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Fast-moving wildfires are devastating parts of Northern California, including Sonoma and Napa Counties, just north of the Bay Area. Victims — and their animals — displaced by evacuation orders and property loss need your help.

While burning coal today causes Earth to overheat, about 300 million years ago the formation of that same coal brought our planet close to global glaciation. For the first time, scientists show the massive effect in a study published in the renowned Proceedings of the US Academy of Sciences. When trees in vast forests died during a time called the Carboniferous and the Permian, the carbon dioxide (CO2) they took up from the atmosphere while growing got buried; the plants’ debris over time formed most of the coal that today is used as fossil fuel. Consequently, the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere sank drastically and Earth cooled down to a degree it narrowly escaped what scientists call a ‘snowball state’.

Tropical Storm Ophelia developed on Oct. 9 around 5 a.m. EDT as the seventeenth, tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season. It formed in the Central Atlantic Ocean about 875 miles (1,405 km) west-southwest of the Azores islands. NASA's Terra satellite provided forecasters with a visible image of the storm as it strengthened into a tropical storm. 

Tropical Depression 23W formed on Monday, Oct. 9 and by Tuesday, Oct. 10 it made landfall in northern Vietnam. NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed the depression in infrared light and determined the strongest storms were located in two countries.  

While the policy debate surrounding crude oil transportation costs has emphasized accidents and spills, a new study by Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh researchers indicates the debate is overlooking a far more serious external cost—air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.