Black bears are climbing Half Dome in Yosemite National Park. Human visitors require 425 feet of cable to ascend the 45° granite slope.

July 2023 was the hottest July in human history.

The loss of Antarctic sea ice results in “unprecedented breeding failure” in emperor penguin colonies.

At least 41 prisoners in Texas’s uncooled prisons have died of heart-related or undetermined causes during this summer’s heat wave.

A record-shattering heat dome in the South and lower Midwest sends heat indexes as high as 135°F (recorded in Lawrence, Kansas).

At Qeshm Dayrestan International Airport in Iran, a temperature of 100°F combines with 90 percent relative humidity to yield a heat index of 178°F. 

None of the eight Republican candidates for president at the first GOP debate will admit to believing that humans cause climate change. The candidate not at the debate doesn’t believe it either.

Conspiracy theories and rumors about the Maui wildfire are so plentiful that FEMA has to launch a website to refute them. 

The catastrophic wildfire in Tenerife on Spain’s Canary Islands is found to have been set deliberately.

People who live with persistent exposure to wildfire smoke have a higher risk of developing dementia.

Asian Americans have significantly higher exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals than other groups. 

Japan starts releasing treated radioactive wastewater from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the Pacific. 

Indonesia builds new coal-fired power plants to power all its factories producing electric vehicles and batteries.

The richest 10 percent of US households are responsible for 40 percent of US greenhouse gases.

California’s enormous Tulare Lake, the product of runoff from the winter’s epic snowfalls, has gone stagnant, and migratory birds there are dying of avian botulism. 

The Interior Department approves Revolution Wind, a wind farm for up to 65 turbines 17 miles off the coast of Rhode Island. It is the fourth offshore wind project to be greenlighted by the Biden administration. 

The Biden administration awards grants worth up to $500 million each to Occidental Petroleum and the Battelle Memorial Institute to build “direct air capture” carbon-removal hubs on the Gulf Coast, the first of many such awards. 

From 2021 to 2022, energy jobs increased in 95 percent of US counties.

California okays driverless “robo-taxis” in San Francisco. In the days following, 10 Cruise taxis freeze in a busy North Beach intersection, another gets stuck in wet cement, and yet another collides with a working fire engine. 

The health ministry in Cyprus distributes anti-COVID pills to the island's cats after 8,000 are killed by feline infectious peritonitis. Cyprus has been known as “the island of cats” since Helen of Constantinople sent boatloads of felines there in 400 CE to hunt venomous snakes. 

A giraffe at a zoo in Tennessee gives birth to a spotless calf, believed to be Earth’s only solid-colored reticulated giraffe.