My Climate Change News

He has called for increased oil production and said that electric vehicles will result in an 'assassination’ of jobs.

Former President Donald J. Trump has vowed to “cancel” President Biden’s policies for cutting pollution from fossil-fuel-burning power plants, “terminate” efforts to encourage electric vehicles, and “develop the liquid gold that is right under our feet” by promoting oil and gas.

Those changes and others that Mr. Trump has promised, if he were to win the presidency again, represent a 180-degree shift from Mr. Biden’s climate agenda.

When he was president, Mr. Trump reversed more than 100 environmental protections put in place by the Obama administration. Mr. Biden has in turn reversed much of Mr. Trump’s agenda.

But climate advocates argue a second Trump term would be far more damaging than his first, because the window to keep rising global temperatures to relatively safe levels is rapidly closing.

“It would become an all-out ...

The polarization of politics means that rules are imposed, gutted and restored with each election. Experts say that’s bad for the economy.

The Biden administration’s move on Thursday to strictly limit pollution from coal-burning power plants is a major policy shift. But in many ways it’s one more hairpin turn in a zigzag approach to environmental regulation in the United States, a pattern that has grown more extreme as the political landscape has become more polarized.

Nearly a decade ago, President Barack Obama was the Democrat who tried to force power plants to stop burning coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. His Republican successor, Donald J. Trump, effectively reversed that plan. Now President Biden is trying once more to put an end to carbon emissions from coal plants. But Mr. Trump, who is running to replace Mr. Biden, has promised that he will again delete those plans if he wins in November.

The country’s participation in the Paris climate accord ...

In Florida, swaths of coral paint a colorful landscape across the ocean floor and serve a key role in its ecosystem.

But last summer, amid the longest marine heat wave in decades, many were scorched - drained of color and their survival left in question. It’s a scenario becoming much more common.

KEY LARGO, Fla.

With milk crates of corals in hand and scuba tanks strapped to their backs, Sam Burrell and his team disappeared under the water’s choppy surface. Heavy, breaking waves crashed against the charter boat anchored miles off the coast.

With each breath they let out, they descended beneath the surface and felt a sense of relief: On this November morning, they were finally returning hundreds of corals pulled out of the water earlier in the year after one of the hottest marine heat waves on record threatened to wipe them out. For months, the corals sat in temperature-controlled tanks in the shadow of the gulf’s bay until the waters were cool enough for ...

Due to the changing climate, young herring arrive in the Wadden Sea earlier and earlier in spring. That is shown in a new publication by NIOZ ecologists Mark Rademaker, Myron Peck, and Anieke van Leeuwen in Global Change Biology.

"The fact that we were able to demonstrate this was only due to very consistently - for more than 60 years - and continuously sampling the fish every spring and every fall with exactly the same fyke [net] every time," Rademaker says. "Recognizing this kind of change requires extreme precision and endurance."

Since 1960, NIOZ, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, has been measuring the number and species of fish that swim in the Marsdiep, between Den Helder and Texel, day in and day out, using a standard fyke, in spring and fall. These measurements show that the peak of the number of young herring swimming into the Wadden Sea since 1982 comes at least two weeks earlier now.

"Such a calculation is difficult with a species of ...

A centuries-old settlement submerged by the construction of a dam in the northern Philippines in the 1970s has reappeared as water levels drop due to a drought affecting swathes of the country.

The ruins in the middle of Pantabangan Dam in Nueva Ecija province are a tourist draw, even as the region swelters in extreme heat.

Parts of a church, municipal hall marker and tombstones began to resurface in March after several months of "almost no rain", said Marlon Paladin, a supervising engineer for the National Irrigation Administration.

It is the sixth time the nearly 300-year-old settlement has resurfaced since the reservoir was created to provide irrigation water for local farmers and generate hydro-power.

"This is the longest time (it was visible) based on my experience," Paladin told AFP.

The reservoir's water level has fallen nearly 50 metres (164 feet) from its normal high level of 221 metres, figures from the state weather forecaster ...

Now, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) aims to facilitate the development of this rapidly emerging technology that the International Energy Agency (IEA) says will be a "key technology" for combating global warming.

NIST scientists have developed a high-precision testing apparatus for benchmarking the performance of the materials, called sorbents, used in DAC plants to trap and remove carbon from the air.

The apparatus will enable the agency to develop research-grade test material (RGTM) sorbents for the DAC industry. These reference materials will be tested in the apparatus and validated to remove a certain amount of CO2 from a given amount of air.

Companies will have the option of using the RGTMs to calibrate their equipment, making sure they get the same results as NIST does when they test the agency's materials. They can also use the materials as part of their research and development process, benchmarking the carbon-removal ...

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Yale Climate Connections

A few years ago, Jacqueline Freidel and her husband built their new home near Madison, Wisconsin, complete with four bedrooms and an open-concept floor plan.

But the couple’s house has a hidden feature - it runs entirely on electricity and is net-zero, meaning it produces just as much energy as it uses every year.

Freidel: “If you were walking by and didn’t know anything about the house, you might not even guess that it is net-zero energy and all-electric.”

Freidel is an energy efficiency consultant. But she says anyone can build a net-zero home if they hire a contractor who has experience with energy-efficient houses.

In their home, the couple and their builders installed electric appliances like an induction stove and a heat pump instead of a gas stove or furnace.

They insulated the house tightly to save on heating and ...

But there's a caveat to this concern: Existing models have predicted a more dramatic rate of Arctic riverbank erosion than has actually been observed. In a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, Madison Douglas and Michael Lamb set out to determine why.

To do this, the team created a model that couples the movement of sediment, such as sand and mud, with permafrost thaw to determine riverbank erosion. The model better reproduces erosion observations on parts of the Yukon River in Alaska. This is because in real-world scenarios, the rate of erosion is slowed by an insulating layer of thawed sediment. Rather than the warmer river water immediately washing away newly thawed sediment, this layer insulates deeper permafrost and limits the pace of bank erosion.

Although the thawed layer does eventually erode, factors such as water temperature, flow speed, and soil consistency can affect the buffer layer's longevity and effectiveness. ...

This week, the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights (IACHR) started to hear testimony at the University of the West Indies, near Bridgetown, Barbados, addressing one of the most pressing global issues of our time: climate change and its implications on human rights. Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) Research Scientist Carly Philips (pictured on the left above) testified on April 24. With dozens testifying over three packed days, the court heard powerful statements focused on impacts to small nation-states, connections between climate and health, calls for intergenerational justice, and - the focus of UCS’s input - state obligations to reduce corporate emissions. All testimony was recorded and can be watched here.

The landmark hearing opened with statements by representatives from Chile and Colombia, which, in 2023, had sought the court’s advisory opinion on the interplay between climate change and human rights. Their requests underline a need for clarity about ...

The climate crisis is extremely unaffordable. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in Nature last week, which found that global warming will cost $38 trillion every year by 2050. For comparison, the entire global economy is about $100 trillion per year.

But one economist has a novel idea about how to pay for at least part of the bill. At a meeting of the world’s wealthiest countries and banks last week, Esther Duflo proposed that the richest people should compensate poor people for the climate damages they disproportionately caused. That money would be raised through a climate tax on billionaires and large corporations.

Duflo is the youngest person and second woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. She is currently the president of the Paris School of Economics, and the co-founder and co-director of MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab. Duflo’s work on poverty pioneered using field experiments to test how well economic policies work in real ...

The Department of Energy finally streamlines permitting requests and requires only one environmental impact statement for each project.

Transmission lines carrying renewable energy. Photo: Shutterstock/lovelyday12

The U.S. Department of Energy will become a "one-stop-shop" for permits for new electricity transmission projects under a rule announced by the Biden administration. The move is intended to make building green energy projects simpler and faster, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters.

The rule will create a new program, the Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorization and Permits (CITAP), which will be the lead agency handling permits for new energy projects. Applicants will have to prepare only a single environmental impact statement for all their federal authorizations. The federal government will be required to respond to applications within a fixed deadline.

That’s a marked difference from the current process, which ...

The Biden administration rolled out its plan Thursday to overhaul the United States’ aging patchwork of fossil-fueled electrical grids, finishing work on a suite of regulations designed to rein in rising utility bills and stem worsening blackouts while cutting planet-heating pollution from power plants.

The regulatory package includes the nation’s first-ever limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, tighter restrictions on mercury gas and coal ash, and a new way to speed up construction of badly needed transmission lines.

Paired with the billions of dollars in carrots for manufacturing, building and buying modern energy equipment that came with President Joe Biden’s landmark climate-spending laws, the rules chart a path for the U.S. to avoid nearly 1.4 billion metric tons of carbon pollution through 2047. That’s equal to taking 328 million gasoline-fueled cars off the road or a full year of emissions from the U.S. electric power sector today.

The ...

The United States on Thursday announced sweeping new rules requiring coal-fired plants to eliminate nearly all their carbon emissions or commit to shutting down altogether, a keystone of President Joe Biden's agenda to confront the climate crisis.

Hailed by environmental groups as a "gamechanger," the regulations take effect from 2032 and will also mandate that new, high capacity gas-fired plants slash their carbon dioxide output by the same amount - 90 percent - a target that would require the use of carbon capture technology.

It comes as Democratic incumbent Biden faces a tough election rematch against Republican Donald Trump in November, with climate action seen as key to galvanizing youth and progressive voters.

US power plant emissions have been declining in recent years, thanks to a drop in the cost of renewables. But the power sector remains the second largest source of US greenhouse gases, accounting for a quarter of the total produced by the world's ...

Join Bob Henson and attribution science experts for a webinar on Friday, May 3 at 12 p.m. Eastern.

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Yale Climate Connections

“A climate-driven migration has already begun,” writes climate journalist Abrahm Lustgarten in his must-read book, “On the Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America.”

“In the United States,” he continues, “a quiet retreat from the front lines of Western wildfires and Gulf Coast hurricanes is hollowing out small towns. These are the subtle first signals of an epochal slow-motion exodus out of inhospitable places that will, as the climate warms further over the lifetime of today’s children, unfold on a global scale.”

If you’re looking for a book that can help inform your personal choices on how to prepare for the future of ...

Chinese car giants locked in a cut-throat price war descended on the capital for the start of the Auto China show Thursday, vying to draw consumers and headlines in the world's biggest electric vehicle market and abroad.

China's EV sector has exploded in recent years, and firms are now engaged in a no-holds-barred battle to offer customers the coolest accessories at the lowest prices.

EV makers from China have made inroads into markets from Europe to Southeast Asia and Tesla's Elon Musk described them in January as "the most competitive car companies in the world".

Beijing's Auto China show, which lasts until May 4, sees dozens of firms square off in a bid to draw customers at one of the country's biggest car shows.

Thursday saw crowds surge into the convention complex hosting the event, which takes place every other year but had not been held since 2019 because of the pandemic.

Several of the Chinese automotive world's top stars addressed ...

Global biodiversity has declined between 2% and 11% during the 20th century due to land-use change alone, according to a large multi-model study published in Science. Projections show climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline by the mid-21st century.

The analysis was led by the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and is the largest modeling study of its kind to date. The researchers compared thirteen models for assessing the impact of land-use change and climate change on four distinct biodiversity metrics, as well as on nine ecosystem services.

Land-use change is considered the largest driver of biodiversity change, according to the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). However, scientists are divided over how much biodiversity has changed in past decades.

To better answer this question, the researchers modeled the ...

In a recent publication in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, a research team led by Academician Piao Shilong from the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University delved into the topic. The paper, titled "Vegetation Greenness in 2023," offers a detailed analysis of the interplay between vegetation greening and climate change.

The greening of vegetation is one of the most significant features of changes in the Earth's biosphere during the modern period of climate warming. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, warming climate, and land use changes are the main drivers affecting global vegetation greening.

Under the long-term warming trend, the intensity and frequency of extreme climate events have significantly increased, which is widely believed to be a key factor in triggering the stagnation or even reversal of the global vegetation greening trend into a browning trend. It is worth noting that 2023 was the hottest year on record, ...

Global automakers and EV startups unveiled new models and concept cars at China's largest auto show on Thursday, with a focus on the nation's transformation into a major market and production base for digitally connected, new-energy vehicles.

Toyota and Nissan both announced tie-ups with major Chinese technology companies as they strive to meet customer demand for AI-enabled online connectivity in cars, from social media apps to autonomous driving features.

Electric vehicles accounted for about a quarter of all auto sales in China last year. Hybrids, which have trailed EVs, are expected to be a growing segment going forward.

China's largest EV maker, BYD, showed off two "dual-mode" plug-in cars that can run either solely on electricity or as hybrids. The other is a hybrid off-road SUV from its luxury Yangwang brand in the 1 million yuan-plus ($140,000) range.

"China's EVs, represented by (BYD's) Qin and Han series, have successfully realized the ...

Colonies of emperor penguin chicks were wiped out last year as global warming eroded their icy homes, a study published Thursday found, despite the birds' attempts to adapt to the shrinking landscape.

The study by the British Antarctic Survey found that record-low sea ice levels in 2023 contributed to the second-worst year for emperor penguin chick mortality since observations began in 2018.

It follows a "catastrophic breeding failure" in 2022, signaling long-term implications for the population, the study's author Peter Fretwell told AFP.

Emperor penguins breed on sea-ice platforms, with chicks hatching in the winter between late July and mid-August.

The chicks are reared until they develop waterproof feathers, typically in December ahead of the summer melt.

But if the ice melts too early, the chicks risk drowning and freezing.

Fourteen of 66 penguin colonies, which can each produce several hundred to several thousand chicks in a year, were ...