https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/rise-carbon-dioxide-absorbing-mountains-tropics-may-set-thermostat-global-climate Source:   By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Many mountains in Indonesia and neighboring Papua New Guinea consist of ancient volcanic rocks from the ocean floor that were caught in a colossal tectonic collision between a chain of island volcanoes and a continent, and thrust high. Lashed by tropical rains, these rocks hungrily react with CO2 and sequester it in minerals. That is why, with only 2% of the world’s land area, Indonesia accounts for 10% of its long-term CO2 absorption. Its mountains could explain why ice sheets have persisted, waxing and waning, for several million years (although they are now threatened by global warming). Now, researchers have extended that theory, finding that such tropical mountain-building collisions coincide with nearly all of the half-dozen or so significant glacial periods in the past 500 million years. “These types of

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/discovery-recent-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse-raises-fears-new-global-flood Source:   By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Some 125,000 years ago, during the last brief warm period between ice ages, Earth was awash. Temperatures during this time, called the Eemian, were barely higher than in today’s greenhouse-warmed world. Yet proxy records show sea levels were 6 to 9 meters higher than they are today, drowning huge swaths of what is now dry land. Scientists have now identified the source of all that water: a collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Glaciologists worry about the present-day stability of this formidable ice mass. Its base lies below sea level, at risk of being undermined by warming ocean waters, and glaciers fringing it are retreating fast. The discovery, teased out of a sediment core and reported last week at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Washington, D.C. [ https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm18/meetingapp.c

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/climate/cop24-katowice-climate-summit.html Source:   By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: KATOWICE, Poland — Diplomats from nearly 200 countries reached a deal on Saturday to keep the Paris climate agreement alive by adopting a detailed set of rules to implement the pact. The deal, struck after an all-night bargaining session, will ultimately require every country in the world to follow a uniform set of standards for measuring their planet-warming emissions and tracking their climate policies. And it calls on countries to step up their plans to cut emissions ahead of another round of talks in 2020. It also calls on richer countries to be clearer about the aid they intend to offer to help poorer nations install more clean energy or build resilience against natural disasters. And it builds a process in which countries that are struggling to meet their emissions goals can get help in getting back on track. The United States agreed to the deal

https://news.berkeley.edu/2018/12/13/researchers-use-jiggly-jell-o-to-make-powerful-new-hydrogen-fuel-catalyst/ Source:   By Kara Manke, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: A cheap and effective new catalyst developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, can generate hydrogen fuel from water just as efficiently as platinum, currently the best — but also most expensive — water-splitting catalyst out there. ...To create the catalyst, the researchers followed a recipe nearly as simple as making Jell-O from a box. They mixed gelatin and a metal ion — either molybdenum, tungsten or cobalt — with water, and then let the mixture dry. ...“We found that the performance is very close to the best catalyst made of platinum and carbon, which is the gold standard in this area,” Lin said. “This means that we can replace the very expensive platinum with our material, which is made in a very scalable manufacturing process.”....

https://eos.org/articles/one-fifth-of-los-angeless-co2-rises-from-lawns-and-golf-courses Source:   By Katherine Kornei, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Measurements of carbon-14 show that roughly 20% of carbon dioxide emissions in the Los Angeles Basin are likely due to the decay of plants in managed landscapes....

https://eos.org/articles/arctic-undergoing-most-unprecedented-transition-in-human-history Source:   By Randy Showstack, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The Arctic continues to undergo dramatic change due to atmospheric and ocean warming, and the region “is no longer returning to the extensively frozen region of recent past decades,” according to the 2018 Arctic Report Card issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at AGU’s Fall Meeting 2018 on Tuesday. ...Here are some of the main findings in the report: In 2018, surface air temperatures in the Arctic continued to warm at more than twice the rate relative to the rest of the globe. The year 2018 was the second warmest year on record in the Arctic ...second only to 2016. ...Arctic sea ice cover, which reached a winter maximum value extent of 14.48 million square kilometers on 17 March 2018, was the second lowest maximum extent in the 39-year record, following 2017. ...Older sea ice, which tends to be thicker and more res

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/power-peat-more-polluting-coal-its-way-out-ireland Source:   By Emily Toner, Science Magazine. Excerpt: ...the Corneveagh Bog in central Ireland ...has been drained and stripped of its moss and heather to reveal the rich, black soil beneath: peat. ...A long mound of peat, stripped and dried earlier in the season, is covered in plastic, waiting to be piled into rail cars and taken to a nearby power plant. There, the carbon-rich soil will be burned to generate electricity. But not for much longer, says Barry O'Loughlin, an ecologist employed by Bord na Móna, a state-owned peat harvesting and energy company based in Newbridge that owns Corneveagh Bog. Bord na Móna, which means "Peat Board," will soon retire dozens of bogs like Corneveagh from energy production. Its team of four ecologists will rehabilitate many of them by blocking drains, soaking the ground, and reestablishing plant life, O'Loughlin says as his boots crunch thr

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/science/climate-change-mass-extinction.html Source:   By Carl Zimmer, The New York Times. Excerpt: In some ways, the planet's worst mass extinction — 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian Period — may parallel climate change today. ... Some 252 million years ago, Earth almost died. In the oceans, 96 percent of all species became extinct. It’s harder to determine how many terrestrial species vanished, but the loss was comparable. This mass extinction, at the end of the Permian Period, was the worst in the planet’s history, and it happened over a few thousand years at most — the blink of a geological eye. On Thursday, a team of scientists offered a detailed accounting of how marine life was wiped out during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. Global warming robbed the oceans of oxygen, they say, putting many species under so much stress that they died off. And we may be repeating the process, the scientists warn. If so, then climate

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/climate/betting-on-a-new-way-to-make-concrete-that-doesnt-pollute.html Source:   By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...a team from a company called Solidia Technologies ...based in Piscataway, N. J. [is] visiting England to test a new technology that the company hopes will dramatically reshape the manufacturing of concrete. Solidia says it can make this ubiquitous building material cheaper and at the same time reduce carbon dioxide emissions by essentially turning them into stone. Solidia’s big bet is that by tweaking the chemistry of cement, the key ingredient in these blocks and other concrete products, it can profit from helping to clean up an industry that is not only one of the largest on the planet but also one of the dirtiest. Cement plants are major league emitters of carbon dioxide, which is blamed for climate change. ...Because of the high heat and large amounts of energy needed as well as the chemical processes involved, maki