In the foothills of the Sierra Madre mountains, the carcasses of starving cattle rotted in a bone-dry reservoir.
Down on the valley floor, farmworker Rafael Parra bent to the work of feeding the world — and unintentionally warming it. wapo.st/3mmTaWk
Parra plunged one end of an old, plastic tube into an irrigation canal, generating the suction that sent water gurgling into the drought-parched earth.
“That’s all there is to it.”
He was not fully aware of the invisible consequences of his work. wapo.st/3mmTaWk
Scientists who have studied this valley for decades know that it’s at these precise conditions — when water mixes with nitrogen fertilizer, with no crops in the ground to absorb it — that huge surges of nitrous oxide gas are released into the atmosphere. wapo.st/3mmTaWk
The world’s climate conferences and pledges have done nothing to change a basic and dangerous fact: Concentrations of major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to rise. wapo.st/3mmTaWk
What happens each fall in this valley underscores how difficult it is to even track these emissions accurately, let alone stop them. wapo.st/3mmTaWk
Emerging scientific evidence suggests that Mexico’s emissions of nitrous oxide are significantly underestimated — emissions may be double or even quadruple what the country reports.
It’s a problem that the Mexican government acknowledged to The Post. wapo.st/3mmTaWk
Without regulation, the fight against nitrous oxide pollution is left to people such as Iván Ortiz-Monasterio, a 63-year-old agronomist from Cuernavaca who has spent his career trying to convince farmers to use nitrogen more efficiently. wapo.st/3mmTaWk
In the fourth installment of our series, Invisible, The Washington Post examines how over-fertilization in Mexico results in a surge of nitrous gas that scientists and the government are grappling to understand. wapo.st/3mmTaWk
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Early evidence from Scotland and England suggests that omicron is sending fewer people to the hospital. That surveillance tracks well with the latest observations from South Africa. washingtonpost.com/world/europe/o…
The early research from Scotland was led by the scientists at the University of Edinburgh, in a well-vaccinated population not too different from the U.S.
The “Cowboy Cocktail,” a coveted financial arrangement, has attracted a new set of outsiders to Wyoming, the least populated state in America. wapo.st/3srvHr3
The arrangement, which combines a Wyoming trust and layers of private companies, allows the world’s wealthy to move and spend money in extraordinary secrecy, in some cases without state oversight. wapo.st/3srvHr3
Millionaires and billionaires around the world have taken note.
In recent years, families across the globe have abandoned international financial centers for law firms in Wyoming, helping to turn the state into one of the world’s top tax havens. wapo.st/3srvHr3
The images of 2021 tell a complex yet dramatic story, Marc Fisher writes.
There was fire and there was rain; the West burned and New York flooded. The Earth itself seemed to confront people with one test after another. wapo.st/3oOPBd4
There was, perhaps above all, the terror of lethal disease, a second year of a virus that unraveled the fabric of daily life and managed to set people against each other in ways that defied reason. wapo.st/3oOPBd4
It was a year when Americans hopped up on rage and fueled by distortions breached barricades and shattered glass, rebelling against their own country’s most solemn symbol of peaceful change. wapo.st/3oOPBd4
Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease specialist, warned Sunday that the U.S. is likely to see record numbers of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths as the omicron variant spreads rapidly. washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12…
“We are going to see a significant stress in some regions of the country on the hospital system, particularly in those areas where you have a low level of vaccination,” Fauci said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” washingtonpost.com/health/2021/12…
Fauci described omicron as “extraordinary,” with a doubling time of two to three days. The variant accounts for 50 percent of cases in parts of the country, which meant it would almost certainly take over as the dominant variant in the U.S., he added. wapo.st/3q77PpD
Sen. Joe Manchin III on Sunday said that he could not vote to proceed on Democrats’ roughly $2 trillion spending package, dealing a potentially fatal political blow to the final piece of President Biden’s economic agenda. washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021…
“I can’t move forward. I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation, I just can’t,” Manchin said on Fox News Sunday, citing the impacts of rising prices, the arrival of a new coronavirus variant and other domestic and international challenges.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a blistering statement that Manchin had previously assured President Biden he would support some version of the bill and that negotiations were continuing. washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021…
Highly vaccinated countries thought they were over the worst. Denmark says the pandemic’s toughest month is just beginning. wapo.st/3J0EG8l
Scientists caution that the knowledge of omicron remains imprecise. Denmark’s virus modelers have many scenarios.
But even in a middle-of-the-road scenario, Danish hospitals will soon face a daily flow of patients several times beyond previously seen. washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/…
Denmark’s data shows people with two doses to be just as vulnerable to omicron infection as the unvaccinated.
Those who’ve received boosters have better protection — a sign of hope — but about 3 in 4 Danes have yet to receive a third dose. washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/…