Federal officials have blocked lithium mining in the heart of Nevada’s Railroad Valley, a dry lakebed that NASA says is needed to calibrate satellites used for, among other things, forecasting weather and studying climate change.
A new study reaffirming that global climate change is human-made also found the upper atmosphere is cooling dramatically because of rising CO2 levels. Scientists are worried about the effect this cooling could have on orbiting satellites, the ozone layer, and Earth’s weather.
A nonprofit backed by Al Gore and other big environmental donors says it can track emissions down to individual power plants, oil fields and cargo ships.
The first satellite in NASA’s Landsat program launched 50 years ago. It’s since shown images of Amazon deforestation, tracked urban heat islands, and helped reveal other ways humans have changed the face of the planet.
