Latest news with #Climate.gov
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Major insurance company accused of illegal scheme to profit off policyholders: 'Race to the bottom'
California homeowners are suing the state's largest home insurer, claiming that the firm misled them and left them "grossly underinsured" as aggressive and unprecedented wildfires devastated much of Los Angeles, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. What's happening? On January 7, what would become a historical series of wildfires began burning in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood. Within a day, the blaze had consumed several homes. It wasn't fully extinguished until January 31, leaving a trail of destruction and fatalities in its wake. On January 9, NPR questioned whether insurance companies had "enough money" to cover the slew of upcoming claims. State Farm is the largest insurer in California, and on January 10, Newsweek covered a statement issued by the insurer. Although the language has since changed, an archived copy matched what was quoted in the article. "We are here for our customers to help begin the process of recovery," it read in part. "We want our customers to know that, when it is safe to do so, they can and should file a claim." In June, several California policyholders jointly filed suit against State Farm, alleging that the firm intentionally and "grossly" left them underinsured. Plaintiffs further alleged the company engaged in a "multifaceted illegal scheme," designed to "reap enormous illicit profits by deceptively misleading over a million homeowners," per the complaint. Through a series of pricing initiatives and other tactics, the complainants assert that State Farm created a "race to the bottom" for rates, aggressively seizing the largest share of California's market. "Lower coverage limits correspond to more attractive premium rates, but leave homeowners unwittingly exposed to serious underinsurance … This has severely undermined plaintiffs' efforts to rebuild their lives in the aftermath," attorneys for the plaintiffs wrote. Why does the California homeowners' lawsuit matter so much? While they're not technically "weather," wildfires are considered a form of extreme weather, as the extent of the damage in Los Angeles demonstrates. Do you think your home has good insulation? Definitely It's just all right It's good in some rooms Not at all Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. The Los Angeles fires were largely caused by a dry winter, exacerbated by rising temperatures and anomalous weather patterns, according to As the planet heats and seas warm, all forms of extreme weather will intensify and occur more frequently. To add insult to injury, many California homeowners experienced delayed claim processing, if they were able to secure home insurance at all. On top of that, State Farm intends to raise rates in California by 30% to 40% across the board. What's being done about the home insurance crisis? In addition to the lawsuit filed in June, homeowners in Eaton sued insurers for similar reasons in April, seeking relief through the court system. Homeowners were caught off guard by the devastating wildfires, which is why it's important to remain aware of critical climate issues and stay prepared. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the the daily Crossword
IOL News
07-07-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
The impact of Trump administration policies on climate research funding
The Trump Administration has cut federal funding for research into Climate Change Image: Doctor Ngcobo / Independent Media A $15 million federal grant was supposed to help scientists better understand how the warming climate is harming plants and animals, setting many on paths toward extinction. But the Trump administration shelved it earlier this year, miring the research in a holding pattern. Jacquelyn Gill isn't sure there's a way out. The professor of paleoecology and plant ecology at the University of Maine spent hundreds of hours readying the grant proposal, and 13 years before that gathering knowledge about how past changes to Earth's climate echoed through ecosystems. But without federal funding, she finds herself at a loss for how to keep building on that work as more species disappear. More scientists are beginning to feel that crunch. A budget document the Trump administration recently submitted to Congress calls for zeroing out climate research funding for 2026, something officials had hinted at in previous proposals but is now in lawmakers' hands. But even just the specter of President Donald Trump's budget proposals has prompted scientists to limit research activities in advance of further cuts. Trump's efforts to freeze climate research spending and slash the government's scientific workforce have for months prompted warnings of rippling consequences in years ahead. For many climate scientists, the consequences are already here. With so much uncertainty across scientific agencies and academic research centers, even prominent scientists are hitting dead ends. 'There are no safety nets,' Gill said. 'Private foundations cannot begin to pick up the slack.' Video Player is loading. 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Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ More recent administration actions have limited or even wiped access to existing climate science. The government this week canceled a contract with the journal publisher Nature, though health officials said its studies remain accessible to researchers. A week earlier, it took down where scientists posted updates about trends in U.S. and global temperatures and explainers about climate phenomena such as El Niño. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it would continue to post those materials on a different webpage. 'We're getting a message loud and clear from this administration: Climate and environmental research are not welcome in this country,' Gill said, 'I have a job, but I don't know if I have a career. I don't know how I'm supposed to do this.' The administration on Monday took down the website of an organization known as the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which housed detailed and congressionally mandated reports about the ways climate change is reshaping American life, as well as webinars, still available on YouTube, about aspects of the National Climate Assessment including sea-level rise adaptation and wildfire risks. But it's not just the website. The organization essentially no longer exists. Until the Trump administration canceled its contract this spring, the program was helping to launch the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report surveying climate impacts around the world and projecting the changes to come. Now, it's unclear how large a role some U.S.-based scientists will be able to play in the report, even if they are leaders in their field. The panel is expected to name leaders of its next report this month, and Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist and professor at Imperial College London who served as an author on a previous report, said that without U.S. participation, the project will suffer. 'It's an extremely complex and challenging process to prepare these reports,' he said. 'Not being able to draw on the world's most prominent experts, or any reduction in the kind of people you can draw on, will have knock-on effects on how challenging it will be for the remaining authors to pull this together.' On a recent visit to Britain for a conference known as London Climate Week, Martin Wolf, who was an affiliate with the Global Change Research Program until this spring, said he was struck by a contrast: As U.S. climate scientists face impossible hurdles, their counterparts in Europe are speeding ahead. In China, investments in solar and wind energy are mounting, just as Republicans in Washington are pulling them back, he added. Scientists said the disappearance of websites and reports just underscore how in several months' time, the administration's actions have started to set climate science back, while also making it harder for the public to learn about it. 'People who are already aware of the reports, they know how to find them,' Wolf said. 'What this really impacts is the curious public.' White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said the administration is acting to correct decades of federal actions prioritizing climate over 'clean American energy,' and in the process, 'jeopardizing our economic and national security.' 'Restoring our energy dominance is far more important than obsessing over vague climate change goals to the 77 million Americans who voted for President Trump,' Rogers said in a statement. 'Future generations should not be expected to forfeit the American Dream to foot the bill of ambiguous climate threats.' Arlyn Andrews spent her 21-year career at NOAA's Global Monitoring Laboratory tracking what scientists describe as a clear threat: the levels of carbon dioxide that have been documented as steadily rising since the 1960s. The lab's sensors have tracked those trends - including last year, when average global temperatures surged to a record high and atmospheric carbon levels took the largest single-year jump ever recorded. Those gases trigger the greenhouse effect, trapping the sun's heat like a blanket and warming the planet. But the monitoring has already suffered as the Trump administration revealed plans to drastically cut federal research efforts, and it could end if Congress approves those plans. Faced with the prospect the administration could claw back money from NOAA's current budget, Andrews said she and colleagues made the decision to halve the number of flights taken each month to gather data on greenhouse gas concentrations close to Earth's surface. Such flights from about a dozen sites show, for example, how much carbon dioxide Midwest cornfields absorb as crops grow, or how much carbon is being emitted around major cities. But the funding uncertainty made it impossible to ensure those kinds of observations would continue uninterrupted. 'When a site is terminated, that's the end of a long-term record,' Andrews said. That is especially true of an observation site at the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa, where both NOAA and the University of California at San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography have been monitoring carbon dioxide levels for decades. Scripps' data feeds what is known as the Keeling Curve, a graph created by scientist Charles David Keeling that formed some of the earliest understanding of the greenhouse effect and climate change. Now, even the Keeling Curve is at risk, said Keeling's son Ralph Keeling, who is director of Scripps' carbon dioxide monitoring program. Keeling, too, has been trying to plan for a future in which his lab will no longer receive federal funding. He's not sure it's possible. He said he has been talking with foundations and other sources of potential funding. 'We're concerned about the viability going forward,' he said. 'I don't have revenue streams that add up to the need at this point.' For Andrews, the uncertainty became so daunting, she joined hundreds of NOAA colleagues in taking a voluntary buyout at the end of April. 'It was not an easy decision,' she said, concluding that she 'could be more impactful from a different position.' She hopes to do research on a freelance basis, and to help other former federal scientists do the same. Young scientists, however, face fewer options. Gill, 44, would normally be preparing to welcome several new graduate students to Maine in the fall, but this year, there won't be any. The University of Maine was an early target of Trump's efforts to strip diversity, equity and inclusion programs from higher education, and his administration's threats of withholding massive amounts of government funding - which it ultimately backed away from - meant that Gill could only afford to secure funding for researchers who were already at work in her lab. Now, without the $15 million National Science Foundation grant she sought to develop models of biodiversity losses informed by DNA found trapped in ice and caves, she isn't sure what's next. To continue her research, NSF staff advised her 'to look elsewhere' for research funding. She hoped to be answering questions about what might happen when plants unable to migrate to cooler climates begin to die off, or how the extinction of Earth's largest creatures will have domino effects on the smallest. But 'there is nowhere else to look for this kind of funding,' she said. Now, she only has questions about the future of research - and no answers. The Washington Post
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Experts issue warning as entire staff of critical public information site is abruptly fired: 'I would hate to see it turn into a propaganda website'
One of the internet's most popular sources for climate science abruptly lost nearly all of its staff, The Guardian reported. The cuts to the government-funded site came as the Trump administration has engaged in sweeping efforts to censor climate science and cut funding for climate research. Multiple government workers assigned to the website informed The Guardian that their contracts and those of nearly all of their colleagues had not been renewed as expected. The only workers retained were two web developers, sparking fears that the site, which receives hundreds of thousands of views per month, might not disappear but instead transform into something much worse. "My bigger worry, long-term, is I would hate to see it turn into a propaganda website for this administration, because that's not at all what it was," said Tom Di Liberto, a former spokesperson for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the federal agency responsible for the site. Rebecca Lindsey, the website's former program manager, echoed those sentiments, telling The Guardian of the "sinister possibility" that the administration would replace the site's climate science with anti-science propaganda, "leveraging our audience, our brand, our millions of people that we reach on social media every month." "That's the worst case scenario," Lindsey said. For decades, oil, gas, and coal companies — along with their legions of government lobbyists, public-relations experts, and friendly politicians — have led a massive campaign to mislead the public about the devastating impact their products have on the planet, particularly the climate. While disagreements about what to do about climate science are understandable, the Trump administration's censorship of climate science represents the latest iteration of its half-century-long crusade to quell public outrage and quash efforts to build a clean-energy future. Researchers at Columbia Law School put together a comprehensive list of the Trump administration's climate censorship, noting changes to the numerous agency websites, from the Department of Defense to the Department of Energy to the Environmental Protection Agency. The attacks on climate science have not ended with the censorship of government websites. The version of Trump's "Big Beautiful Bill" that passed the House of Representatives cut tax credits aimed at encouraging Americans to invest in renewable energy, electric vehicles, and energy-efficient homes. Do you think misinformation is a major problem in America today? Definitely Only for some people Only with certain issues Not really Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Perhaps, most significantly, the administration has also taken a hatchet to funding for climate research. In one particularly impactful cut, the administration fired the staff responsible for producing the National Climate Assessment, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. The only entities that truly stand to benefit from all this are oil and gas companies. "This assessment is so important because it lets every American know how climate change affects their community – or even their own backyard," Ticora Jones, chief science officer at NRDC, said in a statement. "Cutting federal climate research won't eliminate threats from intense heat waves, unprecedented hurricanes, and devastating flooding," she added. "It will just make our nation far less able to prepare for them." With the federal government taking an adversarial approach to climate science, renewable energy, and environmental regulation, it will take a team of other actors working in concert to ensure progression toward a clean-energy future. Those who want to see efforts like these preserved can use their voice by voting for pro-climate candidates and advocating for those in office now to protect these efforts. In addition to advocating for political action, you can make a difference by driving an EV, installing solar panels on your home, or filling your yard with native plants. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Time of India
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Bombshell report claims major US government website likely to be shut down after almost all staff fired
A major central US government website , NOAA 's portal to the work of their Climate Program Office, will likely soon shut down as most of the staff charged with maintaining it were fired on 31 May, The Guardian reported. The website that educates the public about climate science may soon cease to publish new material following a mass firing of its content team. will imminently no longer publish new content, according to multiple former staff responsible for the site's content whose contracts were recently terminated. ALSO READ: 2024 US Presidential election is under scrutiny as lawsuit claims discrepancies in Rockland County, New York by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Homeowners Are Turning to Solar to Lower Their Bills Solar Panels | Search Ads Learn More Undo US govt website shuts down is one of the most widely used climate science resources online, receiving hundreds of thousands of visits monthly, The Guardian noted in its report. 'The entire content production staff at (including me) were let go from our government contract on 31 May,' said a former government contractor who wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. 'We were told that our positions within the contract were being eliminated.' The layoffs are the latest in the wave of cutbacks taken by the Trump administration that have already fired several federal government employees and agencies, including the Department of Education, Food and Drug Administration, and NOAA. Live Events The content production team at operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was abruptly terminated at the end of May, a former contractor among those terminated told the paper anonymously. Noaa has been contacted for comment. It is unclear whether the website will remain visible to the public. ALSO READ: Air India plane crash: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio 'heartbroken' over fatal tragedy that left over 200 dead Rebecca Lindsey, the website's former program manager, who was fired in February as part of the government's purge of probationary employees, told The Guardian, "'I had gotten a stellar performance review, gotten a bonus, gotten a raise. I was performing very well. And then I was part of that group who got the form letter saying, 'Your knowledge, skills, and abilities are no longer of use to Noaa' – or something to that effect.' "It was a very deliberate, targeted attack," Lindsey said the site's funding was stripped during contract negotiations due to pressure from higher-level officials. The 10 or so content staff were supported by NOAA scientists. The site was housed in the agency's science wing rather than its public affairs division, and was designed to maintain political neutrality and scientific accuracy, she told the outlet. "We operated exactly how you would want an independent, nonpartisan communications group to operate," Lindsey said. ALSO READ: US Open 2025: Where to watch golf coverage online for free, live schedule, coverage and other details "It does seem to be part of this sort of slow and quiet way of trying to keep science agencies from providing information to the American public about climate." The fired staff believe the changes to were targeted by political appointees within the Trump administration and specifically aimed at restricting public-facing climate information. Tom Di Liberto, a former spokesperson for the NOAA who was fired earlier this year told the outlet: "It's targeted, I think it's clear." "They only fired a handful of people, and it just so happened to be the entire content team for I mean, that's a clear signal."
Newsweek
12-06-2025
- Science
- Newsweek
Major US Government Website Could be Shut Down After Mass Layoffs
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A central U.S. government website that educates the public about climate science may soon cease to publish new material following a mass firing of its content team, says The Guardian. Newsweek contacted the NOAA for comment on The Guardian's report via email, outside of standard working hours on Thursday. Why It Matters is one of the most widely used climate science resources online, receiving hundreds of thousands of visits monthly, The Guardian noted in its report. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) logo is seen during a NOAA media day at the Aircraft Operations Center in Lakeland, Florida, on May 6, 2025. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) logo is seen during a NOAA media day at the Aircraft Operations Center in Lakeland, Florida, on May 6, 2025. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images The reported layoffs are the latest in a wave of cutbacks by the Trump administration that have already targeted numerous government departments and agencies, including the Department of Education, Food and Drug Administration, and NOAA. What To Know The content production team at operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was abruptly terminated at the end of May, a former contractor among those terminated told the paper anonymously. Newsweek has not verified the anonymous sources. Other former staff said decisions to eliminate their positions appeared not to be based on performance but rather were targeted by political appointees within the Trump administration. "It was a very deliberate, targeted attack," Rebecca Lindsey, the former program manager of the website, told The Guardian. Lindsey, who was fired in February despite receiving what she described as "stellar" performance reviews and a bonus, said the site's funding was stripped during contract negotiations due to pressure from higher-level officials. The 10 or so content staff were supported by NOAA scientists. The site was housed in the agency's science wing rather than its public affairs division, and was designed to maintain political neutrality and scientific accuracy, she told the outlet. "We operated exactly how you would want an independent, nonpartisan communications group to operate," Lindsey said. "It does seem to be part of this sort of slow and quiet way of trying to keep science agencies from providing information to the American public about climate." Tom Di Liberto, a former spokesperson for the NOAA who was fired earlier this year told the outlet: "It's targeted, I think it's clear." "They only fired a handful of people, and it just so happened to be the entire content team for I mean, that's a clear signal." What People Are Saying Former NOAA spokesperson Tom Di Liberto told The Guardian: "My bigger worry, long-term, is I would hate to see it turn into a propaganda website for this administration, because that's not at all what it was." What Happens Next While the site may continue to host some prescheduled updates through June, there are no confirmed plans for future content, The Guardian reported.
