By Sarah Shemkus, Energy News Network .  Excerpt: More than seven years after New Hampshire regulators first approved the idea of using community solar to create savings for low-income households, electric bill discounts are finally on the horizon for the first batch of participants. ...Community solar is widely considered an important strategy for extending the benefits of renewable energy to people unable to take advantage of rooftop solar. Nationally, some two-thirds of households can’t install solar panels, generally because they don’t own their home, don’t have a suitable roof, or can’t afford the cost of the array, said Kate Daniel, Northeast regional director for the Coalition for Community Solar Access....  Full article at https://newhampshirebulletin.com/2024/10/11/new-hampshires-low-income-community-solar-program-is-finally-nearing-the-starting-line/ .

By Stephanie E. Hampton , et al, Science.  Editor's Summary: More than half a billion people live near lakes that freeze over in the winter. However, lakes are rapidly losing winter ice cover in response to warming, and the rate of loss has accelerated over the past 25 years. Hampton  et al . reviewed the state of seasonal ice cover on lakes and discuss some of the consequences of its disappearance. Ice loss will affect culture, economy, water quality, fisheries, and biodiversity, as well as weather and climate. —Jesse Smith.  Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl3211 . 

By Alisha McDarris, Adventure.com.  Excerpt: ...transforming Freiburg into the sustainable beacon it is—with its passive homes (homes designed to make the most of natural light and heat), solar plants, and emphasis on public transportation—has been very intentional.... it’s been a destination driven toward innovation, from championing renewable energies like solar and wind, to reducing vehicular traffic with functional public transit and encouraging cycling—Radstation near the central transit station houses hundreds of bikes in an automated storage center—all of which has earned it the nickname, ‘Green City’. ...In Freiburg, the public transit system, consisting of trams and buses, is designed so that no residence is more than 400 meters from any public transport stop—it makes the car I drove into town feel utterly irrelevant. Indeed, I didn’t use it again until it was time to leave the city and return home. And that’s the point. ...there are incentives which encourage citizens to make

By Paul Voosen , Science.  Excerpt: For the past year, alarm bells have been going off in climate science: Last year’s average global temperature was so high, shooting up nearly 0.3°C above the previous year to set a new record, that human-driven global warming and natural short-term climate swings  seemingly couldn’t explain it . ...Now, a new series of studies suggests most of the 2023 jump can be explained instead by a familiar climate driver: the shifting waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean. The combination of a 3-year-long La Niña, which suppressed global temperatures from 2020 to 2022, followed by a strong El Niño could account for the unexpected temperature jump, the work suggests....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/el-ni%C3%B1o-fingered-likely-culprit-record-2023-temperatures . 

By Richard Luscombe , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Most left when they were told to. But some chose to stay, even though officials warned  Hurricane Milton  would turn their  homes into coffins. ...most people were heeding the warning. This time around people noticed the intensity and started taking it seriously when they saw 180mph winds being talked about. It opened their eyes.”....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/09/hurricane-milton-florida-stay-evacuate . [GSS note: this reminds us of the song, The Preacher & The Flood by Joel Mabus.]  See also the Guardian article Trump continues to deny climate crisis as he visits hurricane-ravaged Georgia . 

By Darren Orf , Popular Mechanics.  Excerpt: ...a new electrode produced by the U.S. company Equatic can safely extract oxygen and hydrogen from seawater while leaving the salt, which usually produces deadly chlorine gas. As a bonus, this method uses direct air capture to remove carbon from the atmosphere. And the anodes are recyclable—they only need a recoating of catalysts (made from abundant materials) every three years. ...Producing hydrogen via seawater electrolysis has the nasty habit of also producing toxic chlorine gas, so current hydrogen production relies on pure water—a resource that’s becoming more and more precious as the world warms. Now, the carbon removal company Equatic—thanks to funding support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)—has successfully developed “oxygen-selective anodes” (OSAs) that will hopefully help scale up hydrogen production via seawater  electrolysis . ...The process does produce acidic and alkaline