YouTube survival challenge contestant rescued after spending nearly 18 hours in the woods: Police
A 36-year-old woman, who was participating in a YouTube survival challenge, was rescued after spending nearly 18 hours in the woods, according to Michigan State Police. Michigan State Police.
(MICHIGAN) — A 36-year-old woman who was participating in a YouTube survival challenge was rescued after spending nearly 18 hours in the woods, according to Michigan State Police.
State Police Troopers on Saturday responded to the Pigeon River State Forest to assist the Otsego County Sheriff’s Office in locating a “woman missing from California,” officials said in a statement.
The woman, who was “participating in a YouTube outdoor survival contest,” left the “designated base camp to search for water” at approximately 5 p.m. on Friday, and when she did not return, the contest hosts “initiated their own search efforts,” the sheriff’s office said in a press release.
After “unsuccessful attempts to locate her,” someone called 911 at around 5 a.m. on Saturday, which prompted a “coordinated search effort” looking through the “dense forest,” officials said.
At approximately 10:40 a.m. on Saturday, officials located the missing woman and “directed the canine units to her,” police said. She was located within a “swampy area” and had been missing in the “cold and rain for almost 18 hours,” according to the sheriff’s office.
Authorities were able to “walk her out of the woods safely,” according to police said. She was released with no serious injuries, the sheriff’s office noted.
Officials did not identify the woman in their public statements, but applauded the rescue effort.
“Great work by all first responders on the scene,” police said.
In a statement sent to ABC News, YouTube said it had “no involvement or awareness of this event, and YouTube does not provide or contribute to this type of content.”
(ORMOND BEACH, Fla.) — Police in Florida have arrested a father who they say is responsible for the death of his 18-month-old son after he left him “helpless in a hot truck” for more than three hours while he got a haircut and went drinking at a local bar, police say.
The Volusia Sheriff’s Office along with the Ormond Beach Police Department arrested 33-year-old Scott Allen Gardner on Thursday and charged him with aggravated manslaughter of a child and child neglect causing great bodily harm, according to a statement from the Volusia Sheriff’s Office.
“Gardner is responsible for the death of his 18-month-old son Sebastian, who was left helpless in a hot truck for more than 3 hours on the afternoon of Friday, June 6, while Gardner got a haircut and then went drinking inside Hanky Panky’s Lounge,” authorities said.
Additionally, Gardner gave multiple false accounts of what occurred that day when he was being investigated by police, officials said.
“It was estimated by medical personnel that Sebastian’s body temperature reached 111 degrees during this tragedy,” police said. “The same OBPD officer who tried to revive Sebastian placed Gardner in handcuffs today as he was taken into custody at his mother’s home in Ormond Beach.”
Officials said they will provide more details of the investigation on Friday and that their investigation is currently ongoing.
(NEW YORK) — As parts of the Midwest continued to experience catastrophic flooding overnight and into Monday, dangerous heat and humidity are expected to set in this week.
Overnight, a flash flood emergency was declared in central Illinois for catastrophic flooding as rain fell at rates of 2 to 3 inches per hour. The area in and surrounding Brownstown, Illinois, seems to have taken the brunt of the rapid rainfall that made streets impassable.
That flash-flood emergency has since expired, and light rain continued to fall across central Illinois early Monday morning.
The St. Louis, Missouri, metro area was also under a flash flood warning overnight, with rainfall rates of 2 to 3 inches per hour. The rainfall total as of 5 a.m. was around 1.25 inches, but additional heavy rain is possible on Monday.
A slew of “considerable” flash flood warnings were issued in the east-central Missouri region on Monday morning — including for Montgomery City, where 3 to 6 inches of rain had fallen and more was expected.
Around 8 million people from northeast Missouri to western Kentucky and West Virginia were under a flash flood watch on Monday.
Heavy rain also fell Sunday in Dover, Maryland, where the finish of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover Motor Speedway was delayed for 56 minutes.
Extreme precipitation events jump 60% in the Northeast
This summer has been one of extreme flooding throughout much of the United States with multiple 100-year rainfall events.
While meteorologists cannot say for sure what is causing this summer’s record rainfall, scientist have surmised that human-amplified climate change is causing extreme rainfall events to become more frequent and more intense.
Human-amplified climate change has contributed to increases in the frequency and intensity of the heaviest precipitation events across nearly 70% of the United States, according to the U.S. Fifth National Climate Assessment.
In the Midwest, extreme precipitation events have increased by about 45% in recent decades, the second largest regional increase in the nation, according to the assessment. Extreme precipitation events are very rare, defined as the top 1% of daily extreme precipitation events.
In the Northeast, extreme precipitation events have increased by about 60% in recent decades, the largest regional increase in the United States. And in the Southeast, extreme rainfall events have jumped about 37% in recent decades, according to the assessment.
90 million people bracing for dangerous heat
Meanwhile, 90 million people in the Midwest and South are bracing for widespread high levels of heat and humidity this week that is potentially dangerous to human health.
Multiple days of extreme heat warnings are in place from Kansas to Missouri and down the Mississippi River Valley to Mississippi. This includes St. Louis, Tulsa, and Memphis where heat indices, which factor in humidity, could make it feel 111 degrees on Monday.
In Kansas City, the heat index could climb to 107 through Thursday.
From South Dakota to Nebraska, heat indices could reach 102 to 108 on Monday and Tuesday.
Much of the South, from Louisiana to Florida and up through the Carolinas, are under a heat advisory as the heat indices are expected to range from 108 to 112 on Monday.
This heat and humidity will continue through much of the week for the Midwest and South.
Chicago, where an extreme heat watch is in place, could feel like up to 110 on Wednesday and Thursday.
For the Northeast, the week will start on the cooler side with seasonal or below-average temperatures on Monday and Tuesday — but heat from the Midwest is expected to surge east later this week.
On Friday, near-record high temperatures are possible along the I-95 corridor from Philadelphia to Boston, including New York City, with possible highs in the mid to upper 90s.
New York City could break a daily temperature record on Friday of 97 degrees, set in 1999.
A heat wave consisting of at least three consecutive days of temperatures in the 90s is expected to invade New York City from Thursday to Saturday. Nighttime low temperatures will only cool to the upper 70s, making it more dangerous for those without access to air conditioning.
A sign marks the U.S. Department of Energy Headquarters Building on April 13, 2025, in Washington, DC. (J. David Ake/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — A group of more than 85 climate scientists released a critical review of a recent U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report on climate change, finding it “biased, full of errors, and not fit to inform policymaking.”
The DOE report, compiled by the agency’s “2025 Climate Working Group,” a five-person panel hand-picked in March by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, was released in late July alongside a proposed regulatory repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Endangerment Finding.”
In 2009, the EPA issued an Endangerment Finding determining that human-amplified climate change poses a threat to human health and safety, which became the basis for its regulation of greenhouse gas emissions.
“The rise of human flourishing over the past two centuries is a story worth celebrating. Yet we are told, relentlessly, that the very energy systems that enabled this progress now pose an existential threat,” Wright said at the time of the report’s release.
The Climate Working Group, which is at the center of a lawsuit against the Trump administration alleging it was improperly formed, operated without transparency and engaged in unlawful activities, began preparing its findings in early April and compiled the report in about two months.
The conclusions in the report are a stark contrast to well-known climate assessments, such as those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and U.S. National Climate Assessment, which include contributions from thousands of scientists around the world and undergo a rigorous years-long process of open and independent review.
The IPCC found that “Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming.” The U.S. National Climate Assessment determined that “Human activities, principally through emissions of greenhouse gases, have unequivocally caused global warming” and that “without deeper cuts in global net greenhouse emissions and accelerated adaptation efforts, severe climate risks to the United States will continue to grow.”
The release of the DOE report met swift backlash from veteran climate scientists who were critical of the findings, the process and the people selected for the working group. Dozens of members of the climate science community then got together to prepare a detailed, public rebuttal of the DOE report.
“This report makes a mockery of science. It relies on ideas that were rejected long ago, supported by misrepresentations of the body of scientific knowledge, omissions of important facts, arm waving, anecdotes, and confirmation bias. This report makes it clear DOE has no interest in engaging with the scientific community,” Andrew Dessler, a climate researcher at Texas A&M University, who helped organize the effort, said.
Experts involved in reviewing the report said that it includes “biased assessments” and “fundamentally flawed” arguments. They pointed out that the DOE report was produced by a small, hand-picked group, often writing outside their expertise, which led to basic factual errors. The report lacked peer review, was developed in secret, and showed no accountability to public input, these experts said in their review.
According to the rebuttal report, the DOE team “selectively cites outdated or discredited studies” and “misrepresents mainstream sources” of climate science. Reviewers also raised concerns that the report was purposely designed to support a predetermined policy agenda, particularly to undermine the EPA’s Endangerment Finding, rather than to offer an objective scientific assessment.
The DOE report claims that climate models used by scientists overestimate warming trends, that long-term trends for disasters generally don’t show much change and the economic impacts of carbon emissions are “negligible.” The DOE report also said there are advantages to a world with more carbon, like increased plant growth.
“The DOE report is not a neutral scientific assessment, it is a policy-driven document that selectively presents information to support a predetermined narrative. Rather than engaging with the full body of climate science, it highlights isolated findings that, when removed from context, give the misleading impression that rising CO₂ levels are broadly beneficial,” said Becca Neumann, associate professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington and head of the hydro-biogeochemistry research group.
In a statement to ABC News, a DOE spokesperson said, “Unlike previous administrations, the Trump administration is committed to engaging in a more thoughtful and science-based conversation about climate change and energy.”
The report was reviewed internally by DOE scientific researchers and policy experts from the Office of Science and National Labs and is open to wider peer review from the scientific community and general public via the public comment period, the DOE spokesperson said.
“The purpose of this report is to restore an open and transparent dialogue around climate science,” the DOE spokesperson concluded. “Following the public comment period, we look forward to reviewing and engaging on substantive comments.”
The benefits from rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere are among the key points made in the DOE’s report, emphasizing that higher carbon dioxide levels can enhance photosynthesis and boost crop yields and aren’t necessarily a bad thing. Neumann acknowledges that this effect is real and well-documented, but said it’s already factored into the climate and agricultural models the report seeks to discredit.
“What the report fails to acknowledge is that these benefits are offset by the broader impacts of climate change: rising temperatures, altered rainfall patterns, and more extreme weather—all of which pose serious challenges to agriculture. For most regions in the U.S. and globally, the net effect of climate change on food production is projected to be negative. Yet the report repeatedly suggests the opposite,” said Neumann.
The DOE report not only criticizes numerous climate science findings but also attempts to cast doubt on the reliability of the weather and climate data being collected for analysis, claiming that urbanization effects, like the Urban Heat Island, significantly bias global temperature observations.
However, the scientific consensus, reflected in IPCC assessments, finds that these effects have a minimal to negligible impact on global warming trends. Climate scientists explain that standard data homogenization techniques effectively identify and correct non-climatic biases, and these adjusted datasets are independently validated by rural-only networks and satellite observations.
The critical review, which totals more than 400 pages, was submitted to the Department of Energy during the report’s public comment period.
The DOE report is already facing legal challenges. In August, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Environmental Defense Fund filed a lawsuit in the Federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts, contesting the Trump administration’s use of a secretly convened group to undermine established climate science and regulations. The suit names Secretary Wright, the DOE, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, the EPA, and the Climate Working Group as defendants.
The lawsuit cites the Federal Advisory Committee Act, enacted in the aftermath of Nixon-era scandals, which requires that federal government advisory committees operate transparently, make their materials publicly available, and maintain balanced membership.
“Decades of rigorous scientific analysis shows burning fossil fuels is unequivocally contributing to deadly heat waves, accelerating sea level rise, worsening wildfires and floods, increased heavy rainfall, and more intense and damaging storms across the country. We should all relentlessly question who stands to gain from efforts to upend this unassailable and peer-reviewed scientific truth,” Dr. Gretchen Goldman, the president and CEO of UCS, said at the time the lawsuit was filed.
The EPA told ABC News regarding the lawsuit, “As a matter of longstanding practice, EPA does not comment on current or pending litigation.”
