Between 2021 and 2022, a stark white band appeared along the rocky cliffs surrounding Lake Mead, the massive reservoir on the Nevada-Arizona border that supplies water to 25 million people across the American Southwest. Photographers working for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other major publications captured images of this "bathtub ring"—a chalky white mineral deposit marking where the water's surface had been just two decades earlier. The contrast was jarring:

In August 2019, satellite imagery from NASA and NOAA revealed a sight that seemed almost apocalyptic: vast plumes of smoke from thousands of fires in the Amazon rainforest, so extensive they were visible from space and had darkened the skies of São Paulo—a city over 1,700 miles away—in the middle of the afternoon. The photographs and satellite data, published by major news outlets worldwide, showed bright orange fire hotspots scattered across Brazil's northern states like a r

When climate scientist Ed Hawkins posted a simple graphic on social media in May 2018, he could hardly have anticipated that within months it would appear on the steps of the United Nations, across the front pages of newspapers worldwide, and even on the warming-up jackets of soccer teams. The "warming stripes" or "climate stripes" visualization stripped climate data down to its absolute essence: a series of vertical bars, progressing from cool blues on the left to alarming r

In 2013, a photograph emerged from the rainforests of Indonesian Borneo that would crystallize the global conversation about deforestation in a single, heartbreaking frame. The image, captured by International Animal Rescue during a rescue operation, showed a lone orangutan confronting a bulldozer that was demolishing its forest home. Standing upright on the mechanical arm of the excavator, the great ape appeared to be physically attempting to stop the machine's advance—a ges

To understand why Tuvalu's government would orchestrate such an unusual photo opportunity, you need to understand what's at stake for this small nation. Tuvalu consists of nine coral atolls scattered across the Pacific Ocean, midway between Hawaii and Australia. The entire country covers just 10 square miles of land, with a population of around 11,000 people. And crucially, no point in Tuvalu rises more than 15 feet above sea level. This makes Tuvalu one of the most vulnerabl

Glacier National Park in Montana offers perhaps the most documented case of glacial retreat in North America. When the park was established in 1910, it contained approximately 150 glaciers. Today, fewer than 25 remain, and most of those are mere shadows of their former selves. The repeat photography project at Glacier National Park has produced some of the most striking before-and-after images available. Grinnell Glacier, one of the park's most photographed ice masses, has lo

At 9:30 AM on September 9, 2020, San Francisco photographer Christopher Michel stepped outside to document what seemed impossible: the city was bathed in an apocalyptic orange glow that turned day into a perpetual, eerie twilight. His photograph of the Bay Bridge shrouded in dense orange atmosphere—streetlights still illuminated against what should have been morning sky—captured a moment when climate change transformed one of America's most iconic cities into something from a

On May 10, 2019, photographer Steve Belasco was documenting erosion damage along North Carolina's Outer Banks when he captured the exact moment a beach house in Rodanthe began its final collapse into the Atlantic Ocean. His photograph—showing the modern two-story vacation home tilting precariously as waves consumed its foundation, its deck already twisted and broken—would become one of the most shared climate change images of the year. Unlike distant melting glaciers or abstr

On August 20, 2018, Swedish photographer Anders Hellberg encountered an unusual sight outside the Swedish Parliament building in Stockholm: a lone 15-year-old girl sitting on the cobblestones with a hand-painted sign reading "Skolstrejk för klimatet" (School Strike for Climate). Hellberg, a professional photographer who often documented Stockholm street life, took several frames of Greta Thunberg on that first day of what she intended to be a three-week strike leading up to S

The poster for "An Inconvenient Truth" presented a deceptively simple visual equation: industrial smokestacks billowing white and gray emissions that morphed seamlessly into the spiral structure of a massive hurricane. Created by the design team at Paramount Classics under creative director Dawn Baillie, this single image managed to distill the entire climate change narrative into an instantly comprehensible cause-and-effect relationship. Released in May 2006, the poster prec

On December 7, 1972, approximately 29,000 kilometers from Earth, the crew of Apollo 17—Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt—turned their Hasselblad camera back toward home. At 05:39 EST, with the sun directly behind them, they captured what would become the most widely distributed photograph in human history: a perfect, fully illuminated view of Earth floating in the black void of space. The image, officially designated AS17-148-22727 but universally known as "Th

Paul Nicklen/National Geographic Creative (2007). In the summer of 2007, Canadian photographer and marine biologist Paul Nicklen was on assignment for National Geographic in the Svalbard archipelago, far above the Arctic Circle. Working in brutally cold conditions from a small Zodiac boat, Nicklen spent weeks tracking and documenting polar bears as they navigated the increasingly fragmented ice floes of a warming Arctic. The image that would emerge from this expedition—a soli

After exploring the marketing machine, promise-reality gaps, and psychological factors that drive AI hype, we arrive at the most practical question: how do we separate genuine AI value from marketing fluff? In a landscape saturated with inflated claims and buzzword bingo, the ability to critically evaluate AI applications has become an essential skill for business leaders, consumers, and investors. The good news is that with the right framework and questions, it's entirely po

Having explored how AI marketing creates unrealistic expectations and examined the gap between promises and reality, a crucial question...

After examining how AI became the ultimate marketing buzzword, it's time to confront an uncomfortable truth: the gap between what AI...

In the span of just a few years, "artificial intelligence" has transformed from a niche computer science term into the most powerful...

The passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill has shaken climate advocates and environmentalists across the country. But in the face of...

In what former President Donald Trump has called “the most beautiful bill in decades,” the newly passed One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB)...

Despite the destruction, there are glimpses of environmental resilience—and even resistance—in the midst of the Middle East’s war-torn...

The Middle East has long been a crucible of conflict. Yet amid the headlines of warfare, geopolitical alliances, and humanitarian crises,...