TV News LIES

It's a moment scientists have warned about for months: Earth has just ended its warmest year since people began keeping records, and scientists say it may have been the warmest in 125,000 years.

Even though the December data isn't yet official, the results were already "locked in" by mid-December, Gavin Schmidt, a scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, told USA TODAY.

Given the six consecutive months of extremely warm temperatures, it was virtually impossible for December to be cold enough to alter the final results.

"We are already beyond the point that any normal process would be able to keep 2023 from being the hottest year," Robert Rohde of Berkeley Earth, said in mid-December.

An Israeli private investigator who orchestrated a global hacking operation that targeted American climate activists and foundations was sentenced in federal court to nearly seven years in prison after pleading guilty.

The emails obtained through the hacking were published in the American media. Federal prosecutors said that oil giant ExxonMobil then used the news reports to fight multiple state investigations.

The activists were victims of a hacking attack led by private investigator Aviram Azari. Federal prosecutors in New York say Azari was a key figure in a "massive computer hacking campaign that targeted thousands of victims worldwide," including climate activists in the U.S., government officials in Africa, members of a Mexican political party and critics of a German company called Wirecard.

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• The temperature in Phoenix, Arizona continues to rise as the city broke its previous record of the most consecutive days at or above 110F (43C).

Environmental and community groups have sued Utah officials over failures to save its iconic Great Salt Lake from irreversible collapse.

The largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere has been steadily shrinking, as more and more water has been diverted away from the lake to irrigate farmland, feed industry and water lawns. A megadrought across the US south-west, accelerated by global heating, has hastened the lake’s demise.

It’s been a strange, cruel summer in the United States. From the dystopian orange skies above New York to the deadly immolation of a historic coastal town in Hawaii, the waning summer has been a stark demonstration of the escalating climate crisis – with experts warning that worse is to come.

A relentless barrage of extreme weather events, fueled by human-caused global heating, has swept the North American continent this summer, routinely placing a third of the US population under warnings of severe heat and unleashing floods, fire and smoke upon communities, with a record 15 separate disasters causing at least $1bn in damages so far this year.

The heat has been particularly withering in places like Phoenix, Arizona, which had a record 31 consecutive days at temperatures above 110F (43C), while an enormous heatwave across the central swath of the US this week caused schools to be closed in states such as Wisconsin, Colorado and Iowa and food banks to be shut in Nebraska.

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A record heat wave in the Pacific Northwest has prompted fire managers to bump the national preparedness level up a notch, from three to four on a five point scale. More than two dozen large fires are now burning in the region, many sparked by dry thunderstorms.

At the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, federal fire managers monitor giant screens in a NASA like control room, as they deploy air tankers, hot shot crews and other resources around the West right now.

Meagan Conry, the federal Bureau of Land Management's assistant deputy director for fire and aviation, tracks fires on live cameras in the Northwest. She says the area has become vulnerable to increased fire activity because of, "above average temperatures, dry conditions, and some expectations for gusty winds over the next few days."

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