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Renewables soar globally despite US climate pullback

By Tom Chivers , SEMAFOR.  Excerpt: Renewables are being deployed aggressively across much of the world even as the US, historically the world’s biggest emitter, overturned a landmark domestic climate ruling. ...Elsewhere in the world, however, green technology is being implemented at pace: Africa’s solar capacity expanded 17% last year, with 20 of the continent’s nations  setting import records , and data this week showed that China’s emissions  may already be falling  thanks in large part to its huge outlay on clean power. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency said renewables and nuclear will account by  half of global power supply by 2030 ....  Full article at https://www.semafor.com/article/02/13/2026/renewables-soar-globally-despite-us-climate-pullback . 

Trump Orders the Pentagon to Buy More Coal-Fired Electricity

By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: President Trump on Wednesday directed the Pentagon to start buying more electricity from coal-burning power plants as part of his efforts to revive the declining coal industry....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/climate/trump-coal-pentagon-electricity.html . 

Climate Change Is Erased From a Manual for Federal Judges

By Karen Zraick , The New York Times.  Excerpt: In a new attack on the science of climate change, a federal agency has stripped a chapter on global warming from a manual written to help judges understand important scientific questions they may face in their courtrooms....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/climate/judge-manual-climate-change-chapter.html . 

Trump set to repeal landmark climate finding in huge regulatory rollback this week

By Valerie Volcovici  and  David Shepardson , Reuters.  Excerpt: The administration of President Donald Trump is set this week to overturn an Obama-era scientific finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health, removing the legal basis for federal greenhouse gas emissions regulations. The move, which the administration formally proposed in July, would mark the Republican administration's most sweeping climate change policy rollback to date, and follows a string of regulatory cuts and other moves intended to unfetter fossil fuel development and stymie the rollout of clean energy....  Full article at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-repeal-landmark-climate-finding-huge-regulatory-rollback-wsj-reports-2026-02-10/ .  See also New York Times articles, Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change and What to Know About the E.P.A.’s Big Attack on Climate Regulation . Also from the American Geophysical Union, AGU Denounces Trump ...

A Groundbreaking Geothermal Heating and Cooling Network Saves This Colorado College Money and Water

By Phil McKenna , Inside Climate News.  Excerpt: GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—The discussions started roughly a decade ago, when an account manager at Xcel Energy, the electricity and gas utility provider, expressed confusion, officials at Colorado Mesa University recalled. A public school on the state’s remote western slope, Colorado Mesa had recently doubled in size, but its energy usage had hardly budged as it began installing an advanced geothermal heating and cooling system. Since its geothermal buildout began in 2008, the university has saved more than $15 million in energy costs, money it has passed on to students through lower tuition and more scholarship funding.  Hundreds of boreholes drilled approximately 500 feet beneath athletic fields and parking lots tap low-temperature thermal energy to help heat and cool campus buildings in what is now one of the largest such networks in the nation. ...A boiler that provides backup heat is rarely used. A bigger challenge is...

A Trump ‘Blockade’ Is Stalling Hundreds of Wind and Solar Projects Nationwide

By Brad Plumer  and  Rebecca F. Elliott , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A week before the 2024 election, Idaho’s largest electric utility struck a 35-year deal to buy power from a wind farm under development in Wyoming. The Jackalope Wind project would span an area the size of Chicago, with hundreds of wind turbines generating clean electricity by 2027. But the wind farm soon became a casualty of President Trump’s efforts to slow — and sometimes revoke — federal approvals for wind and solar projects. A key  environmental review  of Jackalope by the Interior Department was stalled for months, and the project is now effectively dead. Similar stories are unfolding nationwide. While Mr. Trump’s  attacks on offshore wind  have been highly visible, his administration has also been hobbling solar and wind energy projects on land by halting or delaying federal approvals that were once routine....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/climate...

As the world warms, freezing rain shifts to the U.S. South

By Hannah Richter , Science.  Excerpt: Over the weekend of 24–25 January, a major winter storm blanketed the eastern United States in soft snow. ...in many places, the powder gave way to freezing rain, glazing trees and roads in heavy, dangerous ice, bringing down power lines, and depriving 1 million people of light and heat. Freezing rain is a stealth winter hazard, says Zong-Liang Yang, an earth systems scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. ...“...[freezing rain is] relatively understudied.” ...a handful of scientists are studying how this rare but destructive form of precipitation might be changing in a warming world, drawing on long-term records, new measurements, and computer modeling. One early result: Freezing rain isn’t vanishing—but it is shifting in location and timing. “We want to make an urgent warning that these kinds of winter hazards won’t be less frequent under a warmer climate,” says postdoctoral researcher Chenxi Hu, who works with Yang. Instead, in the ...