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Pushed by Trump policies, top U.S. battery scientist is moving to Singapore

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By Jeffrey Mervis , Science.  Excerpt: Shirley Meng grew up in China and earned her degrees in Singapore, but the United States is where she built her career trying to make better and cheaper batteries for a power-hungry world. After 2 decades here, the University of Chicago (UChicago) materials scientist, who also heads a Department of Energy (DOE) research hub, is now heading back to Asia.On 1 July, Meng will become vice president for innovation and global affairs at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), her undergraduate alma mater and a growing rese arch powerhouse. Only 35 years old, NTU was ranked 12th this year in  one global assessment of research universities —one rung above UChicago. Meng took the job because she thinks the U.S. has turned away from a commitment to decarbonize its economy. She’s leaving with mixed emotions—and the hope that the political environment for more sustainable energy sources will improve once President Donald Trump leaves offi...
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As Energy, War and Climate Collide, a Conference in Colombia Charts a Path Beyond Fossil Fuels

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By Bob Berwyn , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: While some major fossil fuel producers keep pushing for expanded oil and gas use, which is  linked  to warfare, economic shocks and ecological damage, more than 50 countries at the first  Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels  began developing plans to shift toward renewable energy systems designed for stability and abundance rather than scarcity and conflict. ...Participants and observers  described  the meeting as a space where fossil fuels themselves, and not just their emissions, were discussed as the root cause of overlapping crises, from conflict and displacement to economic instability. At past UNFCCC climate talks, those connections were often downplayed, especially in official documents....  Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01052026/colombia-climate-summit-charts-path-beyond-fossil-fuels . 
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Global Deforestation Slows, Analysis Finds. But Fires Remain a Major Threat

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By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey  and  Harry Stevens , The New York Times.  Excerpt: In 2025, the world razed less forest than any other year in the last decade. The bad news: global warming is making wildfires more frequent and intense....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/climate/wri-report-forest-loss.html . 
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Trump fires every member of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s governing body

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By Jeffrey Mervis , Science.  Excerpt: Dismissal of the National Science Board is widely seen as latest move to erase NSF’s independence. ...Keivan Stassun, one of the dismissed board members, says the mass firing is the latest indication the White House is ignoring the board’s authority and dictating policies at NSF, which has been without a permanent director since  Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned  exactly 1 year ago. Stassun, an astrophysicist at Vanderbilt University who was appointed to the board in 2022, thinks the board’s public criticism in May 2025 of Trump’s proposed 55% cut to NSF’s current budget—which Congress ultimately ignored—antagonized the administration. “Maybe one way to say it from the administration's perspective,” Stassun says, “is that this group of presidential appointees was advising the Congress to not follow the president's wishes.”...  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/trump-fires-nsf-s-oversight-board . For
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Officials hugely underestimated impact of AI datacentres on UK carbon emissions

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By Damien Gayle , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The UK government vastly underestimated the climate impact of artificial intelligence, it has emerged, after officials raised their estimate of carbon emissions from AI by a factor of more than 100. According to new data quietly published this week, energy use by AI datacentres in the UK could cause the emission of up to 123m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) ...over the next 10 years. That latest figure replaces a previous estimate ...that claimed emissions would reach a maximum of 0.142m tonnes of CO₂ in a single year. There is  increasing alarm  at the carbon impact of AI and with calls to reduce global emissions to mitigate the climate emergency becoming increasingly urgent. ... The latest estimates were revealed in a  revision  to the UK “compute roadmap”, which sets out the government’s plan “to build a world-class compute ecosystem” for delivering artificial intelligence in the UK.... However, AI datacentres require ...
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As the UN Global Climate Talks Lose Momentum, a Smaller Coalition Eyes a Fossil Fuel Exit

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By Bob Berwyn , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: ...more than 50 nations are  gathering in Santa Marta , Colombia, today to start mapping out specific plans to phase out fossil fuels, going beyond the conditional global consensus on “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems” reached at COP28 in Dubai. A lack of progress toward that goal spurred Colombia and the Netherlands to build a coalition of countries willing to move faster and farther. Attending countries span a spectrum from influential fossil fuel producers like Australia, Norway, Brazil, Nigeria and Mexico to climate-vulnerable island nations including Fiji, Tuvalu and the Maldives, as well as Denmark, Spain and France and the European Union. Notably absent are the United States, Russia, China and major Gulf petrostates such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Offering a perspective from  The Elders , a group of former independent world leaders that acts as a moral and ethical voice on issue...
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Clouds moderate Amazon deforestation’s climate effect

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By Gunnar Myhre , Science.  Excerpt: The Amazon rainforest may be flipping from being a massive carbon sink to a net carbon emitter. Deforestation through intentional fires releases ~1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) per year into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate warming ( 1 ). Changes in the region’s vegetation from land-clearing practices modify atmospheric composition, the fraction of solar radiation reflected from Earth’s surface (albedo), and cloud properties. These factors can intensify or stall the warming effect of deforestation, but their contributions are unclear. In particular, clouds regulate Earth’s temperature by reflecting incoming sunlight and trapping outgoing heat. On page 429 of this issue, Dror and Feingold ( 2 ) report that deforestation of the Amazon rainforest increases cloud cover at low altitudes (<2000 m above sea level), partially offsetting the warming influence of released CO 2 . The cooling effect is surprising, with poss...
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