Sites with radioactive material more vulnerable as climate change increases wildfire, flood risks - The Bakersfield Californian
Sites with radioactive material more vulnerable as climate change increases wildfire, flood risks | National | bakersfield.com
Climate change increasingly threatens some of the nation's most sensitive sites, including research laboratories, military facilities and power plants with radioactive material.
Extreme heat and drought, longer fire seasons with larger, more intense blazes and supercharged rainstorms that can lead to catastrophic flooding are forcing a reckoning that environmentalists and experts say is long overdue.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.