Tom Zeller

Heat Waves, As Climate Change Increases, Prove More Deadly For Poor, Minorities

huffingtonpost.com — Heat waves offer no dramatic images of flying debris or surging seawater. Yet each year torrid temperatures take more lives in the U.S. than tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and lightning combined. The silent killer also discriminates, as low-income communities of color often start with poorer underlying health than other communities, and have fewer tools and resources to combat a heat that can be further intensified by their immediate environment.

President Obama’s Dragnet

nytimes.com — Within hours of the disclosure that the federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.

Wildfire Smoke A Rising Health Concern With Climate Change

huffingtonpost.com — Suffocating smoke blew into the streets and schools of Cashmere, Wash., in September -- the billowing byproduct of wildfires blazing in forests surrounding the town and a harbinger of what experts say is a public health threat that increases with climate change. "Everyone was in third period," ninth-grader Hugo Pina told Seattle's KING 5 News.

Marijuana Pesticide Contamination Becomes Health Concern As Legalization Spreads

huffingtonpost.com — BELFAIR, Wash. -- Other than a skunky aroma, the waiting room at the Cannabis Care Foundation in Belfair, Wash., resembles your typical pharmacy. Chairs line walls next to stacks of magazines -- in this case, issues of Rolling Stone -- and a steady stream of patients step up to the counter with doctor's notes.

The Adirondack Park and Conservation on a Crowding Planet

dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com — Andrew C. Revkin Earlier this week, I spoke at the 20th meeting of the Adirondack Research Consortium.* This coalition of scientists and institutions has focused on providing data and analysis that can help sustain the ecological and economic integrity of New York's 6-million-acre, 120-year-old Adirondack Park.

Climate Change Impacts Ripple Through Fishing Industry While Ocean Science Lags Behind

huffingtonpost.com — With a limberness that defies his 69 years, Frank Mirarchi heaves himself over the edge of a concrete wharf and steps out onto a slack, downward sloping dock line bouncing 20 feet above the lapping waters near Scituate, Mass.

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Scientists Agree (Again): Climate Change Is Happening

huffingtonpost.com — Public opinion on the topic of climate change is notoriously fickle, changing -- quite literally sometimes -- with the weather. The latest bit of evidence on this: Yale's April 2013 climate change survey, which found, among other things, that Americans' conviction that global warming is happening had dropped by seven points, to 63 percent, over the preceding six months.

That 3-D Printed Gun? It’s Just the Start

bloomberg.com — It sounds like a Bond villain's idle fantasy. An enchanted machine that can produce any instrument of criminality you can think of: weapons, money, illicit keys, magical pills. Three-dimensional printers, as it happens, may soon be able to produce all this -- if they aren't doing so already.