After nearly two decades, this massive New Mexico wind project is now powering California

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By Hayley Smith, Los Angeles Times. 

Excerpt: Nearly two decades in the making, SunZia — an $11-billion New Mexico wind-and-transmission project — is now online, sending new clean power to Arizona and California. Spanning 916 turbines and a 550-mile high-voltage line, the project can power 1 million homes and already has helped drive record wind generation on California’s grid. The project arrives as the Trump administration doubles down on fossil fuel investments and works to slow the development of offshore wind. The largest wind energy project in U.S. history is now online...signaling a new era for sending clean electricity across the West.... 

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E.P.A. Delays Requirements to Cut Methane, a Potent Greenhouse Gas

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Medieval volcano may have indirectly sparked Europe’s Black Death

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By Andrew Curry , Science.  Excerpt: The Black Death is the single most deadly documented pandemic in human history. In 1347 C.E., it spread from a few Italian port cities to nearly every corner of Europe, killing tens of millions of people within a decade and eliminating more than half the continent’s population. In a paper published today in  Communications Earth & Environment , researchers argue that cool weather  spurred by previously unidentified volcanic eruptions  set into motion a deadly chain of events. ...The authors of the new paper suggest volcanic eruptions a few years before the plague’s rapid spread played a role, by pushing plumes of sulfur high into the atmosphere that cooled parts of Europe and caused harvests to fail around the Mediterranean. These failures, in turn, forced Italian cities to import large quantities of grain from the plague-wracked Black Sea region—along with infected fleas, capable of subsisting on grain dust in the cargo holds...
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