State officials release "resilience plan," but political will remains in question In addition to deaths worldwide from COVID-19 and record unemployment, the globe surpassed another portentous record last month: The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached the highest ever recorded — 417.1 parts per million, according to an announcement yesterday by NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
...climate change
In 2016, Hurricane Florence moved so slowly – more like a mosey, instead of a sprint – that it emptied trillions of gallons of rain over the same places for hours, even days. "At times I could have outrun" the storm, said scientist Jessica Whitehead, chief resilience officer for the state's Office of Resilience and Recovery, at a climate change summit in Havelock earlier this month.
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Embedded in bark, the Emerald Ash Borer gleams like the gem. Adult females lay their eggs in the cracks and crevices of ash trees, and once hatched, larvae, cream-colored and as thin as filament, gnaw into the deeper layers. They chisel fatal curlicues that disrupt the flow of nutrients. A few months later, the life cycle begins again, and the adults emerge through a D-shaped hole in the bark. By that time, the tree is dying or dead of starvation.
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The summer of 2018 ranks among the wettest on record in eastern North Carolina, a consequence of climate change and its driver — greenhouse gas emissions. The NC Department of Environmental Quality’s draft Greenhouse Gas Inventory shows the state’s contributions to a warming and unpredictable global climate...
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