https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/03/31/biden-climate-infrastructure Source:  By  Steven Mufson  and  Juliet Eilperin , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: New standard would mandate renewable-energy use by utilities, while tax breaks and spending would promote climate-friendly technologies. ...The linchpin of Biden’s plan, which he detailed in a speech Wednesday in Pittsburgh, is the creation of a national standard requiring utilities to use a specific amount of solar, wind and other renewable energy to power American homes, businesses and factories. ...Biden said his plan would confront climate change, while putting the U.S. ahead of its economic competitors. “It’s going to boost America’s innovative edge in markets where global leadership is up for grabs,” he said....  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/03/31/climate-change-deforestation/ Source: By C hris Mooney ,  Brady Dennis , and  John Muyskens , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Loss of vital forests in the tropics increased by 12 percent between 2019 and 2020, a satellite-based survey found. ...The Earth saw nearly 100,000 square miles of lost tree cover last year — an area roughly the size of Colorado — according to the satellite-based survey by  Global Forest Watch . The change represents nearly 7 percent more trees lost than in 2019. ...Brazil, which is home to much of the sprawling Amazon rainforest, saw the most tropical forest disappear, largely because of wildfires and the clearing of land, much of it illegally. The nation lost a swath of old-growth forest in 2020 larger than the state of Connecticut.... 

https://eos.org/articles/red-rocks-using-color-to-understand-climate-change Source:  By Ria Mazumdar, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A recent study on hematite formation during the Triassic may help predict the effects of climate change on contemporary monsoonal environments. ...conventional understanding attributes redness in the rock formations to  diagenesis , a process of oxidation that occurs well after rocks are formed. ...Lepre and his colleagues examined part of a 518-meter-long rock core from the Chinle Formation in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. Using  diffuse reflectance spectroscopy , they obtained the wavelengths of various colors to find the concentration of hematite as well as grain size, which pushes the color to be more blue or red. (A more arid climate corresponds to a more reddish hue.) By looking at color cycles recorded in the rock formations, the team evaluated climate behavior during the Late Triassic, about 216 million to 213 million years ago.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/climate/biden-offshore-wind.html Source:  By  Lisa Friedman  and  Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Monday announced a plan to  vastly expand the use of offshore wind power  along the East Coast, aiming to tap a potentially huge new source of renewable energy that has so far struggled to gain acceptance in the United States. The plan sets a goal of deploying 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind turbines in coastal waters nationwide by 2030, enough to power 10 million homes. ...The administration also plans to offer $3 billion in federal loan guarantees for offshore wind projects and invest in upgrading the nation’s ports to support wind construction. The moves come as President Biden prepares a roughly  $3 trillion economic recovery package  that will focus heavily on infrastructure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and tackle climate change, an effort he has framed as a jobs initiative. Officials ma

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/climate/texas-blackout-flaring-natural-gas.html Source:    By  Hiroko Tabuchi , The New York Times.  Excerpt: As Texas was crippled last month by frigid temperatures that killed more than 100 people and triggered widespread blackouts, drilling companies in the state’s largest oil field were forced to burn off an extraordinary amount of natural gas — on the worst day, an amount that could have powered tens of thousands of homes for at least a year. The need to intentionally burn off, or flare, an estimated 1.6 billion cubic feet of gas in a single day — a fivefold increase from rates seen before the crisis, according to satellite analysis — came as the state’s power plants went offline and pipelines froze, so the wells simply had no place to send the natural gas still streaming out of the ground. As a result, the gas had to be set ablaze, fueling towering flames, the highest of which can reach hundreds of feet into the air. ... in recent years, resea

https://eos.org/features/fire-as-medicine-learning-from-native-american-fire-stewardship Source: By  Jane Palmer , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In 2020, nearly  60,000 wildfires  raged across the United States, burning a record-breaking 10.3 million acres. ...California and Colorado recorded their biggest fires ever, and in early October, 65 large fires were burning in California, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and, in smaller instances, five other states. ...The year’s catastrophic fire season could potentially be the new normal, as climate change is bringing hotter and drier conditions, perfect for igniting forests laden with fuel after decades of fire suppression efforts. “As a tribal forester, I am always thinking about climate change,” said John Galvan, a forester for the  Pueblo of Jemez, a tribe located  in north central New Mexico. “It is so much drier, and we are getting so little precipitation.” The ancestors of the Native American community at Jemez Pueblo lived in fire-prone

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/mass-bird-die-off-linked-to-wildfires-and-toxic-gases Source:  By Joshua Rapp Learn,  Eos/AGU. Excerpt: After an abnormally large number of migratory birds turned up dead in people’s backyards in Colorado and other parts of western and central U.S. states, locals began to document their observations on a crowdsourced science platform called  iNaturalist . Within the app, a special project was set up specifically for this die-off, which occurred in August and September 2020, so that records of the dead birds could be compiled together. Around the same period as the birds’ deaths, more than 3 million hectares (7.8 million acres) of land burned, which resulted in habitat loss and the emission of toxic compounds that threaten the health of both avian species and humans. In addition, snowstorms struck parts of the Northwest in early September while these birds were in the midst of their annual migration. Some areas experienced temperature drops of as m

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/new-generation-carbon-dioxide-traps-could-make-carbon-capture-practical Source:  By  Robert F. Service .  Excerpt: Windmills and solar panels are proliferating fast, but not fast enough to stave off the worst of climate change. Doing so, U.N. climate experts say, will also require capturing carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from the tens of thousands of fossil fuel power plants and industrial smokestacks likely to keep belching for years to come. Today’s most popular approach for capturing CO 2  is too expensive for widespread use. But researchers are now developing a new generation of chemical CO 2  traps, including one shown this month to reduce the cost by nearly 20%. When existing U.S. tax credits are added to the mix, carbon capture is nearing commercial viability, says Joan Brennecke, a carbon capture expert at the University of Texas, Austin. ... in the March issue of International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, the PNNL team, together with re

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/world/australia/australia-floods.html Source: By  Damien Cave , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Two massive storms have converged over eastern Australia, dumping more than three feet of rain in just five days. In a country that suffered  the worst wildfires in its recorded history  just a year ago, the deluge has become another record-breaker — a once-in-50-years event, or possibly 100, depending on the rain that’s expected to continue through Tuesday night. Nearly 20,000 Australians have been forced to evacuate, and more than 150 schools have been closed. The storms have  swept away  the home of a couple on their wedding day, prompted at least 500 rescues and drowned roads from Sydney up into the state of Queensland 500 miles north. ...Last year, huge fires combined into history-making infernos that scorched an area larger than many European countries. This year, thunderstorms have fused and hovered, delivering enough water to push rivers like the H

https://eos.org/articles/cold-curriculum-for-a-hot-topic Source:  By Nancy Averett, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: educators at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center do more than just talk about ice cores and what they reveal about temperature, precipitation, and climate: The scientists also help students create their own ice cores—using Pringles potato chip cans filled with layers of frozen water, instant coffee, and other materials to represent the different layers found in the ice. “If you haven’t seen an ice core and looked at what patterns are there, it’s really hard to just jump to the data and have a deeper meaning of what [they’re] telling you or how [they connect] to the core,” said  Jason Cervenec , education and outreach director at the Center, which is on the campus of Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus. Every year, Cervenec and his staff host thousands of kindergarten to 12th-grade students to teach them about ice cores and the secrets they hold. A handful of other facilit

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/03/18/epa-website-climate/ Source:  By  Dino Grandoni  and  Brady Dennis , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: The return of the website again marks the chasm between the two administrations when it comes to climate policy....  

https://www.npr.org/2021/03/17/974774461/drawing-a-line-in-the-mud-scientists-debate-when-age-of-humans-began Source:  By  Rebecca Hersher , National Public Radio.  Excerpt: Humans have changed the Earth in such profound ways that scientists say we have entered a new geological period: the Anthropocene Epoch. But when did the new epoch officially begin? ...Teams are studying 11 locations on five continents, looking for a place where rock, mud or ice perfectly capture the global impact of humans. ...ultimately only one site will be crowned the "golden spike" location for the Anthropocene: the place on Earth where a line in the rock, mud or ice exemplifies the unique markers of the age of humans. ...For example, there is a line of pollen and dust in a specific ice core from Antarctica that is the official reference point for the beginning of the Holocene epoch, which commenced when the last ice age ended about 12 thousand years ago. The golden spike location for the end of th

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/business/steel-emissions-arcelor-mittal.html Source:  By  Stanley Reed , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...steel mills are among the leading polluters. They burn coke, a derivative of coal, and belch millions of tons of greenhouse gases. Roughly two tons of carbon dioxide rises into the atmosphere for every ton of steel made using blast furnaces. With climate concerns growing, a crunch appears inevitable for these companies. Carbon taxes are rising, and investors are wary of putting their money into businesses that could be regulated out of existence. None of this has been lost on the giant steel maker ArcelorMittal. For half a century,  Lakshmi Mittal devoted himself to building and running  what became the world’s largest empire of huge steel mills, employing nearly 170,000 people. Now his son, Aditya Mittal, 44, who recently succeeded his father as chief executive, says the industry that has made the family’s name and fortune needs to change its p

https://eos.org/opinions/building-a-better-model-to-view-earths-interacting-processes Source:  By Gokhan Danabasoglu and Jean-François Lamarque, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Earth’s climate is the result of a complex network of interacting systems: air currents, ocean biogeochemistry, mountain ranges, and ice sheets, to name a few. Understanding how our climate evolves and predicting what it will look like under various scenarios require comparing and combining multiple models and simulations, each with its own strengths and focus areas. Earth science researchers are currently putting the most recent release of one such modeling system through its paces. The open-source Community Earth System Model (CESM) modeling framework is used for many purposes, including investigations of past and current climate, projections of future climate change, and subseasonal-to-decadal Earth system predictions. Its latest version,  CESM 2 , was  released in June 2018 , followed by several incremental releases th

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/03/15/greenland-ice-sheet-more-vulnerable/ Source:  By  Sarah Kaplan , The Washington Post. Excerpt: At first, Andrew Christ was ecstatic. In soil taken from the bottom of the Greenland ice sheet, he’d discovered the remains of ancient plants. Only one other team of researchers had ever found greenery beneath the mile-high ice mass. But then Christ determined how long it had been since that soil had seen sunlight: Less than a million years. Just the blink of an eye in geologic terms. And it dawned on him. If plants once grew at multiple spots on the surface of Greenland, that meant the ice that now covers the island had entirely melted. And if the whole Greenland ice sheet had melted once in the not-so-distant past, that meant it could go again. ...The  findings , published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that the biggest reservoir of ice in the Northern Hemisphere can collapse due to rela

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/business/volkswagen-electric-cars-tesla.html Source:  By  Jack Ewing , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Volkswagen is going all in on electric cars, …. ...the German carmaker staged a so-called  Power Day  to showcase its latest electric car technology. ...The session included a number of attention-getting announcements, including a promise that Volkswagen would cut the cost of batteries by up to 50 percent by the end of the decade, while slashing charging time to 12 minutes. That would make electric cars cheaper than gasoline vehicles and just as convenient. Volkswagen also unveiled plans to build six battery factories in Europe in joint ventures with suppliers. And by 2025, the company said, it would have 18,000 charging stations on the continent operating in conjunction with energy companies including BP. The British oil producer said it would offer charging at its filling stations.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/14/climate/outer-banks-tax-climate-change.html Source:  By  Christopher Flavelle , photographs and video by Erin Schaff, The New York Times.  Excerpt: AVON, N.C. — ...Along the Outer Banks — where tourist-friendly beaches are shrinking by more than 14 feet a year in some places, according to the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management — other towns have imposed tax increases similar to the one Avon is considering. ...Bobby Outten, a county manager in the Outer Banks, delivered two pieces of bad news at a recent public meeting. Avon, a town with a few hundred full-time residents, desperately needed at least $11 million to stop its main road from washing away. And to help pay for it, Dare County wanted to increase Avon’s property taxes, in some cases by almost 50 percent. Homeowners mostly agreed on the urgency of the first part. They were considerably less keen on the second. People gave Mr. Outten their own ideas about who should pay to protect t

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/10/climate/electric-vehicle-fleet-turnover.html Source:  By  Brad Plumer ,  Nadja Popovich  and  Blacki Migliozzi , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...Automakers are now shifting to electric vehicles, which could make up one-quarter of new sales by 2035, analysts project. But at that point, only 13 percent of vehicles on the road would be electric. Why? Older cars can stick around for a decade or two. ...If the United States wanted to move to a fully electric fleet by 2050 — to meet President Biden’s goal of net zero emissions — then sales of gasoline-powered vehicles would likely have to end altogether by around 2035, a heavy lift. ...Around the world, governments and automakers are focused  on selling newer, cleaner electric vehicles  as a key solution to climate change. Yet it could take years, if not decades, before the technology has a drastic effect on greenhouse gas emissions. One reason for that? It will take a long time for all the e

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/03/08/biden-climate-windfarm/ Source:  By  Dino Grandoni  and  Juliet Eilperin , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: The Biden administration took a crucial step Monday toward approving the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm about 12 nautical miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., a project that officials say will launch a massive clean-power expansion in  the fight against climate change ....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/03/05/more-than-50-companies-have-vowed-be-carbon-neutral-by-2040 Source:  By   Desmond Butler  and  Steven Mufson , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Amazon, Walmart, General Motors, and now FedEx. There is a quickening rhythm of corporations with big carbon footprints pledging action to combat climate change. ...Yet even the prodigious voluntary steps by a portion of the corporate world lack the speed, scale or scientific know-how needed to move the thermometer of the warming planet very far in the right direction without government support or broader behavioral changes in the private sector. Just Wednesday, FedEx promised to be carbon-neutral by 2040, 10 years faster than the timeline laid out by the Paris climate accord. The company pledged an initial investment of $2 billion to start electrifying its massive fleet of more than 180,000 vehicles and $100 million for a new Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture. The giant delive

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/business/electric-ebikes-pandemic.html Source:  By Roy Furchgott, The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...While the pandemic has accelerated bike sales, the overriding attraction is that  cities worldwide are beginning to restrict motor traffic . These companies are betting that e-bikes are the urban vehicles of tomorrow — or at least vehicles for good publicity today. “In the past 12 to 18 months, you have seen a lot of new brands come into the market,” said Andrew Engelmann, an e-bike sales and marketing manager at  Yamaha , which has been in the electric bike business since 1993 and claims sales of two million worldwide. ...Credit the coronavirus pandemic, which has ignited bike sales of all stripes, but none so much as e-bikes. While retail unit sales of bicycles from January to October last year were up 46 percent from a year earlier, electric bikes were up 140 percent. Measured in dollars, regular bikes were up 67 percent and e-bikes 158 percent....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/03/04/climate-change-butterflies/ Source:  By   Dino Grandoni , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Hundreds of butterfly species across the American West are vanishing as the region becomes hotter, drier and more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, according to a study released Thursday. In a swath of 11 states, from California to Montana, and from New Mexico to Washington, the populations of a majority of 450 butterfly species are dropping, according to observations by professionals and amateurs stretching back to the 1970s. The loss of butterflies across Western forests and prairies, like the   similar drop in bumblebees nationwide due to rising temperatures , is troubling because both insects play a key role in pollinating crops and wildflowers. And the findings may add to fears among researchers of a broader   die-off of insects   that could be underway everywhere ...a potential and debated bugpocalypse that threatens

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/climate/wyoming-coal-country-wind-farm.html Source:  By  Dionne Searcey , The New York Times.  Excerpt: RAWLINS, Wyo. — The coal layered underground helped bring settlers to this scrubby, wind-whipped part of southern Wyoming, where generations found a steady paycheck in the mines and took pride in powering the nation. But now, it is energy from the region’s other abundant energy resource — the wind itself — that is creating jobs and much-needed tax revenues in Carbon County. Despite its historic ties to coal, as well as local denialism about climate change, the county is soon to be home to one of the  biggest wind farms  in the nation....  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/03/03/hurricanes-atlantic-climate-normal/ Source: By  Matthew Cappucci  and  Andrew Freedman , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Every 10 years, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration revises the baseline of what weather and climate conditions are considered “normal.” The most recent normals for Atlantic hurricane activity will soon be released, and a preview reveals a spike in storm frequency and intensity. During the most recent 30-year period, which spans 1991 to 2020, there has been an uptick in the number of named storms and an increase in the frequency of major hurricanes of category 3 intensity or greater in the Atlantic....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/03/business/energy-storage-batteries-developers.html Source:  By Patrick Sisson, The New York Times. Excerpt: Charged via rooftop solar panels, the cells form a network that provides a building with backup electricity and that utilities can tap during peak periods. ...Battery energy storage in the United States grew substantially last year, adding 476 megawatts of storage in the third quarter, a 240 percent increase from the previous quarter, according to the  U.S. Energy Storage Monitor . But it’s nowhere near what’s needed to support a fully renewable power system. A report by the University of California, Berkeley, exploring the  shift to renewable power  suggests the United States would need 150 gigawatts of storage to achieve a 90 percent clean energy grid by 2035.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/business/volvo-electric-cars.html Source: By  Jack Ewing , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Swedish company would phase out internal combustion engine vehicles faster than other automakers….  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/03/02/api-climate-carbon-tax/ Source:  By  Steven Mufson , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry’s top lobbying arm, is edging closer to endorsing a carbon tax, a tool that would make fossil fuels more expensive, boost prospects for renewable and nuclear energy, and curb pollution that is driving  climate change .... 

https://eos.org/articles/the-surprising-source-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions Source: By  Sarah Derouin , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A belching coal plant is easy to identify as a probable greenhouse gas polluter. Coal emissions are point source pollution—like a chemical spill in a stream, the pollution can be traced back to a specific activity at a precise place. ... A team of scientists recently took a different approach to estimating carbon dioxide: the bottleneck method. Instead of considering the pollution emitted only at the end use, burning phase of fossil fuel use, the researchers considered all phases: mining, transport, refining, and burning. Their study identified the worst emissions offenders, and the results were surprising: oil and gas pipelines. The researchers noted that the companies enabling greenhouse gases emissions are most at risk of climate mitigation lawsuits. ...The new study, published in  Energies , introduces the bottleneck method. ...Using the bottleneck method, al

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/extreme-climate-change-history/617793/ Source:    By  Peter Brannen , The Atlantic.  Excerpt: Our climate models could be missing something big. ...Taking in the whole sweep of Earth’s history, now we see how unnatural, nightmarish, and profound our current experiment on the planet really is. A small population of our particular species of primate has, in only a few decades, unlocked a massive reservoir of old carbon slumbering in the Earth, gathering since the dawn of life, and set off on a global immolation of Earth’s history to power the modern world. As a result, up to half of the tropical coral reefs on Earth have died, 10 trillion tons of ice have melted, the ocean has grown 30 percent more acidic, and global temperatures have spiked. ...The next few fleeting moments are ours, but they will echo for hundreds of thousands, even millions, of years. This is one of the most important times to be alive in the history of life....