By Associated Press/The Guardian.  Excerpt: Coal-fired power plants would be forced to capture smokestack emissions or shut down under a rule issued on Thursday by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ...The power plant rule marks the first time the federal government has restricted  carbon dioxide emissions  from existing coal-fired power plants. The rule also would force future electric plants fueled by coal or gas to control up to 90% of their carbon pollution. The new standards will stave off 1.38bn metric tons of carbon pollution through 2047, equivalent to the annual emissions of 328m gas cars, the EPA said, and will provide hundreds of billions of dollars in climate and health benefits, measured in fewer premature deaths, asthma cases, and lost work or school days. ...Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, said that through the latest rules, “the EPA is systematically dismantling the reliability of the US electric grid”. ...Coal provided about 16

By Dan Gearino , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: For people who have spent their careers trying to expand access to rooftop solar energy, the announcement on Monday of $7 billion worth of project support from the Biden administration is almost unfathomable in its size and scope. Money from the Solar for All program, which is part of the Inflation Reduction Act, will go to 60 recipients that include state and Tribal governments and nonprofit organizations. Its goal is to help lower-income and otherwise disadvantaged households obtain the financial and environmental benefits of solar. “It’s a good day,” said Erica Mackie, CEO and co-founder of GRID Alternatives, an Oakland, California-based nonprofit that will receive two grants totaling more than $310 million and is involved with a third grant of $62.3 million. ...GRID Alternatives started in 2004 with the installation of two solar systems and has grown to about 500 employees who provide job training for solar installers and set up solar

By Delger Erdenesanaa , The New York Times.  Excerpt: To mark Earth Day (and to try to reach young, environmentally-minded voters) President Biden is  promoting a new national program  to train and employ people in climate-related jobs, and reminding voters of the clean-energy investments underway following the Inflation Reduction Act. ...Uruguay, a nation of 3.4 million people wedged between Argentina and Brazil, generates nearly all its electricity from renewable sources. In 2008, the  government set a goal  of transforming the electric grid, which had come to depend on imported oil. ...Between 2013 and 2018, wind generation grew sharply from almost nothing to about a quarter of Uruguay’s electricity mix. By the end of 2022, the most recent year data is available, Uruguay generated more than  90 percent of its power  from renewables, with wind and solar growing even as hydropower declined. ...Transportation is the second biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions. Electric car sales

By ELISE CUTTS , Science.  Excerpt: Samples of eerie blue glacial ice from Antarctica are a staggering 6 million years old, scientists announced last week,  doubling the previous record  for Earth’s oldest ice. The ice opens a new window on Earth’s ancient climate—one that isn’t exactly what scientists expected. The ice opens a new window on Earth’s ancient climate—one that isn’t exactly what scientists expected. The results are preliminary, stresses Ed Brook, a geochemist at Oregon State University (OSU) and leader of the U.S. Center for Oldest Ice Exploration (COLDEX), which  presented   the   discovery  last week here in multiple talks at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly. But if even a tiny drop in CO 2  can kick off a major climate change, Brook adds, “you know, we probably care about that.”....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/oldest-ever-ice-offers-glimpse-earth-ice-ages . 

By CHRISTIAN ELLIOTT , Science.  Excerpt: The helicopter hovered overhead, whipping up snow. ...One trip down, 17 more to go,  thought [Peter] Neff, a polar glaciologist  at the University of Minnesota (UM) Twin Cities. ...Neff and his team would have just 10 days to drill ice cores on Canisteo, a peninsula on the west coast of Antarctica—and a blizzard was already looming. ...Scientists usually target sites deep in the continent’s interior, where the weather is calmer and they can spend years collecting kilometers-long ice cores that record hundreds of thousands of years of climate history. Neff needed just a couple hundred years of history, and he only needed to drill 150 meters deep to get it. But his chosen location was exceptionally remote and stormy. He was there because of ...the  Pine Island  and  Thwaites glaciers , which jut into the Amundsen Sea as frozen shelves tens of kilometers wide. These glaciers act as corks in the bottle of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which ...stor

By WARREN CORNWALL , Science.  Excerpt: In March 2021, a grisly scene materialized on the beaches of South Africa. Giant bat-winged manta rays sprawled belly up on rocks. Hulking bull sharks lay dead in the sand. Puffer fish littered shorelines like deflated footballs. Such fish kills are usually triggered by hot water, low oxygen, or toxic algae blooms. But this time it was a surprising culprit. In the middle of the southern summer, these fish died of cold—a phenomenon that may be linked to climate change, according to  a new paper . At a time when global warming is driving ocean temperatures to record-setting highs and  marine heat waves are striking around the globe , it might seem paradoxical that climate change could be linked to the underwater equivalent of a cold snap. But researchers now say that in some parts of the world, incidents like the 2021 cold spell appear to be getting more common as currents change, with potentially lethal consequences for marine life....  See articl

By Saima May Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Permafrost underlies a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere. A comprehensive analysis shows that the area may have shifted from a sink to a source of greenhouse gases, bringing a longtime prediction to fruition. Permafrost underlies about  14 million square kilometers  of land in and around the Arctic. The top 3 meters contain an estimated 1 trillion metric tons of carbon and 55 billion metric tons of nitrogen. Historically, the northern permafrost region has been a sink for carbon, as frozen soils inhibit microbial decomposition. But rising temperatures contribute to thawing permafrost and enhance the biogeochemical activities that  exacerbate climate change  by releasing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), methane (CH 4 ), and nitrous oxide (N 2 O). ... Ramage et al.   synthesized greenhouse gas measurements of the northern permafrost region between 2000 and 2020 to provide a carbon balance for the region, as well as the first compr

By Nathaniel Scharping , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The U.S. oil and gas industry is responsible for emitting 3 times more methane than current government estimates, according to a new study. Those emissions cost $9.3 billion annually because of their effects on global warming and air quality, the authors estimated. The study,  published in  Nature , used aerial surveys to track methane emissions from oil and gas fields, pipelines, processing facilities, and more in six fossil fuel–producing regions of the United States. It adds to a  growing body of evidence  indicating that methane emissions are  far higher than previously thought .. See article at https://eos.org/articles/methane-emissions-from-the-oil-and-gas-industry-are-triple-current-estimates . Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, often calculated to be 28 times more powerful than carbon dioxide (though  some studies  say it could be even more powerful), and is responsible for around a  third of human-caused global warming  to date. Cur

By Hilary Howard , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Heat pumps, which both warm and cool buildings and are powered by electricity, have been touted as the answer to curbing greenhouse gas emissions produced by homes, businesses and office buildings, which are responsible for about  one-third of the emissions  in New York State. ...A heat pump moves heat. ...During warm weather, a pump works just like an air-conditioner by rerouting indoor heat outdoors. When it’s cold outside, the process is reversed: Heat from the chilly outdoor air is extracted and delivered indoors with the help of refrigerants and a compressor. ...The devices are highly efficient, which should help limit the growing burden on the grid, said Rohit T. Aggarwala, the [New York] city’s climate chief. ...In New York City, Con Ed customers have completed more than 30,000 installations since 2020. And across the state,  nearly 23,000 heat pump projects  were installed in 2022, a threefold increase from the year before.... Se

By Christopher Mims , The Wall Street Journal.  Excerpt: In the next five years, significant upgrades to the batteries in electric vehicles should finally hit the market. In the works for decades, these changes are likely to mean that by 2030, gas vehicles will cost more than their electric equivalents; some EVs will charge as quickly as filling up at a gas station ; and super long-range EVs will make the phrase “range anxiety” seem quaint. ...a new kind of battery which will hold more than 20% more energy than the previous type, and charging speed and range will also improve by up to 30%, says a BMW spokesman. ...In theory, a [solid] lithium metal anode can hold 10 times as many lithium ions as a graphite one [ that’s in today’s lithium-ion batteries ]. All other things being equal, this means the energy density of a battery using lithium metal in place of graphite could be up to 50% higher. ... engineers aim to deliver to automakers a battery that can add 100 miles of range in just

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-04-11/explosive-levels-of-methane-detected-at-cesar-chavez-park-berkeley By Tony Briscoe , Los Angeles Times.  Excerpt: Brimming with wildlife and offering panoramic views of San Francisco Bay, César Chávez Park welcomes visitors who might never suspect this stretch of shoreline was built atop a municipal landfill. But beneath the sprawling grasslands and charming hiking trails, decomposing waste continues to generate methane gas. That’s why the city of Berkeley operates an underground system that collects this flammable gas and torches it at a large mechanical flare near the center of the park. In recent years, environmental regulators have grown increasingly concerned that this equipment has fallen into disrepair and released landfill gases. The  Bay Area Air Quality Management District  has fined Berkeley after finding explosive levels of methane leaking from at least two cracked gas collection wells in the park. Both have since been re

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/climate/line-five-pipeline-amicus-brief.html By Rebecca Halleck  and  Dionne Searcey , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The Department of Justice has weighed in on a court battle over an oil and gas pipeline in Wisconsin, saying that a Canadian oil company has been willfully trespassing on tribal lands in the state for more than a decade.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/climate/ocean-heat-records.html By Delger Erdenesanaa , The New York Times.  Excerpt: The ocean has now broken temperature records every day for more than a year. And so far, 2024 has continued 2023’s trend of beating previous records by wide margins.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/world/europe/climate-human-rights.html By Isabella Kwai  and  Emma Bubola , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Europe’s top human rights court said on Tuesday that the  Swiss government had violated its citizens’ human rights  by not doing enough to stop climate change, a landmark ruling that experts said could bolster activists hoping to use human rights law to hold governments to account. In the case, which was brought by a group called KlimaSeniorinnen, or Senior Women for Climate Protection, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, said that Switzerland had failed to meet its target in reducing carbon emissions and must act to address that shortcoming.... 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/climate/electric-grid-more-power.html By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: One of the biggest obstacles to expanding clean energy in the United States is a lack of power lines. Building new transmission lines can take a decade or more because of permitting delays and local opposition. But there may be a faster, cheaper solution,  according to two reports released Tuesday . Replacing existing power lines with cables made from state-of-the-art materials could roughly double the capacity of the electric grid in many parts of the country, making room for much more wind and solar power.... 

https://hakaimagazine.com/news/can-green-hydrogen-production-help-bring-oceanic-dead-zones-back-to-life/ By Brian Owens , Hakai Magazine.  Excerpt: Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau had met with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, in nearby Stephenville, Newfoundland...in August 2022, the two leaders locked in Canada’s commitment to supply Germany with hydrogen gas. ...Stephenville...is the site of the proposed World Energy GH2 project, a facility that will use wind power to produce hydrogen gas ...reducing Germany’s reliance on Russian oil. ...[Douglas] Wallace, an oceanographer at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, was tracking how dissolved oxygen moves from the Atlantic Ocean through the gulf into the St. Lawrence River, and how the dearth of oxygen in some places can lead to the development of low-oxygen dead zones. ...So when he heard that Canada was set to ramp up hydrogen production—achieved by electrically splitting water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen—he wondered:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/05/letitia-james-jbs-meat-lawsuit-greenwashing By Whitney Bauck , The Guardian.  Excerpt: When the office of the New York attorney general, Letitia James,  announced  that it would be suing the world’s largest meat company, JBS, for misleading customers about its climate commitments, it caused a stir far beyond the world of food. That’s because the suit’s impact has the potential to influence the approach all kinds of big businesses take in their advertising about sustainability, according to experts. It’s just one in a string of greenwashing lawsuits being brought against large airline, automobile and  fashion  companies of late. “It’s been 20 years of companies lying about their environmental and climate justice impacts...,” said Todd Paglia, executive director of environmental non-profit Stand.earth. ...Research  suggests  that citizens are increasingly demanding more sustainably produced goods, and big businesses are taking note. But

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-never-too-late-to-take-climate-action/ By JAMES K. BOYCE , Scientific American.  Excerpt: It’s official: this February was the  hottest one  on record. You may have noticed something odd when you stepped outside your door and winter was missing. It turns out the  weather weirdness was worldwide . In case you missed it, this comes on top of the news that  January  was the hottest ever, too, and that 2023 was the  hottest year  we’ve experienced so far. Again and again, climate activists have warned that we have only so much time left to head off catastrophe. Soon, we are told, it will be “ too late ” to save the planet and ourselves. Their message rests on the assumption that fear is the most potent spur to action. This communication strategy is deeply flawed. Politically, it leads many to  despair  that all is lost. When the climate apocalypse fails to arrive on schedule, it leads others to seek comfort in the parable of the boy who cried

https://www.science.org/content/article/clearer-skies-may-be-accelerating-global-warming By PAUL VOOSEN , Science.  Excerpt: When 2023 turned out to be  the hottest year in history , it underscored the warnings of some prominent climate scientists, including James Hansen, that the pace of global warming was accelerating and had entered a dangerous new phase. A new study,  published  Wednesday in Communications Earth & Environment, suggests one reason for such an acceleration: Earth’s skies are getting clearer and letting in more sunshine. ...a set of NASA instruments in space [the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System (CERES)] since 2001 have tracked the delicate balance of energy entering and leaving the planet...have detected a  marked rise  in the amount of solar energy the planet has absorbed—well beyond the warming expected from rising greenhouse gases. The readings show the planet has become less reflective, as if it recently put on a darker shirt. One reason is a drop

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/africas-carbon-sink-capacity-is-shrinking By Rachel Fritts , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The population of Africa, the second-largest continent in the world, currently sits at about 1.4 billion, but is set to exceed 2 billion by 2040. This means greater swaths of land than ever before are being used for agriculture, and livestock numbers are increasing. A new estimate of Africa’s greenhouse gas budget between 2010 and 2019 quantifies just how much these changes in land use have affected Africa’s role in the global carbon cycle. ...To make their estimates,  Ernst et al.  ...took a comprehensive look at all major potential carbon sources, including human sources such as agriculture and fossil fuel emissions and natural sources such as termites and wildfires. They also considered natural sinks: the  grasslands ,  savannas , and  forests  that still cover much of the continent. The team found that between 2010 and 2019, Africa transitioned from being a slight net

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04042024/biden-administration-green-bank-network-disadvantaged-communities/ By Kristoffer Tigue , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: The Biden administration on Thursday announced it was creating the nation’s first “green bank” network, an historic $20 billion investment aimed at making clean energy affordable to low-income and rural residents. ...Under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund—also known as  the country’s first national green bank —eight community development banks and nonprofit organizations will receive that federal funding to go toward rooftop solar installations, energy efficiency upgrades and other projects that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Inflation Reduction Act created the green bank in 2022 with an initial federal investment of $27 billion. ...The groups, which consist of Coalition for Green Capital, Power Forward Communities, Appalachian Community Capital, Climate United, Justice Climate F

https://www.sfchronicle.com/weather/article/geoengineering-cloud-research-alameda-19368199.php By Anthony Edwards , San Francisco Chronicle.  Excerpt: In Alameda [CA], scientists are embarking on a novel attempt to cool the Earth — by spraying salt into clouds. The work, known as marine cloud brightening, is controversial and is just one method of geoengineering — which describes interventions meant to slow Earth’s warming. But proponents say the technology may be needed to mitigate climate change. To brighten clouds, researchers spray microscopic sea salt into the air over the ocean to boost clouds’ reflectivity. This means less sunlight is absorbed, leading to a planetary cooling effect. ...Scientists hypothesize that by manually increasing the number of particles in the atmosphere, clouds will reflect more sunlight back to space, causing Earth to cool. ...Scientists like Russell say that before more drastic solutions are deployed, the focus should be on reining in greenhouse gas emi

https://hub.jhu.edu/2024/04/03/california-leads-us-emissions-of-little-known-greenhouse-gas/ By Hannah Robbins, Johns Hopkins University.  Excerpt: California, a state known for its aggressive greenhouse gas reduction policies, is ironically the nation's greatest emitter of one: sulfuryl fluoride. As much as 17% of global emissions of this gas, a common pesticide for treating termites and other wood-infesting insects, stem from the United States. The majority of those emissions trace back to just a few counties in California, according to a new study led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. ...60-85% of sulfuryl fluoride emissions in the U.S. come from California, primarily Los Angeles, Orange, and San Diego counties.... First approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for use as a pesticide in 1959, sulfuryl fluoride gained popularity after countries around the world agreed to phase out more reactive fumigants that were depleting the ozone layer, the researchers s

https://www.science.org/content/article/satellite-signals-can-measure-forest-s-moisture-and-its-ability-survive By SEAN CUMMINGS , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The same radio signals that enable your smartphone to pinpoint your location may also reveal how much water a forest holds within its foliage. By measuring how much GPS satellite signals weakened as they passed through a forest canopy, researchers were able to estimate the canopy’s water content. Experts say the technique, which uses a simple setup of two GPS receivers, could provide a simple and affordable way to track a forest’s water content. ...it could provide useful data to researchers trying to figure out how forests will fare under climate change.... 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/s-f-ferry-building-sea-level-rise-19380061.php By Laura Waxmann , San Francisco Chronicle.  Excerpt: An ambitious government plan to  protect San Francisco’s Ferry Building  from flooding and sea level rise by lifting it up as much as 7 feet has at least one powerful skeptic: the developer that’s set to operate the iconic building for another four decades. San Francisco and Army Corps of Engineers officials are considering raising the 126-year-old building as part of a $13.5 billion proposal intended to protect the city’s waterfront in the coming decades. ...But the Ferry Building, with its 245-foot clock tower, is more than a landmark — it’s also a “working building” that would likely see its operations interrupted for years if the plan is executed as proposed, said Hudson Pacific Properties, which runs the Ferry Building under a long-term lease with the Port of San Francisco....