NASA

An unprecedented heat wave is baking Seattle, and Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital is overwhelmed.

Doctors scramble to treat people with heat stroke and pregnant women going into early labor due to triple-digit temperatures. The emergency room runs out of ice. Elective surgeries are canceled. Grey Sloan is so inundated — partly due to power outages at another hospital — that it’s forced to turn away patients.

In one scene — because this is all happening on the latest season of “Grey’s Anatomy” — several doctors operate on a young man who tried to rob a convenience store, only to wind up shot with his own gun during a scuffle.

“We should invite the lawmakers voting against background checks to assist,” says Teddy Altman (Kim Raver), the hospital’s chief of surgery.

“Well, violent crime rises along with the temperature,” responds intern Jules Millin (Adelaide Kane).

Fact check: Accurate. There’s real research linking gun violence to above-average temperatures.

There was also a real heat dome that inspired the writers of “Grey’s Anatomy.” Portland hit a record 116 degrees in 2021; between the U.S. and Canada, 1,400 people died. Global warming made it worse, researchers found.

If President Trump and other politicians keep doing the oil and gas industry’s bidding, the climate crisis will only get deadlier. But Hollywood can play a leading role in turning the tide.

Not by preaching. By entertaining.

I’d never seen “Grey’s Anatomy” before watching the heat wave episodes; soap operas aren’t really my thing. But the long-running ABC drama got me invested right away. The characters are sympathetic, the dialogue sharp and funny, the medical plotlines rife with tension. And I was impressed by how the writers kept the heat front of mind: a coffee cart running out of cold drinks, patients fanning themselves, several references to cooling centers.

In one of the final scenes of the two-episode arc, which concluded in March, surgical resident Ben Warren (Jason George) says the hospital needs an emergency plan for heat domes. It isn’t prepared for wildfires, either.

“They’re only increasing with climate change,” he says.

Some of you may be thinking: Who cares about a bunch of fake doctors running around a fake hospital? We have real climate problems in the real world. Trump and congressional Republicans are eviscerating clean air rules and revoking clean energy grants. Let’s focus on politics and policy, not pop culture.

Thing is, people don’t form opinions in a vacuum. The media we consume inform our politics — fiction included.

Studies have shown, for instance, that the sitcom “Will & Grace” reduced prejudice against gay men, and that on-screen violence can increase the risk of violent behavior. Researchers found that a scene from HBO’s “Sex and the City” reboot “And Just Like That …” made viewers more likely to say eating less meat is good for the environment.

Millions of people watch “Grey’s Anatomy.” The impact is clear to producer Zoanne Clack, an emergency medicine physician who spoke at the Hollywood Climate Summit this month.

“In the ER, I could tell two people about diabetes. They might tell two people, and they might tell two people,” she said. “But I do a story on [diabetes] on ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ and 20 million people have seen it.”

“And if 10% of those people get something out of it, that’s a lot of people,” she added.

Already, researchers are studying viewer responses to the heat dome storyline. The conservation nonprofit Rare surveyed 3,600 people, showing some participants the first heat episode and others an unrelated episode.

Although the study isn’t done yet, Anirudh Tiwathia, Rare’s director of behavioral science for entertainment, told me it’s clear that viewers came away from the heat episode more concerned and better-informed about extreme heat. The nonprofit is still testing whether those effects persisted several weeks after watching.

Rare also showed some viewers the heat dome episode plus a social media video reiterating the health dangers of extreme heat. Those viewers may come away even more informed. Rare released a study last year finding that people who watched “Don’t Look Up” — a disaster movie with intentional climate parallels — were far more likely to support climate action if they also watched a climate-focused video starring lead actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

“People see stuff on screen, and then they see stuff on the second screen,” Tiwathia said, referring to phones and laptops. “The second screen is an opportunity to really pick up the baton from the main narrative.”

The videos used by Rare for its “Grey’s Anatomy” study were commissioned by Action for the Climate Emergency, which paid social media influencers to create 21 videos tied to the show. Rare chose four videos, including one by a gardener with 234,000 Instagram followers and one by an artist with 2 million followers.

A survey by Action for the Climate Emergency found that social media users who saw the videos were more likely than typical “Grey’s Anatomy” viewers to understand the links between heat, health and global warming.

“It’s an opportunity for us to reach outside the echo chamber,” said Leah Qusba, the group’s chief executive.

Fortunately, there’s a small-but-growing ecosystem within Hollywood that’s increasingly able to support this kind of partnership. A few major studios have started teams to advise creatives on climate storytelling. Environmental groups, consulting firms and universities have stepped up to provide expertise and research.

The “Grey’s Anatomy” heat dome storyline might not have happened except for Adam Umhoefer, an executive at the CAA Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Creative Artists Agency, one of Hollywood’s top talent agencies. He co-founded Green Screen, an effort to connect CAA clients and others in the industry to sustainability experts.

“The idea is that I’m kind of operating as an agent for climate,” Umhoefer told me.

When Umhoefer heard from a friend in the “Grey’s Anatomy” writers’ room that the writers were looking to tell a climate story — after ending Season 20 with a massive wildfire — he connected them with the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose Rewrite the Future initiative consults with studios to improve climate storytelling.

“We were very interested in continuing that [fire] story, and the effect on the community of Seattle,” showrunner Meg Marinis said at the Hollywood Climate Summit. “We just didn’t want to pretend that never existed.”

To foreshadow the heat dome, they started the season with climate protesters blocking a bridge, causing several characters to get stuck in traffic. One of them, Link (Chris Carmack), scolds his partner Jo (Camilla Luddington) for getting annoyed, since the protesters are fighting for a worthy cause. Tick populations are exploding, he reminds her, increasing the risk of Lyme disease. And the last 10 years have been the 10 hottest on record globally.

“When Camilla and Chris Carmack were in that car, it was like 95 degrees near Long Beach. … They were putting ice packs on their heads in between takes,” Marinis said. “It was all very relatable. We were all living through it.”

Lived experience aside, it’s hard to know how much appetite entertainment executives will have for more climate stories while Trump is in office. He’s flouted democratic norms by threatening and even pursuing lawsuits against media companies that irk him, including Paramount, Comcast and the Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC.

But the fossil fuel industry won’t stop winning the culture wars, and thus the political wars, until a much broader segment of the American public demands climate solutions, now. Hollywood can help make it happen.

The folks behind “Grey’s Anatomy,” at least, say they aren’t planning to back down. Stay tuned.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

As we drove north along Highway 395 — passing the salty remains of Owens Lake, the Museum of Western Film History, the geothermal plant outside Mammoth Lakes that supplies 24/7 clean energy to San Bernardino County — I felt certain we’d found the northernmost reaches of Southern California.

It was Memorial Day weekend, and my wife and I were headed to a U.S. Forest Service campground in the White Mountains, 225 miles as the crow flies from downtown L.A.’s Union Station. If you drew a line on a map due west from our campsite, you’d cut through the Sierra Nevada and eventually hit San José.

But to my mind, we were still in Southern California.

For one thing, Southern California Edison supplied electricity here. For another, Los Angeles had sucked this place dry.

In the early 1900s, agents secretly working for the city posed as farmers and ranchers, buying up land and water rights in the Owens Valley. Then Los Angeles built an aqueduct, diverting water from the Owens River to feed the city’s growth. Owens Lake largely dried up. The city later extended the aqueduct north to Mono Lake.

As a lifelong Angeleno, I felt compelled to see some of the results for myself.

I had spent time in the Owens Valley, but never the Mono Basin. So we took a dirt road branching off the gorgeous June Lake Loop to stand atop an earthen dam built by L.A. in the 1930s. It impounds Rush Creek, the largest tributary bringing Sierra snowmelt to Mono Lake. As I looked out at Grant Lake Reservoir — beautiful in its own way, if totally unnatural — I realized I had been drinking this water my whole life.

My feelings were similarly muddled when we arrived at Mono Lake.

On the one hand, this was one of the coolest and weirdest places I’d ever seen. As we padded along a boardwalk toward the sandy southern shore, I was blown by the gleaming blue water, the snow-capped Sierra peaks and the tufa — my gosh, the tufa. Bizarre-looking rock towers made of calcium carbonate, like something from a dream.

At the same time, much of the boardwalk ideally would have been underwater.

Under a 1994 ruling by state officials, L.A. is supposed to try to limit its withdrawals from Mono Lake’s tributaries, with a goal of restoring the lake to an elevation of 6,392 feet — healthier for the millions of migratory and nesting birds that depend on it for sustenance, and better for keeping down dust that degrades local air quality.

Three decades later, the lake has never gotten close to its target level. L.A. continues to withdraw too much water, and the Mono Basin continues to suffer. Mayor Karen Bass said last year that the city would take less, but officials ultimately reneged, citing a dry winter.

As we walked past a sign on the way to the southern shore marking 6,392 feet, I felt a little pang of guilt.

Responsibility is a funny thing. When we got back from our camping trip, I read about a woman suing oil and gas companies over the tragic death of her mom, who died of overheating at age 65 during a historic heat wave that roasted the Pacific Northwest in 2021. The first-of-its-kind lawsuit claims wrongful death, alleging — accurately — that the companies spent years working to hide the climate crisis from the public.

I’m neither a psychic nor a psychologist. But I’m guessing, based on more than a decade reporting on energy and climate change, that executives at the fossil fuel companies in question — including Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Phillips 66 and Shell — aren’t suddenly feeling guilty for their role in boiling the planet.

Same goes for the Trump administration — impossible to guilt. The World Meteorological Organization reported last week that Earth is highly likely to keep shattering temperature records in the next few years, driving deadlier heat waves, more destructive fires and fiercer droughts. That hasn’t stopped President Trump and congressional Republicans from pressing forward with a budget bill that would obliterate support for renewable energy.

So why was I, a climate journalist, feeling guilty over something I really had nothing to do with? Was it silly for me to bother taking responsibility when the people wrecking the planet were never going to do the same?

I think the answers have something to do with the importance of honesty.

As we sat at our campsite by a roaring fire — stoked by my wife, who’s way better than me with open flames — I cracked open a book of speeches by President Theodore Roosevelt, delivered in 1903 on his first trip to California. He was on my mind because he’d originally established Inyo National Forest, where our spectacular campground was, to protect the lands and watershed where Los Angeles would build its Owens Valley aqueduct.

“You can pardon most anything in a man who will tell the truth,” Roosevelt said. “If anyone lies, if he has the habit of untruthfulness, you cannot deal with him, because there is nothing to depend on.”

“The businessman or politician who does not tell the truth cheats; and for the cheat we should have no use in any walk of life,” he said.

Naturally, I thought of Trump, whose political success is built on outrageous lies, from climate and election denial to insisting that Haitian immigrants eat their neighbors’ cats. I also recalled a recent order from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum discouraging “negative” depictions of U.S. history on signs at national parks and other public lands — a directive with the Orwellian title, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.”

Did that mean educational materials at Manzanar National Historic Site — which sits just off Highway 395 and is managed by the National Park Service — would soon be revamped, to avoid explaining how the U.S. government cruelly and needlessly imprisoned more than 10,000 Japanese Americans there during World War II?

If a similar order were issued covering the Forest Service, which is overseen by a different federal agency, would the Mono Lake visitor center take down its thoughtful signs explaining the history of the Los Angeles water grab? Would the Forest Service alter a sign at the nearby Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest detailing the possible impacts of global warming, considering that the U.S. is the largest historical emitter of heat-trapping pollution?

Only time will tell. But Teddy Roosevelt was right. So long as Trump and his allies keep lying — pretending that oil and gas aren’t cooking the planet, that we don’t need sound science, that Americans have only ever done good — they’ll feel no guilt, no responsibility. Because they’ll have nothing to take responsibility for.

Accepting the facts means owning up to the hard ones.

It’s not just politicians who have trouble. Highway 395’s Museum of Western Film History is mostly hagiography, a collection of props and artifacts that fails to unpack the settler colonialism behind the western films it glorifies.

But I did learn that the original “Star Wars” was one of many films to shoot footage in the Owens Valley. And the “Star Wars” universe, as it happens, is all about fighting an empire that seeks to control people’s homelands and histories — a message central to Season 2 of “Andor,” now streaming on Disney+.

“I believe we are in crisis,” says Galactic Senator Mon Mothma, a leader of the brewing Rebellion. “The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.”

Here’s the truth: There’s not enough water in Mono or Owens lake. It’s hotter than it used to be. The sky is dark with wildfire smoke more often. The Sierra Nevada peaks frequently aren’t as snowy.

Again, the senator: “When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.”

In America, monsters are screaming. Find harbor in honesty, and perhaps the mountains.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Jared Isaacman, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), looks on during a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing on his nomination at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on April 9, 2025. Over the weekend, Trump revealed he would withdraw Isaacman’s nomination “after a thorough review of prior associations.” File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo

June 2 (UPI) — Just days before the U.S. Senate was set to hold a confirmation vote, President Donald Trump withdrew Jared Isaacman’s nomination for NASA administrator, citing “prior associations.”

While the White House did not reveal specifics about why the nomination was being pulled, spokesperson Liz Huston confirmed Monday that the administration is looking for a new candidate to lead the agency.

“The administrator of NASA will help lead humanity into space and execute President Trump’s bold mission of planting the American flag on the planet Mars,” Huston said. “It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon.”

On Saturday, Trump revealed in a post on Truth Social that he was withdrawing the nomination “after a thorough review of prior associations,” without providing more details.

“I am hereby withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman to head NASA. I will soon announce a new nominee, who will be mission aligned and will put America First in space,” Trump said.

Isaacman was expected to be confirmed this week after Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., filed cloture on the nomination May 22. Several Democratic members of the Senate Commerce Committee had voted with Republicans in April to favorably report the nomination to the full Senate.

Isaacman, a commercial astronaut and billionaire businessman with ties to SpaceX, led the first all-civilian space flight into orbit and had received the endorsement of 28 former NASA astronauts. Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., criticized the administration’s decision to pull his nomination.

“Astronaut and successful businessman Isaacman was a strong choice by President Trump to lead NASA,” Sheet wrote in a post on X. “I was proud to introduce Jared at his hearing and strongly oppose efforts to derail his nomination.”

NASA released details Friday about its proposed fiscal year 2026 budget, which includes 25% cuts to the space agency’s overall spending. In April, Isaacman criticized reports that science funding could be cut by nearly 50%, saying it “does not appear to be an optimal outcome.”

After Trump’s weekend post, Isaacman — who was nominated last December — thanked the president and the Senate “who supported me throughout this journey.”

“The past six months have been enlightening and, honestly, a bit thrilling. I have gained a much deeper appreciation for the complexities of government and the weight our political leaders carry,” Isaacman wrote Saturday in a post on X.

“I have not flown my last mission — whatever form that may ultimately take — but I remain incredibly optimistic that humanity’s greatest spacefaring days lie ahead. I’ll always be grateful for this opportunity and cheering on our president and NASA as they lead us on the greatest adventure in human history.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump is withdrawing the nomination of tech billionaire Jared Isaacman, an associate of Elon Musk, to lead NASA, a person familiar with the decision said Saturday.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the administration’s personnel decisions. The White House and NASA did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.

Trump announced last December during the presidential transition that he had chosen Isaacman to be the space agency’s next administrator. Isaacman has been a close collaborator with Musk ever since he bought his first chartered flight on Musk’s SpaceX in 2021.

He is the CEO and founder of Shift4, a credit card processing company. He also bought a series of spaceflights from SpaceX and conducted the first private spacewalk.

Isaacman testified at his Senate confirmation hearing on April 9 and a vote to send his nomination to the full Senate was expected soon.

SpaceX is owned by Musk, a Trump supporter and adviser who announced this week that he is leaving the government after several months at the helm of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Trump created the agency to slash the size of government and put Musk in charge.

Semafor was first to report that the White House had decided to pull Isaacman’s nomination.

Superville and Kim write for the Associated Press.

Long before Clayton Kershaw donned No. 22 and Fernando Valenzuela wore No. 34, another number told fans it was time for Dodger baseball: 76.

Union Oil Co., the 76 gasoline brand’s former owner, helped finance Dodger Stadium’s construction. The brand’s current owner, Phillips 66, remains a major sponsor. Through six World Series titles, orange-and-blue 76 logos have been a constant presence at Chavez Ravine. They tower above the scoreboards and grace the outfield walls.

So when 76 recently posted on Instagram that it had begun sponsoring L.A.’s rivals in San Francisco — with an orange-and-blue logo on the center field clock at Oracle Park — some Dodgers fans weren’t pleased.

“THE BETRAYAL,” one fan wrote on Instagram.

“bestiessss nooooo,” another lamented.

76 was unfazed, responding: “Still a bestie, just spreading the love!”

Strange as the reactions may sound, it’s not unheard of for long-lived ad campaigns to take on a life of their own, evolving from paid promotions to cultural touchstones. Outside Fenway Park in Boston, Red Sox fans have fought to preserve the massive Citgo sign, with its logo of a Venezuelan-owned oil company.

Nor is it shocking that Houston-based Phillips 66 would market itself through another baseball team. The 76 gasoline brand, after all, evokes the patriotism of 1776 — a clever marketing ploy. And what’s more American than Major League Baseball?

Still, the timing of Phillips 66’s decision to start sponsoring the Giants is intriguing.

Since last summer, nearly 30,000 people have signed a petition urging Dodgers ownership to cut ties with the oil company. California is currently suing Phillips 66 and other oil and gas companies for climate damages, accusing them of a “decades-long campaign of deception” to hide the truth about the climate crisis.

The Sierra Club Angeles Chapter held its third protest at Dodger Stadium before a game against the Athletics on May 15. Activists cloaked in sackcloth marched outside the parking lots. One played a bagpipe.

“It was a bit hard for the fans to comprehend,” organizer Lisa Kaas Boyle acknowledged.

Still, she believes the cause is righteous.

A former environmental crimes prosecutor and a co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, Kaas Boyle lost her home in the Palisades fire. She’s also a Dodgers fan, having caught the bug from her husband, whose 89-year-old mom grew up cheering for the team in Brooklyn. She has a special place in her heart for Kiké Hernández.

So when the Dodgers joined other sports teams in pledging $8 million to wildfire relief, she felt the organization was “speaking out of two sides of its mouth.” She pointed to a study concluding that the weather conditions that helped drive the Palisades and Eaton fires were 35% more likely due to climate change.

“If you really care about us fire victims, you wouldn’t be promoting one of the major causes of the disaster,” Kaas Boyle said. “If you really care, you wouldn’t be boosting their image, greenwashing it through baseball.”

At least one member of the Dodgers ownership group cares about presenting a climate-friendly image.

Tennis star Billie Jean King posted on Facebook, Instagram and X in the fall promoting a climate summit being held next week at the University of Oxford, co-hosted by an arm of the United Nations. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has called on all countries to ban fossil fuel advertising.

So, what does King think of the 76 ads at Dodger Stadium?

Hard to say. Her publicist didn’t respond to my request for comment.

The Dodgers also declined to respond. Same goes for the Giants and Phillips 66.

So why is the oil company “spreading the love” to the Bay Area?

Again, hard to know for sure. But Duncan Meisel has a theory. He runs the advocacy group Clean Creatives, which pressures ad agencies to stop working with fossil fuel clients. And he suspects that lawmakers and regulators based in Sacramento are less likely to attend a baseball game in L.A. than in nearby San Francisco.

“If you’re 76, and you’re worried about decision-makers in California, that’s where you’d want to be,” he said.

Indeed, Phillips 66 may have reasons to be worried.

The company plans to close its Los Angeles County oil refinery this year — a troubling sign of the economic times for Big Oil as California shifts toward electric cars. Lawmakers are also weighing a “polluters pay” bill that would require fossil fuel companies to help pay for damages from more intense heat waves, wildfires and storms.

Phillips 66, meanwhile, was arraigned this month on charges that it violated the U.S. Clean Water Act by dumping oil and grease from its L.A. County refinery into the local sewer system. (It pleaded not guilty.) That followed a win for climate activists in March, when state Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach) wrote to Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, urging him to dump Phillips 66.

Hence, perhaps, the newfound relationship with the Giants.

“That’s why you advertise,” Meisel said. “If you’re a company like Phillips 66 that’s under threat from political and cultural pressures in California, it’s hard to get a better deal than sponsoring a local sports team.”

It’s not just California turning up the heat on Phillips 66. Executives have been battling a pressure campaign from Elliott Investment Management, which won two seats on the company’s board last week.

As Elliott ramped up the pressure on Phillips 66 earlier this year, executives announced an expanded sponsorship deal with their hometown ball club — another Dodgers nemesis, as it happens, the cheating Houston Astros.

Phillips 66 now sponsors the home run train atop the high left-field wall at Houston’s Daikin Park (formerly Minute Maid Park). The train is filled with 25 oversized baseballs, each representing a special moment in Astros history — yes, including the World Series title they stole from the Dodgers.

As Phillips 66 brand manager John Field said in an April news release: “Sponsorships like these are more than just fun — they’re a strategic investment.”

Fun and strategic, sure, if you’re mainly invested in oil industry profits. If you care about watching baseball games in safe temperatures, without choking on wildfire smoke, you might reach a different conclusion.

One thing’s for sure: Fossil fuel companies will keep pumping money into baseball so long as teams let them. The Astros, Texas Rangers and Cleveland Guardians all wear jersey patches sponsored by oil and gas companies.

In California, meanwhile, Phillips 66 will keep reminding Dodgers fans how much they love looking at 76 logos — a playbook so successful it once inspired a campaign to save the rotating 76 balls above gas stations.

“This is a heavy play on Americana,” Roberta J. Newman said.

A Yankees fan and professor in New York University’s Liberal Studies program, Newman wrote the fascinating book, “Here’s the Pitch: The Amazing, True, New, and Improved Story of Baseball and Advertising.” There may be nobody with a better understanding of the cultural and political power of baseball-linked advertising.

When a brand like 76 associates itself with the Dodgers — through special ticket deals, joint promotions with the team charity and TV commercials starring Vin Scully — it’s engaged in “meaning transfer,” Newman said.

“Your positive associations of the Dodgers will become positive associations with 76,” she said.

Most fans won’t drive away from Dodger Stadium and immediately choose 76 over a rival gasoline station. But in the long run, they’ll have good vibes when they see the orange-and-blue logo. It’ll feel familiar, friendly.

If that sounds nuts — well, you might want to tell business executives they blew $1 trillion on ads last year.

“People might think, ‘Oil is terrible. But 76 is the Dodgers,’” Newman said.

Now it’s the Giants, too — not that Newman thinks the dual loyalty will hurt the company. As one Instagram user, a Giants fan, wrote: “Hey Dodger fans, it’s OK! … 76 is a California icon and tradition from North to South!”

Fair enough. Wildfires are getting bigger and more destructive up there too.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

EVEN though humans have never set foot on Mars, we’ve still got plenty of photos of the red planet.

And if you went by those pics alone, you’d think the Martian surface was littered with mysterious faces, swarms of monstrous spiders, and even alien beings.

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Of course, Mars is just a barren wasteland – only occupied by camera-toting rovers shipped there from Earth.

So why do we see all of these strange faces and figures on Mars?

Well it’s a phenomenon known as pareidolia, which is a human tendency to see patterns when there isn’t one – and it’s often to blame for those bizarre sightings on the red planet.

Here are some of the creepiest “sightings” from our space neighbour, Mars.

CYDONIA ‘FACE ON MARS’

One of the most iconic Martian faces is from the Cydonia region.

The feature was first captured in 1976, revealing a strikingly humanlike formation on the Martian surface.

Early images of the region were snapped by Viking 1 and Viking 2, a pair of Nasa orbiters tasked with imaging Mars.

It’s since been captured in several later photographs, clearly exposing it as an optical illusion.

Sadly it’s not a giant alien face at all – but a massive 1.2-mile-long Cydonian mesa.

The region is known for its flat-topped mesas.

BEAR WE GO

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Forget Stonehenge – what about a giant bear circle?

That’s what was seemingly snapped by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on December 12, 2022.

It looks like the face of an enormous grizzly, but it’s actually just a weird hill, as Nasa explains: “A V-shaped collapse structure makes the nose, two craters form the eyes, and a circular fracture pattern shapes the head.

“The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater.”

LEG IT!

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Several images of what look like terrifyingly large spiders have been captured on Mars.

The first was caught by the European Space Agency‘s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter in October 2020, and the second was picked up by Nasa’s MRO in May 2018.

Thankfully they’re not spiders at all – but a strange phenomenon called “araneiform terrain”.

“This is an active seasonal process not seen on Earth,” Nasa explained.

“Like dry ice on Earth, the carbon dioxide ice on Mars sublimates as it warms (changes from solid to gas) and the gas becomes trapped below the surface.

“Over time the trapped carbon dioxide gas builds in pressure and is eventually strong enough to break through the ice as a jet that erupts dust.

“The gas is released into the atmosphere and darker dust may be deposited around the vent or transported by winds to produce streaks.

“The loss of the sublimated carbon dioxide leaves behind these spider-like features etched into the surface.”

LIVING ON A PRAYER

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In 2007, Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured what appeared to be a person kneeling in prayer.

It made headlines around the world when the image was released in early 2008.

The eerie scene was part of a vast panorama of Martian hills taken during the closing months of Spirit’s mission.

Of course, all we’re actually seeing is an interesting rock, and a trick of the light.

GHANDI’S MARTIAN TWIN

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Pictures from Europe‘s Mars Express probe appear to have captured a Ghandi lookalike on Mars.

The Mars Orbiter has been used to pack out the Google Mars project with satellite-style snaps of the red planet.

And in 2011, Italian space fan Matteo Lanneo thought he spotted Ghandi’s likeness on the surface.

Of course, it’s just another classic example of pareidolia, where we’re simply seeing things that aren’t really there.

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MARTIAN DOORWAY

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In mid-2022, Nasa captured what appeared to be a “doorway” into a mound of rock nicknamed ‘East Cliffs’.

The picture of the mound on Mount Sharp was snapped by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover.

Sadly it’s not really a doorway, as Nasa explains: “The mound, on Mount Sharp, has a number of naturally occurring open fractures – including one roughly 12 inches (30 centimeters) tall and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide, similar in size to a dog door.

“These kinds of open fractures are common in bedrock, both on Earth and on Mars.”

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Donald Trump had just been elected president when I first visited the sprawling Wyoming ranch of conservative billionaire Phil Anschutz in late 2016.

But my tour guides didn’t let President Trump’s well-known disdain for wind power stop them from sharing their story: With Anschutz’s fortune behind them, and huge profits ahead, they were preparing to build America’s largest wind farm. America’s future was renewable.

When I visited again in 2022, their story was the same: Wind turbines, all the way.

Not anymore.

After Trump returned to office this year and began weaponizing federal departments against clean energy, wind in particular, with a vengeance unlike anything seen during his first term, Anschutz’s Power Co. of Wyoming updated its website. The company now planned to build a gas-fueled power plant as large as 3,200 megawatts, it said in February. That would be the country’s second-largest gas plant, after a facility in Florida.

Anschutz’s 3,550-megawatt wind farm remained under construction, as did a long-distance power line capable of transmitting the electricity to California. But the way the company described its mission had changed.

Until at least Feb. 11, the website’s home page, as documented by the Internet Archive, was titled, “Putting wind to work for Carbon County.” It said the wind farm’s benefits would include “a reliable, competitively priced supply of renewable electricity” that would “help America reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.”

Now the page says nothing about heat-trapping emissions or renewable electricity, and little about wind. Instead, it’s littered with Trump-esque language about “American-made energy” and “electricity that our nation needs.”

There’s still a separate section of the site describing the wind project and its benefits. But atop the home page, a banner that previously featured two pictures — one of wind turbines, one of the U.S. flag and the Wyoming state flag fluttering in the wind — has been updated. In place of the flag picture, there’s a gas plant.

Why might an energy company owned by a Republican mega-donor feel the need to make such a pivot?

Simply put, Trump despises wind turbines, an obsession that dates to the early 2010s, when he tried and failed to block an offshore wind farm he believed would ruin the view from his Scottish golf resort. In January, he issued an executive order blocking construction of Lava Ridge, an Idaho wind project approved by the Biden administration. Trump’s appointees have paused federal permitting for all wind farms, which experts say is most likely illegal.

In their most brazen attack yet, last month Trump’s appointees ordered the Norwegian company Equinor to stop construction of Empire Wind, an ocean wind farm off the coast of Long Island that will help power New York City. The company had already invested $2.7 billion in the project. Until the Trump administration lifted the stop-work order this week, Equinor executives said they were days away from canceling Empire Wind entirely.

Given those events, it’s possible Anschutz’s pivot toward gas is a “strategic play” to avoid incurring Trump’s wrath, said Leah Stokes, an associate professor of climate and energy policy at UC Santa Barbara.

“Trump has been attacking wind so much,” she said.

Anschutz spokesperson Kara Choquette gave me a different explanation for the company’s gas-plant plan — one that had nothing to do with Trump. She cited “unprecedented demand growth,” alluding to the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence technology that’s driving a data-center boom — and a corresponding need for electricity.

“Market demand has always been the driver for our projects,” Choquette said via email.

In a filing with Wyoming regulators, the Anschutz Corp. expressed interest in selling power to “hyperscale data centers” that could be built on its Wyoming ranch. That power could come from the wind farm, the gas plant or a 1,000-megawatt solar farm that Anschutz is also interested in constructing.

A mix of wind and gas, Choquette told me, “will provide firm, reliable power at a meaningful scale and size.”

But Stokes, who helped craft portions of President Biden’s climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, wonders if the gas plant proposal is largely performative. A surge in gas-plant construction, fueled by AI demand, has led to long delays for gas turbines. The research firm Wood Mackenzie reported this month that some energy developers are finding the earliest they can bring new gas plants online is 2030. Turbine costs have also hit all-time highs.

Meanwhile, solar and batteries made up nearly 84% of new power capacity built in the U.S. last year.

“You’ve got to build batteries and solar, because that’s the only thing you can build fast,” Stokes said.

Thus far, Anschutz’s company hasn’t applied for a gas-plant permit from Wyoming officials. But the Denver-based billionaire won’t lack for resources if and when he decides to move forward. He owns the Coachella music festival, the Los Angeles Kings and L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena, among other lucrative assets. He’s already spent at least $400 million over more than 15 years permitting and beginning to build the wind farm and 732-mile power line.

The wind farm and power line could help wean California off fossil fuels, supplying bountiful clean energy during the evening and nighttime hours, when solar panels stop generating and batteries aren’t always sufficient.

But if Anschutz does indeed build the nation’s second-largest gas plant, the air pollution could be significant.

Gas is usually cleaner than coal. But gas combustion still results in harmful pollutants, including nitrogen oxides, which the American Lung Assn. says can cause asthma attacks and reduced lung function. Gas also fuels the worsening heat waves, wildfires and storms of the climate crisis, especially when it leaks from pipelines and power plants in the form of methane, an especially powerful heat-trapping pollutant.

Anschutz’s company says on its website that the gas plant will be “hydrogen-capable and carbon-capture-ready” — meaning the facility will be capable of eventually switching from gas to clean-burning hydrogen, and ready to add installations that capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide before it escapes into the atmosphere.

In theory, those are nice ideas. In practice, both technologies mostly don’t exist yet in commercial, reliable form. Hence the “capable” and the “ready.” A 3,200-megawatt gas plant would be a big polluter.

“There are water issues. There are wildlife issues,” said Rob Joyce, director of the Sierra Club’s Wyoming chapter. “Even if it is on private land on their ranch, it’s something we should be concerned about.”

Shutting down all gas plants isn’t realistic, at least not yet; even California still depends on gas for one-third of its electricity. But scientists say building new gas plants, especially in richer nations like the U.S., is incompatible with a safe future for human civilization. Not to mention financially questionable, when solar and wind are cheaper.

Here’s hoping Anschutz doesn’t actually build a giant gas plant.

Perhaps just as importantly, here’s hoping America’s most wealthiest and most powerful people and institutions stop caving to Trump’s diktats. Universities, Fortune 500 companies, marquee law firms, billionaires — do they really think if they just give Trump a splash of what he wants, he won’t ask for more? And then he’ll leave office peacefully, and democracy will be fine? And we’ll maintain a livable climate and functioning economy?

I can’t know for sure if Anschutz’s gas-plant proposal is designed to appease Trump.

But Power Co. of Wyoming has definitely undergone a rebranding since he took office.

On its profile page on social media platform X — where it’s long posted under the username “welovewind” — the company used to describe itself as a supplier of “diverse, high-capacity, reliable, ‘Made in Wyoming’ wind power to help meet region’s [renewable portfolio standard, greenhouse gas] and economic growth goals.”

Sometime between late January and early March, though, the description changed. Now it reads: “High-capacity, reliable, clean, ‘Made in Wyoming’ electric power to help meet diverse market demands and goals.”

ONE MORE THING

On this week’s Boiling Point podcast, I talk with Sadie Babits, a climate editor at NPR and author of the excellent new book, “Hot Takes: Every Journalist’s Guide to Covering Climate Change.” We talk about how reporters can do a better job tackling one of the biggest stories of modern times — and how news consumers can help them.

You can listen to my conversation with Sadie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.

Correction: Last week’s newsletter used the wrong name for a nuclear plant in Washington state. It’s Columbia Generating Station, not Centralia. Centralia is a coal plant.

The radiation containment domes at Arizona’s Palo Verde Generating Station were, truth be told, pretty boring to look at: giant mounds of concrete, snap a picture, move on. The enormous cooling towers and evaporation ponds were marginally more interesting — all that recycled water, baking in the Sonoran Desert.

You know what really struck my fancy, though? The paintings on conference room walls.

There were five of them, each representing one of the far-flung Southwestern cityscapes powered by Palo Verde. Two showcased Arizona: one for the Phoenix metro area — saguaro cacti and ocotillo in the foreground, freeway and skyscrapers in the background — and one for the red-rock country to the north. Another showed downtown Albuquerque. A fourth portrayed farm fields in El Paso, likely irrigated with water from the Rio Grande.

Then there was an image that may have looked familiar to Southern Californians: Pacific Coast Highway, twisting through a seaside neighborhood that looks very much like Malibu before the Palisades fire.

That’s right: If you live in Los Angeles County, there’s a good chance your computer, your phone, your refrigerator and your bedside lamp are powered, at least some of the time, by nuclear reactors.

The city of L.A., Southern California Edison and a government authority composed of cities including Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena all own stakes in Palo Verde, the nation’s second-largest power plant. In 2023, the most recent year for which data are available, the plant was L.A.’s single largest energy source, supplying nearly 14% of the city’s electricity. The reactors supplied just over 9% of Edison’s power.

During a tour last month, I walked past the switchyard, a tangle of poles and wires where energy is transferred to power lines marching west and east. When all three reactors are running, the yard can transfer “the equivalent of half of the peak [electric demand] of the state of California on its hottest day,” according to John Hernandez, vice president of site services for utility company Arizona Public Service, which runs the plant.

“So it is a massive, massive switchyard,” Hernandez said.

For all the heated debate over the merits of nuclear energy as a climate change solution, the reality is it’s already a climate change solution. Nuclear plants including Palo Verde generate nearly one-fifth of the nation’s electricity, churning out 24/7, emissions-free power. Shutting down the nuclear fleet tomorrow would cause a giant uptick in coal and gas combustion, worsening the heat waves, wildfires and storms of the climate crisis.

Phasing out the nation’s 94 nuclear reactors over a period of decades, on the other hand, might be manageable — and there’s a case to be made for it. Extracting uranium for use as nuclear fuel has left extensive groundwater contamination and air pollution across the Southwest, especially on tribal lands, including the Navajo Nation.

“When we talk about nuclear, thoughts often go toward spent fuel storage, or the safety of reactors themselves,” said Amber Reimondo, energy director at the Grand Canyon Trust, a nonprofit conservation group. “But I think an often overlooked piece…has been the impacts to those who are at the beginning of the supply chain.”

Reimondo participated in a panel that I moderated at Palo Verde, part of the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. She noted that the nation’s only active conventional uranium mill — where uranium is leached from crushed rock — is located in Utah, just a few miles from the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation.

Even during the Biden years, Reimondo said, it was tough to overcome bipartisan enthusiasm for nuclear energy and “get folks to take seriously the impacts that [tribal] communities are feeling” from mining and milling.

“We just haven’t reached a place in this country where we are listening to these folks,” she said.

That dynamic has remained true during the second Trump administration. Just this week, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said his agency would fast-track permitting for a uranium mine proposed by Anfield Energy in Utah’s San Juan County, completing the environmental review — which would normally take a year — in just 14 days.

Burgum and President Trump, like Biden-era officials before them, say it’s unwise for the U.S. to rely on overseas suppliers for nearly all its uranium. But many environmental activists, even some who are fans of nuclear, believe running roughshod over Indigenous nations and public lands is disgraceful. And counterproductive.

Victor Ibarra Jr., senior manager for nuclear energy at the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force, said rebuilding the U.S. nuclear power supply chain will require local buy-in — on the front end, where uranium is mined, and on the back end, where spent fuel is stored. Thus far, political opposition has derailed every attempt to build a permanent fuel storage site, meaning nuclear waste is piling up at power plants across the country.

If there’s any hope for more uranium mining and power plants, Ibarra said, it will involve a lot of conversations — conversations that lead to less pollution, and fewer mistakes like those made during the 20th century.

“I think it’s really unfortunate that the nuclear industry has behaved the way it has in the past,” he said.

The benefits of nuclear reactors are straightforward: They generate climate-friendly electricity around the clock, while taking up far less land than solar or wind farms. If building new nuclear plants were cheap and easy — and we could solve the lingering pollution and safety concerns — then doing so would be a climate no-brainer.

If only.

The only two nuclear reactors built in the U.S. in decades came online at Georgia Power’s Vogtle plant in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and cost $31 billion, according to the Associated Press. That was $17 billion over budget.

Meanwhile, efforts to build small modular reactors have proved more expensive than large nuclear plants.

“It would really be quite unprecedented in the history of engineering, and in the history of energy, for something that is much smaller to have a lower price per megawatt,” said Joe Romm, a senior researcher at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media. “We try to make use of the economies of scale.”

Those setbacks haven’t stopped wealthy investors including billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos from bankrolling efforts to bring down the cost of small modular reactors, in hopes that mini-nuclear plants will someday join solar panels and wind turbines as crucial tools in replacing planet-warming fossil fuels.

I hope they succeed. But I’m not going to spend much time worrying about it.

Like I said earlier: Love it or hate it, nuclear is already a huge part of the nation’s power mix, including here in L.A. We’ve lived with it, almost always safely, for decades — at Palo Verde, at Washington state’s Centralia Generating Station, at the Diablo Canyon plant on California’s Central Coast. Nuclear, for all its flaws, is hardly the apocalyptic threat to humanity that its most righteous detractors make it out to be.

It’s also not the One True Solution to humanity’s energy woes, as many of its techno-optimist devotees claim it to be. There’s a reason that solar, wind and batteries made up nearly 94% of new power capacity built in the U.S. last year: They’re cheap. And although other technologies will be needed to help solar and wind phase out fossil fuels, some researchers have found that transitioning to 100% clean energy is possible even without nuclear.

So what’s the answer? Is nuclear power good or bad?

I wish it were that simple. To the extent existing nuclear plants limit the amount of new infrastructure we need to build to replace fossil fuels: good. To the extent we’re unable to eliminate pollution from uranium mining: bad. To the extent small reactors might give us another tool to complement solar and wind, alongside stuff like advanced geothermal — good, although we probably shouldn’t spend too much more taxpayer money on it yet.

Sorry not to offer up more enthusiasm, or more outrage. The climate crisis is a big, thorny problem that demands nuance and thoughtful reflection. Not every question can be answered with a snappy soundbite.

Before leaving Palo Verde, I stopped by the conference room for a last look at the paintings: Arizona. New Mexico. Texas. California. It was strange to think this plant was responsible for powering so many different places.

It was strange to think the uranium concealed beneath those domes could power so many different places.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our “Boiling Point” podcast here.

For more climate and environment news, follow @Sammy_Roth on X and @sammyroth.bsky.social on Bluesky.