With the help of her singing rabbit puppet Petunia, Darci Lynne Farmer, a 12-year-old ventriloquist from the Oklahoma City area, wowed the judges and studio audience on Tuesday's season premiere of "America's Got Talent."
Temperature
records have been breaking all over, as our Earth registers some of the
hottest periods ever measured. Correspondent David Pogue
explains how a "heat dome" has been driving up temperatures, and how
extreme heat is affecting residents of Phoenix, where there has been a
rise in hospital admissions for heat stress.
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Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns, mainly caused by human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels.
Comments
Excellent work as always, David. I live in the northern Midwest where the temperature rarely goes above 100 F but we are seeing the impact of global warming in the form of stronger thunderstorms producing larger and more damaging hail. Earlier this year we got hail the size of a quarter and now I need a new roof. All the local car dealers are selling hail damaged cars at reduced prices. Outside of extremely rare tornadoes, we always considered ourselves safe from most natural disasters. Now we are seeing that nature can hit in a wide variety of ways.
What Is Climate Change? Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Such shifts can be natural, due to changes in the sun’s activity or large volcanic eruptions. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures. The main greenhouse gases that are causing climate change include carbon dioxide and methane. These come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a building, for example. Clearing land and cutting down forests can also release carbon dioxide. Agriculture, oil and gas operations are major sources of methane emissions. Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and land use are among the main sectors causing greenhouse gases.
Politicians
may still debate it but it’s getting harder and harder to deny with
temperatures climbing to new heights everywhere something's going on out
there. David Pogue takes
us to Phoenix where the heat is on the last eight years have been the
hottest years ever measured on the planet July was the hottest month
ever recorded July 6 was the hottest day all over the planet the heat
broke temperature records including in Siberia 103 degrees more than
half the U.S population was subject to heat warnings in July here in
Phoenix Arizona the heat has broken all kinds of records including the
longest streak of consecutive days where the temperature hit 110 degrees
or hotter really cooking today in Phoenix 118 degrees I think tomorrow
will be even hotter and it's not just the hot air that's dangerous it's
the surfaces this steering wheel 162.5 this sidewalk is 144
Fahrenheit that's hot enough to burn your dog's Paws in 60 seconds and
this playground slide for children 182.8 degrees people say oh you live
in Phoenix it's a dry heat and honestly 100 105 is not bad but I want
to stress very strongly nobody is acclimated to 115 118 degrees more
Troublesome is the fact that the low temperature Melissa Guardaro is an
extreme heat researcher at Arizona State University have there been in
Phoenix hospitals a rise in admissions absolutely the most number of
Hospital admissions for heat stress that we've ever had what can you
tell us about the ways your life changes during a heat wave like this
so you don't work out Outdoors at 11 o'clock you go and you hike at
five or six o'clock in the morning I actually have mittens in my car
so that when the steering wheel gets really hot I put my mittens on and
that's how I drive you know you're living in a hot place when you
have to keep oven mitts in your glove compartment yeah compartment
because [Laughter] so why has so much of the country been scorching for
so long well allow me to introduce that breakout weather term of
2023 the heat Dome it's an area of high pressure way up high that
traps the warm air like the lid on a pot it traps the heat it stops rain
from moving in to cool us off and it just sits there unfortunately
not every area under the heat Dome suffers equally you want to know
who gets the worst of it cities are where heat comes to stay and comes
to live Becca Benner is a director of climate issues at the nonprofit
nature conservancy cities on average are several degrees warmer than
the surrounding areas and just because of so much pavement it tends to
absorb heat better and reflect heat better they call it the urban heat
island effect too much pavement not enough trees and Greenery to cool
things off the heat island effect is worse in the poorer areas of our
cities where there aren't many trees and even the bus stops don't
always offer shade Carlos Galves lives in Phoenix without air
conditioning electricity or even running water the thermometer on his
wall registers 109.
Are you able to sleep in this heat if I sleep for half an hour then
I'll lie awake for an hour after that because it's just so hot do you
have some tricks to stay cool in here I drink a lot of water and twice a
day I pour a bucket of water on myself and I just try to rest in the
evening in Phoenix you can get free transportation to the city's 90
cooling centers but ever since he collapsed from the Heat last month
Galves is worried about leaving his house I'm afraid I could faint
again if I go out during the day so I wait till the sun is going down to
go out to get ice or water even for people who have air conditioning
not everyone can afford to use it the average bill for AC in Phoenix is
over $450 a month we have a group of people who have to make very
difficult choices do I pay for air conditioning or do I pay for my rent
this kind of heat wave is bringing up all the chinks in the
infrastructure last month President Biden announced some small steps
toward adapting to dangerous heat like expanding access to drinking
water improving weather forecasts and setting up a heat alert system we
should be protecting workers from hazardous conditions and we will but
Guardaro maintains that there's much more to be done city planners
should develop heat infrastructure like cooling centers and strategic
Greenery and the federal government should start taking heat as
seriously as it treats other climate disasters FEMA has never declared
extreme heat as a disaster so flooding and hurricane all those things
can be designated Federal disaster areas but not heat not Heat standing
up more cooling centers providing greater services for people no that
is not reimbursed by the government because there has never been a
FEMA extreme heat declared disaster which climate crisis disaster kills
the most people extreme heat is the climate disaster that kills the
most people in fact it kills more people than all of the other
disasters combined and we kind of have a joke here that we show a
picture of before Heat Wave and then we show a picture after a heat
wave and it's the same picture and that's part of the problem because
people see tornadoes and houses are upended and hurricanes and trees
and utility poles and it's this Invisible Killer so it sounds like heat
among the various climate disasters does not get enough love from the
media and the government it absolutely does not get enough love of
course heat waves aren't the only result of the warming Planet heat
also dries out vegetation and we get fires heat evaporates the land so
we get droughts heat evaporates the oceans so we get hurricanes the
nature conservancy's Becca Benner cautions us not to think of this
Summer's heat as something freakish and rare it's the new normal it is
no longer a future threat we are living this now so whether your
basement just flooded whether you just had to evacuate for a fire
whether it's too hot for you to go outside and enjoy yourself that
means we are now experiencing some of the impacts of climate change we
have to reduce emissions and we have to do it immediately and faster.
On June 21, the sun will be directly overhead at the Tropic of Cancer - signaling the LONGEST DAYLIGHT for the Northern Hemisphere. The day of the June Summer Solstice has the longest daylight in the Northern Hemisphere and the shortest in the Southern Hemisphere. It’s Winter Solstice for those in the south and most of Antarctica also do not receive any sunlight during this time.
Early celebrations date back to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas. They spread across the South
amongst newly freed African American slaves and their descendants and
became more commercialized in the 1920s and 1930s, often centering on a food festival. Participants in the Great Migration brought these celebrations to the rest of the country. During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, these celebrations were eclipsed by the nonviolent determination to achieve civil rights, but grew in popularity again in the 1970s with a focus on African-American freedom and African-American arts. Beginning with Texas by proclamation in 1938, and by legislation in 1979, every U.S. state and the District of Columbia has formally recognized the holiday in some way.
The day was recognized as a federal holiday in 2021, when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. Juneteenth became the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was adopted in 1983.
Celebrations and traditions The holiday is considered the "longest-running African-American holiday" and has been called "America's second Independence Day." Juneteenth falls on June 19 and has often been celebrated on the third Saturday in June. Historian Mitch Kachun considers that celebrations of the end of slavery have three goals: "to celebrate, to educate, and to agitate".
The Black Seminoles of Nacimiento in Mexico hold a festival and reunion, known as el DΓa de los Negros on June 19. Many former British colonies celebrate Emancipation Day on August 1, commemorating the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.
Since 2021, the United Nations has designated August 31 as the International Day for People of African Descent.
History On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln announced that the Emancipation Proclamation
would go into effect on January 1, 1863, promising freedom to enslaved
people in all of the rebellious parts of Southern states of the Confederacy including Texas. Enforcement of the Proclamation generally relied upon the advance of Union troops. Texas, as the most remote state of the former Confederacy, had seen an expansion of slavery because the presence of Union troops was low as the American Civil War ended; thus, the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation had been slow and inconsistent there prior to Granger's order.
Opal Lee is a huge reason Juneteenth is a federal holiday. In 2016 she walked from Fort Worth, Texas to D.C., 2.5M a day, to symbolize the 2.5 years it took news to reach the remaining slaves in Texas that they were free. She was 89. She walked 1400 miles hoping to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
She tried again in 2019 to make the walk but it was cut short by covid (I can't even do any math on how long this walk must take for her).
Last summer, Biden signed the bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday with her in attendance.
She walked 2.5M last year on Juneteenth. But she doesn't have to walk all the way to D.C. ever again.
President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law, June 17, 2021
Today’s video Google Doodle, illustrated by Los Angeles-based guest artist Loveis Wise and narrated by actor and activist LeVar Burton, honors the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth. Short for “June Nineteenth,” Juneteenth marks the true end of chattel slavery across the United States - which didn’t actually occur until 1865, two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
Specifically, it marks the day when enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas (one of the westernmost points in the Confederate South) finally received news of their liberation.