https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/business/energy-environment/orlando-carbon-climate.html Source:   By Ivan Penn, The New York Times. Excerpt: ORLANDO, Fla. ...is vying for another distinction: to be a pioneer in weaning itself from carbon-based energy. You can see its aspirations in the thousands of ponds all over the city that collect the runoff from Central Florida’s frequent downpours. Floating solar panels rise and fall in the water, sending power to the grid. There is also evidence along city streets, where solar panels sit atop streetlights to power them instead of using the electric grid. About 18,000 of the 25,000 in the city already have been converted to high-efficiency light-emitting diodes. Even algae pools may play a role. That’s where officials are testing a system to trap the carbon that the city emits from power plants or transportation, rather than release it into the atmosphere.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/29/science/lake-superior-algae-toxic.html Source:    By Christine Hauser, The New York Times. Excerpt: In 19 years of piloting his boat around Lake Superior, Jody Estain had never observed the water change as it has this summer. The lake has been unusually balmy and cloudy, with thick mats of algae blanketing the shoreline. “I have never seen it that warm,” said Mr. Estain, a former Coast Guard member who guides fishing, cave and kayak tours year-round. “Everybody was talking about it.” ...Scientists generally agree that algae blooms are getting worse and more widespread, and are exacerbated by the warmer water, heat waves and extreme weather associated with climate change. They are also intensified by human activity, such as from farm and phosphorus runoff, leakage from sewer systems, and other pollution. The problems that algae blooms pose to fresh and marine waters have been propelled to the forefront in recent years by high-profile events like th

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/29/climate/puffins-dwindling-iceland.html Source:    By John Schwartz, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Overfishing, hunting and pollution are putting pressure on the birds, but climate change may  prove to be the biggest challenge. ... The birds have been in precipitous decline, especially since the 2000s, both in Iceland and across many of their Atlantic habitats. The potential culprits are many: fickle prey, overfishing, pollution. Scientists say that climate change is another underlying factor that is diminishing food supplies and is likely to become more important over time. And the fact that puffins are tasty, and thus hunted as game here, hardly helps. ... Around Iceland, the puffins have suffered because of the decline of their favorite food, silvery sand eels, which dangle from the parents’ beaks as they bring them to their young. That collapse correlates to a rise in sea surface temperatures that Dr. Hansen has been monitoring fo

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/business/energy-environment/russia-floating-nuclear-power.html Source:   By Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times. xcerpt: Offshore reactors could be cheaper, safer and more flexible, proponents say, making them a useful weapon against climate change. Critics are incredulous. ...Along the shore of Kola Bay in the far northwest of Russia lie bases for the country’s nuclear submarines and icebreakers. ...Here, Russia is conducting an experiment with nuclear power, one that backers say is a leading-edge feat of engineering but that critics call reckless. ...Tied to a wharf in the city of Murmansk, the Akademik Lomonosov ...facility, made of two miniature reactors of a type used previously on submarines, is for now the only one of its kind. ...Moscow, while leading the trend, is far from alone in seeing potential in floating nuclear plants. ...Proponents say they are cheaper, greener and, perhaps counterintuitively, safer. They envision a future when n

https://www.thelocal.se/20180824/meet-the-15-year-old-swedish-girl-on-strike-from-school-for-the-climate Source:   By Catherine Edwards, The Local. Excerpt: Fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg describes herself as a "climate radical" and is protesting outside Sweden's parliament every day until the September election, refusing to attend school and calling on politicians to take climate issues seriously. ...Greta said she learned about the effects of climate change mostly at home, and began to get engaged in environmental issues from the age of 11 or 12. ..."I have gone to climate demonstrations and things like that before, but this is the first time I've organized something myself," the 15-year-old adds. ...The strike has been taking place every schoolday since term began, roughly between the hours of 8.30 and 3.30pm. This means missing three weeks of school in total, so is Greta worried about missing out on the start of the year? "A little bit, but I

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/powerful-new-battery-could-help-usher-green-power-grid Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Lithium-ion batteries power everything from our smartphones to our cars. But one of their most promising replacements is lithium-oxygen batteries, which in theory could store 10 times more power. The only problem: They fall apart after just a handful of charging cycles. Now, researchers have found that running them at high temperatures—along with a couple of other fixes—can push them to at least 150 cycles. Although they would be too hot to handle in phones, lithium-oxygen batteries the size of rail cars could one day underpin a green energy grid, storing excess wind and solar power and delivering it on demand. ... 2 years ago, a team of U.S. researchers came up with the first hints of a breakthrough. They tested another alternative electrolyte, this one made from a combination of salts that turned into a liquid when heated. This m

https://www.ucsusa.org/sm18-looming-coastal-real-estate-bust#.W4DatZNKiIY Source:   By Pamela Worth, Catalyst, Union of Concerned Scientists. Excerpt: A new UCS analysis calculates the threat rising seas pose to the US housing market. ...climate change is causing sea levels to rise at an accelerating rate, which means many coastal properties are at risk of chronic high-tide flooding in the near future. Flooded properties will lose value and, given how widespread the problem is, likely trigger significant deflation in real estate values in many coastal communities, creating problems not just for homeowners but also for mortgage lenders, insurers, real estate developers and investors, and even for communities’ tax bases. Furthermore, while past crashes in the housing market have tended to be temporary, sea level rise is only getting worse under current conditions. For a better sense of what to expect, the UCS team examined information on coastal homes and commercial properties provid

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/climate-change-making-trees-bigger-weaker Source:   By Lakshmi Supriya, Science Magazine. Excerpt: As global temperatures rise, trees around the world are experiencing longer growing seasons, sometimes as much as three extra weeks a year. All that time helps trees grow faster. But a study of the forests of Central Europe suggests the higher temperatures—combined with pollution from auto exhaust and farms—are making wood weaker, resulting in trees that break more easily and lumber that is less durable. ...For the past 100 years, trees have been experiencing growth spurts in temperate regions from Maryland to Finland, to Central Europe, where the growth rate of beech and spruce has sped up nearly 77% since 1870. Assuming wood is just as dense today, those gains would mean more timber for building, burning, and storing carbon captured from the atmosphere. ...But Hans Pretzsch, a forest scientist at the Technical University of Munich in Germany, a

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2018/08/20/ecosystems-are-getting-greener-in-the-arctic/ Source:   By Theresa Duque, Berkeley Lab. Excerpt: In recent decades, scientists have noted a surge in Arctic plant growth as a symptom of climate change. But without observations showing exactly when and where vegetation has bloomed as the world’s coldest areas warm, it’s difficult to predict how vegetation will respond to future warming. Now, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley have ...In a study published online Aug. 20 in Nature Climate Change, the researchers used satellite images taken over the past 30 years to track – down to a pixel representing approximately 25 square miles – the ebb and flow of plant growth in cold areas of the northern hemisphere, such as Alaska, the Arctic region of Canada, and the Tibetan Plateau. ...At first, the satellite data showed what they expected – that as Arctic climates warmed, tree

https://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Green-minded-Greek-isle-about-to-go-fully-off-the-13167057.php Source:   By Iliana Mier, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt: TILOS, Greece — When the blades of its 800-kilowatt wind turbine start turning, the small Greek island of Tilos will become the first in the Mediterranean to run exclusively on wind and solar power. The sea horse-shaped Greek island between Rhodes and Kos has a winter population of 400. But that swells to as many as 3,000 people in the summer, putting an impossible strain on its dilapidated power supply. This summer, technicians are conducting the final tests on a renewable replacement system that will be fully rolled out later this year. It will allow Tilos to run exclusively on high-tech batteries recharged by a wind turbine and a solar park. ...“The innovation of this program and its funding lies in the batteries — the energy storage — that’s what’s innovative,” project manager Spyros Aliferis said. “The energy produced b

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/massive-drought-or-myth-scientists-spar-over-ancient-climate-event-behind-our-new Source:   By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Last month, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the bureaucracy that governs geological time, declared we are living in a new geological age. No, it's not the Anthropocene, the much-debated proposal for a geological division defined by human impact on Earth. The new age anointed by ICS is called the Meghalayan, based on signs in the rock record of a global drought that began about 4200 years ago. It is one of three newly named subdivisions of the Holocene, the geological epoch that began 11,700 years ago with the retreat of ice age glaciers. And the name will now filter its way into textbooks....

http://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us-2018/?est=happening&type=value&geo=county Source:   By Jennifer Marlon, Peter Howe, Matto Mildenberger, Anthony Leiserowitz and Xinran Wang, Yale Program on Climate Change Education. Excerpt: Interactive maps show how Americans’ climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support vary at the state, congressional district, metro area, and county levels....

http://news.berkeley.edu/2018/08/06/mojave-birds-crashed-over-last-century-due-to-climate-change/ Source:   By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: Bird communities in the Mojave Desert straddling the California/Nevada border have collapsed over the past 100 years, most likely because of lower rainfall due to climate change, according to a new University of California, Berkeley, study. A three-year survey of the area, which is larger than the state of New York, concludes that 30 percent, or 39 of the 135 bird species that were there 100 years ago, are less common and less widespread today. The 61 sites surveyed lost, on average, 43 percent of the species that were there a century ago. “Deserts are harsh environments, and while some species might have adaptations that allow them to persist in a desert spot, they are also at their physiological limits,” said Kelly Iknayan, who conducted the survey for her doctoral thesis at UC Berkeley. “California deserts have already experien

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/04/world/europe/europe-heat-wave.html Source:   By Alissa J. Rubin, The New York Times. Excerpt: In Northern Europe, this summer feels like a modern-day version of the biblical plagues. Cows are practically dying of thirst in Switzerland, fires are gobbling up timber in Sweden, the majestic Dachstein glacier is melting in Austria. In London, stores are running out of fans and air-conditioners. In Greenland, an iceberg may break off a piece so large that it could trigger a tsunami that destroys settlements on shore. Last week, Sweden’s highest peak, Kebnekaise mountain, no longer was in first place after its glacier tip melted. [See " Sweden’s Tallest Peak Shrinks in Record Heat "] Southern Europe is even hotter. Temperatures in Spain and Portugal are expected to reach 105-110 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend. On Saturday, several places in Portugal experienced record highs, and over the past week, two people have died in Spain from the high

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/08/atmospheric-carbon-last-year-reached-levels-not-seen-800000-years Source:   By Elizabeth Gamillo, Science Magazine. Excerpt: The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth’s atmosphere reached 405 parts per million (ppm) last year, a level not seen in 800,000 years, according to a new report. It was also the hottest year on record that did not feature the global weather pattern known as El Niño ... concludes the State of the Climate in 2017 , the 28th edition of an annual compilation published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Overall, 2017 ranked as the second or third warmest year, depending on which measure is used, since researchers began keeping robust records in the mid-1800s. Even if humanity “stopped the greenhouse gasses at their current concentrations today, the atmosphere would still continue to warm for next couple decades to maybe a century,” said Greg Johnson, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Ma

https://eos.org/articles/severe-drought-may-have-helped-hasten-ancient-mayas-collapse Source:   By Jenessa Duncombe, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Chemical signatures from sediments in lake cores reveal that the centuries-long drought during the fall of Classic Maya civilization was worse than researchers had imagined. ...From about 250 to 900 CE, the Maya thrived in what’s known as its Classic period. During this time, the Maya built cities with plazas and multistory temples, devised a complex calendar system, and housed an urban population density that rivals Los Angeles County today. But then, sometime between the 8th and 9th centuries, many of the bustling Maya cities fell silent. By around 900 CE, a number of the grand cities had been abandoned. Scholars have many theories about what went wrong. ...A study unveiled today in Science offers ...another answer: a severe drop in rainfall that coincided with the Maya downfall. At the end of the Classic period in the northern reaches of the Maya