and we need to know just how bad it could get.
The research has been published in Nature Communications.
SEE ALSO: There are intriguing reasons to think marijuana improves night vision
DON'T MISS: A supervolcano lies under Yellowstone — here's what would happen if it erupted
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Here's why Boeing 747s have a giant hump in the front
BEIJING (Reuters) - Near-record pollution levels in parts of China this week proved a two-edged sword for the country's e-commerce titans: orders poured in for anti-smog products, but transport restrictions meant it was a challenge to get these delivered.
Up to 50 million orders in north China alone face delivery delays due to grounded planes, closed highways and traffic bans, a spokeswoman for Alibaba Holding Group Ltd told Reuters, citing affiliate Cainiao Network Technology Co Ltd, which oversees China's largest logistics firms.
Online shoppers splurged on masks, filters and other anti-pollution gadgets, with e-commerce firms and brands reporting record demand in response to 'red alert' warnings in 24 cities by mid-week.
"In one day of red alert you'll probably do a month's sales," said Liam Bates, founder of Beijing-based Origins Technology Ltd, which makes air pollution monitors and air filters.
"But of course no one knows when the pollution will be really, really crazy, so it makes logistics a bit of a nightmare."
A consortium of delivery firms under Cainiao Logistics includes ZTO Express Inc, Shanghai YTO Express (Logistics) Co, Shanghai STO Express Co and Yunda Ltd - all of which posted delay warnings on their websites this week.
The red alert is the top warning in a four-tier system that triggers a series of regulations, including the closure of schools, factories and offices, and a blanket ban on up to half the vehicles in affected cities. The system was introduced in 2014 as part of a national effort to reconcile China's industrial engine with growing pressure from health groups.
The alerts in two dozen cities this week told citizens to stay indoors as air quality index (AQI) readings topped the maximum hazardous limit determined by the World Health Organization, and shrouded northeast China in thick smog.
A spokesman for JD.com, China's second-largest e-commerce platform, said orders peaked this week as consumers opted to stay at home. The number of pollution masks sold on the platform during the red alert more than trebled from last week, and sales of air filters rose 50 percent.
"Purchasing does happen in spikes around high pollution days", said Ben Cavender, a Shanghai-based retail analyst at China Market Research Group. "[Consumers] tend to make their actual purchases when they get the visual reminder of stepping outside and realizing they can't see."
According to Baidu, China's top search engine, searches including the term for 'smog' broke previous records on Monday.
It's the same consumer concern that has driven a surge in connected gadgets and consumables in the Chinese market, many of which see record sales during red alert events.
"The volume of people clicking our ads is about 30 times higher during smog periods," said a brand director at Beijing Public Technology Co, who gave only his family name of Liu.
He said the company, which makes ionic air cleaning devices for indoor use that can be worn as badges or necklaces, had to initiate an emergency stock transfer program after inventory was entirely sold out on Tuesday.
Some merchants said sales spikes on red alert days suggests people don't fully understand the year-round dangers of air pollution.
"There's still this issue in China that when there are alerts or the air gets really, really bad then everyone freaks out, but the other 90 percent of the time only a small percentage of people care," said Bates at Origins Technology.
As pollution levels eased slightly on Thursday, and some red alerts were canceled, some consumers took to social media to complain about the logistics delays.
"The face mask I ordered is delayed because of slow deliveries, and now the haze is vanishing," said one user on Weibo. "I guess I'll just save it for the next alert.
(Reporting by Cate Cadell; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)
It snowed on December 19 in the Sahara Desert, and NASA's Landsat 7 satellite was there (or rather, hundreds of miles overhead) to see it.
The photo comes from Landsat 7's Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus visible-light camera, and depicts the first snowfall recorded in the massive African desert in 37 years.
The snow-covered area depicted in the photo lies on the northern end of the desert, near the Moroccan-Algerian border and the town of Ain Safra. Here's the full image, which you can click to enlarge:
This map shows the approximate region of the photo, with images from previous years for comparison:
NASA notes that snow is not all that rare on the African continent, with regular snowfall on high peaks like Kilimanjaro and sites where people ski in South Africa.
Photographer Karim Boucheta was in the right place at the right time to capture photos of the Saharan snowfall from the ground, and he's posted them to Facebook:
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: This startling animation shows how much Arctic sea ice has thinned in just 26 years
Just before Thanksgiving this year, a coalition of meteorologists, climatologists, biologists, ecologists, and other researchers took up a new ritual of thankfulness: tweeting the small and large ways NASA data has helped them understand planet Earth, and attaching the hashtag #ThanksNASA.
For the most part, the scientists avoided mentioning politics or political figures. But context is everything. Bob Walker, a senior adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, had just told The Guardian that the incoming administration planned to strip NASA's earth science programs of funding.
"We see NASA in an exploration role, in deep space research," Walker told The Guardian's Oliver Milman. "Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission."
In the past, the Guardian story notes, Walker has described earth science as "politically correct environmental monitoring."
In reality, earth science goes far beyond direct climate change research — and includes everything from the health of oceans to the threat of devastating solar storms in the upper atmosphere.
Dozens of scientists, including the 13 researchers who spoke to Business Insider for this story and many more who reached out on Twitter and by email, said they were rattled and dismayed by the news.
Several said that cutting earth science would represent a radical change from the mission NASA has carried out for nearly six decades.
"If you go to the Space Act that founded NASA in 1958 and then was amended under President Reagan in 1985, the very first responsibility ascribed to NASA is to understand the Earth and the atmosphere," said Waleed Abdalati, who directs the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado and served as chief scientist at NASA from 2011-12.
"It shows up before putting people in space."
Indeed, it does. The beginning of Section 102(c) of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 begins to lay out the role of NASA:
"(c) The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:
"(1) The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;
"(2) The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles;
"(3) The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies and living organisms through space."
So far, NASA has carried out that mission with gusto under six Republican administrations and five Democratic ones. The agency's trove of satellite data and analysis is the largest in the world and, critically, available freely on the internet for any scientist or interested person to access.
Some researchers said they didn't recognize how much NASA data they used until it was threatened they could lose it all.
"I started going back and trying to think about what I use in my day-to-day work," said Peter Gleick, a hydrologist who looks at the movement of water all over the world to understand and predict droughts and flooding. "The truth is, I didn't fully comprehend the incredible diversity of products that I use that originated with a NASA satellite or an observing platform or a data archive."
The notion of losing that, researchers told Business Insider, had seemed impossible — that is, until they read the news.
Just days before the Guardian piece with Walker's statement was published, NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, who declined to be interviewed again for this story, told Business Insider that he thought NASA climate research was safe from political tampering because it was too intimately connected to the agency's other critical earth science missions.
It doesn't seem to have occurred to most people that earth science itself might be in jeopardy.
Walker's proposal would ax or redirect more than 34% of NASA's $5.2 billion 2017 science budget request, and almost 10% of its $18 billion overall budget request. This would spell an end to the period that researchers across the world and across a wide range of disciplines refer to simply as "the satellite era"— not the time since Sputnik launched, but the decades of high-quality, consistent, and regular data on the global environment from space.
Marshall Shepherd, who directs the University of Georgia's Department of Atmospheric Sciences and has worked on satellites for NASA in the past, said that the moment a satellite's sensor goes dark without another of the same type to replace it, crucial scientific information will be lost.
An unbroken record is necessary to understand how the past and present fit together, and to make firm judgments about the future.
"If you're trying to detect change in something, you need long and continuous uninterrupted records of things like the sea ice or sea level rise or Greenland's ice sheet," Shepherd said. "By shutting those off, you are literally shutting off your long-term record of the diagnostics of the planet."
Julienne Stroeve, a researcher with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said those gaps would undermine our ability to make even basic judgments about the health of the planet.
"You need the [satellites] to consistently be processed with the same type of sensors over and over again to have a long-term data record, otherwise you have these data gaps and these long-term uncertainties, and you have no idea what the long-term changes really are," she said.
It's all well and good that NASA has the most complete sources of earth science data in the world. But what's really important, researchers said, is how easy it is to access.
"This is not politically correct to say in Europe, but the US is much better than Europe about sharing data with the whole world," said Jon Saenz, a professor of applied physics at the University of the Basque Country in Spain.
Other agencies tend to tie up their data behind red tape and bureaucracy, Saenz said. He said that if he had to rely on the European Space Agency's limited, difficult-to-access data for his work checking climate model predictions against reality, he'd be "more or less blind"— particularly in the vast, uninhabited stretches of the globe like the Pacific, which are vital for understanding the world climate.
Some scientists said that if the satellite era in their field ended, they would still be able to continue their work. Instead of satellites, they said, they would use a combination of often lower-quality, more difficult-to-access data from satellites operated by other countries and increased data collection at the ground level.
But that can be difficult and even dangerous work, often with much weaker and more uncertain results.
Ulyana Nadia Horodyskyj is a glaciologist who operates a scientific outreach program in Nepal and analyzes lakes that form on melting glaciers high in the Himalayas. If those lakes grow too large or their natural dams become too weak, the dams can burst and flow down-mountain, threatening tens of thousands of lives.
Horodyskyj brings together images and measurements from NASA's Landsat satellites with observations taken on long hikes around the edges of glacial lakes to advise the Nepalese government on how to address the threat.
Without Landsat, "we would be flying blind," she told Business Insider. "We need those eyes in the sky to complement our ground efforts."
Juanita van Zyl is the geographic information system manager at a company called Manstrat in South Africa. She provides information to the South African government and other companies about droughts, wildfires, and grazing conditions in the country. She said she uses data from NASA to help her clients understand where to move resources.
"South Africa isn't a big country," she said. "But when we are in a drought situation like we are in now, the government can only give out so much money out to help subsistence farmers and commercial farmers. Remote sensing is tremendously important in telling them where to send money."
She said the state of the US presidential election in the spring led her to look for ways to build redundancy into her data sources.
"It's scary to think that something might happen and you won't have access to the data anymore," she said.
But — unique among scientists interviewed for this story — the data sets she studies happen to be replicated by a European data set called Copernicus. After some preparation efforts over the course of the last year, she said she's confident that if NASA earth science were to go dark tomorrow, she would be able to keep up a similar level of quality in her work.
No other scientist interviewed for this story said the same.
Some scientists said that without NASA earth science, it would likely be impossible for them to work. Huge swaths of the planet go entirely unmeasured on the ground. Only satellites have the bird's-eye view to place weather events in their full context.
Researchers said that entire fields of study would be left hobbled or unable to function without NASA earth science research and data. Here's a sampling:
Steve Nesbitt, a researcher at the University of Illinois who works on a NASA mission to measure rainfall all over the world, said that without NASA data, he'd have nothing to study.
He could try to use ground measurements, he said, but it would be nowhere near as sufficient for the scope of his research.
"If you were to try to measure global precipitation on the ground — I mean currently I can fit all of the rain gauges on the globe in the area of about a basketball court," he said.
Farmers rely on Nesbitt and his colleagues' work to measure and model global rainfall to decide how to plant and water their crops. Businesses rely on it to make decisions about production. ("Things like 'How many snow shovels are we going to sell in Buffalo?'" he said.) The US and global transportation systems rely on a deep understanding of atmospheric conditions and long-term weather patterns.
Stroeve, the NSIDC researcher, said that NASA satellites have been necessary to show how dramatically the Arctic has warmed and melted since the 1990s.
"You have one record-low sea-ice year after another," she said. "It doesn't fit long-term trends."
The work Stroeve and her colleagues have done over the span of decades is critical to understanding the radical transformation underway at the top of the world. And there are major economic and diplomatic consequences of those results, as countries and corporations vie for new shipping routes and exposed resources.
She said her work is to observe and report hard numbers on what's happening in the world, and that she finds it baffling that politicians would declare that task political.
Ajit Subramaniam is a Columbia University professor who tracks microscopic plant life in the ocean.
Those tiny floating life-forms produce up to 40% of the world's oxygen and form the basis of the aquatic food web. Understand them, and you can make judgments about the health of a whole fishery. Satellites can track those microscopic plants by watching how the colors of the sea surface change. And Subramaniam said a satellite can examine in two minutes an area that a ship moving 10 mph would take 11 years to cover.
Without Subramaniam's research, fishers, governments, and conservation groups would lose necessary information about sea life. And deadly algae blooms, an increasingly serious threat to human life along coastlines, would become harder to spot and predict.
Peter Neff, a glaciologist at the University of Rochester who travels regularly to the Antarctic, said ground observations would never tell you the full story of what's going on with ice sheets in that part of the world.
Unlike Arctic ice, which floats on water, Antarctic ice sits on land. If those ice sheets were to collapse, global sea levels could change dramatically.
On the surface, Antarctica's ice still looks pretty still and stable. But ice-penetrating NASA satellites and airplane-mounted sensors show that far below the surface, some are melting at a rate of hundreds of meters a year and risking collapse.
"We never thought these kinds of changes happen year to year," Neff said. "It's dumbfounding how much data NASA produces and how quickly they release it. They fly over an area and the next day the data is available."
Neff's research helps us understand the health of massive glaciers with behavior we still don't fully understand but that lock up enough water to drive up global sea levels on the order of meters, not inches.
And none of them would be able to do their work without NASA satellite data.
Walker, Trump's adviser who wants to shutter NASA earth science, told The Guardian that other US agencies would be able to pick up where NASA leaves off.
"My guess is that it would be difficult to stop all ongoing NASA programs," he said. "But future programs should definitely be placed with other agencies. I believe that climate research is necessary, but it has been heavily politicized, which has undermined a lot of the work that researchers have been doing. Mr. Trump's decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science."
However, researchers familiar with US science initiatives said such a move wouldn't be feasible without massive expenses or losses in capability.
"You can't just send money over to another agency and expect them to be able to launch satellites," said Abdalati, the former NASA chief scientist. "There's an expertise that exists within NASA that isn't particularly portable. But if it were deemed necessary that the capability to go to some other agency, they'd have to move a lot more than the money."
Shepherd said that the problem has to do with the way institutions like NASA work.
"By shutting off NASA's earth sciences program, you are shutting off expertise, institutional knowledge of the Earth's system that cannot just be spun back up," he said. "It's not like training someone to cook burgers in a fast-food joint. You're talking about years and decades of expertise and technical knowledge. Brainware will be lost, and that is critical."
Another problem is that NASA earth science is more than people — it's buildings, systems, and machines that are now woven into the framework of the space agency and could not cheaply or efficiently be extracted.
"They'd have to move the people, they'd have to move the systems, the infrastructure, the facilities. And, you know, it currently exists in the framework that supports all the space activities, so to carve out the Earth piece would be inefficient because you would have to build capability twice," said Abdalati.
Another problem is that there isn't another agency within the federal government built for NASA's task.
The closest is probably the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is responsible for the day-to-day tasks of government weather forecasting.
"Certainly NOAA is an organization that provides lifesaving forecasts," Nesbitt said. "I don't want to take anything from NOAA. But they have a different mission and rely on NASA to launch satellites."
The problem, he said, is that NOAA isn't structured for the high-risk, boundary-pushing work NASA does every day.
"It's kind of like if you have a car. Want to fix it? Go to a mechanic (like NOAA). If you want to take it in an auto race, go to someone who is more experimental, and that is NASA. They can develop something that is amazing. It may not work every single day, but then they can scramble and fix things," Nesbitt said. "There's just that cultural divide, and I'm worried that if they take these experimental missions and plug them into NOAA, there's going to be harsh degradation."
NASA's earth science program, several researchers said, is critical to national security.
There are the obvious ways: building and constantly improving the infrastructure necessary to predict hurricanes and other extreme weather, collecting images of disasters to guide emergency response workers, and tracking sea level changes around the world that affect coastlines and the Navy.
But plenty are less obvious — but no less important — ways NASA helps keep the country safe.
In September, Business Insider published a story about the severe and underreported danger that space weather poses to modern society. There's a very real threat that a major solar storm could strike Earth and knock out the electric grid, satellites, navigation systems on airplanes, and any other electrical system not hardened to withstand the blast.
These sorts of events aren't all that rare — the last one happened in 1859.
"We'll almost certainly see a major event in our lifetimes," said Morris Cohen, a researcher who studies electrical events in the upper atmosphere. "It's kind of a game of Russian roulette we're playing. Keep playing forever, and eventually you're going to get hit."
If scientists are on alert, humanity should have a few days to prepare between the start of a solar storm and the moment it reaches Earth, Cohen said. But that prediction will rely on NASA earth science mission data.
"Obviously what's driving the political question of 'Yes to earth science or no to earth science?' is climate change," Cohen said. "That's the motivation behind cutting all this stuff. But what a lot of people don't realize is that earth science data and earth science in general goes way beyond climate change. The same satellite that's capturing data from clouds is also capturing data about what's going on in space and what's coming from the sun."
Cohen said he's working on a project to strengthen the US military that would be impossible without geoscience research of the sort that's threatened at NASA.
Right now, the military relies on satellite GPS systems for navigation, just like civilians. But GPS is remarkably easy to jam. Cohen has worked on an alternative system that would use live data on lightning strikes and the radio waves they emit to build a more resilient navigation system for the military that would be much more difficult to disrupt.
Without geoscience research, he said, the system would never get off the ground.
Jacquelyn Gill researches paleoecology and plant ecology — in other words, she studies the history of the global climate over millions of years — at the University of Maine.
She and her students spend their time trying to understand how the atmosphere worked in the ancient world — sometimes finding themselves knee-deep in bogs collecting buried pollen or ash from ancient fires.
"Despite our best efforts, all we see of the Earth's climate is a really narrow snapshot in time," she said. "And to get a more complete and full picture of how Earth operates, we need long-term data."
That long-term data shows that modern climate change is faster and more acute than anything else in Earth's history. But there are also concrete implications for modern-day lobster fishers — and for futuristic endeavors like terraforming Mars.
And none of it would be possible, she said, without NASA data creating a baseline for how the climate works.
"A lot of the work we do in the past is motivated by the world we have in the present," Gill said. "If we don't have that information then [the past data] becomes a kind of novelty. It loses its grounding."
Without NASA's earth science programs, many researchers say they expect to see the American scientific enterprise to become less singular and less great, and to fall into decline.
"It's unfortunate that the politics of climate change have evolved to the point in this country where really serious games of chicken are being played with major agencies in our federal government," Nesbitt said. "These are agencies that have absolutely no political agenda, just collections of scientists that are doing work to better society. And it's really sad that these political forces are trying to exploit this issue."
"Is there a line you can draw between understanding how the Earth works and the so-called politically incorrect environmental monitoring?" Subramaniam said. "If you think of the Earth as a being, knowing how well it's doing is a good thing is how I see it. Why would we not want to do it?
"It's a head-scratcher for me. I simply don't understand what the issue would be."
Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein is an early-universe cosmologist. That means she works on understanding what happened in the moments after the Big Bang, when the whole universe was hot and physics was bent to the point of breaking.
Her work relies on data from NASA's spaceward missions, and a shift from earth science toward even more space data might offer new opportunities for her research. But she said the idea of a NASA that no longer examines the Earth scares her.
"You know, I am not a parent, but I have a niece who just turned 8, and many of my close friends have children right now. And I want those children to have a beautiful life," she said. "I think that trumps any interest in early-universe cosmology. The work that I do on dark matter, I'm not sure it will have a lot of meaning if those kids don't have an opportunity to learn about it because society has been devastated by global warming. So that's, for me, the priority."
Abdalati said that losing half of NASA's mission would mean giving up on part of what makes us human.
"As human beings, throughout time, we have explored our surroundings, and we have worked to understand our environment, and we looked as far beyond as we could," he said.
And NASA fulfills both drives — to understand and to explore.
"I think both are critical. Both are essential. I wouldn't want to see human space zeroed out to support a whole bunch of earth science" either, he added. "I may differ from some of my colleagues in that, but I think we need it all."
Lori Janjigian contributed to this story.
Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Walker's proposal would ax or redirect 40% of NASA's budget and operations. This was based on past numbers, and referred only to NASA's science budget, not the agency's total budget. In fact, Walker's proposal would ax or redirect more than 34% of NASA's $5.2 billion 2017 science budget request, and almost 10% of its $18 billion overall budget request. Thanks to Loren Grush of The Verge for spotting the error.
DON'T MISS: The Arctic is smashing heat records — and missing enough ice to freeze over 9 states in the US
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: This NASA map shows the drastic disappearance of Arctic ice
Hey America, you forgot a huge pile of junk in the wilderness.
Abandoned by the US Air Force in 1947, Bluie East Two is one of several World War II and Cold War installations left to crumble in Greenland after the military lost interest in maintaining them. (Another, from the Army's secret "Project Iceworm,"could soon leak toxic nuclear waste into the environment.)
"Bluie" was military code for Greenland during the war with Germany. Bluie East Two was one of three aircraft bases maintained on the Danish territory in North America as part of the US Atlantic defense scheme of the period.
In two trips in the summers of 2014 and 2015, landscape photographer Ken Bower traveled to Bluie East Two to shoot the hulks of rusted equipment, aviation-fuel barrels, and collapsed buildings still strewn across the earth at the lip of great fjord. He said he hopes his images bring attention to the problem, along with a petition to clean up the site he's circulated in hopes of catching the White House's attention.
Here is what he saw.
SEE ALSO: The National Park Service just turned 100. We visited one of its filthiest, forgotten sites.
AND: Here's a cautionary tale about why we shouldn't colonize any Earth-like neighboring planets
President Barack Obama designated two national monuments Wednesday at sites in Utah and Nevada that have become key flashpoints over use of public land in the U.S. West, marking the administration's latest move to protect environmentally sensitive areas in its final days.
The Bears Ears National Monument in Utah will cover 1.35 million acres in the Four Corners region, the White House said.
In a victory for Native American tribes and conservationists, the designation protects land that is considered sacred and is home to an estimated 100,000 archaeological sites, including ancient cliff dwellings.
It's a blow for state Republican leaders and many rural residents who fear it will add another layer of unnecessary federal control and close the area to energy development and recreation, a common refrain in the battle over use of the American West's vast open spaces.
In Nevada, a 300,000-acre Gold Butte National Monument outside Las Vegas would protect a scenic and ecologically fragile area near where rancher Cliven Bundy led in an armed standoff with government agents in 2014. It includes rock art, artifacts, rare fossils and recently discovered tracks.
The White House and conservationists said both sites were at risk of looting and vandalism.
"Today's actions will help protect this cultural legacy and will ensure that future generations are able to enjoy and appreciate these scenic and historic landscapes," Obama said in a statement.
His administration has rushed to safeguard vulnerable areas ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration. It has blocked new mining claims outside Yellowstone National Park and new oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean.
Obama's creation and expansion of monuments covers more acreage than any other president.
But Trump's upcoming presidency has tempered the excitement for tribal leaders and conservationists, with some worrying he could try to reverse or reduce some of Obama's expansive land protections.
U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah, who opposes the Bears Ears Monument, has suggested presidents have the power to undo monuments, though it has not been done before.
A coalition of tribes pushed for the creation of Utah's eighth national monument, though they asked Obama to make it about 500,000 acres larger than the monument he named Wednesday.
Tribal members visit the Bears Ears area to perform ceremonies, collect herbs and wood for medicinal and spiritual purposes, and do healing rituals.
Navajo Nation President ?Russell Begaye called it an exciting day for his tribe and people of all cultures.
"We have always looked to Bears Ears as a place of refuge, as a place where we can gather herbs and medicinal plants, and a place of prayer and sacredness," Begaye said. "The rocks, the winds, the land — they are living, breathing things that deserve timely and lasting protection."
The Navajo Nation is one of five tribes that will get an elected official on a first-of-its-kind tribal commission for the Bears Ears monument. The panel will provide federal land managers with tribal expertise and historical knowledge about the area, federal officials said.
Tucked between existing national parks and the Navajo reservation, the proposed monument features stunning vistas at every turn, with a mix of cliffs, plateaus, towering rock formations, rivers and canyons across wide expanses covered by sagebrush and juniper trees.
Opponents agree the area is a natural treasure worth preserving but said the federal designation would create restrictions on oil and gas development as well residents' ability to camp, bike, hike and gather wood.
No new mining and oil and gas development will be allowed within the monument boundaries, said Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Members of Utah's all-GOP congressional delegation had backed a plan to protect about 1.4 million acres at Bears Ears, while opening up other areas of the state for development.
To many residents in the small, predominantly Mormon town of Blanding that sits near the new monument, the proposal is a thinly veiled, repackaged push from environmental groups who recruited tribes after previous attempts at the designation fizzled out.
In Nevada, retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Harry Reid has pushed for protections at Gold Butte, a remote area northeast of Lake Mead, but GOP members of the state's congressional delegation have been vocal opponents.
Bundy is one rancher who does not recognize federal jurisdiction in the area. He was accused of illegally allowing his cows to roam there after failing to pay more than $1.1 million in fees and penalties.
He has pleaded not guilty to charges in the 2014 standoff with U.S. agents trying to round up his cattle.
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: In the 1970s the CIA created a spy drone the size of a dragonfly
Last night, I took a break from the news to watch an episode of "Star Trek," and it turned out to be the most relevant commentary on science and President-elect Donald Trump I've seen so far.
In November, The Guardian reported that Trump's administration was "poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by NASA as part of a crackdown on 'politicized science,'" as senior Trump campaign adviser Bob Walker has said.
This is the clearest policy stance on climate science that we've seen so far from the Trump administration.
As far as Trump the individual goes, his stated opinions on human-induced climate change have wavered. In 2012 he denied it, saying instead that climate change was a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese to cripple US manufacturing. Several weeks ago, however, he acknowledged that it could be real, telling a room of New York Times reporters and editors that he believed there was "some connectivity" between humans and climate change.
Of course, his policy speaks louder than his personal opinion.
And if last month's statement is any indication of what climate-change policy will look like in Trump's administration, we should be worried. Essentially, Trump is proposing to halt future NASA research on climate change. NASA currently does a ton of work in this field — just take a look at climate.nasa.gov. NASA researchers would be significantly limited in working on the climate models that show how and why our actions are contributing to a warmer planet.
On a more positive note, Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist and director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which studies the changing atmosphere, has told my colleague Rafi Letzter that it won't be simple for Trump to purge federal agencies of climate researchers during his presidency.
"Chopping off science just to prevent people from talking about climate change won't work," Schmidt said. "You need science for hazards, for weather forecasting, and climate comes along for the ride."
I hope he's right. Still, I'm terrified by the prospect that climate-change research would be limited in any way. So last night, I turned away from the news and toward science-fiction television for solace.
Mistake.
I rewatched a classic episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation," an episode I saw for the first time when I was a kid. I'd seen it with my father, a self-proclaimed Trekkie and a man from whom I continue to draw endless inspiration.
Turns out the episode was one of the most powerful critiques of Trump's proposal — which is essentially a ban on future NASA-led climate change research — that I've come across.
"Force of Nature" (season seven, episode nine, available on Netflix), takes place aboard the main ship, the Enterprise, and focuses on its reliance on warp drive, a faster-than-light spacecraft propulsion system the crew uses to skip around the galaxy. Basically, if warp drive allows the Enterprise to ferry itself around in a Ferrari, without it, it would be reduced to something like crawling on all fours.
Unfortunately, unbeknownst to the crew members, every time they engage warp drive, they slowly contribute to the creation of a phenomenon they call "a rift," which is causing terrible damage to multiple solar systems. The rift is like a massive tear — every time a ship uses warp drive, it wreaks havoc on the solar system nearby. Among the rift's effects are the shifting of a planet's tilt and triggering of massive earthquakes, two things that would eventually destroy the planet.
In the episode, the crew is using warp drive for a rescue mission — it's traveling to an area of space where a friendly ship has been stalled. On the way to the ship, the Enterprise is rendered powerless by an unrecognized ship and boarded by two strangers.
When they come aboard, the strangers — a brother and sister from another planet — tell the Enterprise it must immediately stop using warp drive. "You are killing us!" the sister says.
The Enterprise crew members, while initially outraged that they've been shut down by an unrecognized vessel and boarded without permission, eventually agree to look into the duo's claims.
The Enterprise's captain, Jean-Luc Picard, essentially tells them their claims are reasonable and promises to ask the powers in charge (the Federation Council) to conduct "more research" on their behalf in exchange for the strangers' agreement to let the Enterprise go. The sister responds angrily, saying it isn't good enough. She leaves aboard her ship and sends herself into warp drive to prove her point. In the process, she destroys her ship and kills herself.
They all soon see that she and her brother were right. Some of the crew members who earlier dismissed her claims say they feel responsible.
"Maybe I was taking the whole thing personally. Maybe I was a little threatened, the thought that warp engines might be doing some kind of damage," Geordi La Forge, the chief engineer, says.
Finally, the Enterprise sends its report, which concludes that warp drive is harmful, to the Federation Council. The agency responds by announcing strict policies limiting the use of warp drive except for specific situations in which it is necessary. At the end of the episode, Captain Picard says he feels partially responsible for using warp drive even though he wasn't aware of the damage it was doing.
"I've charted new worlds. I've met dozens of new species. I believed that these were all valuable ends in themselves," Picard says. "And now it seems that all this while I was helping to damage the thing that I hold most dear."
SEE ALSO: Trump tells New York Times there is 'some connectivity' between humans and climate change
DON'T MISS: 3 reasons researchers are terrified about Donald Trump's presidency
Join the conversation about this story »
NOW WATCH: Trump's pick for UN Ambassador once said he was 'everything a governor doesn't want in a president'
