https://li-cycle.com/news/interview-ajay-kochhar-ceo-li-cycle-electric-cars-will-create-battery-tsunami-in-the-coming-years/ Source: original article published in  Zev.News .  Excerpt: Batteries are a hot topic in electric mobility. From the concern to obtain raw materials to their end-of-life destination. Aspects by the way used by some voices to question the real sustainability of electric vehicles. The theme gains relevance in light of the exponential increase in electric vehicles expected for the coming years. A perspective that, outside the prism of concern, becomes an enormous opportunity for those capable of solving the problem and converting it into business. Precisely the proposal of Canadian  Li-Cycle . The startup founded in 2016 developed technologies to replace materials in the battery production chain. In a low-emission and scalable process, capable of partially replacing mining as a source of raw materials. Li-Cycle is now operational. And accelerating as a business, as

https://eos.org/articles/health-costs-from-climate-soar-to-820-billion ] Source: By  Jenessa Duncombe , Eos/AGU .  Excerpt: Climate change and fossil fuel use are responsible for hiking up the price of health care beyond what the U.S. spends on defense. ... A report released at a medical conference last weekend featured one very large sum. According to the synthesis of dozens of published scientific research studies, the price of health care costs attributed to climate change and fossil fuel use is at least $820 billion each year in the United States. The costs include expenditures associated with doctor visits, prescriptions, emergency room visits, physical therapy, allergy treatments, mental health care, and premature death. They also factor in downstream costs like lost work hours and lost wages. The costs stem either directly or indirectly from burning fossil fuels. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, and Wisconsin Hea

https://eos.org/features/is-green-las-vegas-gone-forever Source: By  Mary Caperton Morton , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...Will desertification overtake Nevada’s half-million-year history of wetlands? Long before the neon lights and artificial fountains of the Las Vegas Strip, people were attracted to the Las Vegas Valley by its artesian springs. Las Vegas means “the meadows,” after all, and for thousands of years, this valley tucked between arid mountain ranges was a startlingly green oasis in the midst of the Mojave Desert. In 1962, after decades of groundwater pumping, the  Las Vegas Springs ran dry , and today 90% of the water that flows through the valley’s faucets comes from the Colorado River by way of  Lake Mead . In the grip of an already decadelong  drought  and with the climate projected to get  even hotter and drier , the valley’s growing population of 2.7 million residents and 42 million annual visitors is expected to get even thirstier, making a return of the Las Vegas meadows hig

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/batteries-used-hearing-aids-could-be-key-future-renewable-energy Source: By  Robert F. Service , Science Magazine.  Excerpt: If necessity is the mother of invention, potential profit has to be the father. Both incentives are driving an effort to transform zinc batteries from small, throwaway cells often used in hearing aids into rechargeable behemoths that could be attached to the power grid, storing solar or wind power for nighttime or when the wind is calm. ...Lithium-ion batteries—giant versions of those found in electric vehicles—are the current front-runners for storing renewable energy, but their components can be expensive. Zinc batteries are easier on the wallet and the planet—and lab experiments are now pointing to ways around their primary drawback: They can’t be recharged over and over for decades. ...recently, some zinc rechargeables have also been commercialized, but they tend to have limited energy storage capacity. Another technolo

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/how-hospitals-respond-to-wildfires Source: By  Elizabeth Thompson , Eos/AGU .  Excerpt: A new study tracks intensive care unit admissions after periods of wildfire smoke pollution. A prolonged or severe smoke event has the potential to strain hospital resources. Wildfires are becoming  worse  and more frequent. Massive plumes of smoke—more  dangerous than urban pollution—disperse across entire continents, spreading inhalable particles that can cause smoke-related  fatalities  and exacerbate a range of medical conditions far from the actual burn site. In a new study,  Sorensen et al.  compared the concentration of inhalable  smoke  particles to local hospital intensive care unit (ICU) admissions by ZIP code. They found that an increase in smoke particles in an area was followed 5 days later by a small but measurable bump in ICU admissions. The researchers then simulated a severe, weeklong smoke scenario. In such conditions, ICU admissions increased by

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/05/26/sea-snot/ Source: By  Antonia Noori Farzan , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: For months, Turkish fishermen in the Sea of Marmara have been running into a problem: They can’t catch fish. That’s because a thick, viscous substance known colloquially as  “sea snot”  is floating on the water’s surface, clogging up their nets and raising doubts about whether fish found in the inland sea would actually be safe to eat. Scientists  say  that the unpleasant-looking mucus is not a new phenomenon, but rising water temperatures caused by global warming may be making it worse. Pollution — including agricultural and raw sewage runoff — is also to blame.... 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/05/21/g7-climate-coal/ Source: By Brady Dennis, The Washington Post.  Excerpt: ...The outcome of the Group of Seven ministerial meeting — in which nations agreed to limit international financing for coal projects and eventually to end financing for such projects around the world — underscored the return of the United States as a force for global climate action after the country remained on the sidelines under President Donald Trump.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/25/climate/biden-california-wind-farm.html Source: By  Coral Davenport , The New York Times.  Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The notion of wind farms churning in the Pacific Ocean, creating clean energy to power homes and businesses, has long been dismissed because of logistical challenges posed by a deep ocean floor and opposition from the military, which prefers no obstacles for its Navy ships. But evolving technology and a president determined to rapidly expand wind energy have dramatically shifted the prospects for wind farms in the Pacific. On Tuesday, the Navy abandoned its opposition and joined the Interior Department to give its blessing to two areas off the California coast that the government said can be developed for wind turbines. The plan allows commercial offshore wind farms in a 399-square-mile area in Morro Bay along central California, and another area off the coast of Humboldt in Northern California. It marked the most significant action the fed

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/05/22/subtropical-storm-ana-hurricane-season/ Source: By Jason Samenow, The Washington Post.  Excerpt: The National Hurricane Center early Saturday declared the arrival of Subtropical Storm Ana, making 2021 the seventh year in a row that a named storm has developed in the Atlantic Ocean ahead of the official June 1 start of hurricane season. Scientists say the recent tendency for preseason storms is another sign of the effects of climate change on tropical weather systems.... 

https://eos.org/features/the-surprising-root-of-the-massachusetts-fight-against-natural-gas Source: By  Jenessa Duncombe , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...Beacon Hill street in Boston ...many of the trees have grown ill and died in the past several years. ...Camargo and many others blame natural gas leaks as a driving cause of the trees’ afflictions. The city has thousands of gas leaks in old, cracked pipes and joints under sidewalks and streets. ...Today Massachusetts has some of the most progressive laws in the country regulating gas leaks. They’re largely thanks to a powerful coalition of organizations and researchers called Gas Leaks Allies taking the state’s energy system to task. The movement to plug leaks has gained steam over the past 2 decades and evolved into a campaign to quit natural gas altogether. Although the campaign has broad ambitions, the movement started with protecting community trees. The fight in Boston over the future of natural gas is also playing out across the country.

https://eos.org/agu-news/growing-healthy-city-canopies Source: By  Heather Goss , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In our  June issue of Eos , we look at the growing body of research on this vital city greenery. Courtney L. Peterson and colleagues  walk us through the canopies of three U.S. cities —Albuquerque, N.M.; Austin, Texas; and Durango, Colo.—and how local government is starting to work with researchers to better manage and adapt their green spaces. As climate change exacerbates the urban heat island effect, among other issues, protecting local trees and their cooling benefits is essential.... 

https://eos.org/features/growing-equity-in-city-green-space Source: By  Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: As the COVID-19 pandemic stretched into the summer months of 2020, people around the world began to flock to outdoor green spaces in and around cities. ...However, not all city residents have the same access, geographically and historically, to nearby green space. ...Developing new urban  green space —places covered with grass, trees, shrubs, or other vegetation—and  infrastructure  that works with it is a priority in many cities these days. But experts agree that the solution is more complicated than simply planting more trees in certain spots. Done right, adding new green space in and around our cities can improve human health, revitalize ecosystems, and boost a region’s economy. Done wrong, it can worsen existing socioeconomic and ecological problems or even create new ones. ...Green spaces in and around cities, collectively known as  urban forests , can mitigate regio

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/climate/storms-floods-wildfires-displacement.html Source: By  Somini Sengupta , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Storms, floods, wildfires — and to a lesser degree, conflict — uprooted 40.5 million people around the world in 2020. It was the largest number in more than a decade, according to figures  published Thursday by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center,  a nonprofit group based in Geneva that tracks displacement data annually. It was all the more notable as it came during the worst global pandemic in a century. Extreme weather events, mainly storms and floods, accounted for the vast majority of the displacement. While not all of those disasters could be linked to human-induced climate change, the Center’s report made clear that global temperature rise, fueled by the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, “are increasing the intensity and frequency of weather-related hazards.”....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/05/20/record-heat-russia-canada-climate-change/ Source: By  Jason Samenow , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: It’s only May, and temperatures near the Arctic Circle in northwestern Russia are approaching 90 degrees. In Moscow, temperatures have shattered records on consecutive days. It has also been unusually warm in central Canada, where raging wildfires in Manitoba are sending plumes of smoke across retreating ice in Lake Winnipeg.... 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/millions-electric-cars-are-coming-what-happens-all-dead-batteries Source: By  Ian Morse , Science Magazine.  Excerpt: ...Thousands of cylindrical cells ...transform lithium and electrons into enough energy to propel the car hundreds of kilometers, again and again, without tailpipe emissions. But when the battery comes to the end of its life, its green benefits fade. ...recycling the battery can be a hazardous business, warns materials scientist Dana Thompson of the University of Leicester. ...many problems confronting researchers, including Thompson, who are trying to tackle an emerging problem: how to recycle the millions of electric vehicle (EV) batteries that manufacturers expect to produce over the next few decades. Current EV batteries “are really not designed to be recycled,” says Thompson, a research fellow at the Faraday Institution, a research center focused on battery issues in the United Kingdom. ...Governments are inching toward requi

https://eos.org/articles/your-summer-outlook-cloudy-with-an-above-normal-chance-of-hurricanes Source: By   Jenessa Duncombe , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: This year may be the sixth consecutive above-normal Atlantic hurricane season. NOAA released its season outlook today and predicted that it will be another doozy in the Atlantic. ...“Climate change has not been directly linked to the frequency of named tropical storms, but it has been linked to an increase in the intensity of storms,” said Rosencrans. The reason for the higher number of storms this year comes from the ongoing periodic climate fluctuation called the   Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation . We have been in a warm phase since 1995, leading to more storms. ...The storm season could be on the more extreme end of the outlook if another large climate phenomenon, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO), switches to its La Niña phase. ...Last year was a   record-setting   year for hurricanes. We had   30 named storms , surpassing the prev

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/business/macron-france-climate-bill.html Source: By  Liz Alderman  and  Constant Méheut , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...As President Emmanuel Macron moves to make France a global champion in the fight against climate change, a  wide-ranging environmental bill  passed by the French National Assembly this month promises to change the way the French live, work and consume. It would require more vegetarian meals at state-funded canteens, block expansion of France’s airports and curb wasteful plastics packaging. Polluters could be found guilty of “ecocide,” a new offense carrying jail terms of up to 10 years for destroying the environment. If Mr. Macron gets his way, the fight against climate change would even be enshrined in the French constitution through a referendum. But those lofty ambitions are running into a barrage of resistance. Environmentalists and politicians from France’s Green party, rather than backing the legislation, have accused Mr. Ma

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/business/ford-electric-vehicle-f-150.html Source: By   Neal E. Boudette , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Ford Motor has opened a major new front in the battle to dominate the fast-growing   electric vehicle   market, and it’s banking on one of the world’s most powerful business franchises. ... the automaker unveiled an electric version of its popular F-150 pickup truck called the Lightning. Ford’s F-Series trucks, including the F-150, make up the top-selling vehicle line in the United States.... See also   Daimler’s Truck Unit Maps Plans to Replace Diesel With Hydrogen   [ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/23/business/hydrogen-trucks-semis.html ]

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/climate/national-parks-climate-change.html Source: By Zoë Schlanger, The New York Times.  Excerpt: For more than a century, the core mission of the National Park Service has been preserving the natural heritage of the United States. But now, as the planet warms, transforming ecosystems, the agency is conceding that its traditional goal of absolute conservation is no longer viable in many cases. Late last month the service published an 80-page document that lays out  new guidance for park managers  in the era of climate change. ...The new research and guidance — which focus on how to plan for worst-case scenarios, decide what species and landscapes to prioritize, and how to assess the risk of relocating those that can’t survive otherwise — represent a kind of “reckoning” for the Park Service, Ms. Glick said.... 

https://eos.org/science-updates/an-unbroken-record-of-climate-during-the-age-of-dinosaurs Source: By Chengshan Wang, Yuan Gao, Daniel E. Ibarra, Huaichun Wu, and Pujun Wang, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A scientific drilling project in China has retrieved a continuous history of conditions from Earth’s most recent “greenhouse” period that may offer insights about future climate scenarios....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/05/18/narrow-pathway-net-zero-future-greenhouse-gases-iea-says/ Source: By  Steven Mufson , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: To limit climate change, by 2030 the world must install the equivalent of the current largest solar park — every day. The rate of energy efficiency improvements will have to triple the rate of the past two decades. And by 2035, the sale of the internal combustion engine needs to be a thing of the past. Those are some of the items in a new International Energy Agency report titled “ Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector ,” which warns that the pathway to net zero is “achievable” but “narrow.” The report hails the rapid growth in the number of countries that have pledged to achieve net zero emissions; those pledges now cover about 70 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. China has pledged to reach net zero emissions by 2060. But the report warns that in many cases there is nothing bac

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/world/middleeast/syria-solar-power-idlib.html Source: By  Ben Hubbard , The New York Times.  Excerpt: HARANABUSH, Syria — When the Syrian government attacked their village, Radwan al-Shimali’s family hastily threw clothes, blankets and mattresses into their truck and sped off to begin new lives as refugees, leaving behind their house, farmland and television. Among the belongings they kept was one prized technology: the solar panel now propped up on rocks next to the tattered tent they call home in an olive grove near the village of Haranabush in northwestern Syria. “It is important,” Mr. al-Shimali said of the 270-watt panel, his family’s sole source of electricity. “When there is sun during the day, we can have light at night.” An unlikely solar revolution of sorts has taken off in an embattled, rebel-controlled pocket of northwestern Syria, where large numbers of people whose lives have been upended by the country’s 10-year-old civil war have embra

https://eos.org/articles/forecasters-navigate-a-highway-to-success-around-lake-victoria Source: By Munyaradzi Makoni, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...Four years of testing an early-warning system (EWS) to inform fisherfolk in East Africa of approaching high-impact weather events on Lake Victoria recently concluded. The High Impact Weather Lake System ( HIGHWAY ) project successfully demonstrated how improved weather, water, and climate services can save lives and livelihoods, as well as support socioeconomic development of vulnerable communities. ...Lake Victoria’s size (it is the world’s second-largest freshwater lake, behind only Lake Superior in North America) allows it to generate its own weather patterns, sometimes suddenly and with human and economic casualties. According to its website,  HIGHWAY  aimed to “enhance the resilience of African people and economic development to weather and climate related shocks, with an initial focus on the Lake Victoria Basin.” The project was funded by £4.

https://eos.org/articles/the-who-what-when-where-and-why-of-the-polar-vortex Source: By  Katherine Kornei , EosAGU.  Excerpt: The polar vortex is a media darling. Headlines frequently announce that it’s  coming ,  collapsing , or  splitting , and articles often tout its role in  record-setting winter storms . But misconceptions about this atmospheric phenomenon abound, and scientists are still untangling its effects on our weather. ...“circumpolar vortex,” typically refers to a swirling mass of air at far northern or southern latitudes. “It’s a region of high wind speed that encircles the pole,”.... ...recent decreases in Arctic sea ice cover—triggered by climate change—have been  linked to a more unstable stratospheric polar vortex .... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/science/space-junk-climate-change.html  Source: By Jonathan O’Callaghan, The New York Times.  Excerpt: Our planet’s atmosphere naturally pulls orbiting debris downward and incinerates it in the thicker lower atmosphere, but increasing carbon dioxide levels are  lowering the density  of the upper atmosphere, which may diminish this effect. A study  presented last month  at the European Conference on Space Debris says that the problem has been underestimated, and that the amount of space junk in orbit could, in a worst-case scenario, increase 50 times by 2100....

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/12/climate/climate-change-weather-noaa.html Source: By  Henry Fountain  and  Jason Kao , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week issued its latest “climate normals”: baseline data of temperature, rain, snow and other weather variables collected over three decades at thousands of locations across the country. ...Because the normals have been produced since 1930, they also say a lot about the weather over a much longer term. That is, they show how the climate has changed in the United States, as it has across the world, as a result of emissions of heat-trapping gases over more than a century. “We’re really seeing the fingerprints of climate change in the new normals,” Dr. Palecki said. “We’re not trying to hide that.” Not that they could. The maps showing the new temperature normals every 10 years, compared with the 20th century average, get increasingly redder [hotter]....

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/12/climate/climate-change-epa.html Source: By  Christopher Flavelle . The New York Times.  Excerpt: Wildfires are bigger, and starting earlier in the year. Heat waves are more frequent. Seas are warmer, and flooding is more common. The air is getting hotter. Even ragweed pollen season is beginning sooner. Climate change is already happening around the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Wednesday. And in many cases, that change is speeding up. The  freshly compiled data , the federal government’s most comprehensive and up-to-date information yet, shows that a warming world is making life harder for Americans, in ways that threaten their health and safety, homes and communities. ...The data released Wednesday came after a four-year gap. Until 2016, the E.P.A. regularly updated its climate indicators. But under President Donald J. Trump, who repeatedly questioned whether the planet was warming, the data was frozen in time. It was ava

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/climate/climate-wind-farm.html Source: By  Coral Davenport  and  Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Vineyard Wind project, off the coast of Massachusetts, would generate enough electricity to power 400,000 homes.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/climate/gas-flaring.html Source: By  Shola Lawal , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Gas flaring worldwide decreased by 5 percent in the pandemic year, mostly because of lower demand for oil, according to a  recent report from the World Bank . While the overall drop was expected, the report offered a detailed picture of the flaring activities around the world, with steep declines in some areas, like the United States, and surprising increases in others, notably China. Flaring occurs when the gas that emerges with crude oil is burned off rather than captured. That burning emits carbon dioxide, a gas that is the main contributor to climate change. ...According to the report, Russia was responsible for more flaring overall than any other country in 2020, contributing 15 percent of the global total. ...The other top flaring countries, according to the report, were Iraq, Iran, the United States, Algeria, Venezuela and Nigeria. ...China saw the biggest percenta

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/05/10/tropical-storm-andres-pacific/ Source: By  Matthew Cappucci , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: It’s the latest in a trend that may be tied to climate change. ...Tropical Storm Andres formed in the eastern Pacific Ocean on Sunday morning, becoming the earliest named storm on record in the region and the latest in a trend of storms forming earlier....

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/business/lithium-mining-race.html Source: By   Ivan Penn   and   Eric Lipton , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A race is on to produce lithium in the United States, but competing projects are taking very different approaches to extracting the vital raw material. Some might not be very green. ...Atop a long-dormant volcano in northern Nevada, workers are preparing to start blasting and digging out a giant pit that will serve as the first new large-scale lithium mine in the United States in more than a decade — a new domestic supply of an essential ingredient in   electric car   batteries and renewable energy. The mine, constructed on leased federal lands, could help address the near total reliance by the United States on foreign sources of   lithium . But the project, known as Lithium Americas, has drawn protests from members of a Native American tribe, ranchers and environmental groups because it is expected to use   billions of gallons   of precious gr

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/05/05/uncertainty-is-not-our-friend-scientists-are-still-struggling-understand-sea-level-risks-posed-by-antarctica/ Source: By  Chris Mooney  and  Brady Dennis , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Two studies find the Paris climate goals could significantly reduce sea level rise by 2100 — but also show researchers still grappling with how climate change will alter the world’s largest ice sheet ...Scientists struggling to understand the threat of sea level rise on a warming Earth found Wednesday that amid lingering uncertainty, this much is clear: Meeting the goals of the Paris climate agreement remains humanity’s best hope for preserving current coastlines in the 21st century. At the same time, they diverged over the risks posed by the biggest wild card, the Antarctic ice sheet, which contains by far the most ice on the planet and holds the potential to unleash tens of feet of sea level rise. Ice losses from Antarctica have been  acce

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/05/nasas-new-fleet-satellites-will-offer-insights-wild-cards-climate-change Source: By  Paul Voosen , Science Magazine.  Excerpt: NASA is about to announce its next generation of Earth-observing satellites... “Earth system observatory,” as NASA calls it, will offer insights into two long-standing wild cards of climate change—clouds and aerosols—while providing new details about the temperatures and chemistry of the planet’s changing surface. The satellite fleets also mark a revival for NASA’s earth science, which has languished over the past decade compared with exploration of Mars and other planets.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/climate/heat-climate-health-risks.html Source:  By  Christopher Flavelle , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The growing risk of overlapping heat waves and power failures poses a severe threat that major American cities are not prepared for,  new research suggests . Power failures have increased by more than 60 percent since 2015, even as climate change has made heat waves worse, according to the new research  published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology . Using computer models to study three large U.S. cities, the authors estimated that a combined blackout and heat wave would expose at least two-thirds of residents in those cities to heat exhaustion or heat stroke....  

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/climate/EPA-HFCs-hydrofluorocarbons.html Source:  By  Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency moved on Monday to sharply reduce the use and production of powerful greenhouse gases central to refrigeration and air-conditioning, part of the Biden administration’s larger strategy of trying to slow the pace of global warming.The agency proposed to regulate hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, a class of man-made chemicals that are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet. The proposal is the first significant step the E.P.A. has taken under President Biden to curb climate change. The move is also the first time the federal government has set national limits on HFCs, which were used to replace ozone-depleting  chlorofluorocarbons  in the 1980s but have turned out to be a significant driver of global warming. More than a dozen states have either banned HFCs or are formulating s