https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Batteries-included-Even-huge-Saudi-solar-farm-12795344.php Source:   By Brian Eckhouse and Mark Chediak, San Francisco Chronicle-SF Gate. Excerpt: The world’s biggest-ever solar project — a $200 billion venture in Saudi Arabia — comes with a “batteries included” sticker that signals a major shift for the industry. SoftBank Group has partnered with the oil-rich Saudis to plan massive networks of photovoltaic panels across the sun-drenched desert kingdom. The project is 100 times larger than any other proposed in the world and features plans to store electricity for use when then sun isn’t shining with the biggest utility-scale battery ever made. The daytime-only nature of solar power has limited its growth globally partly because the cost of batteries was so high. Utilities that get electricity from big solar farms still rely on natural gas-fired backup generators to keep the lights on around the clock. But surging battery supplies to feed ele

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/scientists-say-we-re-cusp-carbon-dioxide-recycling-revolution Source:  By Matt Warren, Science Excerpt: Every year, the billions of metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) we release into the atmosphere add to the growing threat of climate change. But what if we could simply recycle all that wasted CO 2  and turn it into something useful? By adding electricity, water, and a variety of catalysts, scientists can reduce CO 2  into short molecules such as carbon monoxide and methane, which they can then combine to form more complex hydrocarbon fuels like butane. Now, researchers think we could be on the cusp of a CO 2 -recycling revolution, which would capture CO 2  from power plants—and maybe even directly from the atmosphere—and convert it into these fuels at scale, they report today in Joule. Science talked with one of the study’s authors, materials scientists and graduate student Phil De Luna at the University of Toronto in Canada,

https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/Huge-garbage-sprawl-in-Pacific-ocean-is-much-12773818.php Source:   By Peter Fimrite, San Francisco Chronicle. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7. Excerpt: The giant mass of floating plastic that has imperiled birds and wildlife between San Francisco and Hawaii contains 1.8 trillion pieces of trash covering an area nearly four times the size of California — significantly bigger than previously thought — and it is growing, a study published Thursday concluded. A team of scientists from the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, based in the Netherlands, said the debris field, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, covers about 618,000 square miles of deep ocean and weighs 80,000 metric tons. It is the largest accumulation of ocean plastics on Earth, and a serious threat to both marine animals and people, according to the three-year mapping study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. That’s because eating plastic, which contains several

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/climate/canada-outdoor-rinks.html Source:   By John Schwartz, The New York Times Excerpt: WATERLOO, Ontario —  Jack Williams and his sister, Cara, sat in their kitchen watching their backyard rink melt. ...A rink like the Williamses’ used to offer good skating in this part of Canada from early December into March. But on this late February afternoon, the temperature outside was 55 degrees and rain had fallen steadily all day.  ...Mr. Williams is finding it hard to maintain the ice in a warming world. “There’s a huge difference between when I grew up and was skating outside, and the last five years of skating out here,” he said. ...Climate change is warming the Northern Hemisphere rapidly, largely because of the greenhouse gases that humans have put into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial age. ...Mr. McLeman, with Colin Robertson, both associate professors of geography at Wilfrid Laurier, created Rink Watch, a citizen science proj

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/science/toba-supervolcano-supereruption.html Source:   By Shannon Hall, The New York Times. Excerpt: About 74,000 years ago, a supervolcano at the site of present-day Lake Toba on the Indonesian island of Sumatra rocked our world. But while it was the largest volcanic eruption of the last two million years, a new study published Monday in Nature suggests that humans not only survived the event — they thrived. The study counters previous hypotheses, which suggested that the behemoth was so disastrous it caused the human species to teeter on the brink of extinction. ... Climate models suggest that temperatures may have plummeted by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit. And in such a cold world, plants may have ceased growing, glaciers may have advanced, sea-levels may have dropped and rainfall may have slowed. Then in 1998, Stanley Ambrose, an anthropologist, linked the proposed disaster to genetic evidence that suggested a population bottleneck had occ

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/climate/kenya-drought.html Source:   By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times. Excerpt: KAKUMA, Kenya — These barren plains of sand and stone have always known lean times: times when the rivers run dry and the cows wither day by day, until their bones are scattered under the acacia trees. But the lean times have always been followed by normal times, when it rains enough to rebuild herds, repay debts, give milk to the children and eat meat a few times each week. ...Times are changing, though. Northern Kenya ...has become measurably drier and hotter, and scientists are finding the fingerprints of global warming. According to recent research, the region dried faster in the 20th century than at any time over the last 2,000 years. Four severe droughts have walloped the area in the last two decades, a rapid succession that has pushed millions of the world’s poorest to the edge of survival. Amid this new normal, a people long hounded by poverty and strife ha

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/climate/pruitt-red-team-climate-debate-kelly.html Source: By Lisa Friedman and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, The New York Times. Excerpt: John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, has killed an effort by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to stage public debates challenging climate change science, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, thwarting a plan that had intrigued President Trump even as it set off alarm bells among his top advisers. The idea of publicly critiquing climate change on the national stage has been a notable theme for Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the E.P.A. For nearly a year he has championed the notion of holding military-style exercises known as red team, blue team debates, possibly to be broadcast live, to question the validity of climate change. Mr. Pruitt has spoken personally with Mr. Trump about the idea, and the president expressed enthusiasm for it, according to people familiar with

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/countries-crank-ac-emissions-potent-greenhouse-gases-are-likely-skyrocket Source:   By April Reese, Science. Excerpt: In the summer of 2016, temperatures in Phalodi, an old caravan town on a dry plain in northwestern India, reached a blistering 51°C—a record high during a heat wave that claimed more than 1600 lives across the country. Wider access to air conditioning (AC) could have prevented many deaths—but only 8% of India's 249 million households have AC.... As the nation's economy booms, that figure could rise to 50% by 2050, he said. And that presents a dilemma: As India expands access to a life-saving technology, it must comply with international mandates—the most recent imposed just last fall—to eliminate coolants that harm stratospheric ozone or warm the atmosphere. "Growing populations and economic development are exponentially increasing the demand for refrigeration and air conditioning," says Helena Molin Valdés, h

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/03/fleet-sailboat-drones-could-monitor-climate-change-s-effect-oceans Source:   By Paul Voosen, Science. Excerpt: Two 7-meter-long sailboats are set to return next month to California, after nearly 8 months tacking across the Pacific Ocean. ...No captains will be at their helms. That is not because of a mutiny. These sailboats, outfitted with sensors to probe the ocean, are semiautonomous drones, developed by Saildrone, a marine tech startup based in Alameda, California, in close collaboration with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Washington, D.C. The voyage is the longest test for the drones and also the first science test in the Pacific—an important step in showing that they could replace an aging and expensive array of buoys that are the main way scientists sniff out signs of climate-disrupting El Niño events.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/climate/forests-storms-climate-change.html Source:   By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. Excerpt: RIO GRANDE, P.R. — When Hurricane Maria walloped Puerto Rico in September, it ripped off roofs, flooded neighborhoods and all but destroyed the island’s power grid, leaving a humanitarian catastrophe that Puerto Ricans are still recovering from months later. But Maria took its toll on nature as well. Its winds of up to 155 miles an hour wrecked thousands of acres of trees, including much of El Yunque National Forest, 28,000 acres of lush tropical rain forest east of the capital, San Juan. To a group of researchers hiking down a steep, slick mountain trail in El Yunque recently, the destruction was readily apparent. Led by María Uriarte, an ecologist at Columbia University, they were here to study the damage and better understand how an expected increase in extreme weather may undermine the ability of forests to aid the climate....

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/06/climate/yard-garden-global-warming.html Source:   By Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times. Excerpt: As the verdant hills of Wakanda are secretly enriched with the fictional metal vibranium in “Black Panther,” your average backyard also has hidden superpowers: Its soil can absorb and store a significant amount of carbon from the air, unexpectedly making such green spaces an important asset in the battle against climate change. Backyard soils can lock in more planet-warming carbon emissions than soils found in native grasslands or urban forests like arboretums, according to Carly Ziter, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The results of her research, published Tuesday in the journal Ecological Applications, were something of a surprise, given that those of us who have yards generally don’t think of them as “nature,” or as especially beneficial to the environment. But at least in this case, the things we enjoy for ourselves a

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/climate/suv-sales-global-climate.html Source:   By Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...Spurred by rising incomes and lower gas prices, drivers in China, Australia and other countries are ditching their smaller sedans for bigger rides at a rapid pace. For the first time, S.U.V.s and their lighter, more carlike cousins known as “crossovers” made up more than one in three cars sold globally last year, almost tripling their share from just a decade ago, according to new figures from the auto research firm JATO Dynamics. ...The ascent of S.U.V.s and crossovers is already slowing progress in reining in emissions from the world’s cars and trucks, major emitters of the gases that are warming the planet. Transportation accounts for an estimated 14 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, with cars and trucks making up the biggest share....