https://eos.org/features/diagnosing-thwaites Source:   By Javier Barbuzano, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The water under a vulnerable Antarctic glacier is warming. Its catastrophic collapse could trigger a dramatic increase in global sea level. Thwaites Glacier is not stable. In fact, it is one of the most rapidly changing glaciers in Antarctica, melting at roughly twice the rate it did in the mid-1990s. And in January, scientists confirmed a dire prediction: The water underneath the glacier is currently two degrees above the freezing point.....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/30/business/media/guardian-climate-change-fossil-fuel-advertisements.html Source:     By Amie Tsang and Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: It said the decision was based on the efforts by the industry to prevent meaningful climate action by governments....

https://eos.org/articles/wooden-buildings-could-house-the-carbon-of-the-21st-century Source:   By Jonathan Wosen, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: To keep carbon out of the atmosphere, researchers argue that we need to return to one of the world’s oldest building materials: wood. ...Steel and concrete remain go-to materials for constructing new homes and commercial buildings. But although these materials are sturdy and durable, their manufacture and transport spew carbon into the atmosphere. ....microbes mastered carbon capture—photosynthesis—more than 3 billion years ago, with the first woody plants developing more than 300 million years ago. Churkina worked with a team of architects and scientists to calculate the benefits of using wood to build urban mid-rise buildings from 2020 to 2050. The team forecast four different scenarios. In the first, dubbed “business as usual,” 99.5% of new buildings would be built with steel and concrete. In the other three scenarios, 10%, 50%, or 90% of new buildi

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/world/europe/italy-lake-bolsena-castel-giorgio.html Source:    By Jason Horowitz, The New York Times.  Excerpt: A company wants to build a geothermal plant in Umbria. Locals — and celebrities who live there — don’t want it. ...The company building the plant says it uses an environmentally friendly system with zero carbon emissions to produce electricity. It would help, not harm, the environment and never trigger an earthquake, it says....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/climate/greta-thunberg-davos-transcript.html Source:    The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...full transcript of her remarks...  

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/us-appeals-court-tosses-children-s-climate-lawsuit Source:    By Jennifer Hijazi, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Judges for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “reluctantly” ruled in favor of the government in the kids’ climate case today, thwarting the young people’s historic legal fight while acknowledging the “increasingly rapid pace” of climate change. The arguments presented by the 21 young people in Juliana v. United States proved too heavy a lift for Circuit Judges Mary Murguia and Andrew Hurwitz, who found that the kids failed to establish standing to sue....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/14/us/free-public-transit.html Source:    By Ellen Barry, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Mayors are considering waiving fares for bus service as a way to fight inequality and lower carbon emissions. Critics wonder who will pay for it....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/climate/ocean-temperatures-climate-change.html Source:   By Kendra Pierre-Louis, The New York Times. Excerpt: Last year was the warmest year on record for the world’s oceans, part of a long-term warming trend, according to a study released Monday [ https://doi.org/10.1007/s00376-020-9283-7 ]. “If you look at the ocean heat content, 2019 is by far the hottest, 2018 is second, 2017 is third, 2015 is fourth, and then 2016 is fifth,” said Kevin E. Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and an author on the study. ...Since the middle of last century, the oceans have absorbed roughly 93 percent of the excess heat caused by greenhouse gases from human activities such as burning coal for electricity. That has shielded the land from some of the worst effects of rising emissions. “Ocean heat content is, in many ways, our best measure of the effect of climate change on the earth,” said Zeke Hausfather, the director of c

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/business/drought-increasing-worldwide.html Source:  By Peter Schwartzstein, The New York Times. Excerpt: In Kathmandu, as in much of South Asia and parts of the Middle East, South America and sub-Saharan Africa, these men and their tanker trucks sometimes prevent entire cities from running dry. Without them, millions of households wouldn’t have sufficient water to cook, clean or wash. Or perhaps any at all. And without them, an already deteriorating infrastructure might break down completely, as the tanker men know well. ...Yet there’s another side to them, too, one that is less pleasant and sometimes outright nasty. Tankers frequently deliver poor quality water, which can sicken. They usually charge much more than the state, devastating to the poor. ...But the tanker industry might also be an early illustration of how parts of the private sector stand to profit from a warming and fast-urbanizing world. The urban population of South Asia alone is

https://eos.org/articles/heres-what-your-favorite-ski-resort-may-look-like-in-2085 Source:    By Jenessa Duncombe, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Ski seasons at many of North America’s western resorts might melt away by 2085 because of warming temperatures....

https://eos.org/articles/first-u-s-airline-goes-carbon-neutral Source:   By Jenessa Duncombe, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: JetBlue will buy carbon offsets for all domestic flights starting in July, but are carbon offsets enough to clean up a dirty industry? ...JetBlue will offset their carbon dioxide emissions by funding projects that include forest conservation, landfill gas capture, and renewable energy. The airline will also use sustainable fuel to power planes leaving from San Francisco International Airport. JetBlue did not release a cost estimate for the changes, but a spokesperson told CBS News that the decision would not raise ticket prices.....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/taking-cue-plants-new-chemical-approach-converts-carbon-dioxide-valuable-fuel Source:   By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Researchers have long sought to imitate photosynthesis, harnessing the energy of the Sun to generate chemical fuels. Now, a team has come closer to this goal than ever before. The researchers developed a new copper- and iron-based catalyst that uses light to convert carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) to methane, the primary component of natural gas. If the new catalyst can be improved further, it could help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. ...Now, Mi and his colleagues have come up with a recipe.... They started with the same GaN nanowires grown on top of a commercially available silicon wafer. They then used a standard technique called electrodeposition to add tiny 5- to 10-nanometer-wide particles consisting of a mix of copper and iron. Under light and in the presence of CO 2  and water, the setup converts 51% o

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/05/us/bellingham-natural-gas-ban.html Source:   By Mike Baker, The New York Times. Excerpt: BELLINGHAM, Wash. — As a progressive-minded city nestled where the Cascade mountains reach the sea, Bellingham, Wash., has long been looking to scale back its contribution to climate change. In recent years, city leaders have converted the streetlights to low-power LEDs, provided bikes for city employees and made plans to halt the burning of sewage solids. But while the efforts so far have lowered the city’s emissions, none have come close to erasing its carbon footprint. Now, Bellingham is looking to do something that no other city has yet attempted: adopt a ban on all residential heating by natural gas. ...the move to phase out natural gas is not without opponents, even here. The business community has mobilized to fight the plan and to establish a $1 million campaign to tout natural gas, especially as Seattle, 85 miles south, also begins discussions about

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/climate/trump-nepa-climate-change.html Source:   By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — Federal agencies would no longer have to take climate change into account when they assess the environmental impacts of highways, pipelines and other major infrastructure projects, according to a Trump administration plan that would weaken the nation’s benchmark environmental law. The proposed changes to the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act could sharply reduce obstacles to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and other fossil fuel projects that have been stymied when courts ruled that the Trump administration did not properly consider climate change when analyzing the environmental effects of the projects. According to one government official who has seen the proposed regulation but was not authorized to speak about it publicly, the administration will also narrow the range of projects that require environmental review. That could mak

https://eos.org/opinions/integrating-input-to-forge-ahead-in-geothermal-research Source:   By Robert Rozansky and Alexis McKittrick, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: we describe a methodological approach to combining qualitative input from the geothermal research community with technical information and data. The result of this approach is a road map to overcoming barriers facing this important field of research. Geothermal energy accounts for merely 0.4% of U.S. electricity production today, but the country has vast, untapped geothermal energy resources—if only we can access them. The U.S. Geological Survey has found that unconventional geothermal sources could produce as much as 500 gigawatts of electricity [ https://www.usgs.gov/energy-and-minerals/energy-resources-program/science/geothermal?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects ] —roughly half of U.S. electric power generating capacity [ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-