Health Trotter

August 05, 2021 at 11:18PM Flames light up hillsides in British Columbia. Smoke swells over highways into Athens. A swimming pool in California is surrounded by charred rubble. Thick forests in Siberia lie shriveled and brown. Countries across the northern hemisphere this summer are experiencing the worst wildfires in years of recorded history, with large swaths of land and entire towns in Europe, North America and Russia consumed by flames since the start of July. Though many of these countries are used to summer fire seasons, climate change is making the hot, dry conditions that allow fires to catch and spread more common and more intense. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] In parts of the western U.S., a summer of intense heat waves has arrived on the back of a weak rainy season, as a two-year-long drought stretches on. In mid-July, fires broke out in parts of Oregon and California, together consuming more than 230,000 hectares, part of a nationwide toll of over 1 million...

August 05, 2021 at 04:30PM If you want to go to space, Inspiration4 commander Jared Issacman believes, it helps to climb a mountain first, in order to bond as a group over a shared physical struggle. Any mountain will do, really, but for the crew of Inspiration4 —the first all-civilian team bound for orbital space, set to fly aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft next month—it was Mt. Rainier, the 14,100-ft. volcanic peak in western Washington State. “I wanted them to get comfortable with being uncomfortable,” says Isaacman, 39, “because not everything about space will be comfortable.” If that’s what he wanted, that’s what he got. There was the cloud bank that followed the crew the entire way up their trek to their target spot at the 10,000-ft. elevation point on the flank of the mountain. There was the cutting cold and the blowing snow and the frozen ham and cheese sandwiches that greeted them when they opened their packs. And there was the constant plodding over the cour...