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The first people on Tasmania brought fire and forever changed the land

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By Warren Cornwall , Science.  Excerpt: More than 41,000 years ago, humans traversed a strip of land that once joined the mainland of Australia to what is today the island of Tasmania, called Lutruwita by its Indigenous inhabitants today. The first humans to reach this land brought a tool they used to transform the landscape and that left the first lasting marks of their presence: fire. Thanks to layers of sediment that formed year by year along the bottom of a lake on a small island off the northeastern tip of Lutruwita, scientists have for the first time chronicled the region’s history of vegetation spanning more than 50,000 years. They found  a surge in fires starting about 41,600 years ago , the researchers report today in Science Advances, the same time as falling sea levels opened a dry corridor allowing humans to migrate to the island. ...The findings come at a time of growing interest in reviving a traditional burning culture on Lutruwita. Aboriginal communities and scientists
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Breakthrough in capturing ‘hot’ CO2 from industrial exhaust

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By Robert Sanders , UC Berkeley News.  Excerpt: Industrial plants, such as those that make cement or steel, emit copious amounts of carbon dioxide, a potent greenhouse gas, but the exhaust is too hot for state-of-the-art carbon removal technology. Lots of energy and water are needed to cool the exhaust streams, a requirement that has limited adoption of CO 2  capture in some of the most polluting industries. Now, chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, have discovered that a porous material can act like a sponge to capture CO 2  at temperatures close to those of many industrial exhaust streams. The material — a type of metal-organic framework, or MOF — will be described in a paper to be published in the Nov. 15 print edition of the journal  Science . ...“We need to start thinking about the CO 2  emissions from industries, like making steel and making cement, that are hard to decarbonize, because it’s likely that they’re still going to be emitting CO 2,  even as our energy i
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A Big Climate Goal Is Getting Farther Out of Reach

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By Brad Plumer  and  Mira Rojanasakul , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Countries have made scant progress in curbing their greenhouse gas emissions over the past year, keeping the planet on track for dangerous levels of warming this century,  according to a new report  published Thursday. The report by the Climate Action Tracker, a research group, estimates that the climate and energy policies currently pursued by governments around the world would cause global temperatures to rise roughly 2.7 degrees Celsius, or 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by 2100. That estimate of future warming has barely budged for three years now, the group said. ...The study was issued during the United Nations climate summit [COP29] in Baku, Azerbaijan....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/climate/climate-action-tracker-temperatures-emissions.html . 
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Pathways to reduce global plastic waste mismanagement and greenhouse gas emissions by 2050

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By A. Samuel Pottinger et al, Science.  Abstract: Plastic production and plastic pollution negatively affect our environment, environmental justice, and climate change. Using detailed global and regional plastics datasets coupled with socio-economic data, we employ machine learning to predict that, without intervention, annual mismanaged plastic waste will nearly double to 121 Mt (100 - 139 Mt 95% CI) by 2050. Annual greenhouse gas emissions from the plastic system are projected to grow by 37% to 3.35 Gt CO 2  equivalent (3.09 - 3.54 CO 2 e) over the same period. The United Nations plastic pollution treaty presents a unique opportunity to reshape these outcomes. We simulate eight candidate treaty policies and find that just four could together reduce mismanaged plastic waste by 91% (86% - 98%) and gross plastic-related greenhouse gas emissions by one third.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adr3837 .  See also A world without plastic pollution? A new paper s
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Best evidence yet that “Snowball Earth” saw ice cover the entire globe

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By Evrim Yazgin, COSMOS.  Excerpt: More than 700 million years ago, the entire globe was covered in ice in a period called “Snowball Earth”. At least, that’s what scientists think. Now geologists believe they’ve found the best evidence that the “Snowball Earth” was really a global event. For  reasons which remain unclear , a runaway chain of events caused a massive shift in Earth’s climate about 720 million years ago. Global temperatures plunged and ice sheets kilometres thick are believed to have covered the planet from the poles to the equator. Called the  Sturtian glaciation , Snowball Earth lasted about 60 million years. This was quickly followed by another global ice age called the  Marinoan glaciation . Together, these big freezes made up the geological period called the Cryogenian (720–635 million years ago). ...A new study published in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences  presents new evidence that these massive glaciers covered the entire globe. ...After Snowb
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‘Fossil Fuels Are Still Winning’: Global Emissions Head for a Record

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By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: One year after world leaders made a splashy promise to shift away from fossil fuels, countries are burning more oil, natural gas and coal than ever before, researchers said this week. Global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are on track to reach ...a 0.8 percent increase over 2023 levels,  according to new data from the Global Carbon Project . It’s a trend that puts countries farther from their goal of stopping global warming. ...Emissions will most likely decline this year in the United States and Europe, and fossil fuel use in China slowed. Yet that was offset by a surge in carbon dioxide from India and the rest of the world. ...The findings were made public early on Wednesday at the United Nations climate change summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, where diplomats and world leaders have gathered to discuss  how to raise trillions of dollars  to cope with rising global temperatures....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/12
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California tightens clean transportation standards

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By Julie Johnson , San Francisco Chronicle.  Excerpt: California air quality regulators on Friday tightened a key environmental program credited with reducing the amount of pollution churned out by cars and trucks but criticized for raising the state’s already high gasoline prices. The California Air Resources Board voted 12-2 on Friday to strengthen the Low Carbon Fuels Standard, which creates financial incentives for oil and gas companies that slash emissions from transportation fuels and adds costs to companies that don’t. ...The air board said the hallmark program, established in 2011, has doubled the volume of low carbon fuels such as renewable diesel on the market, slashed regular diesel consumption in half and generated $4 billion oil and gas industry investments in cleaner fuels and technology. ...The standard works by rewarding oil and gas companies for lowering the carbon intensity of fuels, which encompasses the greenhouse gas emissions produced throughout their life cycle,
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