CC10C. Staying Current—What Do You Think About Global Climate Change?

Articles from 2024–2025 (most recent)

2025-02-19. Farm fertilizer could suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: If humanity wants to avoid a climate catastrophe, sucking up the carbon dioxide (CO₂) it has already spewed into the atmosphere may be its last hope. One approach is to use naturally abundant minerals as CO₂ sponges, but the process is slow. Now, a study reported in Nature suggests a way to accelerate it: by converting those minerals to compounds that bind CO₂ faster and are similar to others already widely used in farming. …direct air capture (DAC)…requires building expensive CO₂ capture plants and consumes some 2 megawatt hours of energy for every ton of CO₂ wrung from the air. …Another approach is carbon mineralization: spreading vast amounts of crushed alkaline rocks—usually abundant magnesium silicates, such as olivine and serpentine—on soils worldwide. The pulverized rock binds CO₂, permanently locking it away in mineral form. Nature already performs carbon mineralization on a grand scale, in a process known as weathering. But natural weathering takes millennia. …Unlike magnesium silicates, calcium silicates react quickly with CO₂. If implemented on a global scale, say, by adding these crushed minerals to agricultural soils, the process could draw down billions of tons of atmospheric CO₂ per year, Kanan and his postdoctoral assistant Yuxuan Chen estimate in the new research…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/farm-fertilizer-could-suck-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere.

2025-02-10. Rice Paddies, Like Cows, Spew Methane. A New Variety Makes Them a Lot Less Gassy. By Matt Simon, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: …cows are really gassy, and that’s really bad for the planet: Microbes in their guts produce methane—a greenhouse gas up to 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide—which comes out as burps. Consequently, livestock is responsible for 30 percent of humanity’s methane emissions. …Rice cultivation, surprisingly enough, accounts for another 12 percent of humanity’s global methane emissions. …Growing rice requires flooding fields, called paddies, with staggering quantities of water. Microbes known as archaea multiply in the wet, oxygen-poor conditions, releasing methane. One way to reduce those emissions is to inundate the fields less often, but that’s not always feasible given local irrigation infrastructure, and less water can lead to reduced yields. …Now, though, scientists have gone to the source, announcing a breakthrough in breeding a variety of rice they say reduces methane emissions by 70 percent—while delivering yields nearly twice the global average. “The only drawback is that it cannot be cultivated throughout the whole of China, because the climate is so different in the different regions,” said Anna Schnürer, a microbiologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and coauthor of the paper published in the journal Molecular Plant. “We are still working on finding additional varieties that can handle different temperatures.”… Full article at https://eos.org/articles/rice-paddies-like-cows-spew-methane-a-new-variety-makes-them-a-lot-less-gassy.

2024-12-10. As Seas Rise, Marshes May Still Trap Carbon—and Cool the Planet. By Rambo Talabong, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Coastal wetlands have long been seen as one of the casualties of climate change, doomed by the rising seas that are steadily swallowing their ecosystems. …New research by Virginia Institute of Marine Science coastal geomorphologist Matthew Kirwan has revealed that some marshes, migrating as they adapt to changing conditions, may release carbon (primarily as carbon dioxide) but gain an enhanced capacity to store methane. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and sequestering it may have an atmospheric cooling effect. As sea level rises, freshwater marshes get saltier and turn into salt marshes. Conventional wisdom has long held that as freshwater marshes shrink, they release carbon stored in their soil and biomass. But Kirwan pointed out that as freshwater marshes degrade and salinize, their microbial populations are affected in a way that causes the marshes to emit less methane. “Even degrading marshes can still sequester carbon effectively,” Kirwan said. He will present this research on 10 December at AGU’s Annual Meeting 2024 in Washington, D.C….. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/as-seas-rise-marshes-may-still-trap-carbon-and-cool-the-planet.

2024-11-18. Geological Net Zero and the need for disaggregated accounting for carbon sinks. By Myles R. Allen et al, Nature. Abstract: Achieving net zero global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), with declining emissions of other greenhouse gases, is widely expected to halt global warming. CO₂ emissions will continue to drive warming until fully balanced by active anthropogenic CO₂ removals. For practical reasons, however, many greenhouse gas accounting systems allow some “passive” CO₂ uptake, such as enhanced vegetation growth due to CO₂ fertilisation, to be included as removals in the definition of net anthropogenic emissions. By including passive CO₂ uptake, nominal net zero emissions would not halt global warming, undermining the Paris Agreement. …targets should acknowledge the need for Geological Net Zero, meaning one tonne of CO₂ permanently restored to the solid Earth for every tonne still generated from fossil sources…. Full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08326-8.

2024-11-04. Spraying rice with sunscreen particles during heatwaves boosts growth. By James Dinneen, New Scientist. Excerpt: A common sunscreen ingredient, zinc nanoparticles, may help protect rice from heat-related stress, an increasingly common problem under climate change. …Researchers have explored such nanoparticles as a way to deliver more nutrients to plants, helping maintain crop yields while reducing environmental damage from using too much fertiliser. Now Xiangang Hu at Nankai University in China and his colleagues have tested how zinc oxide nanoparticles affect crop performance under heatwave conditions…. Full article at https://www.newscientist.com/article/2454728-spraying-rice-with-sunscreen-particles-during-heatwaves-boosts-growth/.

2024-10-23. Capturing Carbon From the Air Just Got Easier. By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley Research News. Excerpt: …direct air capture, or DAC, is being counted on to reverse the rise of CO₂ levels, which have reached 426 parts per million (ppm), 50% higher than levels before the Industrial Revolution. Without it, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we won’t reach humanity’s goal of limiting warming to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preexisting global averages. A new type of absorbing material developed by chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, could help get the world to negative emissions. The porous material — a covalent organic framework (COF) — captures CO₂ from ambient air without degradation by water or other contaminants, one of the limitations of existing DAC technologies. “We took a powder of this material, put it in a tube, and we passed Berkeley air — just outdoor air — into the material to see how it would perform, and it was beautiful. It cleaned the air entirely of CO₂. Everything,” said Omar Yaghi, the James and Neeltje Tretter Professor of Chemistry at UC Berkeley and senior author of a paper that will appear online Oct. 23 in the journal Nature.… Full article at https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/capturing-carbon-air-just-got-easier.

2024-10-22. A Radical Approach to Flooding in England: Give Land Back to the Sea. By Rory Smith, The New York Times. Excerpt: In September, a month’s rain fell in a single day in some parts of England. The 18 months to March 2024 were England’s wettest in recorded history. Even on an island that has built at least part of its identity around tolerating inclement weather, it has been impossible to ignore the deluge. Flooding has submerged fields, ruined homes, and at times, cut off whole villages. As sea levels rise and extreme weather becomes more common, experts say that Britain’s traditional defenses — sea walls, tidal barriers and sandbanks — will be insufficient to meet the threat. It is not alone: in September, deadly floods in Central Europe led to the deaths of at least 23 people. …But on a tendril of land curling out from the coast of Somerset, in southwestern England, a team of scientists, engineers and conservationists have embraced a radical solution. …In a project costing 20 million pounds (around $26 million), tidal waters were allowed to flood the Steart Peninsula in 2014 for the first time in centuries. Rather than attempting to resist the sea, the land was given back to it. It was, in the words of Alys Laver, the conservationist who oversees the site, a “giant science experiment.” A decade on, its results might offer a blueprint for how some parts of Britain — and the rest of the world — might adapt to the reality of climate change…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/world/europe/uk-steart-marshes-carbon-climate-change-flooding.html.

2024-10-17. Are diamonds Earth’s best friend? Gem dust could cool the planet. By Hannah Richter, Science. Excerpt: …proposals to cool the planet through “geoengineering” tend to be controversial. …In a modeling study published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists report that shooting 5 million tons of diamond dust into the stratosphere each year could cool the planet by 1.6ºC—enough to stave off the worst consequences of global warming. The scheme wouldn’t be cheap, however: experts estimate it would cost nearly $200 trillion over the remainder of this century—far more than traditional proposals to use sulfur particles…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/are-diamonds-earth-s-best-friend-gem-dust-could-cool-planet-and-cost-trillions.

2024-10-09. Some Floridians choose to stay despite warnings of life risk: ‘We have faith in the Lord’. By Richard Luscombe, The Guardian. Excerpt: Most left when they were told to. But some chose to stay, even though officials warned Hurricane Milton would turn their homes into coffins. …most people were heeding the warning. This time around people noticed the intensity and started taking it seriously when they saw 180mph winds being talked about. It opened their eyes.”…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/09/hurricane-milton-florida-stay-evacuate. [GSS note: this reminds us of the song, The Preacher & The Flood by Joel Mabus.] See also the Guardian article Trump continues to deny climate crisis as he visits hurricane-ravaged Georgia.

2024-09-26. Burying wood in ‘vaults’ could help fight global warming. By Saima Sidik, Science. Excerpt: The discovery of an eastern red cedar log, buried in eastern Canada for millennia and nearly perfectly preserved, illustrates the potential of a new kind of carbon storage scheme in the fight against climate change: wood “vaults.” The log shows how burying wood—rather than letting it decay on the surface—could keep billions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO₂) out of the atmosphere, advocates say. The unusual conditions that preserved the log, described today in a paper in Science …they discovered a 78-centimeter-long piece of eastern red cedar. Using carbon-14 dating, they found it was 3775 years old; other lab tests revealed the log had retained some 95% of its carbon. The log was buried in an impermeable, water-logged layer of clay deposited by a sea that has since retreated. The clay, the researchers believe, prevented the delivery of any fresh, oxygen-rich water to the log and kept it from decomposing…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/burying-wood-vaults-could-help-fight-global-warming.

2024-09-23. They’ve Got a Plan to Fight Global Warming. It Could Alter the Oceans. By Brad Plumer and Raymond Zhong. The New York Times. Excerpt: In a quiet patch of forest in Nova Scotia, a company is building a machine designed to help slow global warming by transforming Earth’s rivers and oceans into giant sponges that absorb carbon dioxide from the air. When switched on later this year, the machine will grind up limestone inside a tall green silo and release the powder into the nearby West River Pictou, creating a chalky plume that should dissolve within minutes. …adding limestone converts some of that carbon dioxide into a stable molecule that instead stays underwater and washes into the sea, where it should remain trapped for thousands of years. …Toying with ocean chemistry also carries unknown risks. Some environmental groups worry that even early experiments with these techniques could threaten fish and other aquatic life. …In the 1970s and ’80s, industrial pollution made rainfall more acidic, which poisoned lakes and streams around the world. Some of the hardest-hit countries, including Norway, Sweden and Canada, began adding limestone to their waterways to restore the pH balance and help fish populations recover. It worked. …adding limestone also helped rivers sequester more carbon…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/climate/oceans-rivers-carbon-removal.html.

2024-08-29. Sinking seaweed. By Warren Cornwall, Science. Excerpt: …the potential benefits and risks of a controversial idea: growing seaweed to fight climate change. The concept has generated enthusiasm among entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and some scientists. They envision vast seaweed farms floating in the open ocean, where plants such as kelp would be grown and then sunk thousands of meters to the ocean floor, entombing the carbon for centuries. ompanies looking to feed the growing market for carbon credits have hatched a variety of strategies. …But the strategy faces daunting, unanswered questions about how much carbon it might actually sequester, potential ecological effects, and whether coastal seaweed can thrive in the open ocean. …some ocean scientists have called for a moratorium on the practice. It is unlikely to work as promised, they say, and threatens to upend ocean ecosystems…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/can-dumping-seaweed-sea-floor-cool-planet-some-scientists-are-skeptical.

2024-08-14. Will regulators OK controversial effort to supercharge ocean’s ability to absorb carbon? By Warren Cornwall, Science. Excerpt: Geoengineering study that would disperse alkaline chemicals off Cape Cod draws environmental opposition. Adam Subhas …has spent much of his career as a chemical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), quietly studying how seawater can naturally offset global warming by absorbing carbon dioxide (CO₂). Now, Subhas has been thrust into a heated public debate. Next month he and his colleagues want to dump tons of caustic chemicals off the coast of Massachusetts to see whether they can boost the ocean’s uptake of CO₂. They’re seeking what would be the first-ever regulatory approval for such a study from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But some nearby residents and environmental groups, worried about safety, have pressed EPA to delay or halt the study. “It’s been a new journey to interact with reporters and the public and everyone at this level and at this intensity,” Subhas says. …The natural alkalinity of the ocean already allows it to absorb 10 billion tons of CO₂ every year, equivalent to roughly one-quarter of society’s annual CO₂ emissions from burning fossil fuels. Alkaline molecules contained in rocks such as limestone erode into the ocean, where they react with dissolved CO₂ to form relatively inert chemicals such as bicarbonate, which can persist unchanged for millennia. Depleted of CO₂, the ocean can then absorb more out of the atmosphere. Adding more alkaline chemicals or rocks to the ocean would boost this process. But the approach has major unanswered questions, including whether tweaking ocean chemistry might affect ecosystems, how much CO₂ would really be captured, …. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/will-regulators-ok-controversial-effort-supercharge-ocean-s-ability-absorb-carbon. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.

2024-07-11. BP-owned company is selling carbon credits on trees that aren’t in danger, analysis finds. By Luke Barratt and Miranda Green, The Guardian. Excerpt: Some forest carbon offsets sold by the biggest offsetting company in the US offer little or no benefit to the climate, a satellite analysis has found. Finite Carbon, created in 2009 and bought by British multinational oil and gas giant BP in 2020, is responsible for more than a quarter of the US’s total carbon credits, which it says it generates from protecting more than 60 “high credibility, high integrity projects” across 1.6m hectares (4m acres). However, experts at the offsets ratings agency Renoster and the non-profit CarbonPlan analyzed three projects accounting for almost half of Finite Carbon’s total credits, with an estimated market value of $334m, according to analysis by market intelligence company AlliedOffsets. Renoster found issues, including trees in a project in the Alaska Panhandle that were probably never in danger of being cut down in an already extensively logged area. Of the credits Renoster looked at, they found that about 79% should not have been issued…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/11/finite-carbon-forest-offsets-analysis.

2024-07-10. Can humanity address climate change without believing it? Medical history suggests it is possible. By Ron Barrett, Professor of Anthropology, Macalester College. Excerpt: Strange as it may seem, early germ theorists could tell us a lot about today’s attitudes toward climate change. While researching for a new book about the history of emerging infections, I found many similarities between early debates over the existence of microbes and current debates over the existence of global warming. Both controversies reveal the struggles of perceiving an unseen threat. Both reveal the influence of economic interests that benefit from the status quo. But most importantly, both reveal how people with different beliefs and interests can still agree on key policies and practices for tackling a global problem…. Full article at https://theconversation.com/can-humanity-address-climate-change-without-believing-it-medical-history-suggests-it-is-possible-230936.

2024-07-05. Four decades of data indicate that planted mangroves stored up to 75% of the carbon stocks found in intact mature stands. By CARINE F. BOURGEOIS et al, Science. Abstract: Mangroves’ ability to store carbon (C) has long been recognized, but little is known about whether planted mangroves can store C as efficiently as naturally established (i.e., intact) stands and in which time frame. Through …models compiled from 40 years of data and built from 684 planted mangrove stands worldwide, we found that biomass C stock culminated at 71 to 73% to that of intact stands ~20 years after planting. Furthermore, prioritizing mixed-species planting including Rhizophora spp. would maximize C accumulation within the biomass compared to monospecific planting. Despite a 25% increase in the first 5 years following planting, no notable change was observed in the soil C stocks thereafter, which remains at a constant value of 75% to that of intact soil C stock, suggesting that planting effectively prevents further C losses due to land use change. These results have strong implications for mangrove restoration planning and serve as a baseline for future C buildup assessments…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adk5430.

2024-06-20. Rural America Lags Cities in Helping People Beat the Heat. By Dionne Searcey, The New York Times. Excerpt: Large parts of the nation were boiling this week as temperatures climbed in Maine and other areas that are not accustomed to mid-June heat waves. In many cities, residents cooled off in shady parks, jumped in public pools, or hydrated with cold water handed out by paramedics and police officers stationed at busy intersections or inside public transportation hubs — all tactics health officials encourage to help avoid heat-related illnesses. These kinds of strategies are common in countless cities because they are effective in areas with large populations. In more rural areas, however, people are far more spread out and much harder to reach. “We’re missing a large swath of our society, and a swath that typically has higher levels of chronic disease, older populations and lower income,” said Kevin Lanza, an assistant professor of environmental science at UTHealth Houston in Austin. “All three are factors increasing the serious risk on rural communities in the face of climate change.”…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/climate/heat-wave-rural-america.html.

2024-06-18. Is It Climate Change? Americans Mostly Say Yes. By Grace van Deelen, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Attribution science aims to determine the extent to which climate change causes natural hazards and extreme weather such as hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and heat waves. But how comfortable is the public in making these connections? Pretty comfortable, as it turns out. A new study published in Climatic Change shows that 83% of Americans have some confidence in attributing at least one type of extreme weather to climate change. However, the public’s views varied among hazards and didn’t always line up with scientists’ confidence. The results point out some important considerations for climate scientists looking to communicate their work to the public. …The public’s confidence in attributing events aligned with climate scientists’ understanding of how extreme weather and climate change are linked about 40% of the time, according to the researchers. The scientists’ views came from a 2016 report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The public was least aligned with scientists when it came to wildfires and, on average, overattributed these events to climate change. That makes sense to Zanocco—though the public may see visceral images of Earth on fire and make a strong link to climate change, scientists tend to understand that the reasons for wildfires are highly complex, and climate change isn’t always the primary cause, he said…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/is-it-climate-change-americans-mostly-say-yes.

2024-05-30. Corporations invested in carbon offsets that were ‘likely junk’, analysis says. By Nina Lakhani, The Guardian. Excerpt: Delta, Gucci, Volkswagen, ExxonMobil, Disney, easyJet and Nestlé are among the major corporations to have purchased millions of carbon credits from climate friendly projects that are “likely junk” or worthless when it comes to offsetting their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a classification system developed by Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog. Some of these companies no longer use CO₂ offsets amid mounting evidence that carbon trading do not lead to the claimed emissions cuts – and in some cases may even cause environmental and social harms. …The fossil fuel industry is by far the largest investor in the world’s most popular 50 CO2 offsetting schemes. At least 43% of the [81 million] CO₂ credits purchased by the oil and gas majors are for projects that have at least one fundamental flaw and are “probably junk”, according to the analysis…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/30/corporate-carbon-offsets-credits. See also Guardian article, Market value of carbon offsets drops 61%, report finds.

2024-05-20. Carbon Offset Programs Underestimate the Threat of Hurricanes. By Sierra Bouchér, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: New England is one of the most heavily forested areas in America: Roughly 15 million metric tons of carbon is stored there every year. These projects account for disasters that can kill trees and release their stored carbon. However, a new study published in Global Change Biology suggests that they may be underestimating the destructive power of hurricanes. A single hurricane in New England could release at least 121 million metric tons of carbon from downed trees, the study showed, the equivalent of the energy use of almost 16 million homes in 1 year. Many carbon offset programs reforest in the region. …When a company buys a carbon credit, it buys a slight surplus of offset, allowing offset programs to plant slightly more trees to take in more carbon than is being emitted. That way, if trees are lost to drought, fire, disease, or other disasters, the program stays carbon neutral. …As of 2020, 7% of California’s Cap-and-Trade Program carbon was stored in New England forests, and 3% of that carbon was set aside for storm damage. A single storm could take out that buffer pool…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/carbon-offset-programs-underestimate-the-threat-of-hurricanes.

2024-05-09. What are the most powerful climate actions you can take? By Damian Carrington, The Guardian. Excerpt: …the most effective action individuals can take …Most experts (76%) backed voting for politicians who pledge strong climate measures, where fair elections take place. …The second choice for most effective individual action, according to the experts, was reducing flying and fossil-fuel powered transport in favour of electric and public transport. …Globally it is a small minority of people who drive aviation emissions, with only about one in 10 flying at all. Frequent-flying “super emitters” who represent just 1% of the world’s population cause half of aviation’s carbon emissions, with US air passengers having by far the biggest carbon footprint among rich countries. …Meat production has a huge impact on the environment. Most people in wealthy countries already eat more meat than is healthy for them and more than 60% of the scientists said they had cut their own meat consumption. Almost 30% of the experts said eating less meat was the most effective climate action, while a similar proportion backed cutting emissions from heating or cooling homes, by installing heat pumps…. Having fewer children was backed by 12% of the experts but many made further suggestions. …Shifting savings or pension funds away from fossil fuel investments and towards green ones was also mentioned by multiple experts…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/09/what-are-the-most-powerful-climate-actions-you-can-take.

2024-05-06. Deadly Pacific ‘blobs’ tied to emission cuts in China. By WARREN CORNWALL, Science. Excerpt: Starting in late 2013, the first in a handful of record-shattering heat waves struck the north Pacific Ocean near Alaska. Temperatures in these warm “blobs,” which have occurred four times in the past decade, sometimes reach more than 2°C above normal. …Research has implicated climate change, which can supercharge natural fluctuations in ocean heat. But now, scientists are pointing to another surprising contributor: China’s success in stemming air pollution. A steep decline in aerosols—tiny airborne particles such as sulfates—emitted by Chinese factories and power plants in the 2010s appears to have amplified a string of extreme heat waves on the other side of the Pacific, driving up to 30% of the temperature increase during these heat waves, scientists report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. …Aerosols can act like tiny mirrors, reflecting sunlight back into space and reducing the amount that reaches Earth’s surface. Eliminate them and the world warms. Scientists last month reported that cleaner air might be responsible for 40% of the increase in heat driving global warming between 2001 and 2019…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/deadly-pacific-blobs-tied-emission-cuts-china.

2024-05-03. Florida sees thriving future if climate resilience managed, research finds. By Richard Luscombe, The Guardian. Excerpt: Climate predictions in Florida, for the most part, make pretty grim reading. Rising oceans threaten to submerge most of the state by the end of the century, and soaring temperatures could make it too hot to live here anyway. But new research by a coalition of prominent universities paints a more upbeat picture of Florida’s future as a thriving state for humans and wildlife, with natural resources harnessed to mitigate the worst effects of the climate emergency generally, as well as extreme weather events such as hurricanes and floods. Such a prosperous tomorrow, the authors say, can only follow essential preparatory work today. One key element, an 18m-acre swath of protected land called the Florida wildlife corridor, is already mostly in place, and will spearhead Florida’s climate resilience if properly managed and allowed to evolve, the researchers believe…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/03/florida-climate-future.

2024-04-05. It’s Never Too Late to Take Climate Action. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-never-too-late-to-take-climate-action/] By JAMES K. BOYCE, Scientific American. Excerpt: It’s official: this February was the hottest one on record. You may have noticed something odd when you stepped outside your door and winter was missing. It turns out the weather weirdness was worldwide. In case you missed it, this comes on top of the news that January was the hottest ever, too, and that 2023 was the hottest year we’ve experienced so far. Again and again, climate activists have warned that we have only so much time left to head off catastrophe. Soon, we are told, it will be “too late” to save the planet and ourselves. Their message rests on the assumption that fear is the most potent spur to action. This communication strategy is deeply flawed. Politically, it leads many to despair that all is lost. When the climate apocalypse fails to arrive on schedule, it leads others to seek comfort in the parable of the boy who cried wolf. Scientifically, the depiction of the climate crisis as a cliff—once we fall off the edge, it’s game over—is nonsense. Climate change does not end with a grand finale. Instead, it unleashes a cascade of mounting damages that will escalate exponentially over time….

2024-04-03. Here’s why the Bay Area has the perfect weather for a first-of-its kind geoengineering study. [https://www.sfchronicle.com/weather/article/geoengineering-cloud-research-alameda-19368199.php] By Anthony Edwards, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt: In Alameda [CA], scientists are embarking on a novel attempt to cool the Earth — by spraying salt into clouds. The work, known as marine cloud brightening, is controversial and is just one method of geoengineering — which describes interventions meant to slow Earth’s warming. But proponents say the technology may be needed to mitigate climate change. To brighten clouds, researchers spray microscopic sea salt into the air over the ocean to boost clouds’ reflectivity. This means less sunlight is absorbed, leading to a planetary cooling effect. …Scientists hypothesize that by manually increasing the number of particles in the atmosphere, clouds will reflect more sunlight back to space, causing Earth to cool. …Scientists like Russell say that before more drastic solutions are deployed, the focus should be on reining in greenhouse gas emissions and making further investments in solar and wind power.  “Emitting particles to offset global warming is not the smartest idea … but it may be better than doing nothing,” Russell said. “Given the point we’re at with warming and climate change, we feel it’s important to know what our options are.”…. See also article in the New York Times.

2024-03-31. Can We Engineer Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis? [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/31/climate/climate-change-carbon-capture-ccs.html] By David Gelles, The New York Times. Excerpt: On a windswept Icelandic plateau, an international team of engineers and executives is powering up an innovative machine designed to alter the very composition of Earth’s atmosphere. If all goes as planned, the enormous vacuum will soon be sucking up vast quantities of air, stripping out carbon dioxide and then locking away those greenhouse gases deep underground in ancient stone — greenhouse gases that would otherwise continue heating up the globe. …Global temperatures are now expected to rise as much as 4 degrees Celsius, or more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit, by the end of the century. That has given new weight to what some people call geoengineering, though that term has become so contentious its proponents now prefer the term “climate interventions.” …Many of the projects are controversial. A plant similar to the one in Iceland, but far larger, is being built in Texas by Occidental Petroleum, the giant oil company. Occidental intends to use some of the carbon dioxide it captures to extract even more oil, the burning of which is one of the main causes of the climate crisis in the first place….

2024-03-26. Startups aim to curb climate change by pulling carbon dioxide from the ocean—not the air. [https://www.science.org/content/article/startups-aim-curb-climate-change-pulling-carbon-dioxide-ocean-not-air] By ROBERT F. SERVICE, Science. Excerpt: …one long gray barge docked at the [Port of Los Angeles] is doing its part to combat climate change. On the barge, which belongs to Captura, a Los Angeles–based startup, is a system of pipes, pumps, and containers that ingests seawater and sucks out CO₂, which can be used to make plastics and fuels or buried. The decarbonated seawater is returned to the ocean, where it absorbs more CO₂ from the atmosphere, in a small strike against the inexorable rise of the greenhouse gas. After a yearlong experiment with the barge, which is designed to capture 100 tons of CO₂ per year, Captura is planning to open a 1000-ton-per-year facility later this year in Norway that will bury the captured CO₂ in rock formations under the North Sea. Equatic, another Los Angeles–based startup, is launching an even larger 3650-ton-per-year ocean CO₂ capture plant this year in Singapore, and other companies are planning demos as well. …Proponents say capturing CO₂ from the ocean should be easier and cheaper than a seemingly more direct approach: snagging it directly from the air. Direct air capture, which relies on fans to sweep air past absorbent chemicals, currently costs between $600 to $1000 per ton of CO₂ removed, largely because atmospheric CO₂ is so dilute, making up less than 0.05% of the air by volume. Earth’s oceans, in contrast, hold the gas at a concentration nearly 150 times higher, and absorb roughly 30% of all CO₂ emissions each year….

2024-03-05. The Anthropocene is dead. Long live the Anthropocene. [https://www.science.org/content/article/anthropocene-dead-long-live-anthropocene] By PAUL VOOSEN, Science. Excerpt: …a panel of two dozen geologists has voted down a proposal to end the Holocene—our current span of geologic time, which began 11,700 years ago at the end of the last ice age—and inaugurate a new epoch, the Anthropocene. …Few opponents of the Anthropocene proposal doubted the enormous impact that human influence, including climate change, is having on the planet. But some felt the proposed marker of the epoch—some 10 centimeters of mud from Canada’s Crawford Lake that captures the global surge in fossil fuel burning, fertilizer use, and atomic bomb fallout that began in the 1950s—isn’t definitive enough. …The Anthropocene backers will now have to wait for a decade before their proposal can be considered again. ICS has long instituted this mandatory cooling-off period, given how furious debates can turn, for example, over the boundary between the Pliocene and Pleistocene, and whether the Quaternary—our current geologic period, a category above epochs—should exist at all….

2024-02-28. These Cities Aren’t Banning Meat. They Just Want You to Eat More Plants. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/climate/plant-based-treaty-climate.html] By Cara Buckley, The New York Times. Excerpt: Amsterdam … Los Angeles …are signatories to the Plant Based Treaty, which was launched in 2021 with the aim of calling attention to the role played by greenhouse gases that are generated by food production. …Anita Krajnc …and other activists modeled the Plant Based Treaty after the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls on governments to stop new oil, gas and coal projects. …The first municipality to sign on was Boynton Beach, Fla., in September 2021…. Twenty-five other municipalities have since joined, including Los Angeles, Amsterdam and more than a dozen cities in India. …Globally, food systems make up a third of planet-heating greenhouse gasses, with the environmental toll of the meat and dairy industries being particularly high. Livestock accounts for about a third of methane emissions, which have 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide in the short term. It’s also a water intensive industry. It takes 2,110 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef, 520 gallons of water to produce one pound of cheese and 410 gallons of water to produce one pound of chicken. By comparison, protein-rich lentils require 190 gallons of water per pound. …A 2023 study from the University of Oxford found that, compared to diets heavy in meat, vegan diets resulted in 75 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions, 54 percent less water use and 66 less biodiversity loss….

2024-02-19. Los Angeles Just Proved How Spongy a City Can Be. [https://www.wired.com/story/los-angeles-just-proved-how-spongy-a-city-can-be/] By MATT SIMON, Wired. Excerpt: …A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three days—over half of what the city typically gets in a year. It’s the kind of extreme rainfall that’ll get ever more extreme as the planet warms. The city’s water managers, though, were ready and waiting. Like other urban areas around the world, in recent years LA has been transforming into a “sponge city,” replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants. It has also built out “spreading grounds,” where water accumulates and soaks into the earth. With traditional dams and all that newfangled spongy infrastructure, between February 4 and 7 the metropolis captured 8.6 billion gallons of stormwater, enough to provide water to 106,000 households for a year. …Long reliant on snowmelt and river water piped in from afar, LA is on a quest to produce as much water as it can locally. …Centuries of urban-planning dogma dictates using gutters, sewers, and other infrastructure to funnel rainwater out of a metropolis as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. Given the increasingly catastrophic urban flooding seen around the world, though, that clearly isn’t working anymore, so now planners are finding clever ways to capture stormwater, treating it as an asset instead of a liability….

2024-02-02. Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis?. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/climate/sun-shade-climate-geoengineering.html] By Cara Buckley, The New York Times. Excerpt: The idea is to create a huge sunshade and send it to a far away point between the Earth and the sun to block a small but crucial amount of solar radiation, enough to counter global warming. Scientists have calculated that if just shy of 2 percent of the sun’s radiation is blocked, that would be enough to cool the planet by 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit, and keep Earth within manageable climate boundaries. …To block the necessary amount of solar radiation, the shade would have to be about a million square miles, roughly the size of Argentina, Dr. Rozen said. A shade that big would weigh at least 2.5 million tons — too heavy to launch into space, he said. So, the project would have to involve a series of smaller shades. They would not completely block the sun’s light but rather cast slightly diffused shade onto Earth, he said. …The sunshade idea has its critics, among them Susanne Baur, …. A sunshade would be astronomically expensive and could not be implemented in time, given the speed of global warming, she said. In addition, a solar storm or collision with stray space rocks could damage the shield, resulting in sudden, rapid warming with disastrous consequences….

2024-01-16. Can Submerging Seaweed Cool the Climate? [https://eos.org/features/can-submerging-seaweed-cool-the-climate] By Saima May Sidik, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Running Tide is one of many organizations asking whether submerging seaweed could be part of an effective strategy for mitigating climate change. When these algae photosynthesize, they turn carbon dioxide from the upper ocean into biomass. In some parts of the ocean, submerging that biomass below thousands of meters of water could lock its carbon away for hundreds or even thousands of years, drawing down levels of carbon in the atmosphere. …But major questions remain. For example, if growing seaweed depletes the pool of nutrients available for other forms of ocean life, then will it actually increase the ocean’s net carbon storage? What happens to ocean bottom ecosystems if humanity creates giant, underwater seaweed landfills? And how will companies monitor the effects of sending tons of seaweed to a watery grave?….

2024-01-10. Why Humans Are Putting a Bunch of ‘Coal’ and ‘Oil’ Back in the Ground. [https://www.wired.com/story/why-humans-are-putting-a-bunch-of-coal-and-oil-back-in-the-ground/] By Matt Simon, Wired. Excerpt: Startups are processing plant waste into concentrated carbon to be buried or injected underground. It’s like fossil fuels, but in reverse. In a roundabout way, coal is solar-powered. Millions of years ago, swamp plants soaked up the sun’s energy, eating carbon dioxide in the process. They died, accumulated, and transformed over geologic time into energy-dense rock. This solar-powered fuel, of course, is far from renewable, unlike solar panels: Burning coal has returned that carbon to the atmosphere, driving rapid climate change. But what if humans could reverse that process, creating their own version of coal from plant waste and burying it underground? That’s the idea behind a growing number of carbon projects: Using special heating chambers, engineers can transform agricultural and other waste biomass into solid, concentrated carbon. Like those ancient plants captured CO₂ and then turned into coal, this is carbon naturally sequestered from the atmosphere, then locked away for (ideally) thousands of years….

2024-01-06. Can $500 Million Save This Glacier?. [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/06/magazine/glacier-engineering-sea-level-rise.html] By on Gertner, The New York Times. Excerpt: …a glacier on Greenland’s west coast…referred to by its Danish name, Jakobshavn…situated on the edge of Greenland’s massive ice sheet, that moves 30 billion to 50 billion tons of icebergs off the island every year. …Glaciologists have identified it as one of the fastest-deteriorating glaciers in the world. …Jakobshavn alone was responsible for 4 percent of the rise in global sea levels during the 20th century. It probably contains enough ice to ultimately push sea levels up at least another foot. …at the bottom of the bay’s entrance…the warm water flows over a sill, a ridge rising several hundred feet above the ocean floor …akin to a threshold that crosses the floor of a doorway between two rooms. [British glaciologist John Moore] and his colleague Michael Wolovick published an article that proposed looking into building a sea wall 100 meters high…on the floor of Disko Bay. Raising the sill, using gravel and sand, could reduce the warm water in the fiord and allow Jakobshavn to thicken naturally and stabilize. …If the idea proved workable in the Arctic, it could be translated to Antarctica, where much larger glaciers in the Amundsen Sea, especially one known as Thwaites, threaten to raise sea levels substantially. …geoengineering seeks to reduce the impacts of climate change and to buy us more time as we transition to a zero-carbon world. …A number of glaciologists…view Moore’s idea for protecting glaciers as technically or ethically problematic. …geoengineering, in general terms…only addresses — at best — some of its impacts. Of more direct concern…seabed curtains in the Arctic might affect ecosystems and fisheries…. For

2024-01-04. In Juneau, Alaska, a carbon offset project that’s actually working. [https://grist.org/energy/in-juneau-alaska-a-carbon-offset-project-thats-actually-working/] By Taylor Kate Brown, Grist. Excerpt: When Kira Roberts moved to Juneau, Alaska, last summer, she immediately noticed how the town of 31,000 changes when the cruise ships dock each morning. Thousands of people pour in, only to vanish by evening. As the season winds down in fall, the parade of buses driving through her neighborhood slows, and the trails near her home and the vast Mendenhall Glacier no longer teem with tourists. …But Mendenhall is shrinking quickly: The 13-mile-long glacier has retreated about a mile in the past 40 years. Getting all those tourists to Juneau — some 1.5 million this summer by cruise ship alone — requires burning the very thing contributing to its retreat: fossil fuels. …In an effort to mitigate a portion of that CO2, some of those going whale watching or visiting the glacier are asked to pay a few dollars to counter their emissions. The money goes to the Alaska Carbon Reduction Fund, but instead of buying credits from some distant (and questionable) offset project, the nonprofit spends that cash installing heat pumps, targeting residents like Roberts who rely upon oil heating systems. Heat pumps are “a no-brainer” in Juneau’s mild (for Alaska) winters, said Andy Romanoff, who administers the fund. Juneau’s grid relies on emissions-free hydropower, so electricity is cheaper and less polluting than oil heat. They also save residents money — Roberts said she was paying around $500 a month on heating oil, and has seen her electricity bill climb just $30….

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