By John Dietz , SuccessfulFarming.  Excerpt: Agrivoltaics, a relatively new term, unites cropping practices and solar panels on the same fields. ...Well-established programs exist throughout Europe, as well as in Japan and China. “Agrivoltaics has emerged as a formal pillar of the energy plan for countries with scarce farmland, including France, Germany, and Italy,” Winter explains. It’s catch-up time in North America. ...[Joshua] Pearce calls agrivoltaics in North America “a slam dunk” opportunity. “A few percent of agricultural land in the U.S. could power the entire country,” he asserts. ...In his latest research paper, Pearce posits that as little as 1% of Canadian farmland could provide a quarter to a third of Canada’s electrical energy needs. ...“You can increase the yield for your crop if you do it right ,” he said in an interview. “You do get more food, and you get the added revenue of the solar. [That’s] why agrivoltaics is growing like crazy in the who...

By Michael Levenson , The New York Times.  Excerpt: For 19 years, Richard Burton, a letter carrier in Athens, Ga., drove the classic boxy mail truck, with only a fan on the dashboard to keep the cabin cool in the sweltering summer months. ...about two months ago, Mr. Burton, 46, became one of the first letter carriers in the United States to get a long-awaited upgrade: a new electric mail truck with air-conditioning, a 360-degree camera and a sliding cargo door on the side that allows the unloading of packages directly onto the sidewalk. ...The new mail trucks — 10 years in the making — have started rolling into American neighborhoods, and the early reviews from letter carriers are positive. Many have complained for years that the mail trucks they have been driving, which were introduced in the 1980s, break down frequently and are stiflingly hot, as climate change pushes temperatures to greater extremes. The rear cargo space is so small, they say, that they have to crouch inside to...

By Ariana Bindman , SFGate.  Excerpt: A Cold War relic, Camp Century was supposed to be entombed in ice forever. NASA’s April 2024 expedition to the Greenland Ice Sheet...[was] "...looking for the bed of the ice and out pops Camp Century,” said Alex Gardner, a scientist at NASA’s California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in a  Nov. 25 news release. ...Part research facility, part war machine, the clandestine, underground military site once housed up to  200 soldiers  and scientists who dutifully  studied ice core samples  during the height of the Cold War.  The nuclear-powered operation , complete with  an experimental subsurface railway  ultimately designed to help launch 600 missiles and provide year-round accommodations for its personnel, was supposed to be entombed in  snow for eternity  after authorities decommissioned it in 1967. ...But the bones of “Project Iceworm” may soon reemerge, as scientists worry that global w...

By Skyler Ware , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Massive volcanic eruptions have reshaped Earth and its climate at several points in history. New research suggests that long after these surface eruptions ceased, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) dissolved in underground magmas could have slowly escaped to the surface. This “cryptic carbon” may have contributed to prolonged periods of warming, slow climate recovery, and mass extinctions. ...extensive volcanism has occurred in conjunction with periods of climate disruption throughout Earth’s history: Large igneous provinces emitted large volumes of greenhouse gases such as CO 2  into the atmosphere, raising temperatures. These events were also sometimes accompanied by major biological changes. The eruptions of the Siberian Traps 252 million years ago coincided with massive biodiversity loss, known as the end-Permian mass extinction, or the Great Dying. But during that event, temperatures and CO 2  levels remained high for about 5 million years aft...

By Ehsan Masood , Nature.  Excerpt: An eleventh-hour deal that rescued the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, is a “fragile consensus”, researchers who study climate finance have told  Nature . Visibly relieved COP delegates representing rich countries applauded in the early hours of 24 November, following a last-minute pledge in which rich countries will ‘take the lead’ in increasing climate finance for poor countries to at least US$300 billion annually by 2035. Low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), notably China, will also be expected to contribute to international climate funds, a first for a COP agreement. But delegates from some of the largest LMICs, including India, Indonesia and Nigeria, were furious. Some alleged that they had been pressured into a deal, so that the COP meeting did not end in failure. The delegates also did not agree on how much of the $300 billion will be in grants versus loans, nor how much will come from private or public-sector sources. C...

By Julia Simon , NPR.  Excerpt: The U.S. is preparing for a second presidential term for Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax and federal investments in climate solutions a " green new scam “. In China, it’s a different story. China has made it clear it plans to be at the forefront of manufacturing climate solutions–and selling them around the globe. China is the world’s largest producer of renewable energy, now constructing almost  two thirds of all large-scale wind and solar power , according to nonprofit Global Energy Monitor. And China is spreading climate solution technologies across the developing world. Walk into an electric vehicle showroom in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, or Kenya these days, and the car on offer is likely made in China. “They’ve set up a situation where it’s good for them to sell clean energy technologies to the world,” says  Alex Wang , a professor of law at UCLA focused on Chinese climate policy. “It’s very good economically,...

By Mitra Taj , The New York Times.  Excerpt: As the glaciers of South America retreat, the supply of freshwater is dwindling and its quality is getting worse. Dionisia Moreno, a 70-year-old Indigenous farmer, still remembers when Shallap River, nearly 13,000 feet up in the Cordillera Blanca, brought crystal clear water brimming with trout to her village, Jancu. “People and animals alike could drink the water without suffering,” she said. “Now the water is red. No one can drink it.”....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/science/peru-glaciers-water-pollution.html . 

By Myles R. Allen et al, Nature.  Abstract: Achieving net zero global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), with declining emissions of other greenhouse gases, is widely expected to halt global warming. CO 2  emissions will continue to drive warming until fully balanced by active anthropogenic CO 2  removals. For practical reasons, however, many greenhouse gas accounting systems allow some “passive” CO 2  uptake, such as enhanced vegetation growth due to CO 2  fertilisation, to be included as removals in the definition of net anthropogenic emissions. By including passive CO 2  uptake, nominal net zero emissions would not halt global warming, undermining the Paris Agreement. ...targets should acknowledge the need for Geological Net Zero, meaning one tonne of CO 2  permanently restored to the solid Earth for every tonne still generated from fossil sources....  Full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08326-8 .  [not free]

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 a...

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 ...

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 . 

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 ...

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...

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://ww...

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 thei...

By Katherine Kornei , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Human activity is pumping carbon dioxide into Earth’s atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. But centennial-scale increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide—albeit significantly smaller—also persisted in the past. These so-called carbon dioxide jumps are tied to the tilt of Earth’s axis, new research suggests. ...The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, [at a] level of 315 parts per million was measured in 1958, when modern records began. Today the value is 420 parts per million. On average, the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been  increasing by roughly 1–3 parts per million per year since the late 1950s . ...  Etienne Legrain , a paleoclimatologist at the Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement in Grenoble, France, and his colleagues... analyzed 203 measurements of carbon dioxide concentration ranging in age from 260,000 to 190,000 years before present. ...they spotted seven unusual events in which the carb...

By Rocio Fabbro , Quartz.  Excerpt: Renewable energy stocks plunged following Donald Trump’s election victory Tuesday, as the sector braces for the real possibility that the president-elect actually does  “drill, baby, drill.” That resulted in a roughly  $1.3 billion windfall  for investors betting against the stocks, according to calculations by Bloomberg. Among the most shorted clean energy stocks are Plug Power ( PLUG ), SolarEdge Technologies ( SEDG ), Bloom Energy ( BE ), First Solar ( FSLR ), and Enphase Energy ( ENPH ).... A second Trump presidency is expected to give other areas of the energy sector a major boost — especially oil. The Republican has promised to expand oil drilling on his first day in office, and to do away with clean energy policies....  Full article at https://qz.com/renewable-energy-stocks-short-sellers-donald-trump-oil-1851692959 . 

By Damian Carrington , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Analysis of 19m flights between 2019 and 2023 reveals 50% rise in emissions, condemned as ‘gratuitous waste’. Private jet flights have soared in recent years, with the resulting climate-heating emissions rising by 50%, the most comprehensive global analysis to date has revealed. ...Private flights, used by just 0.003% of the world’s population, are the most polluting form of transport. The researchers found that passengers in larger private jets caused more CO 2  emissions in an hour than the average person did in a year. The US dominated private jet travel, representing 69% of flights.... A  private jet takes off every six minutes  in the UK. ...Industry expectations are that  another 8,500 business jets  will enter service by 2033, far outstripping efficiency gains and indicating that private flight emissions will rise even further. The researchers said their work highlighted the vast global inequality in em...

By Sandra Laville , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Pollution is affecting the climate, biodiversity, ecosystems, ocean acidification and human health, according to analysis. Plastic pollution is changing the processes of the entire Earth system, exacerbating climate change, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification, and the use of freshwater and land, according to scientific analysis. Plastic must not be treated as a waste problem alone, the authors said, but as a product that poses harm to ecosystems and human health. ...Microplastics are now everywhere, from  the top of Mount Everest  to  the Mariana Trench , the deepest point on earth. ...“It’s necessary to consider the full life cycle of plastics, starting from the extraction of fossil fuel and the primary plastic polymer production” said the article’s lead author, Patricia Villarrubia-Gómez, at Stockholm Resilience Centre....  Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/07/plastic-pollution-is-ch...

By Saima May Sidik , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: From time to time, when Earth’s tectonic plates shift, the planet emits a long, slow belch of carbon dioxide. In a new modeling study,  Müller et al.   show how this gas released from deep Earth may have  affected climate  over the past billion years. ...Scientists have often estimated the volume of such carbon emissions solely on the basis of the gas released by plate tectonics. But plate tectonics can also  capture  carbon by incorporating it into new crust formed at mid-ocean ridges. In the new work, researchers   drew on  two  recent  studies  about the past billion years of plate movement to more precisely model how much carbon dioxide this process has generated. ...Tectonic activity is a major determinant of Earth’s atmospheric composition over geologic time, the researchers conclude.  https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GC011713 , ....  Full article at https://eos.org/research-sp...

By Yizhou Zhuang  et al, Science.  Abstract: Historically, meteorological drought in the western United States (WUS) has been driven primarily by precipitation deficits. However, our observational analysis shows that, since around 2000, rising surface temperature and the resulting high evaporative demand have contributed more to drought severity (62%) and coverage (66%) over the WUS than precipitation deficit. This increase in evaporative demand during droughts, mostly attributable to anthropogenic warming according to analyses of both observations and climate model simulations, is the main cause of the increased drought severity and coverage. The unprecedented 2020–2022 WUS drought exemplifies this shift in drought drivers, with high evaporative demand accounting for 61% of its severity, compared to 39% from precipitation deficit. Climate model simulations corroborate this shift and project that, under the fossil-fueled development scenario (SSP5-8.5), droughts like the ...

By Meghie Rodrigues , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: In August and September, huge portions of South America were shrouded in intense smoke from wildfires raging in the Amazon and other parts of Brazil and Bolivia. The Brazilian Pantanal—the  world’s largest  tropical wetland—had an  almost eightfold  increase in wildfires this year compared to 2023. From  Manaus  to  São Paulo  and  Buenos Aires , the smoke,  visible from   space , blurred sunlight for weeks and posed a threat to  the health  of  millions . ...South America, according to a  new study  published in  Communications Earth and Environment , is becoming drier, warmer, and more flammable. These conditions favor not only natural wildfires but also the uncontrolled spread of human-caused fire. ...The paper did not uncover the weight of climate change and land use change when it comes to wildfires. Up to what point can we attribute the findings to El ...

By Warren Cornwall , Science.  Excerpt: During a heat wave, many people seek relief by sitting in front of a fan. But public health agencies warn that if it’s too hot, the blowing air can actually make things worse by acting like a convection oven—and they differ on that threshold. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends not using a fan at  temperatures above 32.2°C . Others, including the city of Phoenix, give higher thresholds, and the World Health Organization (WHO) puts the  limit at 40°C . New research from two different groups of thermal physiologists favors the higher temperature limits, especially in humid weather. But the groups don’t agree on a single temperature threshold. One study,  published on 6 November  in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), reports that fans can relieve stress on the heart in elderly people in humid conditions at 38°C. The other,  published on 17 October  in JAMA, co...

By Marina Dunbar , The Guardian.  Excerpt: Every US state except Alaska and Kentucky is facing  drought , an unprecedented number, according to the  US Drought Monitor . A little more than 45% of the US and  Puerto Rico  is in drought this week, according to the tracker. About 54% of land in the 48 contiguous US states is affected by droughts. Even as the country experiences autumn and heads further away from a  summer of record heat , the droughts continue to rise. More than 150 million people in the country – and 149.8 million in the 48 contiguous states – are in a drought this week. That is about a 34% increase since last week and an over 150% increase since last month. The drought is also affecting more than 318m acres of crops, a 57% increase since last month, according to the tracker. That reality is only the latest illustration of global warming and the  climate crisis , spurred primarily by humans’ burning of  fossil fuels . Last month, it...

By James Dinneen , New Scientist.  Excerpt: A common sunscreen ingredient, zinc nanoparticles, may help protect rice from heat-related stress, an increasingly common problem under climate change. ...Researchers have explored such nanoparticles as a way to deliver more nutrients to plants, helping maintain crop yields while reducing environmental  damage from using too much fertiliser . Now  Xiangang Hu  at Nankai University in China and his colleagues have tested how zinc oxide nanoparticles affect crop performance under heatwave conditions....  Full article at https://www.newscientist.com/article/2454728-spraying-rice-with-sunscreen-particles-during-heatwaves-boosts-growth/ .