(Photo via iStock) Phoenix is no stranger to blistering temperatures, but it experienced an extraordinary October this year, with temperatures rising above 100 degrees for 21 straight days. This streak sets a new benchmark for the region, marking a level of heat that is unprecedented even for the Southwest. Climate change continues to warm the planet, creating chaos and displacing people across the globe. Until relatively recently , the U.S. has largely escaped the dire, immediate consequences of climate change, unlike the island nations slowly sinking under rising sea levels or the African countries facing drought or torrential flooding. But despite this relatively privileged positioning, rising average temperatures and an increase in extreme weather are having a palpable impact on an already vulnerable U.S. population: young people . Students experience…

For as long as scientists and policymakers have been grappling with climate change, they’ve been up against two critical questions: How much extra carbon has mankind sent into the atmosphere? And how much more can be added before global warming becomes disastrous? Climate researchers have spent decades tracking and quantifying the complex flows of carbon into and out of the atmosphere, but those questions couldn’t be filter sugar babies answered convincingly until 2009. That’s when a group of European scientists published a groundbreaking and highly credible global carbon budget that filled the information void. Using a comprehensive climate model, the scientists determined the maximum amount of greenhouse gases mankind could send into the atmosphere without triggering catastrophe—and then found that more than a quarter of that budget had been spent…