On Wednesday July 12, one Chooseco staff member sat on a wet lawn, attempting to save friends’ photographs that had become glued together with mud. They had been stored in a basement that filled with water—one of many casualties of the flooding that swept across Vermont last week. The irony? Twelve years earlier, this same staff member had her own photos submerged in the flood water from Tropical Storm Irene and volunteers took on the task of saving them. Both floods were described as a once-in-1,000-years event.

A common misbelief is that a once-in-1,000-years event means an event that should only happen once every 1,000 years. While that interpretation is understandable, it is actually false. Instead, a once-in-1,000-years event means there is a 1 in 1,000 (or .1%) chance of an event happening every year.

You have the same odds of cracking open an egg with a double yolk or being born with an extra finger or toe!

The only way this kind of prediction is accurate is if we can rely on what environmental engineers call “stationarity,” which basically means that today is going to be like yesterday, and tomorrow is going to be like today, explains Dr. Ed Kearns, the Chief Data Officer of First Street Foundation, an organization whose mission is to make “climate risk accessible, easy to understand, and actionable for individuals, governments, and industry.” 

But “stationarity” is no longer a concept we can count on. Weather predictions can’t reliably be based on historical data anymore. In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration just published a report that finds that 1-in-100-year flood events are now becoming more like 1-in-8-year events. 

Why? 

Two words and a whole lot of mud-caked photographs: climate change.

As the planet continues to get warmer, we will experience more extreme precipitation. Every Celsius degree of warming (the equivalent of 33.8 degrees Fahrenheit) gives the air 7% more capacity for water vapor. More capacity for water vapor means more ability to hold moisture. This phenomenon is called a huge moisture plume, or a narrow corridor of concentrated moisture, also called an atmospheric river. (In essence we’ve got both rivers on the ground and rivers in the sky contributing to flooding.) This is critical and scary information, because more held moisture means a more likely possibility of extreme precipitation events. We’re talking hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, and floods.

But none of this is inevitable.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) says we’ve got four good reasons to be hopeful in 2023 in terms of climate mitigation—one reason for each season!

• Farming will Get Greener in 2023

  Agriculture is responsible for 24% of global greenhouse gas emissions on earth. Dairy cows are responsible for 8% of the methane pollution. Many food companies and farmers are collaborating on climate change projects like reducing methane emissions from commercial milk production. And $20 billion is going to farmers as part of the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, specifically earmarked for climate-smart practices. The EDF believes this may be the climate change/farm “tipping point” we’ve needed. (Not to be confused with cow tipping, which is a myth, BTW!)

• Making Clean Energy More Affordable

  The Just Energy Transition Partnership works off the idea that wealthy nations can negotiate clean energy project loan guarantees and grants for developing nations. The partnership will keep an estimated 1-1.5 gigatonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere, which is roughly equivalent to the pollution released by 250 million U.S. cars annually.

• 150 Countries Have Joined the Global Methane Pledge

  Methane is the main component in natural gas. And because it has more immediate warming power than carbon dioxide, cutting methane emissions is the quickest way to reduce global warming. The hope is to cut emissions by at least 30% by 2030.

• Improved International Food Waste Reduction 

  Through the United Nations’ Environment Program food waste reduction pledge, these companies promise to reduce food loss and waste, which worsens food insecurity and malnutrition, and accounts for 8% of global climate pollution. (Here are some great tips for reducing your own food waste.)

These are big resolutions. But climate change is an enormous issue. What can we do in our own lives to be a part of successful mitigation? The United Nations has compiled a great list of actions we can each take. From switching light bulbs to buying used clothes to eating more vegetables, there are tangible ways to embrace our new reality—which is preferable to cleaning out muddy basements and salvaging your life history in photos. 

If you would like to support recovery efforts, two local bookstores in Montpelier, Bear Pond Books and The Book Garden, have fundraisers you can contribute to.

Crocodiles are already pretty cool, right? They’re the largest reptiles on earth. They can hold their breath underwater for an hour. Their hearts are considered the most sophisticated in the animal world, with four chambers, and they're about as close as you can get to seeing a live dinosaur. But there has recently been a new discovery that takes their coolness to the next level.

Female crocs can reproduce without a male.

This phenomenon is called parthenogenesis (Greek for virgin creation) and means the act of reproducing from an egg without fertilization. As in no father needed. All of the genetic material comes from the mother.

But how?

In January 2018, in a Costa Rican zoo, an eighteen-year-old crocodile named Coquita laid fourteen eggs—but here’s the amazing thing—she had been living alone for sixteen of those years. Seven of the eggs seemed to be fertilized, so the zoo caretakers incubated them. After three months, the eggs still hadn’t hatched (it typically takes crocodile eggs nine to ten weeks to hatch), so the caretakers opened them. Six of the eggs contained nothing recognizable, but one of them contained a fully formed (but stillborn) baby crocodile.

Five years later, in June 2023, science tools had advanced enough for a team of researchers to analyze the DNA. They discovered that Coquita’s baby was a parthenogen, and they published a paper in the journal Biology Letters. 

So how does parthenogenesis actually work? Most animals need both a male and female to reproduce, each contributing half of the genetic material needed to create a new life. In the case of a parthenogenetic birth, as an egg cell grows in its mother’s body, it divides repeatedly to make exactly half the genes it needs to form new life. Three smaller cellular sacs containing chromosomes (called polar bodies) are byproducts of those dividing cells. Usually the polar bodies wither away. But in Coquita’s case, one of the polar bodies fused with the egg, in a sort of “fake” fertilization process, creating a cell with the necessary complement of chromosomes to create a whole individual. 

Engaging with Neal Agarwal’s The Deep Sea is kind of like experiencing your own personal IMAX. As you scroll through his captivating graphics that depict creatures living at deeper and deeper (and deeper…) depths of the ocean, you become privy to a secret world. The research that goes into this effort is evident. (For example, did you know the Japanese Spider Crab lives at 668 meters below sea level and is the largest known crab with a leg span of 3.8 meters? Neal does…) Neal also puts as much attention into the graphic aesthetics. And the result? An awe-inspiring dive into the deep, from the comfort of the chair you are sitting on. 

All of Neal Agarwal’s projects—neal.fun—are inspiring. Spend Bill Gates’ Money gives you a chance to buy things until Bill Gates’ $100,000,000,000 is gone. (Not as easy as you think!) Earth Reviews lets you literally give (and read other people’s) reviews about random, quirky subjects like Beards, Brunch, and Bears. (Totally hilarious.) And Space Elevator is The Deep Sea in reverse—a breathtaking trip up into space.