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Earth Day 2024: 60 Minutes revisits climate change reporting archive
To mark Earth Day, 60 Minutes looked back at some of the climate change stories we have reported over the years.
Last year, 60 Minutes reported that scientists were sounding an alarm that we were living in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. American biologist Paul Ehrlich told Scott Pelley that humans would need “five more Earths” to maintain our current way of life.
In 2006, Scott Pelley and a 60 Minutes team traveled to the Arctic to speak with scientists, including leading authority on climate change Robert Corell and glaciologist Carl Boggild, to unearth and explain the effects that man is having on the world’s climate.
Rising seas, powerful hurricanes and the eventual extinction of polar bears are a few of the major consequences these scientists warned the world about on 60 Minutes over 15 years ago.
In 2007, 60 Minutes reported on a new consequence of global warming—living in an age of “megafires.” These are “forest infernos,” wildfires that are roughly 10 times larger than the world was used to seeing at the time.
Scott Pelley spoke with the then-chief of fire operations for the federal government, Tom Boater, who explained that “ten years ago, if you had a 10,000-acre fire, you were talking about a huge fire…now we talk about 200,000-acre fires like it’s just another day at the office.”
Pelley also spoke with Tom Swetnam, one of the world’s leading fire ecologists, about how global warming has created these mega-fires, and is continuing to exacerbate them.
“As the spring is arriving earlier because of warming conditions, the snow on these high mountain areas is melting and running off,” Swetnam said in 2007. “The log and the branches and the tree needles all can dry out more quickly and have a longer period to be dry.”
This causes a longer time period for fires to start.
At Petermann Glacier in Greenland, one of the largest glaciers in the Arctic Circle that has been rapidly melting, the world’s leading climate scientists, oceanographers and geologists go just one month a year to work.
In 2016, 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi and her team traveled seven hundred miles above the Arctic Circle to the U.S.’s Thule Air Force Base in northern Greenland to join these scientists, and report on “one of the most significant efforts to study changes in the climate.”
In December of 2018, 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker reported on “The Camp Fire,” a massive wildfire that burned through Paradise, California in November 2018 and claimed 85 human lives. The fire that raged through this small town in Central California destroyed over 19,000 buildings and homes in just its first few hours.
The remains of many victims couldn’t be identified with conventional methods such as fingerprints or dental records, and local authorities had to turn to a new rapid DNA approach for victim identification.
Ken Pimlot, the former chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, said that years of drought and dry vegetation stemming from rising temperatures were the reason for these blazing fires, and that it was only going to get worse.
“These fires are showing no sign of letting up,” Pimlot said. “There’s no reason for them to stop based on the conditions that we’re seeing…we’re now, every year, seeing fires…that are becoming more and more extreme.”
This article was originally published on April 22, 2021.
There were no injuries after a Southwest flight carrying passengers was struck by gunfire on the tarmac of Dallas Love Field Friday night, authorities said.
Southwest Airlines Flight 2494 was preparing for departure to Indianapolis when “a bullet apparently struck the right side of the aircraft under the flight deck,” a Southwest spokesperson told CBS News in a statement.
The airline said no one was hurt. A spokesperson for Dallas Love Field said in an email that the aircraft returned to its gate after sustaining damage from a “security incident” and the passengers deplaned. The runway was also temporarily closed, but has since reopened.
Dallas police confirmed the incident, saying that officers responded to reports of gunfire at 9:48 p.m. local time, arriving to find that the aircraft had been struck.
No further details were provided on the circumstances of the incident or what was the potential source of the gunfire. It’s unclear how many people were aboard the jet at the time, or how much damage the aircraft sustained.
In its own statement provided to CBS News, the Federal Aviation Administration said that the plane “was reportedly struck by gunfire near the cockpit.”
Dallas police are leading the investigation into the incident.
Earlier this week, gunfire amid ongoing gang violence struck three planes that were either landing or departing Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince. The shootings prompted the FAA to issue a 30-day ban on U.S. airlines flying to Haiti.
Social media star Jake Paul defeated boxing legend Mike Tyson in a highly anticipated fight with an age difference of over three decades between the two contenders. The Friday night win for the YouTuber-turned-pro-boxer was streamed on Netflix from the home of the Dallas Cowboys in Texas.
Paul defeated Tyson by an unanimous decision after the two fighters went eight full rounds.
Fight night for the 58-year-old Tyson and 27-year-old Paul came following doubts over whether it would happen at all. The fight was originally scheduled for July, but was postponed after the former heavyweight champion experienced an ulcer flare-up on a plane in May.
A different kind of flare-up happened during the official weigh-in Thursday with Tyson slapping Paul in the face. Tyson later told the New York Post that Paul had stepped on his toe when the two were toe to toe onstage.
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What is Jake Paul’s fight record?
With the win, Paul’s record improved to 11-1.
Was Jake Paul predicted to win?
Oddsmakers had Paul as the slight favorite to win. Former heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua also went with Paul.
How much prize money does Jake Paul win?
Paul was expected to earn about $40 million from the fight, according to DraftKings Network and other online sources.
Promoters didn’t reveal the payouts ahead of the bout. Paul is a co-founder of Most Valuable Promotions, which produced the fight.
Does Mike Tyson still get paid?
Tyson was expected to take home around $20 million for the fight, according to DraftKings and other online reports.
Tyson entered professional boxing in 1985 and became the youngest heavyweight champion in history a year later. After serving time for a rape conviction in the 1990s, Tyson won the World Boxing Council and World Boxing Association titles.
He retired from boxing in 2005 and was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2011. He last fought in a 2020 exhibition match against former four-division world champ Roy Jones Jr.
“He like put on another 20 pounds from when I fought him, so he’s more bigger and he’s more dangerous because more size, more power, so it’s going to be a tough one for Jake to climb,” Jones told CBS News ahead of the fight.
Anne Marie Lee and
contributed to this report.
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