https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/amazon-beef-deforestation-brazil/ By Terrence McCoy  and  Júlia Ledur , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: The pattern is clear: First, the forest is razed. Then the cattle are moved in. If the Amazon is to die, it will be beef that kills it. And America will be an accomplice. Cattle ranching, responsible for the great majority of  deforestation in the Amazon , is pushing the forest to the edge of what scientists warn could be a vast and irreversible dieback that claims much of the biome. Despite agreement that change is necessary   to avert disaster, despite attempts at reform, despite the resources of Brazil’s federal government and powerful beef companies, the destruction   continues. ...the United States has grown to become its second-biggest buyer. The country  bought more than 320 million pounds  of Brazilian beef last year — and is on pace to purchase  nearly twice as much  this year. ...JBS, the world’s largest beef producer, ha

https://eos.org/features/a-lidars-eye-view-of-how-forests-are-faring By Van R. Kane ,   Liz Van Wagtendonk  and   Andrew Brenner , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Success in Yosemite is driving the wider use of lidar surveys to support forest health and wildfire resilience, study wildlife habitats, and monitor water resources. Building the perfect campfire requires the right mix of ingredients: plenty of kindling, a spark to ignite it, and large, dry logs to keep the fire burning strong. Unfortunately, fire suppression strategies adopted long ago—combined more recently with severe droughts and climate change—have created this same mixture writ large across many of the dry forests of the western United States, such as those in Yosemite National Park and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada. ...Despite their destructive power, fires are natural phenomena in many forests, where they are essential to the biomes’ long-term health. Decades of field-based studies have built the field of fire ecology and have i

https://www.science.org/content/article/animal-melting-pot-created-climate-change-could-lead-new-disease-outbreaks By Jon Cohen, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: As habitats shift, many mammalian species will meet each other for the first time and swap viruses, modeling study predicts. Earth’s warming climate is expected to change the habitat of many animal species, which a new modeling study predicts may spell trouble: Species on the move will mingle with many others they have never encountered before, allowing the various animals to exchange viruses. That could spark new disease outbreaks in many wildlife populations—and in humans as well. By 2070, assuming the most conservative warming scenario, there will be at least 15,000 new cross-species transmissions involving more than 3000 mammalian species, according to a modeling team led by Colin Carlson, a global change biologist at Georgetown University. “Most of this pattern has probably been set in motion with the 1° of warming we’ve alrea

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abe9039 By Justin L. Penn and Curtis Deutsch, Science Magazine.  Abstract: Global warming threatens marine biota with losses of unknown severity. Here, we quantify global and local extinction risks in the ocean across a range of climate futures on the basis of the ecophysiological limits of diverse animal species and calibration against the fossil record. With accelerating greenhouse gas emissions, species losses from warming and oxygen depletion alone become comparable to current direct human impacts within a century and culminate in a mass extinction rivaling those in Earth’s past. Polar species are at highest risk of extinction, but local biological richness declines more in the tropics. Reversing greenhouse gas emissions trends would diminish extinction risks by more than 70%, preserving marine biodiversity accumulated over the past ~50 million years of evolutionary history.…

https://www.science.org/content/article/global-land-degradation-serious-u-n-report-finds-restoration-offers-hope By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Restoring 5 billion hectares of land could increase crop yields, slow biodiversity decline, and help curb climate change. ...Reversing global land degradation can alleviate three big problems—the effects of climate change, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity, according to a U.N. report released today. The  Global Land Outlook 2  from the  United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) points out that 40% of Earth’s land has been compromised by development, deforestation, farming, and other human activities. But the report also offers a vision of benefits that could accrue by 2050 if humanity acts to restore landscapes and reverse this toll.…

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2022/japan-zero-carbon-village-climate/ By Michelle Ye Hee Lee  and Julia Mio Inuma, The Washington Post.  Excerpt: KAMIKATSU, Japan — Tucked away in the mountains of Japan’s Shikoku island, a town of about 1,500 residents is on an ambitious path toward a zero-waste life. In 2003, Kamikatsu became the first municipality in Japan to make a zero-waste declaration. Since then, the town has transformed its open-air burning practices used for waste disposal into a system of buying, consuming and discarding with the goal of reaching carbon neutrality. Now, the town estimates it is more than 80 percent of its way toward meeting that goal by 2030. ...The Zero Waste Center is the town’s recycling facility, where residents can sort their garbage into 45 categories — there are nine ways to sort paper products alone — before they toss the rest into a pile for the incinerators. Residents clean and dry dirty items so they are suitable for

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/04/21/right-whales-biden/ By Dino Grandoni , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: With  only about 300 left , the North Atlantic right whale ranks as one of the world’s  most endangered marine mammals . Nearly annihilated centuries ago by whalers, the slow-swimming species is said to have earned its name because it was the “right” whale to hunt. Old-fashioned harpoons have yielded to other threats. Humans are still killing right whales at  startlingly high numbers  — but by accident. Waters free from whalers now brim with ships that strike them, and ropes that entangle them. The latest challenges come in a changing climate. Rising temperatures are driving them to new seas. And soon, dozens of offshore wind turbines — part of President Biden’s clean energy agenda — will encroach their habitat as the administration tries to balance tackling global warming with protecting wildlife.…

https://www.science.org/content/article/global-warming-speeding-ocean-currents-here-s-why By Paul Voosen, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Excess heat constricts water flow in shallow surface layers Two years ago, oceanographers  made a surprising discovery : Not only have oceans been warming because of human-driven climate change, but the currents that flow through them have accelerated—by some 15% per decade from 1990 to 2013. At the time, many scientists suspected faster ocean winds were driving the speedup. But a new modeling study fingers another culprit: the ocean’s own tendency to warm from top to bottom, leading to constricted surface layers where water flows faster, like blood in clogged arteries. The study suggests climate change will continue to speed up across ocean currents, potentially limiting the heat the ocean can capture and complicating migrations for already stressed marine life.…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/19/sea-farmed-supercrop-how-seaweed-could-transform-the-way-we-live By Richard Orange , The Guardian.  Excerpt: experts believe that seaweed could be a key crop in the  “protein shift”  away from meat. Some of last spring’s harvest here hit about 30% protein, close to the level that would make it compete against the world’s other big protein sources like meat and soya. Steinhagen also believes passionately that this plant –  long eaten as “green laver” on the coasts of Britain  – can be a more sustainable alternative to soya. Sea lettuce doesn’t draw on scarce resources of land and fresh water. “There is no other option,” she says later, ... “Climate change is affecting most of our crop systems and we are in urgent need of new production. We cannot extend terrestrial farmland – so we need to go into the ocean.” It’s not just a protein source. As we shift to a  bio-based rather than fossil-fuel-based economy , seaweed could provide a lot

By Ben Ryder Howe , The New York Times. Excerpt: A new aircraft being built in Vermont has no need for jet fuel. ...Amazon and the Air Force are both betting on it. ...a long-held aviation goal: an aircraft with no need for jet fuel and therefore no carbon emissions, a plane that could take off and land without a runway and quietly hop from recharging station to recharging station, like a large drone. ...Electric motors have the virtue of being smaller, allowing more of them to be fitted on a plane and making it easier to design systems with vertical lift. However, batteries are heavy, planes need to be light, and for most of the last century, the e-plane was thought to be beyond reach.… [ https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/16/business/beta-electric-airplane.html ]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/15/seed-banks-the-last-line-of-defense-against-a-threatening-global-food-crisis By Salomé Gómez-Upegui and  Rita Liu . The Guardian.  Excerpt: As the risks from the climate crisis and  global conflict  increase, seed banks are increasingly considered a priceless resource that could one day prevent a worldwide food crisis. Two in five of the world’s plant species  are at risk of extinction , and though researchers estimate there are  at least 200,000 edible plant species  on our planet, we depend on just three – maize, rice and wheat– for more than half of humanity’s caloric intake. There are roughly  1,700 seed banks , or gene banks, around the world housing collections of plant species that are invaluable for scientific research, education, species preservation and  safeguarding  Indigenous  cultures . “At a first glance, seeds may not look like much, but within them lies the foundation of our future food and nutrition security, and the

https://www.science.org/content/article/thermal-batteries-could-efficiently-store-wind-and-solar-power-renewable-grid By Robert F. Service, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: How do you bottle renewable energy for when the Sun doesn’t shine and the wind won’t blow? ...Massive battery banks are one answer. ...Another strategy is to use surplus energy to heat a large mass of material to ultrahigh temperatures, then tap the energy as needed. This week, researchers report a major improvement in a key part of that scheme: a device for turning the stored heat back into electricity. A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory achieved a nearly 30% jump in the efficiency of a thermophotovoltaic (TPV), a semiconductor structure that converts photons emitted from a heat source to electricity, just as a solar cell transforms sunlight into power. ...The idea is to feed surplus wind or solar electricity to a heating element, which boosts the tempe

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/14/australia-japanese-encephalitis-climate-change/ By Frances Vinall , The Washington Post.  Excerpt: Public health professionals say the appearance of Japanese encephalitis here is just the latest example of how global warming is  contributing to the spread  of disease. Six years ago, melting permafrost in Siberia  released frozen anthrax , which infected an Indigenous community. In 2007, the tropical  chikungunya virus  was detected in Europe  for the first time  in two Italian villages and has since appeared in France. In the United States, Lyme disease cases  have doubled  over 30 years as warmer conditions  create longer tick seasons . And in Australia, experts warn Japanese encephalitis could be the first of several illnesses to spread south. Tim Inglis is the head of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Western Australia. “With accelerating climate change, we’re going to be in a world of hurt,” he said, “with some o

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/12/climate/climate-change-hurricane-rain.html By Maggie Astor , The New York Times.  Excerpt: During the record-setting 2020 Atlantic storm season, the most extreme three-hour rainfall rates were 10 percent higher than they would have been without climate change, a new study found. ...During the official 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, which ran from June through November, the average sea surface temperature in the Atlantic Ocean was more than 27 degrees Celsius, or 80.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The new study,  published in the journal Nature Communications , used modeling to estimate that the average temperature would have been 0.4 to 0.9 degrees Celsius lower without the effects of climate change. The researchers then simulated a hypothetical season without those 0.4 to 0.9 degrees Celsius in human-caused warming, and compared the rainfall rates and totals to models of the actual season.…

https://www.science.org/content/article/climate-change-killing-soil-organisms-critical-some-earth-s-ecosystems By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: Lichens can’t take the heat, with disastrous implications for arid places Just as our skin is key to our well-being, the “skin” covering desert soils is essential to life in dry places. This “biocrust,” made up of fungi, lichens, mosses, blue-green algae, and other microbes, retains water and produces nutrients that other organisms can use. Now, new research shows climate change is destroying the integrity of this skin. ...in 2013, scientists discovered climate change is changing the  microbial composition  of biocrusts. A new survey of these organisms in a pristine grassland in Canyonlands National Park in Utah has uncovered a hidden vulnerability of some of the lichens in these crusts. ...The U.S. Southwest is rapidly warming, and Canyonlands is no exception, says USGS ecologist Rebecca Finger-Higgens, who led the analysis. W

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/business/electric-hydrogen-trucks.html By Jack Ewing , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Even before war in Ukraine sent fuel prices through the roof, the trucking industry was under intense pressure to kick its addiction to  diesel , a major contributor to climate change and urban air pollution. But it still has to figure out which technology will best do the job. Truck makers are divided into two camps. One faction, which includes Traton, Volkswagen’s truck unit, is betting on batteries because they are widely regarded as the most efficient option. The other camp, which includes Daimler Truck and Volvo, the two largest truck manufacturers, argues that fuel cells that convert hydrogen into electricity — emitting only water vapor — make more sense because they would allow long-haul trucks to be refueled quickly. ...Battery-powered trucks sell for about three times as much as equivalent diesel models, although owners may recoup much of the cost in fuel sav

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/bald-eages-dead-wind-farms.html By Eduardo Medina , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A wind energy company pleaded guilty last week to killing at least 150 eagles at its wind farms and was ordered to pay $8 million in fines and restitution, federal prosecutors said. ...ESI [Energy] acknowledged that at least 150 bald and golden eagles had died at its facilities since 2012, and that 136 of those deaths were “affirmatively determined to be attributable to the eagle being struck by a wind turbine blade,” the Justice Department  said in a statement . ...The company agreed to spend up to $27 million on measures to “minimize additional eagle deaths and injuries,” prosecutors said. ...The case comes as the bald eagle, the nation’s symbol whose resurgence is considered one of the greatest conservation stories of the 21st century, faces a new threat:  lead poisoning . All but a few hundred bald eagles were presumed dead by the mid-20th century, killed off larg