https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/climate/europe-energy-crisis-cop.html By  Melissa Eddy  and  Somini Sengupta , The New York Times.  Excerpt: BERLIN — The soaring price of electricity represents a Rorschach test for Europe’s politicians. Depending on their leanings, it is either a reason to wean the continent from fossil fuels more swiftly — or more slowly. The timing is crucial. European Union leaders have cast themselves as the vanguard of a global green transition at the international climate talks that kick off this weekend in Glasgow. ...Europe accounts for a very large share of global emissions produced since the start of the industrial age, and its ability to pivot away from fossil fuels is key to averting ruinous rates of global warming. At the heart of the surge in electricity prices is Europe’s reliance on natural gas to turn on the lights, heat homes, and power industry. Even though most countries in the bloc are moving away from coal faster than other parts of the world,

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/business/greece-green-energy-climate-eu.html By   Liz Alderman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...The push for a transition to clean energy would seem a herculean task for Greece, a country of around 10 million that recently emerged from a devastating decade-long debt crisis and still leans heavily on fossil fuels for power. ...Greece is  getting a powerful financial boost to underwrite these efforts: 30 billion euros  (nearly $35 billion) — equivalent to a fifth of Greece’s economy — from a European Union  recovery fund designed to power a rebound from the coronavirus pandemic. ...The idea is to build Greece’s incomplete infrastructure to cycle more solar and wind power through the national grid. Greece aims to produce 60 percent of its power from renewable energy sources by 2030 and be  climate neutral  by 2050.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/business/energy-environment/china-coal-climate.html By   Keith Bradsher , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Faced with electricity shortages, the country is racing to expand mining despite risks to the environment, miner safety and the economy.…

https://www.science.org/content/article/eve-climate-summit-researchers-sharpen-emissions-tracking By Warren Cornwall, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: ...the world needs to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030, but current national pledges only trim emissions by 7.5%, the United Nations Environment Programme warned this week. In a bid to achieve the Paris goal, some nations at the meeting, formally known as the 26th Conference of the Parties (COP26), are expected to commit to deeper emissions cuts, especially from the burning of fossil fuels. While nations step up their pledges, some scientists and policymakers are focused on making sure they stick to them. They are nurturing rapidly emerging technologies—including satellites, sensors, and software—that promise a quick and accurate assessment of greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and methane.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/28/business/energy-environment/electric-grid-overload-solar-ev.html By   Ivan Penn , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...President Biden is pushing lawmakers and regulators to wean the United States from fossil fuels and  counter the effects of climate change . But his ambitious goals could be upended by aging transformers and dated electrical lines that have made it hard for homeowners, local governments and businesses to use solar panels, batteries, electric cars, heat pumps and other devices that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Much of the equipment on the electric grid was  built decades ago and needs to be upgraded . It was designed for a world in which electricity flowed in one direction — from the grid to people. Now, homes and businesses are increasingly supplying energy to the grid from their rooftop solar panels. These problems have become more urgent because the fastest way to cut greenhouse gas emissions is to move machinery, cars and

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/measuring-sea-level-rise-along-the-coast By  David Shultz , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...Earth’s ocean is clearly rising. Between the loss of land and sea ice and warmer waters expanding, rising sea level is a global issue. But the equation governing exactly where the land meets the ocean also depends on the land itself. For instance, various forces such as the motion of tectonic plates can cause  vertical land motion  (VLM) that either exacerbates or mitigates the threat of sea level rise. VLM is caused by a host of different factors. Tectonic forces can drive continents up or down as plates subduct beneath one another. But motion can also result from changes in the water content in an aquifer or stored in the land’s surface water. In a new study supported by  NASA’s Sea Level Change program ,  Hammond et al.  use GPS station data from thousands of sites across the planet to create a global map of VLM along the coasts, which the authors say, can be compare

https://eos.org/articles/air-pollution-killed-a-million-people-in-africa-in-2019 By  Andrew Mambondiyani , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Air pollution was responsible for 1.1 million deaths across Africa in 2019, with more than half of those fatalities associated with household (indoor) pollutants, according to a   study recently published  in  The Lancet Planetary Health . ...More than  350 million  African children live in households that use solid fuels, mostly wood and coal, for cooking and heating. Sanganyado, who is also president of the  Zimbabwe Young Academy of Sciences , said emissions from these solid fuels were the main causes of indoor air pollution. ...a shift away from wood and coal and toward solar and wind could help reduce the hazard. ...“While use of electrical stoves has helped to reduce indoor air pollution, the gains are now being reversed due to the  current electricity shortage  in most sub-Saharan African countries,” Sanganyado said. ...a strong, rapid push for solar and

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/world/europe/russia-arctic-climate-change-putin.html By   Andrew E. Kramer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...While governments across the globe may be racing to head off the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change, the economics of global warming are playing out differently in Russia. Arable land is expanding , with farmers planting corn in parts of Siberia where it never grew before. Winter heating bills are declining, and Russian fishermen have found a modest pollock catch in thawed areas of the Arctic Ocean near Alaska. Nowhere do the prospects seem brighter than in Russia’s Far North, where rapidly rising temperatures have opened up a panoply of new possibilities, like mining and energy projects. Perhaps the most profound of these is the prospect, as early as next year, of year-round Arctic shipping with specially designed “ice class” container vessels, offering an alternative to the Suez Canal. ...The trip from Busan, in South Korea,

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/travel/sonoma-county-regenerative-agriculture.html By  Amy Tara Koch , The New York Times.  Excerpt: This holistic approach to land management is called regenerative agriculture. It eschews conventional farming techniques and taps into composting, pollinator habitat restoration and other measures to encourage nutrient-dense soil. These practices also curb skyrocketing carbon emissions by coaxing carbon from the atmosphere and into plant roots, a process known as carbon sequestration. Nitrogen, supplied by cover crops, helps the process. ...Indeed, mitigating climate change is the end goal. And while many wineries around the world are also implementing decarbonization measures, vineyards in Sonoma County are some of the earliest pioneers in the practice.…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/19/zero-carbon-fuel-shipping-amazon-ikea/ By  Hamza Shaban , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: In an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in global trade, a coalition of companies that includes Amazon and Ikea has pledged to use only ocean shippers that use zero-carbon fuel by 2040. The cargo ships that ferry as much as 90 percent of the world’s products also produce nearly  3 percent of man-made carbon dioxide emissions  each year — an estimated nearly  1.1 billion tons  that rivals the annual output of Germany, the world’s sixth-largest emitter. Organized by the nonprofit Aspen Institute, the initiative counts Amazon, Unilever, Michelin and Patagonia among its signatories.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/19/world/europe/russia-climate-change.html By  Anton Troianovski , Photographs by Sergey Ponomarev, The New York Times.  Excerpt: President Vladimir V. Putin long dismissed the threat posed by global warming. But fires, disasters and foreign pressure have prompted him to change course. SAKHALIN ISLAND, Russia — Sixteen wind turbines are slated to go up amid the winding coast and wooded hills of this Russian island in the Pacific, creating a wind park bigger than any that currently exists in the vast reaches of the country’s Far East. The clean energy generated by the new wind park will go toward mining more coal.…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2021/russia-greenhouse-gas-emissions/ By  Steven Mufson ,  Isabelle Khurshudyan ,  Chris Mooney ,  Brady Dennis ,  John Muyskens  and  Naema Ahmed , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: On the morning of Friday, June 4, an underground gas pipeline running through the ancient state of Tatarstan sprang a leak. And not a small one. In a different era, the massive leak might have gone unnoticed. But hovering 520 miles above the Earth, a European Space Agency satellite was keeping watch. The four-year-old Copernicus Sentinel-5P, which orbits the planet 14 times a day, looks for traces of methane and other gases. ...Crews from the natural gas giant Gazprom hurried to repair a defect in the steel pipeline and stem the rush of methane  —  an invisible but powerful greenhouse gas  —  which was escaping into the atmosphere at a breakneck rate of approximately 395 metric tons an hour. ...Methane, the second-most abundant greenhouse gas afte

2019 - Utrecht: Planning for People & Bikes, Not for Cars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boi0XEm9-4E 2017 - Nijmegen: The City That Tamed Cars So People Can Walk & Bike Where They Please https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjLZv3Y0CWM

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/business/china-electricity-shortage.html By   Keith Bradsher , The New York Times.  Excerpt: China announced on Wednesday a national rush to mine and burn more coal, as the country’s electricity shortage threatens to damage its image as a reliable manufacturing base.… See also The Washington Post Article, Mass floods hit China’s coal hub, threatening power supplies .

https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/10/13/air-conditioning-in-a-changing-climate-a-growing-rich-poor-divide/ By  Edward Lempinen , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: As the earth’s climate warms, residents of affluent nations will find some relief with air conditioning, but people in lower-income countries may have to pay vastly more for electricity or do without cooling, says a new study co-authored at the University of California, Berkeley. The research,  published today in  Nature , provides a dramatic new view of how climate change will aggravate the global gap between rich and poor nations. It found that even as temperatures rise, electricity consumption in the U.S. might increase only slightly by the end of the century. But in some emerging countries, demand for energy could rise dramatically as residents seek access to air conditioning, while others will still be so poor that air conditioning will remain an inaccessible dream, the researchers found. ...“While some form of air conditioning

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/13/electric-vehicles-grid-upgrade/ By  Will Englund , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: By 2035, the chief automakers will have turned away from the internal combustion engine. It’ll be up to the grid to fuel all those new cars, trucks and buses.…

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/13/climate/biden-offshore-wind-farms.html By  Coral Davenport , The New York Times.  Excerpt: ...Speaking at a wind power industry conference in Boston, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said that her agency will begin to identify, demarcate and hope to eventually lease federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of Maine and off the coasts of the Mid-Atlantic States, North Carolina and South Carolina, California and Oregon, to wind power developers by 2025. ...Taken together, the actions represent the most forceful push ever by federal government to promote offshore wind development.…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2021/bread-baking-sustainable-grain-kernza/ Source: By Sarah Kaplan , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Scientists hope this new kind of perennial grain offers a taste of what environmentally friendly farming could look like. ...Most commercial crops are annual. They provide only one harvest and must be replanted every year. Growing these foods on an industrial scale usually takes huge amounts of water, fertilizer and energy, making agriculture a major source of carbon and other pollutants. Scientists say this style of farming has imperiled Earth’s soils, destroyed vital habitats and contributed to the dangerous warming of our world. But Kernza — a domesticated form of wheatgrass developed by scientists at the nonprofit Land Institute — is perennial. A single seed will grow into a plant that provides grain year after year after year. It forms deep roots that store carbon in the soil and prevent erosion. It can be planted alongsi

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/18/seventy-two-hours-under-the-heat-dome By  James Ross Gardner , The New Yorker.  Excerpt: A chronicle of a slow-motion climate disaster that became one of Oregon’s deadliest calamities. …Typhoon Champi caused no serious damage and no loss of human life. But a number of atmospheric scientists believe that it may be what gave the jet stream a snap. After the storm diminished, its force continued on, crimping the jet stream into a sharply curved band, or what meteorologists refer to as an omega block, because it resembles the Greek letter. This led to what’s called, colloquially, a heat dome, a high-pressure system in which hot air is trapped over a single geographic area. It stalled over British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon, sealing in the heat. ...In the course of the heat wave, the cooling shelters hosted fourteen hundred people overnight. At its peak, the convention center housed three hundred and eighty-five in a single night, not to

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/climate/methane-global-climate.html Source: By Lisa Friedman , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Methane is the second-largest driver of global warming after carbon dioxide emissions. Scientists say the promised cuts could help avert the worst consequences of climate change. ... Methane  is the second-most prevalent greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide but much more potent in the short term in its ability to heat the planet. It is the main component of natural gas and is also released into the atmosphere from landfills, livestock and thawing permafrost. ...The pledge, developed with the European Union, commits nations to cut emissions from methane 30 percent by 2030. ...While the four heaviest emitters of methane — China, India, Russia and Brazil — have not joined the pledge, the administration announced that nine of the world’s top 20 methane polluters had signed on. In addition to the  United States  and the European Union, they are Canada, Indonesia, Pa

https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/10/10/electric-school-buses-berkeley-unified Source: By  Ally Markovich , Berkeleyside.  Excerpt: A fleet of eight electric school buses is picking up Berkeley students for the first time this fall. ...Across the country, school districts are beginning to trade diesel buses, which have been shown to  exacerbate symptoms related to asthma  and other respiratory illnesses, for electric buses, which  reduce instances of these illnesses . A typical commute on a diesel bus accounts for one third of a student’s daily exposure to pollutants, even though the average student spends less than 10% of their day riding the bus, according to  research  conducted by California Air Resources Board.…

https://eos.org/features/adapting-to-receding-glaciers-in-the-tropical-andes By  Tania V. Rojas ,   Duncan Quincey ,   Pedro Rau ,   Daniel Horna-Muñoz  and   Jorge D. Abad , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Integrated approaches are needed to understand and respond to changes in tropical mountain ecosystems and communities brought about by receding glaciers and changes in land use. ...the effects of climate change on mountain environments prone to degradation disproportionately fall on populations relying on tropical glaciers in the Global South, where many people have limited economic resources, especially those who get most of their income from agriculture and raising livestock. ...holistically understanding ongoing changes to tropical mountain glaciers and their surrounding environments, and current and future impacts on the people that depend on those environments, requires interdisciplinary approaches to developing feasible, effective, and acceptable adaptation and mitigation measures.... ...f