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 ...

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...

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...

By Farah Nayeri , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Olafur Eliasson s hook up the contemporary art scene in 2003 when he installed a glowing replica of the sun inside London’s Tate Modern and watched visitors flock to it as if to the nearest beach. Recently, another of Eliasson’s outsized spheres drew large crowds, this time in Salt Lake City, Utah: a  towering, globe-shaped screen  which, night after night, beamed sounds and images illustrating the ecological threats faced by the Great Salt Lake and its ecosystem. To make the installation (titled “ A symphony of disappearing sounds for the Great Salt Lake” ), the Danish Icelandic artist teamed up with the music producer Koreless to create a soundtrack using sounds (collected by archivists) made by more than 150 local animal species — including bison, coyotes, frogs, pelicans and rattlesnakes — which he has paired with abstract images inspired by crystalline shapes and motifs in nature.  The Great Salt Lake is in peril :...

By Brad Plumer , The New York Times.  Excerpt: A federal judge on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from enforcing a series of decisions that wind and solar developers say  have throttled hundreds of renewable energy projects  across the country. Judge Denise J. Casper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts  granted a preliminary injunction  in a lawsuit that a coalition of renewable energy developers filed against the Interior Department in December. The developers argued that the Trump administration was unlawfully discriminating against wind and solar power, impeding projects on public and private land....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/climate/solar-wind-trump-judge.html .  See also article from The Guardian .

By Valerie Volcovici , Reuters.  Excerpt: WASHINGTON, April 16 (Reuters) - The Department of Energy will retain funding for major carbon direct air capture awarded under the Biden administration after targeting them for ​fund cancellation last year, according to a list of projects identified ‌by the agency that it sent to Congress this week seen by Reuters. Last October, the DOE considered cancelling billions of dollars in funding for clean energy programs, including awards for auto ​manufacturing, hydrogen and carbon capture. Projects slated for cancellation included two major direct ​air capture hubs that received $1.2 billion awards from former President Joe ⁠Biden's administration, including one that involves oil company Occidental (OXY.N) in Texas and another ​in Louisiana. ...The DOE confirmed that the South Texas DAC Hub and Louisiana's Project Cypress were on the list of nearly 2,000 projects that would ​retain their funding....  Full article at https://www.reuters.com...