Cotton seeds sprout aboard China’s Chang’e-4 lunar lander, becoming the first plants to germinate on the moon. 

Wildfires now burn so intensely that they create their own thunderstorms, known as pyrocumulonimbus clouds.

Clearing all the trees that could fall on power lines and spark deadly wildfires, says California utility Pacific Gas & Electric, could cost $150 billion. 

Following a year in which no newborn North Atlantic right whales were identified, three have been spotted thus far in the 2019 breeding season.

Efforts to rescue right whales in distress—e.g., those entangled in fishing gear—are being disrupted or halted by the partial shutdown of the federal government. 

The shutdown has also caused the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s climate data website to go dark. 

Greenland is melting four times faster than previously thought and will become a major contributor to future sea level rise.

A man in Arctic Village, Alaska, encounters a polar bear 100 miles south of the bears’ usual range. 

In a new poll, 73 percent of respondents say they believe climate change is occurring, an increase of 10 points since 2015. 

President Trump mocks climate change because it is snowing.

A 20-foot great white shark seen feeding on a dead sperm whale off the coast of Oahu may be Deep Blue, the largest great white ever recorded. 

Apple predicts that climate change will make people even more dependent on their iPhones, since they can also be used as flashlights or sirens and can be charged with hand-crank devices.  

Berkeley, California, bans most disposable plastic foodware.

Germany’s Green Party proposes a speed limit of 130 kilometers per hour (roughly 80 mph) on the currently unlimited Autobahn. 

Since Uber and Lyft entered the transportation market in San Francisco in 2010, ridership on buses has declined by 12.7 percent.  

The world’s largest and most powerful wind turbine is being built in the Netherlands near Rotterdam. The 12-megawatt turbine will be as tall as San Francisco’s Transamerica Pyramid, with a rotor diameter as large as a tower of the Golden Gate Bridge above water.  

A man tries to carve a peace symbol into the giant spinning ice disk in the Presumpscot River in Westbrook, Maine, and breaks it in half.