https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/climate/api-exxon-biden-climate-bill.html Source: By Hiroko Tabuchi , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The messages take aim at Democrats by name as part of a broad effort to undermine landmark climate legislation that now hangs in the balance in Congress.…

https://eos.org/articles/how-do-you-know-if-youve-experienced-global-warming Source: By Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: People in every corner of the United States are increasingly seeing climate change affect their daily lives: water shortages and lost crops from extended drought, record-breaking heat waves in cities, hazy air from wildfire smoke half a country away, and hurricane-related flooding in basement apartments, to name just a few. ...A  recent study  in  Global Environmental Change  has found that regardless of political and sociodemographic factors, experiencing an anomalously high number of hot, dry days is most likely to make U.S. residents believe they’ve experienced global warming. “Climate change expresses itself very differently in different places—wildfires and drought in the West, hurricanes and flooding in the East, all of the above in Texas!” said  Jennifer Marlon , a climate scientist at the Yale School of the Environment in New Haven, Conn., and lead

https://eos.org/articles/degraded-coral-reefs-may-be-more-resistant-to-climate-change Source: By Clara Chaisson , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: New research on Kiribati’s beleaguered atolls paints a complex picture of reef recovery.…

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2021/09/electric-cars-have-hit-inflection-point/620233/ Source: By Robinson Meyer , The Atlantic.  Excerpt: One sign EVs are no longer the auto industry’s neglected stepchild? Norway could sell its last gas-powered car as soon as next year. ...Last night, the automaker [Ford] and SK Innovation, a South Korean battery manufacturer,  announced  that they were spending $11.4 billion to build two new multi-factory centers in Tennessee and Kentucky that are scheduled to begin production in 2025. The facilities, which will hire a combined 11,000 employees, will manufacture lithium-ion vehicle batteries and assemble  electric F-series pickup trucks . ...this will be its first plant in Tennessee  in six decades . ...and its  first new American vehicle-assembly plant  in decades. ...GM, Ford,  Volkswagen ,  Toyota ,  BMW , and the parent company of Fiat-Chrysler  have all pledged that by 2030,  at least 40 percent of their new cars  worldwide will

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/business/energy-environment/ford-battery-electric-vehicles.html Source: By Neal E. Boudette , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The automaker and a supplier will spend $11.4 billion on three battery factories and a truck plant, creating 11,000 jobs.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/27/science/dinosaurs-volcanoes-triassic.html Source: By Sam Jones , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Massive eruptions transformed the climate in the Triassic era, creating the conditions in which dinosaurs diversified into many more species. ...For decades, scientists argued over  whether volcanoes  or an  asteroid caused dinosaurs’ abrupt extinction  some 65 million years ago. It wasn’t  until 2010  that an international panel of experts formally declared that it was the space rock, and not giant eruptions, that was the primary cause of dino demise. And now a team of researchers is presenting  the most compelling evidence yet  that massive volcanic events likely helped the dinosaurs take over the planet, at least in another era. Their results were published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.…

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/26/climate/ida-oil-spills.html Source: By Blacki Migliozzi  and  Hiroko Tabuchi , The New York Times.  Excerpt: When Hurricane Ida barreled into the Louisiana coast with near 150 mile-per-hour winds on Aug. 30, it left  a trail of destruction . The storm also triggered the most oil spills detected from space after a weather event in the Gulf of Mexico since the federal government started using satellites to track spills and leaks a decade ago. ...In the two weeks after Ida, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a total of 55 spill reports, including a spill near a fragile nature reserve. It underscores the frailty of the region’s offshore oil and gas infrastructure to  intensifying storms   fueled by climate change.…

https://eos.org/features/how-the-ski-industry-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to-love-climate-activism Source: By Jenessa Duncombe , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A cultural shift is underway to transform outdoor buffs into stalwarts for climate action. Will it come soon enough to save their sport?….

https://eos.org/agu-news/winters-melting-point Source: By Heather Goss , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Around the world, the seasonal snowpack is changing. Eos’s October issue looks at how we study winter weather, adapt to climate changes, and even fight for the snow we love.…

https://abcnews.go.com/US/eating-sustainably-easiest-ways-combat-climate-change-experts/story?id=80043481 Source: By Julia Jacobo , ABC News.  Excerpt: As temperatures around the world continue to warm at alarming rates, individuals are asking themselves what lifestyle changes they can make to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. ...the easiest thing individuals can do in their daily lives to make an impact in the climate fight is simple switches to their diets -- and they don't even have to become a vegetarian or give up animal products altogether to do it, experts say. ...The easiest way to make a meal more sustainable is to eat less meat and more organic, plant-based foods -- the closer they were grown, the better, according to the experts. ...Meat consumption is the largest culprit of greenhouse gas emissions in American diets ...Planetary boundaries are being challenged by meat consumption, but meat, and beef in particular, represents the majority of the carbon footprint in the

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/climate/federal-flood-insurance-cost.html Source: By Christopher Flavelle , The New York Times.  Excerpt: New federal flood insurance rates that better reflect the real risks of climate change are coming. For some, premiums will rise sharply. ...Florida’s version of the American dream, which holds that even people of relatively modest means can aspire to live near the water, depends on a few crucial components: sugar white beaches, soft ocean breezes and federal flood insurance that is heavily subsidized. But starting Oct. 1, communities in Florida and elsewhere around the country will see those subsidies begin to disappear in a nationwide experiment in trying to adapt to climate change: Forcing Americans to pay something closer to the real cost of their flood risk, which is rising as the planet warms.…

https://eos.org/articles/better-together-perovskites-boost-silicon-solar-cell-efficiency Source: By Mary Caperton Morton, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Scientists engineer a way to layer materials to boost efficiency without interrupting manufacturing processes. ...solar panels made with crystalline silicon convert between 18% and 22% of the Sun’s energy into usable electricity, with an upward theoretical limit of 33%. Despite this limitation, crystalline silicon photovoltaic cells account for 95% of the solar cell market. ...In a new perspective, published in  Applied Physics Letters , a team led by  Laura Miranda Pérez , head of materials research at Oxford PV in the United Kingdom, and  Chris Case , the chief technology officer at Oxford PV, presents a case for commercializing tandem solar cells by combining existing silicon cell technology with synthetic variants of the perovskite. ...By adding perovskite, which more efficiently captures the blue region of the solar spectrum, to silicon, whic

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/23/biden-climate-rule-hydrofluorocarbons Source: By  Dino Grandoni , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Agency’s final rule will slash the use and production of hydrofluorocarbons — often found to be leaking from U.S. supermarket freezers — by 85 percent over the next 15 years…

https://www.route-one.net/news/equipmake-reveals-jewel-e-battery-electric-double-decker/ By  routeone Team .  Excerpt: Equipmake has revealed its Jewel E battery-electric double-decker bus. The model will be produced in partnership with Spanish coachbuilder Beulas and it will offer a maximum of 543kW/h of onboard energy storage. That is the largest energy capacity of any two-axle battery-electric double-decker. It will deliver what Equipmake claims is a 250-mile range. The first vehicles are expected to begin in-service trials in Q1 2022…

https://eos.org/articles/collaboration-in-the-rockies-aims-to-model-mountain-watersheds-worldwide Source: By Saima Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: As Earth’s climate changes at an unprecedented rate, the Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory is studying precipitation on an unprecedented scale. ...Earth is entering a period that some scientists have called the “no-analog future” because climate change has left them unable to use past experience to predict future weather trends, like rain and water availability. But this month, a new monitoring project called the  Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory , or SAIL, started collecting data that scientists hope will fill holes in hydrology models and guide water policy in this uncertain future.…

https://eos.org/articles/to-understand-hunger-in-sub-saharan-africa-consider-both-climate-and-conflict Source: By Rachel Fritts , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Warfare exacerbates the impacts of drought to produce food insecurity crises that last long after the drought has passed, new research documents. ...World hunger has been increasing since 2014 after falling for decades, and Africa in particular has suffered from this trend. More than 20% of people in Africa are currently affected by hunger, and more than one third are undernourished, the  United Nations estimates .“ New research suggests that in Africa at least, this increase in food insecurity is being driven by an uptick in violent conflict. An analysis of food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa between 2009 and 2019 found that the impacts of drought, although significant, remained relatively steady over the period, whereas violent conflict had an increasingly significant impact. Warfare exacerbates and prolongs the impacts of drought by d

https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2021/Q3/purdue-record-for-the-whitest-paint-appears-in-latest-edition-of-guinness-world-records.html From Purdue University News.  Excerpt: ...the world’s  whitest paint , ... may dramatically reduce or even eliminate the need for air conditioning. The paint, developed at Purdue University, has earned a  Guinness World Records TM  title . ...“When we started this project about seven years ago, we had saving energy and fighting climate change in mind,” said  Xiulin Ruan , a professor of  mechanical engineering  at Purdue, in a podcast episode of “ This Is Purdue .” Ruan invented the paint with his graduate students. ...The formulation that Ruan’s lab created reflects 98.1% of solar radiation at the same time as emitting infrared heat. Because the paint absorbs less heat from the sun than it emits, a surface coated with this paint is cooled below the surrounding temperature without consuming power. Typical commercial white paint gets warmer rather

https://eos.org/articles/small-climate-changes-could-be-magnified-by-natural-processes Source: By Damond Benningfield , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: A new study uses modeling techniques to uncover how small incidents of warming may be turned into hyperthermal events lasting thousands of year. ...A little bit of global warming may go a long way. A recent mathematical analysis of the climate of the Cenozoic­—our current geologic era, starting at the demise of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago—says that natural processes may amplify small amounts of warming, turning them into “hyperthermal” events that can last for thousands of years or longer. This finding suggests that human-induced climate change could make our planet susceptible to more extreme warming events in the future....

https://www.science.org/content/article/huge-forest-experiment-aims-reduce-wildfires-can-it-unite-loggers-and-environmentalists Source: By Warren Cornwall, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: ...James Johnston could see two possible futures for the forests that blanket the Blue Mountains. ...swaths of dead trees, their trunks weathered to a polished silver, rose from powdery dirt. “That’s old-growth ponderosa pine killed by the southern edge of the Canyon Creek Fire,” which struck in 2015, explained Johnston, who works at Oregon State University (OSU), Corvallis. ...The living trees sat within a forest tract that had been carefully logged—“treated” in the parlance of researchers—as part of an ambitious experiment, launched in 2006, that aims to prevent the kinds of intense wildfires now destroying forests across western North America. The effort seeks to demonstrate ways of reversing more than 100 years of mismanagement that have transformed many forests into tinderboxes. It is also a study in

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/08/solar-panels-made-usa/ Source: By Jeanne Whalen , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: ... First Solar  is one of the few U.S. solar-panel manufacturers in an industry dominated by Chinese factories, some of which the Biden administration  has accused of employing forced labor . Lately, that has made First Solar particularly popular with panel buyers, which have snapped up the company’s entire production run through 2022. Posters in the factory’s lobby proudly declare that the company is “countering China’s state-subsidized dominance of solar supply chains” while churning out products that are “uniquely American” and “Ohio-made.”…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/science/komodo-dragons-endangered.html Source: By Marion Renault , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A top conservation organization updated the status of the fierce giant lizards on its Red List of threatened species. ...Komodo dragons are particularly vulnerable to environmental changes because they inhabit a limited belt of land between the islands’ coasts and steep forested hills. ...The International Union for Conservation of Nature warns that suitable Komodo dragon habitat is expected to shrink by at least 30 percent in the next 45 years. Factors driving this habitat loss include the rising temperatures and sea levels associated with climate change.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/technology/batteries-new-technology.html Source: By Cade Metz , The New York Times.  Excerpt: This week, a more efficient type of battery arrives in a wristband fitness tracker. It could soon reach smart glasses, cars and even aircraft. ...The battery provides 17 percent greater power density than the battery used by Whoop’s previous fitness tracker. ...To improve the efficiency of the battery, Sila replaces graphite with silicon, which can pack more lithium atoms into a smaller space. That means more efficient batteries.…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/09/08/co2-capture-plan-iceland-climeworks/ Source: By Michael Birnbaum , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: The Orca, an installation built by Climeworks, will capture 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year — and serve as a blueprint for similar technology. ...A major new facility to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere started operating in Iceland on Wednesday, a boost to an emerging technology that experts say could eventually play an important role in reducing the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/business/energy-environment/biden-solar-energy-climate-change.html Source: By Ivan Penn , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Biden administration on Wednesday released a blueprint showing how the nation could move toward producing almost half of its electricity from the sun by 2050 — a potentially big step toward fighting climate change but one that would require vast upgrades to the electric grid. ...Such a large increase, laid out in  the report , is in line with what most climate scientists say is needed to stave off the worst effects of global warming. It would require a vast transformation in technology, the energy industry and the way people live.…