Stay Current with GSS

The GSS google group receives “Stay Current” weekly emails with excerpts and links to articles. To join, email gssmail@berkeley.edu with subject line “Join GSS” and in the body your name, city, state, country, and school (if any).

“Stay Current” links are in the Contents table in each book. If a news source limits the number of articles one person can read for free, try “divide and conquer” with different students reading and reporting to the class on different articles.

See updates from 2025 -|- 2024 -|- 2023 -|- 2022 -|- 2021

RECENT UPDATES (2026)

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2026-03-13. China’s Clean Energy Push Has Made It Less Vulnerable to Energy Shocks, Including the Iran War. By Nicholas Kusnetz, Georgina Gustin, Inside Climate News. Excerpt: As countries scramble to secure oil, gas and fertilizer, China’s bets on clean energy and coal are cushioning its dependence on oil and gas imports. …In an essay in Foreign Policy written with Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy, Downs argued that while the war has exposed China’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil, “it also underscores how deliberately Beijing has sought to prepare for a world in which energy security is inseparable from geopolitics—by electrifying its economy, securing domestic sources of energy, amassing stockpiles, and dominating clean technology supply chains.” Last year more than half of new cars sold in China were electric, according to the energy think tank Ember, while the country is a leader in electrifying heavy-duty vehicles and high-speed rail, too. Meanwhile, a rapidly growing portion of its electricity is being generated by solar and wind energy as China installs more of those technologies than the rest of the world combined…. Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13032026/china-clean-energy-coal-cushions-oil-dependence-iran-war/. See also the The New York Times article China’s Edge in an Oil Shock: Electric Cars and Renewables. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-03-12. Trump Administration Fires New Shot in Fight Over California Clean Car Rules. By Maxine Joselow and Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. Excerpt: The Trump administration on Thursday filed a new lawsuit against California over its strict limits on planet-warming pollution from cars, arguing that the restrictions would unlawfully force a rapid transition to electric vehicles in the state. …Across the country, 17 states representing more than a third of the American automobile market follow California’s lead on clean car standards. “Gavin Newsom is determined to continue pushing Democrats’ radical E.V. fantasy — even if doing so is illegal,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement…. Anthony Martinez, a spokesman for Governor Newsom, called the lawsuit “meritless.” “While the Trump administration surrenders the future of the auto industry to China, California will continue competing globally to win the clean vehicle market,” Mr. Martinez said, adding, “This lawsuit is meritless, and we’re not backing down from this fight.”… Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/12/climate/trump-california-tailpipe-emissions.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-03-11. Slowly, Slowly, ‘Darwin’s Finches of the Snail World’ Return From Near Extinction. By Franz Lidz, The New York Times. Excerpt: …in French Polynesia, where well-meaning ecological interventions have backfired with catastrophic precision. During the 1980s, Partula snails, a genus of aspirin-size tree mollusks with more than 100 species and subspecies across the Society Islands of French Polynesia, nearly vanished after the arrival of a carnivorous foreign snail. (That snail had been introduced a decade earlier in an attempt to control a different invasive snail.) …Partula is re-establishing its place in Pacific ecosystems because of a pioneering rescue initiative that began in 1991 and now includes 15 zoos around the world. …The road to extinction is often paved with good intentions and poor science. Hawaii learned this lesson the hard way after introducing the giant African land snail (Lissachatina fulica) in 1936. The snail, which grows to nearly a foot long, was intended to be a food source, but it multiplied rapidly and became an agricultural nightmare. Within two years, it was ravaging crops and even stripping the stucco from buildings…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/11/science/conservation-snails-partula.html. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 3.

2026-03-11. A genetic trick helps this all-female fish species escape evolutionary doom. By Phie Jacobs, Science. Excerpt: The Amazon molly, which reproduces asexually, has survived—and thrived—at least 10 times longer than predicted by evolutionary theory. …Talk about an odd couple. At least 100,000 years ago, a female Atlantic molly (Poecilia mexicana) living in the fresh waters near what is now Tampico, Mexico, mated with a male sailfin molly (Poecilia latipinna). The offspring of this cross-species coupling ought to have been sterile, like a mule. But this particular hybrid went on to birth a brood of daughters—all of which were genetic clones of their mother. Scientists have long assumed this reproductive strategy of birthing clones to be an evolutionary dead end among vertebrate animals, with offspring inevitably succumbing to genomic degradation over time. But the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa), named for the fierce female warriors of Greek mythology, has kept on defying the odds. According to research published today in Nature, it all comes down to a quirk of genetics that helps reverse harmful mutations…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/genetic-trick-helps-all-female-fish-species-escape-evolutionary-doom. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 4.

2026-03-09. A creepy-crawly solution to plastic waste. By Science Advisor, AAAS. Excerpt: Cockroaches are traditionally viewed as disgusting pests—a reputation they frequently deserve, as infestations can pose serious health risks by spreading disease and triggering allergic reactions. According to new research, however, these undesirable insects could help solve a different kind of hazard: plastic pollution. Polystyrene, one of the most widely used plastic polymers, is also one of the hardest to break down. Some insect species, such as mealworms, can digest small amounts of this material, but they aren’t particularly efficient. In a new study, scientists wanted to find out if the cockroach Blaptica dubia could do better. In controlled feeding experiments, each cockroach consumed an average of six milligrams of polystyrene per day. Over 42 days, the critters managed to degrade nearly 55% of the plastic they had ingested—far higher than rates reported for other plastic-munching insects. …Setting a bunch of cockroaches loose on the world’s garbage heap is, of course, a terrible idea, but the discovery could help scientists develop other biological strategies for dealing with plastic waste…. Full paper at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666498426000244. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 7.

2026-03-05. Scientists Create the First Map of Deep Earthquakes Beneath Continents. By Larissa G. Capella, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Scientists once thought Earth’s continental mantle was too weak for earthquakes. A new global map of 459 deep tremors suggests otherwise. …Most earthquakes happen in Earth’s brittle upper crust, where rocks snap under pressure. But as depth increases, temperatures rise, and rocks start to deform by ductile flow rather than break. Now, in a study published in Science, geophysicists at Stanford University have compiled the first comprehensive global map of 459 continental mantle earthquakes (CMEs). CMEs describe extremely rare earthquakes that originate below the Mohorovičić discontinuity (the Moho), the boundary between Earth’s crust and its mantle…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/scientists-create-the-first-map-of-deep-earthquakes-beneath-continents. For GSS Energy Flow, chapter 2.

2026-03-05. Nature Report, Killed by Trump, Is Released Independently. By Catrin Einhorn, The New York Times. Excerpt: Scientists and other experts were preparing a first-of-its-kind assessment of the health of nature in the United States when President Trump returned to the White House. He canceled the report. The researchers went ahead and compiled it on their own. This week, they released a 868-page draft for public comment and scientific review. Many of the preliminary findings are grim: Freshwater ecosystems across the country are in crisis, “overdrawn, polluted, fragmented and invaded.” Marine and terrestrial ecosystems are degraded, with reduced biodiversity. An estimated 34 percent of plant species and 40 percent of animal species are at risk of extinction. Human pressures on nature are eroding the necessities it gives us, such as clean water, food, health, livelihoods and protection from storms and fire. But there is hope, and the authors emphasized the ability to chart a new course…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/climate/trump-nature-assessment.html. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 7.

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2026-03-. TEMPLATE. By . Excerpt: … Full article at URL. For GSS BOOK, chapter .

2026-03-06. Minnesota’s aspirations for a ‘green ammonia’ industry could soon pay off for farmers. By Kristoffer Tigue, The Minnesota Star Tribune. Excerpt: The University of Minnesota helped pioneer the process of making fertilizer with renewable energy. A new coalition aims to bring it to commercial scale…. Full article at https://www.startribune.com/minnesotas-aspirations-for-a-green-ammonia-industry-could-soon-pay-off/601591441. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-03-04. Many heat-stressed tropical insects are reaching their limits. By Erik Stokstad, Science. Excerpt: Insects living in the lowland tropics have evolved to deal with brutal heat. But many of them are close to their limit, according to a massive study that assessed the heat tolerance of hundreds of species. The findings, published today in Nature, provide an unprecedented view of what temperatures tropical insects can deal with—and reinforce concerns about the risk that climate change poses for insect biodiversity…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/many-heat-stressed-tropical-insects-are-reaching-their-limits. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-03-04. North American birds: from decline to free fall. By Science Advisor. Excerpt: North American bird populations have been falling for decades. But a new study in Science suggests something even more troubling: In many places, those declines are accelerating. Using data from 1033 North American Breeding Bird Survey routes spanning 1987 to 2021, researchers analyzed trends for 261 species. On average, bird abundance per survey route declined by about nine individuals per year, roughly a 15% drop over the study period. Seventy percent of routes showed significant losses. In all, nearly half of the species studied (122 species) showed significant declines, and 63 of those exhibited accelerating losses. …Geographically, hotspots of accelerating decline cluster in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwest, and California, specifically in regions of high-intensity agriculture. Statistical models linked accelerating declines to cropland expansion, fertilizer use, and pesticide application. Warmer regions also saw stronger overall population losses. …the study does not prove what’s driving the acceleration…. Full paper at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads0871. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 6.

2026-03-02. Google’s new Minnesota data center comes with the world’s largest battery—and won’t raise electric bills. By Adele Peters, Fast Company. Excerpt: New data centers can lead to higher electric bills and lock in aging, outdated coal plants. But a Google project in Minnesota takes a different approach: The tech giant is paying to build enough clean power that existing customers won’t foot the bill, and the grid will get innovative new tech—a massive battery that will be the largest by capacity in the world. …To support the data center, which will be built in the small town of Pine Island, Google inked an agreement with the local utility Xcel Energy to fund 1,900 megawatts of new clean energy. It’s similar to an approach that Google took in Nevada to pay for a geothermal power plant from Fervo, a company with next-generation technology…. In the Minnesota project, Google is paying for 1,400 megawatts of new wind power and 200 megawatts of solar power while helping pioneer another new technology—a battery that can store energy over days instead of hours. …The battery, from a startup called Form Energy, uses iron-air technology to help store renewable energy longer. The company describes it as reversibly rusting iron: The iron reacts with oxygen to store and release energy, with storage lasting 100 hours. The new plant in Minnesota will be big enough to deliver 300 megawatts of power and store an enormous 30 gigawatt-hours of energy, making it the largest battery by capacity that’s been announced so far. By comparison, that’s more storage than all of the battery projects built in the U.S. in 2024 added together…. Full article at https://www.fastcompany.com/91500104/google-minnesota-data-center-electric-bills. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-03-02. Antarctic Ice Sheet Has Lost a Connecticut-Sized Amount of Ice Over the Past 30 Years. By Grace van Deelen, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A new study of Antarctica has found that since 1996, its ice sheet has lost 12,820 square kilometers (nearly 5,000 square miles) of ice—nearly enough to cover the state of Connecticut, or 10 cities the size of Greater Los Angeles. The study, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, evaluated the retreat of the ice sheet’s grounding line over the past 30 years. A grounding line is the point at which continental ice (grounded on bedrock) meets a floating ice shelf, and as such serves as a good measure of the advance and retreat of ocean-terminating glaciers…. Full article at https://eos.org/research-and-developments/antarctic-ice-sheet-has-lost-a-connecticut-sized-amount-of-ice-over-the-past-30-years. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-02-26. Why farmers in California are backing a giant solar farm. By Dan Charles, NPR. Excerpt: A mammoth solar farm is moving forward in the heart of California. If built, which seems increasingly likely, it would cover 200 square miles of land and generate 21,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power entire cities. Huge batteries will store some of that power until it’s needed most. Farmers are among the project’s backers. They don’t have enough water to grow crops on big chunks of their land, and they’re looking for new uses for it. “We’re farmers, and we would rather farm the ground,” says Ross Franson, president of Woolf Farming and Processing, his family’s business. “If we had the water to do it, we would farm it. But the reality is, you don’t. You have to deal with the cards you’re dealt.”… Full article at https://www.npr.org/2026/02/26/nx-s1-5726411/farmers-california-san-joaquin-valley-solar-farm-westlands-water-district-golden-state-clean-energy. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-02-25. Drought Drove the Amazon’s 2023 Switch to a Carbon Source. By Madeline Reinsel, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest, typically storing more carbon than it releases into the atmosphere each year. But in 2023, global high-temperature records accompanied droughts and heat waves across South America, disrupting that stable pattern. Botía et al. combined carbon dioxide measurements and global atmospheric data to calculate the Amazon rainforest’s 2023 carbon balance…. They found that the forest released between 10 billion and 170 billion kilograms of carbon into the atmosphere in 2023 (including fire-related emissions), turning the ecosystem into a small net carbon emitter. The change was most pronounced in the second half of the year, likely driven by climate warming and high sea surface temperatures in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. …the rainforest’s change from a carbon sink to a carbon source was caused by the rainforest’s vegetation absorbing less carbon during drought conditions, rather than by fire-induced carbon release. The rainforest’s record-breaking switch from a carbon absorber to a carbon emitter accounted for up to 30% of worldwide tropical carbon emissions in 2023, the researchers say. The findings suggest that the Amazon could become an overall carbon source faster than previously predicted. However, the authors note that the research so far is not conclusive, and the possibility of the ecosystem recovering exists as well. (AGU Advances, https://doi.org/10.1029/2025AV001658, 2026). Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/drought-drove-the-amazons-2023-switch-to-a-carbon-source. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-02-24. Following 35% growth, solar has passed hydro on US grid. By John Timmer , arstechnica. Excerpt: On Tuesday, the US Energy Information Administration released full-year data on how the country generated electricity in 2025. It’s a bit of a good news/bad news situation. The bad news is that overall demand rose appreciably, and a fair chunk of that was met by additional coal use. On the good side, solar continued its run of astonishing growth, generating 35 percent more power than a year earlier and surpassing hydroelectric power for the first time. Overall, electrical consumption in the US rose by 2.8 percent, or about 121 terawatt-hours. Consumption had been largely flat for several decades, with efficiency and the decline of industry offsetting the effects of population and economic growth. There were plenty of year-to-year changes, however, driven by factors ranging from heating and cooling demand to a global pandemic. Given that history, the growth in demand in 2025 is a bit concerning, but it’s not yet a clear signal that the factors that will inevitably drive growth have kicked in. …(These factors include things like the switch to heat pumps, the electrification of transportation, and the growth in data centers….) Full article at https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/02/final-2025-data-is-in-us-energy-use-is-up-as-solar-passes-hydro/. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-02-02. How the Rise of a Salty Blob Led to the Fall of the Last Ice Age. By Emily Gardner, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: There are a few things scientists know for sure about how Earth grows warmer: For instance, when there’s more carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere, that CO₂ traps heat. This means that during an ice age, less CO₂ is present in Earth’s atmosphere. “One of the fundamental questions in our field was, ‘Where did that CO₂ go during ice ages, and where did it come from when the planet warmed?’” said Ryan Glaubke, a paleoceanographer and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arizona. …Now, new research published in Nature Geoscience seems to confirm what many researchers have long thought was the case: A giant “blob” of salty ocean water kept carbon dioxide locked deep in the ocean during the last ice age, and the blob released that CO₂ during an upwelling event 18,000 years ago…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/how-the-rise-of-a-salty-blob-led-to-the-fall-of-the-last-ice-age. For GSS Life and Climate, chapter 10.

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2026-02-25. Why ice ages lost their cool. By Science Advisor. Excerpt: About 2.7 million years ago, Earth’s climate had a personality crisis. Before then, ice ages waxed and waned in long, predictable cycles tied to Earth’s orbit, tens of thousands of years at a time. But new research in Science suggests that as Northern Hemisphere ice sheets grew larger, the planet’s climate system began behaving very differently. And ice ages started “flickering,” swinging abruptly every couple thousand years. To understand when and why this shift occurred, researchers analyzed sediment cores drilled from the seafloor off the Iberian margin, near Portugal. …For most of the Pliocene, from about 5.3 to 2.7 million years ago, the record shows only slow orbital cycles, with little to no sign of any rapid swings. But after 2.7million years ago, during the intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation, the first isolated cold events begin to appear. Within 200,000 years, rapid oscillations became frequent and persistent. The timing coincides with the expansion of glaciers large enough to reach the ocean in places like Greenland. As these ice masses grew, more icebergs broke off and melted into the North Atlantic—activity that may have disrupted ocean circulation, making the climate system more prone to abrupt shifts. With ice sheets growing larger, millennial-scale variability became an enduring feature of ice ages and a new mode of climate behavior that would define the Quaternary, the ice-age period that continues today. The shift overlaps with the emergence of the genus Homo, indicating that our earliest ancestors evolved in an increasingly variable world that could have influenced hominin evolution… Full paper at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady7970. For GSS Life and Climate, chapter 10.

2026-02-24. Allegations of a Chinese nuclear blast may reignite weapons testing. By ichard Stone, Science. Excerpt: In the afternoon on 22 June 2020, a seismic station in eastern Kazakhstan registered two small earthquakes 12 seconds 
apart near China’s Lop Nur nuclear test site. …U.S. officials this month asserted the shaking was from a clandestine nuclear detonation—an accusation that could sound the starting gun for a new global arms race. Weeks earlier, U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to resume nuclear weapons tests “on an equal basis” with other nations. “We’re not going to play on a nonlevel field anymore,” Christopher 
Yeaw, assistant secretary for the Bureau of Arms Control and Nonproliferation at the Department of State, said at a public forum on
18 February. Such tests could contravene the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the major nuclear powers have adhered to, even though China and the United States have not ratified it and Russia rescinded ratification in 2023. …Incentives for testing are strong. The U.S. is developing a new submarine-launched warhead, Russia is deploying hypersonic missiles nearly impossible to intercept, and China is ramping up its arsenal. …Heightening concerns is the lapse this month of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which capped U.S. and Russian deployed nuclear warheads at 1550 each. …China conducted fewer than four dozen nuclear tests at Lop Nur before signing the CTBT in 1996, compared with about 700 Soviet tests and more than 1000 by the U.S. “China needs [testing] much more than the U.S. does,” says Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin, a nuclear engineer…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/allegations-chinese-nuclear-blast-may-reignite-weapons-testing. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 4.

2026-02-24. Could dewdrops explain why plants are flowering earlier? By Rachel Nuwer, Science. Excerpt: A new study finds that as climate changes, dewdrops are forming on plants’ leaves earlier in the spring, triggering a chemical cascade that hastens flowering. …According to findings published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tiny water droplets that come into contact with the surface of leaves set off a cascade of chemical signals that tell a plant it’s time to bloom…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/could-dewdrops-explain-why-plants-are-flowering-earlier. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-02-22. Yes in Our Backyards! A creek restoration showcase for urban biodiversity & resilience briefs. By Dr. Juliet Lamont, Ecesis — the News Journal of SERCAL California Society for Ecological Restoration. This is a story about an urban creek, degraded by decades of short-sighted engineering decisions, that was brought back to health. Bringing nature back into our cities is essential not only for climate resilience, but also for generating support for biodiversity. Direct engagement can reconnect us to the natural world in our backyards and on our streets, to foster a deeper environmental ethic that spreads beyond city borders and across future generations…
… Full article at https://sercal.org/s/ecesis-25iv-yes-backyards.pdf. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 7.

2026-02-20. Why the western US is running out of water, in one chart. By Kenny Torrella, Vox. Excerpt: More than one in 10 Americans rely on the Colorado River to take showers and drink clean water. But with no end in sight to the decades-long drought in the western US and rapidly decreasing river levels, this essential resource is fueling bitter disputes over who, exactly, should be cutting back on water. This fight has been coming to a head especially among the seven states that make up the Colorado River Compact — California, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming — as well as a sliver of Mexico and over 20 tribal nations that rely on the 1.9 trillion gallons of water pulled from the Colorado River for use each year. …Farming accounts for about 75 percent of annual Colorado River water usage, according to a 2024 paper published in the journal Nature Communications Earth & Environment. But not all agricultural sectors are equally thirsty. While a small share of the Colorado River water is used on farms to grow fruits and vegetables, like lettuce, oranges, and grapes, almost half of it — by far the lion’s share — is used to grow just alfalfa and other types of hay, virtually all of which is used to feed beef and dairy cattle…. Full article at https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/why-western-us-running-water-133000477.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-02-19. The nation’s largest public utility is going back to coal — with almost no input from the public. By Katie Myers & Rebecca Egan McCarthy, Grist. Excerpt: The Tennessee Valley Authority’s quarterly meeting in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, opened with a triumphant video homage to its work during Winter Storm Fern. Energy had come through, yet again, to defeat extreme cold. The montage credited this to the utility’s “coal workhorses,” then noted that nuclear provided “uninterrupted power” and “hydro responded instantly.” The list ended there, despite years of promises that the agency would bolster renewables and battery storage. The message was clear: Solar had been unceremoniously dropped from the mix, and coal, which the agency had been phasing out, was back. What the video hinted at, the board made official. Its seven members unanimously dropped renewable energy as a priority, ended diversity programs, and granted two of the agency’s four remaining coal plants a reprieve. The decision followed the seating of four members selected by President Trump, breaking months of paralysis that followed the termination of three Biden appointees…. Full article at https://grist.org/energy/the-nations-largest-public-utility-is-going-back-to-coal-with-almost-no-input-from-the-public/. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 4.

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2026-02-20. Rocky, the Space Snowman. By Science Insider. Excerpt: Out past Neptune, connected spheres of rock orbit through the solar system like faceless galactic snowmen. Called contact binaries, these objects represent roughly 10% of all planetary building blocks. But how these cosmic curiosities form has remained unclear. Typically, simulations of two colliding space objects model the masses as fluid blobs that squish into a single sphere on impact. But using high-performance computers, …new models were able to predict the snowman-shaped contact binaries for the first time, scientists reported this week. As for the origins of the binaries, scientists think they began as single objects formed when gravity pulled together dust, gas, and pebbles in the disc of the early Milky Way. As the disc rotated, it ripped apart such objects into two separate chunks that orbited each other. Over time, gravity gently tugged these chunks back together until they fused into their characteristic two-lobed shape…. Full paper at https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/546/4/stag002/8488819. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 7.

2026-02-20. New Jersey Unions Create a Coalition Focused on Decreasing Energy Costs and Creating Solar Jobs. By Raeanne Raccagno, Inside Climate News. Excerpt: Standing inside the New Jersey Statehouse last month, Claudia Mutzus wore a T-shirt from the Service Employees International Union …gathered with other union members to mark the start of a new organized labor coalition, Climate Jobs New Jersey, with lofty ambitions: to secure energy independence through solar construction and, in the process, address the state’s electrical affordability crisis.  New Jersey residents have been facing increasingly high electrical bills since they began to spike as much as 20 percent in June 2025. With large electricity demands from data centers and the state’s need to purchase off-grid power to meet energy requests, costs have surged, leaving many residents baffled with no relief.   One of Climate Jobs New Jersey’s priorities is a statewide solar and battery storage program that coalition leaders say will enable the state to take back control of planning its own energy needs from PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that oversees the regional wholesale electricity market…. Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/20022026/new-jersey-climate-jobs-coalition/. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-02-19. Fishing ban spurs fish recovery. By Science Advisor. Excerpt: For decades, biodiversity in the Yangtze River declined under pressure from overfishing, dam construction, pollution, and rapid development. Since the 1950s, fishery yields have fallen to a quarter of their historical peak, and more than 100 fish species recorded in earlier surveys have disappeared from recent monitoring. To combat this, China instituted a 10-year, basin-wide fishing ban under the Yangtze River Protection Law in 2021. By analyzing data from 57 river reaches collected between 2018 and 2023, researchers compared fish communities before and after the ban. The tally is in, and early evidence suggests the policy is working. Overall fish biomass more than doubled after implementation, rising by a median of 209%. …Threatened species, including the Yangtze sturgeon and Chinese sucker, showed early signs of recovery. …While statistical modeling identified the removal of fishing pressure as the primary driver of recovery, improvements in water quality, reduced vessel traffic, and habitat restoration also contributed. …“These results show that strong political decisions are required to restore biodiversity,” Sebastien Brosse, the study’s co-author told LiveScience. But it is also an encouraging sign for a field where damage is “often seen as irreversible.”… Full paper at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu5160. For GSS Losing Bidiversity, chapter 7.

2026-02-18. Highly destructive mussel has started to invade the Amazon. By Sofia Moutinho, Science. Excerpt: The golden mussel, a highly destructive invasive species that began to plague South American waterways decades ago, has reached the Amazon region, threatening some of the richest biodiversity on the planet. Scientists tracking the bivalve say it’s spreading rapidly up and down a major artery that flows into the Amazon River delta—and that it could soon reach the main stem of the mighty waterway. The march of the mussel threatens water quality and local ecosystems, and could cause economic disruptions for hydroelectric plants and fisheries…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/highly-destructive-mussel-has-started-invading-amazon. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 6.

2026-02-17. Restored Peatlands Could Become Carbon Sinks Within Decades. By Saima May Sidik, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Drained peatlands in Finland can become carbon sinks within just 15 years of restoration, suggests a study published in Restoration Ecology. The findings are a stark contrast to another recent publication that suggests the switch from source to sink can take hundreds of years. Finland will submit a biodiversity restoration plan to the European Commission this September, and what to do about the country’s 5 million hectares of drained peatland will likely be a hot topic. Teemu Tahvanainen, the author of the new study and a plant ecologist at the University of Eastern Finland (Itä-Suomen Yliopisto), said the upcoming deadline motivated him to add to the conversation…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/restored-peatlands-could-become-carbon-sinks-within-decades. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 5.

2026-02-17. Lake Erie’s Storm Surges Become More Extreme. By Jim Robbins, The New York Times. Excerpt: Officials are designing new ways to protect the shorelines from sudden flooding and longer storm seasons…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/science/lake-erie-storm-surges.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-02-17. Heating Up Aerosols. By ScienceAdvisor. Excerpt: Every day, aerosols [tiny airborn particles] form in clouds and swirl throughout the turbulent atmosphere. Aerosols, especially those under 10 nanometers, can be dangerous to humans when inhaled because of how easily they enter body tissues; estimates suggest exposure to fine aerosols causes around seven million premature deaths annually. Researchers wanted to see if climate change may alter how aerosol production occurs. Scientists have generally assumed that hot temperatures should hinder the formation of new aerosols…. To check, a team took measurements of nanoparticles and trace gases during a heat wave in central Texas. …To their surprise, the researchers reported this week in Science that at conditions nearing 40ºC, new particles formed in droves. …gaseous organic acids…which come from industry sources like traffic and biological sources like oak and pine trees. …fatty acids in nanoparticle form, which come from cooking emissions. …the authors wrote… “Our results suggest plausible compound health risks from coexposure to extreme heat and acidic ultrafine particles.”… Paper at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ady5192. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-02-16. The Ballad Of Romeo: The Frog Who Failed To Save His Species, But Didn’t Have To After All. By Dr. Katie Spalding, IFL Science. Excerpt: It’s probably objectively the harshest rejection possible: “not if you were the last guy on Earth, fella.” So pity poor Romeo, who actually was that – or at least, the last male of his species, the Sehuencas water frog – and still couldn’t get a date with the girl next door. …The survival of Sehuencas water frogs as a species depended largely on his ability to mate, and it just wasn’t happening. …Romeo died in 2025 without an heir – a bachelor till the end. Was this the end for the Sehuencas water frog? …Starting in the 1970s, scientists started noticing something troubling in the amphibian world: the decline and, in some cases, complete disappearances of entire species around the globe. …It took two decades before researchers discovered the culprit: a deadly fungus, named Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis – Bd for short – which caused the disease chytridiomycosis. Infected frogs would experience their skin peeling away; they would grow increasingly sluggish until eventually, they died – all the while spreading the fungus’s spores further into the environment via water or touch. …“Chytridiomycosis has contributed to the decline or extinction of at least 501 amphibian species, …earning Bd the inauspicious title of the most destructive pathogen for biodiversity ever recorded. …an admittedly small, but mercifully stable population of Sehuencas water frogs, hopping it up in the wild. These weren’t taken to a museum – a quarter century after Romeo was found, the protocol was now to monitor and protect them in their native habitat, using more modern methods that allow researchers to hear and see how the frogs act free from human interference…. Full article at https://www.iflscience.com/the-ballad-of-romeo-the-frog-who-failed-to-save-his-species-but-didnt-have-to-after-all-82564. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 1.

2026-02-15. Trump Administration Ends Credit for Start-Stop Feature in Vehicles. By Amanda Holpuch, The New York Times. Excerpt: Manufacturers will no longer get a credit toward vehicle emissions standards by installing engines that automatically stop at red lights. …The start-stop feature is meant to save fuel and reduce emissions, but the Trump administration rejected the scientific finding that the government used to support vehicle emission reduction regulations, making it possible to eliminate the credit. …Research shows that start-stop reduces fuel use and cuts emissions. Depending on driving conditions, stop-start improved fuel economy between 7.27 and 26.4 percent during testing, according to a 2023 technical paper by SAE International, an organization formerly known as the Society of Automotive Engineers…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/15/business/energy-environment/epa-tax-credits-stop-start-ignition-cars.html. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 9 and Climate Change chapter 9.

2026-02-13. A Climate Supercomputer Is Getting New Bosses. It’s Not Clear Who. By Eric Niiler, The New York Times. Excerpt: The U.S. National Science Foundation said on Thursday that the management and operations of a supercomputer used by more than 4,000 climate and weather scientists across the country would be transferred from a leading research lab to an undisclosed third party. …Science foundation officials said stewardship of the supercomputer, located at a National Center for Atmospheric Research [NCAR] facility in Cheyenne, Wyo., would “transition to a third-party operator” but declined to give details about the new operator or the timeline. The national center…at its headquarters in Boulder, Colo., and has managed the Cheyenne facility since it opened in 2012. The announcement took many scientists by surprise. …The center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in humanity’s understanding of weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in disaster warning and weather forecasting around the United States…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/climate/derecho-supercomputer-ncar.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-02-12. Boosting origin of life theory, RNA comes close to copying itself. By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: …many scientists think RNA molecules were the star players in the origin of life. By both storing genetic information and copying themselves, they might have touched off the march of evolution that produced increasingly complex life forms. So far, researchers haven’t found RNAs that can replicate themselves, a key feature of living things. But they now have something close. In a paper published online today in Science, researchers report creating RNAs that can generate a sort of mirror image of themselves and use that template to generate the original…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/boosting-origin-life-theory-rna-comes-close-copying-itself. For GSS Life and Climate, chapter 4.

2026-02-11. Earth’s Climate May Go from Greenhouse to Hothouse. By Grace van Deelen, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Earth systems may be on the brink of long-term, irreversible destabilization, sending our planet on a “hothouse Earth” trajectory, a scenario in which long-term temperatures remain about 5°C (9°F) higher than preindustrial temperatures, according to a new paper…published in One Earth, …Earth system components could be at a higher risk than we think of reaching crucial tipping points such as the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and the thawing of the world’s permafrost—points of destabilization that, once breached, are irreversible. “As we move to higher temperatures, we go into higher risk zones,” said Nico Wunderling, a coauthor of the new paper and a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Goethe University Frankfurt, both in Germany. Scientists know higher temperatures will activate interactions between tipping elements, he said. The new paper “strongly builds” on a 2018 perspective paper linking the possibility of hothouse Earth to tipping points, said Swinda Falkena, a climate scientist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who was not involved in either publication…. Full article athttps://eos.org/articles/earths-climate-may-go-from-greenhouse-to-hothouse. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

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2026-02-13. 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. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-02-10. 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. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-02-12. El Niño May Be Back This Summer, Bringing Drought and Floods. By Eric Niiler, The New York Times. Excerpt: The Pacific Ocean weather pattern known as El Niño will return this summer, bringing the potential for extreme rainfall, powerful storms and drought across some areas of the globe, although scientists aren’t sure yet how strong it will be. …El Niño patterns emerge about every three to seven years and typically last between nine and 12 months. The last El Niño, in 2022 and 2023, was a major driver of record-breaking global temperatures as the atmosphere absorbed heat from the ocean…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/climate/el-nino-weather-pattern-returning-noaa.html. For GSS Energy Flow, chapter 8.

2026-02-11. 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. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9 and Energy Use chapter 4.

2026-02-10. Persistent pesticides. By Science [Advisor]. Excerpt: It’s been more than 60 years since Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring woke the world to the dangers of pesticides. But have countries really stopped spraying them? Clearly not, finds a new analysis published last week in Science. Researchers combined safety thresholds from seven international regulatory agencies to follow a single toxicity metric created by the United Nations (UN) called “total applied toxicity” (TAT). They then applied TAT to 625 pesticides, 65 countries, and eight ecological groups including fish, pollinators, terrestrial vertebrates, and even aquatic and terrestrial plants. The metric revealed that global ecological toxicity increased during the study period of 2013 to 2019. Not all creatures suffered equally; toxicity rose 27% for fish and 43% for terrestrial arthropods, for example. Unsurprisingly, big agricultural powerhouses were big polluters: Brazil, India, Russia, and the United States contributed as much as two-thirds of the toxicity. Crops like fruits, vegetables, maize, soybean, rice, and cereals contributed up to 83% of global TAT. The authors suggest that increased TAT is due to countries using larger volumes of pesticides, as well as more toxic ones in response to pests adapting to traditional chemicals. …The study results “should be a stark warning that applied toxicities are still increasing in many regions…” lead author Jakob Wolfram told The Guardian…. READ THE PAPER. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 8.

2026-02-09. From Fishing Nets to Furniture: Turning Ocean Plastic Into Usable Products. By Visuals and Text by Lena Mucha, The New York Times. Excerpt: When most people think of ocean waste, they often picture mounds of plastic that wash up on the sandy beaches of remote islands in the Pacific. But environmentalists face a hidden scourge in abandoned fishing nets that drift beneath the waves and blanket the ocean floor. These discarded “ghost nets” are typically made of durable nylon and can last for centuries, trapping marine life and damaging coral reefs. Getting them off the ocean floor can require dayslong dives from expert teams. A mission from 2024 spanned five days and pulled up 4,900 kilograms of netting — roughly the weight of an African elephant. Now, some start-ups are trying to tackle the problem by recycling the nets into commercial products that will appeal to consumers interested in saving the oceans and companies eager to prove they are environmentally friendly. Some are making soccer and volleyball nets; others are making surfboards or bracelets. A brother and sister in Spain started a company [Gravity Wave] to collect and turn the ghost nets into furniture, decorative materials and plastic pellets…. Full article athttps://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/business/gravity-wave-conservation.html. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 7.

2026-02-09. 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 Administration’s Repeal of the EPA Endangerment Finding. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

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2026-02-07. 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 managing excess heat in the summer when thermal energy is drawn from buildings to keep them cool. Much of this heat is pumped underground and stored for winter use. Additional heat is used to warm the university’s swimming pool, showers and campus irrigation system. These creative uses of waste heat reduce the university’s need for conventional cooling towers that rely on evaporation. Sound Geothermal estimates that CMU reduced its annual water consumption from the highly constrained Colorado River watershed by 10 million gallons. Xcel Energy commissioned a report on Colorado Mesa’s geothermal system that confirmed the system’s energy savings. A “key advantage” of the University’s thermal network is its ability to share heating and cooling loads, the 2023 report concluded. “This load sharing can happen from room to room, floor to floor, and building to building.” The report measured the system’s “coefficient of performance,” or overall efficiency. A gas boiler, for example, can theoretically have a coefficient of performance as high as one, meaning that for every unit of gas that flows into the boiler, one unit of heat is produced. Air source heat pumps, by comparison, are more efficient. They typically have a higher coefficient of performance, ranging from 2 to 4, because they don’t generate heat; instead, they use fans and compressors to extract heat from outdoor air. …Colorado Mesa’s system, which draws on geothermal energy, stores heat seasonally in underground borefields, and balances heating and cooling loads between buildings, had a much higher coefficient of performance, ranging from 3.6 to 8.9, depending on the time of year. …There are now more than twenty utility-led thermal energy networks under development or completed nationwide, according to the Building Decarbonization Coalition. Xcel Energy is currently working on three thermal energy network projects, two in Colorado and one in Minnesota, a spokesperson said in a written statement. …Geothermal heating and cooling tax credits approved under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 cover 30 percent or more of the total project cost. Unlike its cuts to wind and solar tax credits, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump in July, largely left geothermal tax credits intact…. Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07022026/colorado-college-geothermal-network/. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 8.

2026-02-04. Space dust reveals rapid evolution after dino-killing asteroid. By Taylor Mitchell Brown, Science. Excerpt: About 66 million years ago, a 14-kilometer-wide asteroid careened into southeastern Mexico, eviscerating forests, nonavian dinosaurs, and nearly everything in between. The impact and the apocalyptic winter that followed wiped out 75% of species. But life finds a way. According to a recent redating of sedimentary layers formed around the time of this collision, microscopic marine organisms bounced back far more quickly than many believed possible. …The new work, published last month in Geology, focuses on minuscule organisms called planktic forams that dwell near the ocean surface. …Soot-filled skies and pollution swiftly led to a collapse that extinguished about 90% of the planktic foram species living at the time, …. …one influential study from 1995 found that new species of forams began to emerge about 30,000 years after the impact, …. …Across six sites that document the periods just before and after the asteroid impact, Lowery and his colleagues …found that forams began to proliferate in some places as early as 2000 years after impact—not 30,000 years as was canonically believed…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/space-dust-reveals-rapid-evolution-after-dino-killing-asteroid. For GSS Life and Climate, chapter 9 (and A Changing Cosmos, chapter 1).

2026-02-04. 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/wind-solar-projects.html. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10 (and Climate Change chapter 9).

2026-02-03. In ant colonies, ozone turns friends into foes. By Science Advisor. Excerpt: Ants are famous for their complex, highly organized social structures, which allows thousands of them to function effectively as one single superorganism. Each colony had a distinct odor, which is determined by chemical compounds called alkenes. Ants learn to recognize their nestmates by odor, and if an individual ant doesn’t pass the sniff test, other ants will react aggressively and attack the intruder. Now, new research reveals that ozone—one of many air pollutants produced by burning fossil fuels—can break these bonds of fellowship by degrading alkenes . After setting up artificial colonies of six ant species, scientists exposed individuals from each colony to slightly elevated levels of ozone. After 20 minutes of exposure, the ants were returned to their colonies, where they were threatened and attacked by their nestmates. …Further experiments showed that adult ants in ozone-polluted colonies were also more likely to neglect their larvae, possibly due to disrupted chemical communication. The findings suggest that air pollutants, in addition to pesticides, may be contributing to the decline of insects worldwide. …“Oxidizing pollutants such as ozone and nitrogen oxides are often discussed because of their harmful effects on humans ,” study co-author Bill Hansson noted in a statement. “However, we should also be aware that these man-made pollutants can also cause significant damage to our ecosystems.”… Research article at https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2520139123?et_rid=40179168&et_cid=5867423. For GSS Ozone, chapter 11.

2026-02-03. 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 U.S., they are occurring later in winter, and moving toward the southeast, Yang said in a presentation in December 2025 at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU’s) annual meeting…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/world-warms-freezing-rain-shifts-u-s-south. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-02-02. Why China is building so many coal plants despite its solar and wind boom? By KEN MORITSUGU Associated Press. Excerpt: BEIJING — Even as China’s expansion of solar and wind power raced ahead in 2025, the Asian giant opened many more coal power plants than it had in recent years — raising concern about whether the world’s largest emitter will reduce carbon emissions enough to limit climate change. …At the same time, even larger additions of wind and solar capacity nudged down the share of coal in total power generation last year. Power from coal fell about 1% as growth in cleaner energy sources covered all the increase in electricity demand last year. …If more of the nation’s 1.4 billion people climb into the middle class, more will be able to afford air conditioners and washing machines. …The government position is that coal provides a stable backup to sources such as wind and solar, which are affected by weather and the time of day. The shortages in 2022 resulted partly from a drought that hit hydropower, a major energy source in western China. …“Whether China’s coal power expansion ultimately translates into higher emissions will depend on … whether coal power’s role is genuinely constrained to backup and supporting rather than baseload generation,” [Qi] Qin said…. Full article at https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/china-building-coal-plants-despite-solar-wind-boom-129805102. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 4.

2026-02-02. Record-Breaking “Molecular Sponge” Pulls Carbon from Air Faster Than Ever Before. By Bakar institute of Digital Materials for the Planet. Excerpt: A new material developed by BIDMaP researchers captures CO₂ from outdoor air with unprecedented speed, marking a critical leap toward practical direct air capture technology. As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels continue to climb, the scientific consensus is clear: reducing emissions alone is no longer enough. To avert the worst effects of climate change, scientists must also figure out a way to actively remove vast quantities of CO₂ that are already lingering in the sky. One of the most promising technologies for this task is Direct Air Capture (DAC), machines that filter carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. …a team of researchers from Omar M. Yaghi’s Lab —whose pioneering work on reticular chemistry was recognized with the Nobel Prize in 2025—has reported a major breakthrough. In a study published today in Nature Sustainability, the team unveils COF-1000, a new material that captures carbon dioxide from outdoor air faster than any other material reported to date…. Full article at https://bidmap.berkeley.edu/news/record-breaking-molecular-sponge-pulls-carbon-air-faster-ever. See also New Scientist article, Nobel prizewinner Omar Yaghi says his invention will change the world. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 10.

2026-02-02. UC Berkeley’s mass timber research is impacting the decarbonization of California’s construction industry. By UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. Excerpt: Drawing on research developed by Paul Mayencourt’s team at the UC Berkeley Wood Lab, Mad River Mass Timber has emerged as California’s first producer of dowel-laminated mass timber, which has the potential to improve forest health, mitigate wildfire risk, and accelerate the production of affordable housing — while also contributing toward the long-term goal of decarbonizing the environment. …With guidance from Assistant Professor Paul Mayencourt and the UC Berkeley Wood Lab, Humboldt County’s Mad River Mass Timber is pioneering the commercial manufacture of dowel-laminated timber (DLT) in the state. The first vertically integrated producer of mass timber in California, MRMT transforms waste wood from our forests into construction-ready building panels. …Weak or small-diameter trees that cannot otherwise be used for construction, such as red fir, hemlock, and Ponderosa pine, can be joined together to create strong DLT panels. DLT can also repurpose fire-damaged timber, which until now has not had a commercial use. …DLT is a kind of mass timber, the industry term for engineered wooden panels prefabricated for construction. Mass timber, unlike steel and concrete, is a renewable resource that locks away carbon for the lifespan of a structure, sequestering it from the atmosphere. By relying on wooden dowels as connectors, DLT avoids chemical adhesives used in other mass timber products and is completely recyclable…. Full article at https://ced.berkeley.edu/news/mass-timber-uc-berkeley-research-mad-river-dlt. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 10.

2026-01-30. Why are Tatooine planets rare? Blame general relativity. By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: Of the more than 4,500 stars known to have planets, one puzzling statistic stands out. Even though nearly all stars are expected to have planets and most stars form in pairs, planets that orbit both stars in a pair are rare. Of the more than 6,000 extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, confirmed to date — most of them found by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) — only 14 are observed to orbit binary stars. There should be hundreds. Where are all the planets with two suns, like Tatooine in Star Wars? Astrophysicists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the American University of Beirut have now proposed a reason for this dearth of circumbinary exoplanets — and Einstein’s general theory of relativity is to blame. …If a planet is orbiting the pair of stars, the gravitational tugs from the stars make the planet’s orbit precess, …similar to the way the axis of a spinning top rotates …in Earth’s gravity. The orbit of the binary stars also precesses, but …The precession rate of the stars increases, but the precession rate of the planet slows. …“Two things can happen: Either the planet gets very, very close to the binary, suffering tidal disruption or being engulfed by one of the stars, or its orbit gets significantly perturbed by the binary to be eventually ejected from the system,” said Mohammad Farhat, a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley and first author of the paper. “In both cases, you get rid of the planet.”… Full article at https://news.berkeley.edu/2026/01/30/why-are-tatooine-planets-rare-blame-general-relativity/. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 8.

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2026-01-28. Earth-size planet spotted with yearlong orbit. By Elise Cutts, Science. Excerpt: Astronomers are planning ambitious telescopes to search for signs of life on distant planets. A newly discovered world, announced here last week at the Rocky Worlds conference and published yesterday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, might just be the perfect target. The planet, called HD 137010 b, is almost exactly Earth-size. At 355 days, its orbit is almost exactly Earth-like, too. And its star is bright and just 146 light-years away–close enough to be observed in detail with future telescopes…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/earth-size-planet-spotted-yearlong-orbit. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 8.

2026-01-28. Court Orders the Netherlands to Protect a Caribbean Island From Climate Change. By Karen Zraick, The New York Times. Excerpt: A Dutch court ruled on Wednesday that the Netherlands violated the human rights of residents of the tiny Caribbean island of Bonaire, a Dutch territory, by failing to protect them from the effects of climate change. …In a statement accompanying Wednesday’s decision, the court said, “There is no good reason why measures for the inhabitants of Bonaire, who will be affected by climate change sooner and more severely, should be taken later and less systematically than for the inhabitants of the European part of the Netherlands.”… Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/climate/netherlands-bonaire-climate-ruling.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-01-28. JWST spots most distant galaxy ever, pushing the limits of the observable universe. By Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Scientific American. Excerpt: The galaxy MoM-z14 could offer clues to what the universe looked like in its early infancy. …On Wednesday astronomers on announced that a bright galaxy called MoM-z14 that was found using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the farthest yet detected, existing just 280 million years after the big bang. …The galaxy, the light of which has taken more than 13 billion years to reach our telescopes, is brighter, denser and more chemically rich than astronomers had expected, according to NASA…. Full article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jwst-spots-most-distant-galaxy-ever-pushing-the-limits-of-the-observable/. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 9.

2026-01-27. Wildfire Smoke Linked to 17,000 Strokes Annually in the United States. By Emily Gardner, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A study of 25 million Medicare participants adds to a body of evidence suggesting that prolonged exposure to wildfire smoke is more harmful to human health than other forms of air pollution…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/wildfire-smoke-linked-to-17000-strokes-annually-in-the-united-states. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-01-27. What Americans Lose If Their National Center for Atmospheric Research Is Dismantled. By Carlos Martinez, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Five ways dismantling NCAR will cost the American people, and two ways to save it. …the Trump administration plans to dismantle the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a federally funded institution that underpins critical science that Americans rely on. …1. Air Travelers Will Lose Protection. …2. Food Security and the U.S. Agricultural Economy Will Be Put at Risk. …3. U.S. National Security and Military Readiness Will Be Weakened. …4. Americans in Disaster-Prone Areas Will Have Less Time to Prepare for, and Evacuate from, Extreme Weather. …5. Americans Lose a Unique Source of National Pride. …What We Must Do Now. …This moment demands more than concern—it requires action. First, NSF is requesting feedback regarding its intent to restructure NCAR. …Respond, and inform NSF about the value and benefits of all of NCAR, not only its constituent parts. Readers can submit comments through 13 March. Second, Congress ultimately holds the authority to fund and protect NCAR, and lawmakers need to hear clearly that dismantling it would put the health, safety, and financial stability of Americans at risk. …Readers can contact their members of Congress through easy-to-use resources provided by AGU and the Union of Concerned Scientists…. Full article at https://eos.org/opinions/what-americans-lose-if-their-national-center-for-atmospheric-research-is-dismantled. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-01-26. Tidal waves of lava may slosh around alien worlds. By Elise Cutts, Science. Excerpt: Towering tidal waves of lava could be rolling around hot alien worlds, researchers reported last week, here at the Rocky Worlds conference and in a preprint posted on arXiv this month. The Sun and Moon drive tides on Earth, but these tidal waves would be tugged up by the intense gravitational forces endured by planets in tight orbits around their stars. For instance, lava tidal waves on the blazing-hot exoplanet 55 Cancri e—a rocky world that orbits its star every 18 hours—could rise several hundred meters high and surge at the speed of a human sprinter, says Mohammad Farhat, a planetary scientist at the University of California (UC), Berkeley who presented the modeling study. …Scientists often look for alien air by taking the temperatures of planets’ dayside hemispheres. The presence of an atmosphere would spread heat around to the nightside, making the dayside look cooler than expected for a bare rock. But if lava waves can melt deep magma oceans and create wandering blobs of hot material, it raises questions about whether it would mimic the observational signal of an atmosphere…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/tidal-waves-lava-may-slosh-around-alien-worlds. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 8.

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2026-01-. TEMPLATE. By . Excerpt: … Full article at URL. For GSS BOOK, chapter .

2026-01-22. Energy Dept. Says It Is Canceling $30 Billion in Clean Energy Loans. By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: Many of the cancellations had been known for months, but the announcement underscored the drastic change in the energy landscape under President Trump. The Energy Department said on Thursday that it was in the process of revising or canceling more than $83 billion in loans for clean energy technologies that had been approved under the Biden administration. The announcement came from the agency’s loan programs office, which played a central role in the Biden administration’s efforts to develop new technologies to fight climate change. Under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., that office finalized or issued conditional commitments for roughly $104 billion in lending for battery factories, transmission lines, hydrogen plants and many other projects. The Trump administration has sought to reshape the agency and renamed it the Office of Energy Dominance Financing. Last year, the energy secretary, Chris Wright, announced a sweeping review of the office’s loan obligations…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/climate/energy-dept-says-it-is-canceling-30-billion-in-clean-energy-loans.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-01-20. As Greenland loses ice, global sea levels will rise—and its own will fall. By Evan Howell, Science. Excerpt: Seas will rise this century—but not uniformly…. In the very places where glaciers are melting and shrinking, the land beneath will rebound as the burden eases, meaning seas may fall even as the meltwater causes them to rise elsewhere. A new study shows that in Greenland—whose rapidly melting ice sheet accounts for about one-fifth of current sea level rise—this paradox will mean expanding coastlines, dried-up fjords, and future complications. Published today in Nature Communications, the research shows portions of Greenland’s coast will rebound far more sharply than expected, causing seas to fall by anywhere from 1 to nearly 4 meters by 2100. Western and southern Greenland…will likely bear the brunt of the retreat, posing major problems for shipping and food security. …Changes in the mass of Greenland’s enormous ice sheet, which is roughly three times the size of Texas and in some places more than 3 kilometers thick, are the culprit. …As it melts, the underlying land springs back and rises, effectively lowering relative sea levels. …For decades, researchers thought only the planet’s springy crust could respond on human timescales, rebounding by small amounts. Below the crust, the mantle’s slow, honeylike heave was thought to take millennia to relax. But …Scientists now show that when the ice shrinks, the mantle flows faster than expected, to the point that this supposedly “long-term” process kicks in within decades. …This study also builds on evidence from the past. For instance, geologic traces from a cold snap known as the Little Ice Age—roughly spanning the 14th through the 19th centuries, which may have hastened the Vikings’ departure from Greenland—show glacier volumes and sea level shifted quickly…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/greenland-loses-ice-global-sea-levels-will-rise-and-its-own-will-fall. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-01-18. China’s Birthrate Plunges to Lowest Level Since 1949. By Alexandra Stevenson, The New York Times. Excerpt: Declaring childbirth a patriotic act. Nagging newlyweds about family planning. Taxing condoms. To get its citizens to have babies, the Chinese Communist Party has pulled every lever. The efforts have largely failed. For the fourth year in a row, China reported more deaths than births in 2025 as its birthrate plunged to a record low, leaving its population smaller and older. …The number of births for every 1,000 people fell to 5.63, the lowest level on record since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, according to official government data. …Around the world, governments are contending with falling birthrates. But the problem is more acute for China: Fewer babies mean fewer future workers to support a rapidly growing cohort of retirees…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/business/china-population-data.html. See also Real Estate Crash Weighs on China’s Economic Growth. For GSS Population Growth, chapter 6.

2026-01-17. World’s First Treaty to Protect the High Seas Becomes Law. By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, The New York Times. Excerpt: Over two decades after negotiations began, the High Seas Treaty is designed to protect biodiversity in international waters by enabling conservation zones. …The United Nations discussed the treaty for more than two decades, and formal negotiations began in 2017. The final text makes it possible for countries to create environmentally protected zones in international waters and includes requirements for new ocean industries. …In September, Morocco became the 60th country to ratify the High Seas Treaty, triggering a 120-day countdown for it to become international law. There are now 83 countries that have ratified it, though the United States has not…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/17/climate/high-seas-treaty-law.html. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 7.

2026-01-13. How to cool down African homes—and keep mosquitoes out. By Abdullahi Tsanni, Science. Excerpt: Painting roofs white and adding screens to doors and windows is a low-cost way to increase comfort and curb malaria risk. …a study published last week in Nature Medicine…. In the Kenyan countryside, the roofs of houses are typically made of corrugated zinc sheets. They absorb so much heat during the daytime that the rooms stay hot at night, forcing occupants to leave windows and doors open and exposing their homes to disease-carrying mosquitoes…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/how-cool-down-african-homes-and-keep-mosquitoes-out. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 8.

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2026-01-16. Survival on the move. By Science Advisor. Excerpt: Scientists suspected that the arrangement of continents and islands—a concept called paleogeography—might have played an important role in past mass extinctions. To find out, a team combined analyses of more than 325,000 fossil invertebrates with reconstructions of how the continents looked over 540 million years. …they found that animals living along coastlines running east to west, like in the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Mexico, were historically more vulnerable to extinction than those living along north-south oriented stretches like the United States’ modern Pacific and Atlantic coasts. That’s because, during periods of climate change, temperatures typically change along horizontal bands; animals with freedom to head north or south can escape to cooler polar zones. “This work confirms what many paleontologists and biologists have suspected for years—that a species’ ability to migrate to different latitudes is vital for survival,” said author Erin Saupe in a statement. The results could help explain some of the varied severity of past mass extinctions, since certain continental arrangements could have blocked more animals’ north-south movement. Today, write the authors, the finding should renew the focus on animals in isolated habitats that won’t be able to migrate due to global warming…. Paper at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adv2627. For GSS Life and Climate, chapter 7.

2026-01-15. Inside the World’s First Climate-neutral Cruise—Powered by Garbage. By Ryan Craggs, Travel + Leisure. Excerpt: In Norway, the Havila Polaris is sailing on liquefied biogas and battery power, making it the world’s first climate-neutral cruise. …Norway built the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund by selling oil; Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, a $2 trillion nest egg, was built almost entirely on North Sea oil and gas revenues. Now it’s spending that money to prove you don’t need oil at all. As of Jan. 1, 2026, Norwegian regulations require zero emissions for passenger ships under 10,000 gross tons operating in the country’s five UNESCO World Heritage fjords, with larger vessels facing the same mandate in 2032…. Full article at https://www.travelandleisure.com/worlds-first-climate-neutral-cruise-powered-by-garbage-havila-polaris-11885603. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 9.

2026-01-15. In fish, low doses of common pesticide speed aging and death. By Erik Stokstad, Sciencr. Excerpt: Chronic exposure to pesticides and other pollutants can devastate wildlife populations—sometimes in dramatically obvious ways. By thinning birds’ eggshells, for example, DDT caused brooding bald eagles to crush their unhatched offspring. But more often, the exact cause of harm remains a mystery. Now, a study finds that a widely used insecticide, chlorpyrifos, speeds up aging in a common lake fish by shortening the protective caps on its chromosomes, and leads to its premature death…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/fish-low-doses-common-pesticide-speed-aging-and-death. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 7.

2026-01-14. Why Greenland Matters for a Warming World. By Somini Sengupta, The New York Times. Excerpt: …the fate of the world’s largest island has outsize importance for billions of people on the planet. That’s because of the one thing that Greenland is quickly losing: ice. Most of Greenland’s landmass…is covered in ice. That ice is melting rapidly because the polar regions of the world are warming rapidly, with wide-ranging consequences for the stability of the Earth’s climate. Blame the burning of coal, oil and gas. Their emissions have driven up global temperatures, most strikingly in the Arctic, which is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the planet. As the Arctic warms, potential new trading routes open up, as well as access to mineral riches, including those that are vital for clean energy technologies useful for slowing climate change…. …In the 12 months ending on Aug. 31, 2025, Greenland lost 105 billion metric tons of ice, according to scientists at the Danish Meteorological Institute, who published their findings in Carbon Brief, an online publication. …Greenland’s ice sheet has been thinning for the past 29 years. It shrank by nearly 2,000 square miles from 1985 to 2022, according to a study published in Nature. …Melting ice means more fresh water in the ocean, which raises sea levels, which can be dangerous for coastal regions all over the world. The global sea level has gone up by about four inches since 1993. …If all the ice of Greenland were to melt — albeit an impossible proposition during this century — that could result in 23 feet of sea-level rise, or 7.4 meters, scientists say. Rising sea levels makes flooding worse during storms and high tides…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/world/europe/greenland-climate.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-01-13. The Arctic’s ‘last ice area’ is showing signs of weakness. By Rachel Berkowitz, Science. Excerpt: Plugged with the world’s oldest and thickest sea ice, the fjords of the Queen Elizabeth Islands (QEI), in the northernmost Canadian Arctic, have long been impenetrable to icebreaker ships. But even here, in a place where climate models predict ice will persist the longest, global warming is taking its toll. Last summer, when the Canadian Coast Guard ship Amundsen conducted the first comprehensive oceanographic research mission through the QEI archipelago, the ice “was much easier to go through than we expected,” says Amundsen Capt. Pascal Pellerin. Floes once several meters thick were broken and soft…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/arctic-s-last-ice-area-showing-signs-weakness. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-01-13. 2025: A Year of Fire and Floods. By Sachi Kitajima Mulkey, The New York Times. Excerpt: Last year — the third-warmest in modern history — opened with history-making fires in Los Angeles and closed with catastrophic floods in the United States and Southeast Asia. The intervening months were punctuated with disasters and extreme weather across the globe. All the while, emissions of greenhouse gases climbed to new heights as the world burned coal, oil and gas for energy. Excess heat building up in the atmosphere and the oceans creates conditions that can exacerbate extreme weather. Here are some of the notable events that marked 2025. …Wildfires…Heat…Storms…Extreme Precipitation… Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/climate/2025-extreme-weather.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-01-13. US carbon pollution rose in 2025 in reversal of previous years’ reductions. By Associated Press/The Guardian. Excerpt: In a reversal from previous years’ pollution reductions, the United States spewed 2.4% more heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels in 2025 than in the year before, researchers calculated in a study released on Tuesday. The increase in greenhouse gas emissions is attributable to a combination of a cool winter, the explosive growth of datacenters and cryptocurrency mining, and higher natural gas prices, according to the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm. Environmental policy rollbacks by Donald Trump’s administration were not significant factors in the increase because they were only put in place this year, the study authors said. Heat-trapping gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas are the major cause of worsening global warming, scientists say. US emissions of carbon dioxide and methane had dropped 20% from 2005 to 2024, with a few one- or two-year increases in the overall downward trend. Traditionally, carbon pollution has risen alongside economic growth, but efforts to boost cleaner energy in recent years decoupled the two, so emissions would drop as gross domestic product rose.… Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/13/us-carbon-emissions-increase-2025. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 6.

2026-01-13. Photos Capture the Breathtaking Scale of China’s Wind and Solar Buildout. By YaleEnvironment360. Excerpt: Last year China installed more than half of all wind and solar added globally. In May alone, it added enough renewable energy to power Poland, installing solar panels at a rate of roughly 100 every second…. Full article at https://e360.yale.edu/digest/china-renewable-photo-essay. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-01-12. US judge lets Danish firm resume Rhode Island offshore wind project halted by Trump. By Reuters/The Guardian. Excerpt: A federal judge on Monday cleared the Danish offshore wind developer Ørsted to resume work on its nearly finished Revolution Wind project, which Donald Trump’s administration halted along with four other projects last month. The ruling by US district judge Royce Lamberth is a legal setback for Trump, who has sought to block expansion of offshore wind in federal waters. Ørsted’s Revolution Wind lawsuit is one of several filed by offshore wind companies and states seeking to reverse the interior department’s 22 December suspension of five offshore wind leases over what it said were national security concerns…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/12/orsted-rhode-island-wind-project-trump. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-01-08. Outrage as Trump withdraws from key UN climate treaty along with dozens of international organisations. By Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Excerpt: Donald Trump has sparked outrage by announcing the US will exit the foundational international agreement to address the climate crisis, cementing the US’s utter isolation from the global effort to confront dangerously escalating temperatures. In a presidential memorandum issued on Wednesday, Trump withdrew from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), along with 65 other organizations, agencies and commissions, calling them “contrary to the interests of the United States”. The UNFCCC treaty forms the bedrock of international cooperation to deal with the climate crisis and has been agreed to by every country in the world since its inception 34 years ago. The US Senate ratified the treaty in October 1992…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/07/trump-international-groups-un. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-01-07. All the climate info that disappeared under Trump. And how it’s being saved. By Chelsea Harvey, E&E News by Politico. Excerpt: The National Climate Assessments. Climate.gov. The billion-dollar disaster database. Hundreds of scientific datasets. They’re all government resources that have been altered, deleted or curtailed since President Donald Trump returned to office nearly one year ago. Now, all of those resources have been rescued, in some form or another, by organizations that are determined to combat Trump’s cuts to federal science. But whether these grassroots missions are making a difference — or are able to fully replace their canceled counterparts — is hard to say. Even as some efforts to preserve the information show promise for purposes like public education or climate-related lawsuits, they’re also running up against big challenges…. Full article at https://www.eenews.net/articles/all-the-climate-info-that-disappeared-under-trump-and-how-its-being-saved/. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-01-06. Against all odds, a curious sea creature survived the dino-killing asteroid. By Taylor Mitchell Brown, Science. Excerpt: About 66 million years ago, an asteroid 14 kilometers across struck today’s Yucatán Peninsula in southeastern Mexico, ejecting millions of tons of debris, creating a tsunami 4.5 kilometers high, and engulfing the world in caustic ash and flames. The calamity drove 75% of life on Earth extinct, including the nonavian dinosaurs that had ruled unchallenged for 160 million years. But against all odds, a curious sea creature once thought to have perished in this mayhem may have survived the initial fallout. A study published last week in Scientific Reports finds that a population of ammonites, shelled mollusks related to octopuses and squids, survived the extinction for tens of thousands of years. The discovery, in Denmark, overturns prior thinking about how these animals responded to the noxious oceanic conditions caused by the impact…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/against-all-odds-curious-sea-creature-survived-dino-killing-asteroid. For GSS Life and Climate, chapter 9.

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2026-01-08. This ‘Galaxy That Wasn’t’ Never Bore Any Stars. By Katrina Miller, The New York Times. Excerpt: This week, astronomers announced the discovery of a new kind of cosmic object, something that is very nearly a galaxy, save for one crucial, missing ingredient: stars. The almost-galaxy is about 14 million light-years from Earth. It was the ninth cloud found to be associated with a nearby spiral galaxy, leading to its serendipitous name: Cloud-9. The object is starless, consisting of only a haze of hydrogen gas that astronomers believe is swaddled in a much more massive clump of dark matter, the invisible substance that permeates the cosmos and shapes its overarching structure. …Cloud-9 is the first confirmed example of what astronomers call a RELHIC, short for Reionization-Limited H I Cloud and pronounced “relic.” Such objects are rich in gaseous hydrogen but devoid of any stars. They are failed galaxies thought to be nearly as old as time itself, primordial fossils that can help astronomers understand the conditions required for galaxies to grow…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/science/cloud-9-starless-dark-galaxy.html. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 9.

2026-01-08. Tree bark microbes for climate management. By Vincent Gauci, Science. Excerpt: For decades, soil was thought to be the only surface that exchanges trace gases with the atmosphere…soil emits gas when it is saturated with water and absorbs gas when it is not saturated. Tree bark biogeochemistry (life-mediated chemical cycling and exchange between air, water, and land) has been almost completely ignored, despite bark having a global surface area of ~143 million km², almost as large as the global land surface… Leung et al. report that bark microbes process methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide, showing that bark is an important component of global trace gas dynamics. …Over a 100-year period, methane, hydrogen, and carbon monoxide trap 27.9, 12.8, and 3 times as much heat as carbon dioxide, respectively. Atmospheric methane is responsible for 0.5°C of the global rise in temperature observed since the preindustrial period…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec9651. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 4.

2026-01-06. Earthquakes shake nutrients loose in the deep. By Science Adviser. Excerpt: Eighteen hundred meters below Antarctica’s Southern Ocean, a volcanic ridge lined by hydrothermal vents burbles in the dark. As these vents belch out scalding water rich with iron and other compounds, they nourish the microscopic plankton that krill and other crustaceans eat, sustaining a food web that culminates in predators such as penguins and whales. Now, new research reveals these vents can be supercharged by a surprising source: earthquakes. According to a study published last month in Nature Geoscience, earthquakes cause these vents to violently burp up essential nutrients , which travel to the surface and enable the formation of massive plankton blooms. …Each year, the waters above the Australian Antarctic Ridge, at the junction between the Australian and Antarctic tectonic plates, host a bloom that once covered 266,000 square kilometers of ocean (an area about the size of New Zealand). …researchers…found that blooms grew largest when earthquakes of magnitude 5 or greater occurred ahead of the Antarctic phytoplankton’s growing season…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/deep-sea-earthquakes-fuel-huge-plankton-blooms-antarctica. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 2.

2026-01-06. NASA’s Mars Sample Return mission is dead. By Paul Voosen, Science. Excerpt: After years on life support, NASA’s plan to collect martian rocks and ferry them back to Earth has died. Yesterday, Congress released a compromise spending bill for the present financial year that backs the White House’s effort to kill the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program. Although the bill must be passed by both congressional chambers and signed into law, it effectively signals the end of MSR…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-s-mars-sample-return-mission-dead. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 2.

2026-01-05. After Sackett, a Wisconsin-Sized Wetland Area Is Vulnerable. By Grace van Deelen, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Three hundred years ago, the central United States was a land of wetlands—more than 150 million hectares of them. All that water made the region highly attractive to farmers, who, over time, converted most of it into agricultural land. For the wetlands that remain, protections secured by the Clean Water Act are often the only thing preventing wetland conversion or development, especially when state protections are weak, said Kylie Wadkowski, a landscape ecohydrologist and doctoral candidate at Stanford University.  With wetlands, “you actually can’t do whatever you want,” said Elliott White Jr., a coastal socioecosystem scientist at Stanford University. “That’s how this Sackett case came about.” The Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision ruled in favor of two landowners backfilling a lot containing wetlands. The decision changed the definition of the term “waters of the United States”—which is used in the Clean Water Act—to exclude wetlands without continuous surface connections to larger, navigable bodies of water. In November 2025, the Trump administration’s EPA proposed to set new rules for water regulations that may be even looser than the updated Sackett definition. According to research by Wadkowski and White presented on 15 December 2025 at AGU’s Annual Meeting in New Orleans, the changing definition will leave millions of hectares of wetlands unprotected and more vulnerable to development…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/after-sackett-a-wisconsin-sized-wetland-area-is-vulnerable. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 4.

2026-01-05. A window into better windows. By Science Adviser. Excerpt: If you’ve ever pressed your face up to a windowpane, you know just how bad it is at insulating—both cold and warm temperatures seem to bleed right through! Researchers have now designed a highly insulating, transparent material for more efficient windows. With buildings consuming around 40% of the world’s energy, the technology could be a promising climate solution. Researchers have previously tried to engineer better windows using gas-filled panes, vacuum insulation, and even transparent aerogels. But they’ve all been pricey, difficult to manufacture, and maladapted to different uses. So, a team started from scratch, designing a new class of metamaterials built from interconnected nanoscale polysiloxane tubes. Because structural features of the material—including the diameter of the nanotubes and sizes of the pores between them—were all smaller than the wavelength of visible light, the materials let through 99% of sunlight, the researchers reported in Science. The materials could be manufactured at a range of useful sizes and shapes and insulated on par with or better than double-paned glass. Since windows leak nearly half of a building’s heating and cooling energy, these next-generation windows have the potential for energy, cost, and climate savings. The materials could even trap infrared light, raising their potential for passive, energy-generating windows that use solar energy. The findings “may represent a new class of architectural material that actively manages energy instead of merely conserving it,” wrote photonics researchers Longnan Li and Wei Li…. READ THE SCIENCE PAPER… Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aed1907. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 8.

2026-01-05. Venezuela’s ‘Dirtiest’ Oil and the Environment: Three Things to Know. By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. Excerpt: Venezuela’s oil reserves, thought to be the largest in the world at an estimated 300 billion barrels, are notable not just for scale. Most of the oil found there is among the dirtiest type, with high sulfur and low hydrogen content. …the country is vulnerable to oil spills, it has one of the fastest deforestation rates in the tropics and the production of its oil generates more planet-warming greenhouse gases than most other types of crude oil…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/climate/venezuela-dirty-oil.html. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 3.

2026-01-02. Marine Heat Waves Can Exacerbate Heat and Humidity over Land. By Sarah Derouin, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Researchers found the unprecedented 2023 East Asian marine heat wave increased land temperatures and humidity by up to 50%…. Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/marine-heat-waves-can-exacerbate-heat-and-humidity-over-land. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

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2026-01-03. How Kazakhstan Aims to Tap More Oil Riches Below Its Grassy Plains. By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: More than two miles below the windswept steppe of western Kazakhstan, porous rocks composed of the skeletons of coral and other ancient marine life form the matrix for one of the world’s most prolific oil fields. Tengiz, as the field is known, has been producing oil for more than three decades, helping to nurture Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s largest economy. The oil field has also contributed handsomely to the earnings of Chevron, the American oil giant, which owns 50 percent of the company that operates Tengiz, known as Tengizchevroil, or TCO. The participation of Chevron and Exxon Mobil in TCO and other projects in Kazakhstan also provides the country, which shares a 4,750-mile border with Russia, with an important tie to the United States. …Recently, Ukraine has attacked the main oil export route from Kazakhstan through Russia, a 940-mile pipeline that includes flows from the Tengiz field, as part of an effort to crimp Moscow’s earnings from energy. …Typically, output from oil fields declines over time, but Tengiz is far from depleted. …According to TCO, the field contains 25 billion barrels of oil. Korolev, an adjacent field that would be considered very large almost anywhere else, contains another 1.6 billion barrels…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/business/chevron-kazakhstan-oil.html. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 3.

2026-01-02. As deep-sea mining race ramps up, mission will assess whether ecosystems recover afterward. By Christian Elliott, Science. Excerpt: In 2021, a 10-meter-long robotic vehicle called Patania II trundled along the sea floor in the eastern Pacific Ocean, some 4 kilometers below the surface. Suction heads slurped up potato-size polymetallic nodules and pumped them up hoses to a ship at the surface. It was the first test of industrial-scale mining equipment in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), a 5-million-square-kilometer expanse that’s littered with valuable chunks of metal—and is at the heart of the debate over whether companies should be allowed to mine the deep sea. At the surface, a research ship followed, using remotely operated vehicles and other oceanographic sensors to monitor what was left in the machine’s wake. The data it collected painted a stark picture of the immediate damage deep-sea mining causes to the rich but little-known fauna of the abyss. Now, 5 years later, researchers in Europe’s MiningImpact projects plan to head back to the Patania II test site and other locations in the CCZ to assess longer term impacts on deep-sea communities, and how long it might take them to recover…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/deep-sea-mining-race-ramps-mission-will-assess-whether-ecosystems-recover-afterward. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 7.

2026-01-02. China’s BYD Surpasses Tesla as World Leader in Electric Car Sales. By Jack Ewing, The New York Times. Excerpt: Tesla has lost its status as the world’s biggest seller of electric vehicles after Congress and President Trump eliminated the federal tax credits that had encouraged Americans to buy those cars. The company’s car sales declined 16 percent in the last three months of 2025, Tesla said on Friday. And its sales for the full year declined 9 percent even as other automakers notched gains. In 2025, for the first year ever, the company sold fewer electric cars than China’s leading automaker, BYD…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/business/tesla-electric-vehicles-fourth-quarter-sales.html. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 9.

2026-01-02. Offshore Wind Projects Challenge Trump Administration’s Order to Stop Work. By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. Excerpt: Developers of five offshore wind farms that were ordered last week by the Trump administration to halt construction are suing to restart work on at least three of the projects. The Interior Department on Dec. 22 ordered companies to halt work on five wind farms in various stages of construction along the East Coast. They were: Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind, both off the coast of New York; Revolution Wind off Rhode Island and Connecticut; Vineyard Wind 1 off the coast of Massachusetts; and Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind off Virginia. The administration cited unspecified national security concerns about the projects. On Thursday, Orsted, the Danish energy giant that is building Revolution Wind, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. On Friday Equinor, the developer of Empire Wind, did the same…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/02/climate/trump-offshore-wind-lawsuit-national-security.html. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

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2025-05-00. TEMPLATE. By . Excerpt: … Full article at URL. For GSS BOOK, chapter .

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