Stay Current 2023
The GSS email list (google group) receives “Stay Current” articles (excerpts and links to the source articles). To receive them email gssmail@berkeley.edu with subject line “Join GSS”. Please give your city, state, country, and your school (if you’re a teacher). See also “Stay Current” links in each book’s Contents table. Some news sources limit the number of articles one person can read. You can “divide and conquer” with different students to reading and reporting to the class on different articles.
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[template] 2023-03-00. . [] By . Excerpt: … For GSS chapter .
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2023-03-21. ‘A living pantry’: how an urban food forest in Arizona became a model for climate action. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/21/urban-food-forest-dunbar-spring-tucson-arizona-climate-crisis-drought] By Samuel Gilbert, The Guardian. Excerpt: Near downtown Tucson, Arizona, is Dunbar Spring, a neighborhood unlike any other in the city. The unpaved sidewalks are lined with native, food-bearing trees and shrubs fed by rainwater diverted from city streets. One single block has over 100 plant species, including native goji berries, desert ironwood with edamame-like seeds and chuparosa bushes with cucumber-flavored flowers. This urban food forest – which began almost 30 years ago – provides food for residents and roughage for livestock, and the tree canopy also provides relief to residents in the third-fastest warming city in the nation. It has made Dunbar Spring a model for other areas grappling with increased heat, drought and food insecurity caused by the climate crisis. “We’re creating a living pantry,” said Brad Lancaster, a resident and co-founder of the Dunbar/Spring Neighborhood Foresters organization, which planted the urban food forest. …Dunbar Spring’s urban food forest began on an early morning in September 1996, when residents gathered for the first-ever community-wide tree-planting event. Like many lower-income areas in Tucson, Dunbar Spring was unusually hot, lacking the street tree cover to provide shade during the city’s brutal summers. Temperatures today are 4.5F warmer than in the 1970s. …Almost 30 years later, neighborhood foresters have planted more than 1,700 trees and thousands more understory plants, transforming Dunbar Spring into an urban food forest fed by rainwater. …The work in Dunbar Spring, along with Lancaster’s books and website, have inspired people worldwide to take up water harvesting to irrigate native food-bearing street trees. “In almost every neighborhood in Tucson, you can now find at least one property doing this,” he said. …The work of Dunbar Spring neighborhood foresters has also informed Tucson’s climate action plan, including legalizing citywide rainwater harvesting and planting arid-adapted trees…. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2023-03-20. A Different Kind of Pipeline Project Scrambles Midwest Politics. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/20/us/carbon-dioxide-ethanol-underground-midwest.html] By Mitch Smith, The New York Times. Excerpt: For more than a decade, the Midwest was the site of bitter clashes over plans for thousand-mile pipelines meant to carry crude oil beneath cornfields and cattle ranches. Now high-dollar pipeline fights are happening again, but with a twist. Instead of oil, these projects would carry millions of tons of carbon dioxide from ethanol plants to be injected into underground rock formations rather than dispersed as pollutants in the air. What is playing out is a very different kind of environmental battle, a huge test not just for farmers and landowners but for emerging technologies promoted as ways to safely store planet-warming carbon. …Supporters… say the pipelines… would lower carbon emissions while aiding the agricultural economy through continued ethanol production. …opponents are concerned about property rights and safety, and are not convinced of the projects’ claimed environmental benefits…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-03-19. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) . [https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/] By Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Summary for Policy Makers (draft) [https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6syr/pdf/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf] is marked as “Approved” but “Do Not Cite, Quote or Distribute”. That said, there are many many aspects of interest. E.g.:
“A.4.2 Several mitigation options, notably solar energy, wind energy, electrification of urban systems, urban green infrastructure, energy efficiency, demand-side management, improved forest- and crop/grassland management, and reduced food waste and loss, are technically viable, are becoming increasingly cost effective and are generally supported by the public. From 2010– 2019 there have been sustained decreases in the unit costs of solar energy (85%), wind energy (55%), and lithium ion batteries (85%), and large increases in their deployment, e.g., >10x for solar and >100x for electric vehicles (EVs), varying widely across regions. The mix of policy instruments that reduced costs and stimulated adoption includes public R&D, funding for demonstration and pilot projects, and demand pull instruments such as deployment subsidies to attain scale. Maintaining emission-intensive systems may, in some regions and sectors, be more expensive than transitioning to low emission systems. (high confidence)….” There are interesting variations of how this report is portrayed in news media. For example, compare the headlines in The New York Times, “Climate Change Is Speeding Toward Catastrophe. The Next Decade Is Crucial, U.N. Panel Says“, with The Guardian, “World can still avoid worst of climate collapse with genuine change, IPCC says.” For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2023-03-19. How Does Carbon Capture Work? [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/19/us/carbon-capture.html] By Eden Weingart, The New York Times. Excerpt: …Carbon capture is an umbrella term for technologies, some of them first proposed in the 1980s, that aim to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere or catch emissions and store them before they are released into the air. …Encouraged by tax incentives included in the Inflation Reduction Act, some companies have proposed projects in the United States to capture CO2 and either use it or store it deep underground. Those proposals have been met with skepticism, though, by some environmentalists who say carbon capture could distract from efforts to reduce emissions in the first place. …Efforts to plant trees and other small-scale experiments are happening around the country. And two larger-scale methods are being developed: post-combustion capture and direct air capture…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-03-19. Colleges Showcase Mass Timber, in Research and on Display. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/business/mass-timber-universities.html] By Lisa Prevost, The New York Times. Excerpt: Mass timber, an engineered wood product that offers durability and sustainability benefits, has become increasingly prominent at colleges across the country, where it is included not only as a concept in the curriculum but also as a material in campus buildings. Experts say universities are helping to increase awareness of mass timber — layers of wood bonded with glue or nails — by demonstrating its potential as a low-carbon alternative to steel and concrete. …Long used in Europe, cross-laminated panels are so strong they are suitable for walls, roofs and flooring. And they have a number of other benefits: They capture carbon, keeping it out of the atmosphere; they are more sustainable than other construction materials, like steel and concrete; and they are exposed, adding aesthetic appeal…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 8.
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2023-03-15. The Brilliant Inventor Who Made Two of History’s Biggest Mistakes. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/15/magazine/cfcs-inventor.html] By Steven Johnson, The New York Times. Excerpt: While The Times praised him as “one of the nation’s outstanding chemists” in its obituary, today [Thomas Midgley Jr.] is best known for the terrible consequences of that chemistry, thanks to the stretch of his career from 1922 to 1928, during which he managed to invent leaded gasoline and also develop the first commercial use of the chlorofluorocarbons that would create a hole in the ozone layer…. For GSS Ozone chapter 4.
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2023-03-15. Active volcano on Venus shows it’s a living planet. [https://www.science.org/content/article/active-volcano-shows-venus-living-planet] By Paul Voosen, Science. Excerpt: Choked by a smog of sulfuric acid and scorched by temperatures hot enough to melt lead, the surface of Venus is sure to be lifeless. For decades, researchers also thought the planet itself was dead, capped by a thick, stagnant lid of crust and unaltered by active rifts or volcanoes. But hints of volcanism have mounted recently, and now comes the best one yet: direct evidence for an eruption. Geologically, at least, Venus is alive. The discovery comes from NASA’s Magellan spacecraft, which orbited Venus some 30 years ago and used radar to peer through the thick clouds. Images made 8 months apart show a volcano’s circular mouth, or caldera, growing dramatically in a sudden collapse. On Earth, such collapses occur when magma that had supported the caldera vents or drains away, as happened during a 2018 eruption at Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano. …The discovery, published today in Science and presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, makes Venus only the third planetary body in the Solar System with active magma volcanoes, joining Earth and Io, Jupiter’s fiery moon…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2023-03-15. Splitting seawater could provide an endless source of green hydrogen. [https://www.science.org/content/article/splitting-seawater-provide-endless-source-green-hydrogen] By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: …“Green” hydrogen, made by using renewable energy to split water molecules, could power heavy vehicles and decarbonize industries such as steelmaking without spewing a whiff of carbon dioxide. But because the water-splitting machines, or electrolyzers, are designed to work with pure water, scaling up green hydrogen could exacerbate global freshwater shortages. Now, several research teams are reporting advances in producing hydrogen directly from seawater, which could become an inexhaustible source of green hydrogen. …Md Kibria, a materials chemist at the University of Calgary, says for now there’s a cheaper solution: feeding seawater into desalination setups that can remove the salt before the water flows to conventional electrolyzers. …Today, nearly all hydrogen is made by breaking apart methane, burning fossil fuels to generate the needed heat and pressure. Both steps release carbon dioxide. Green hydrogen could replace this dirty hydrogen, but at the moment it costs more than twice as much, roughly $5 per kilogram. That’s partly due to the high cost of electrolyzers, which rely on catalysts made from precious metals. The U.S. Department of Energy recently launched a decadelong effort to improve electrolyzers and bring the cost of green hydrogen down to $1 per kilogram…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2023-03-14. Geneticists should rethink how they use race and ethnicity, panel urges. [https://www.science.org/content/article/geneticists-should-rethink-how-they-use-race-and-ethnicity-panel-urges] By Jocelyn Kaiser, Science. Excerpt: The once widely held notion that humans fall into discrete races has led to geneticists drawing erroneous conclusions about the role of genes in shaping health and traits, and in some cases, to harmful discrimination against some groups. An expert committee is now urging an overhaul of this practice. Most notably, the committee’s report calls for researchers to scrap the term “race” itself in most studies, use caution with other labels such as ethnicity and geography, and determine ancestry by quantifying how closely a group’s members are related to reference genomes drawn from certain populations. …Many human geneticists have already dropped the term “race” from their studies. But other recommendations in the report will be new to researchers using genomic data and challenging to put into practice, says clinical and molecular geneticist Wendy Chung of Columbia University, a report reviewer…. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 4.
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2023-03-15. Schizophrenia pinpointed as a key factor in heat deaths. [https://www.science.org/content/article/schizophrenia-pinpointed-key-factor-heat-deaths] By Warren Cornwall, Science. Excerpt: …more than 600 people died from the heat in British Columbia, as temperatures topped 40°C for days, shattering records in a region better known for temperatures usually half as high. Now, new research has zeroed in on one of the hardest hit groups: people with schizophrenia. Epidemiologists combing through provincial health records found that, overall, those with mental health conditions seemed to have an elevated risk of a heat-related death. That was most severe for people with schizophrenia—a 200% increase compared with typical summers. …schizophrenia can affect the brain’s hypothalamus, which helps regulate temperature through sweating and shivering. Some antipsychotic medications can raise body temperature, which can have deadly effects when coupled with extreme heat. The disease affects people’s ability to make reasoned decisions or sense when they are ill. People with schizophrenia tend to have other conditions tied to heat-related illness, such as diabetes. Finally, schizophrenia is associated with isolation and homelessness, which puts people at risk when temperatures rise…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-03-14. An Oil Rush Threatens Natural Splendors Across East Africa. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/world/africa/oil-pipeline-uganda-tanzania.html] By Abdi Latif Dahir, The New York times. Excerpt: An oil rush is now underway in Uganda, a verdant, landlocked country in East Africa which has signed onto a multibillion-dollar joint venture with French and Chinese oil companies, arguing that the revenues will fund schools, roads and other development. …Land is being acquired and cleared to build a pipeline to carry the oil from the lush west of landlocked Uganda, through forests and game reserves in Tanzania, to a port on the Indian Ocean coast. …Environmentalists are alarmed that oil spills could threaten Lake Victoria, a vital source of freshwater for 40 million people, and ravage the park that protects Murchison Falls, one of the world’s most powerful waterfalls, where the Nile River roars through a narrow gorge. …Fishing communities as well as farmers are being displaced. …Babihemaiso Dismas, a village leader, said China National tells fishermen to stay off the lake for days on end because of the drilling — depriving them of food and income. Residents say they have seen little of the development the company promised. It paved only the roads leading to its drilling sites and offices, and hired few locals, bringing in outside laborers instead. “They are digging millions of dollars in our land but they don’t want to share it,” he said. “They are milking the cow without feeding it.”…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 3.
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2023-03-14. Pythons, Invasive and Hungry, Are Making Their Way North in Florida. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/us/pythons-florida-invasive-species.html] By Patricia Mazzei, The New York Times. Excerpt: A study from the U.S. Geological Survey called the state’s python problem “one of the most intractable invasive-species management issues across the globe.” So much for all the efforts to slow the proliferation of Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades over the last two decades, including with paid contractors, trained volunteers and an annual hunt that has drawn participants from as far as Latvia: The giant snakes have been making their way north, reaching West Palm Beach and Fort Myers and threatening ever-larger stretches of the ecosystem. That was one of the few definitive conclusions in a comprehensive review of python science published last month by the U.S. Geological Survey, which underscored the difficulty of containing the giant snakes since they were first documented as an established population in the state in 2000. …“One python transited continuously for 58.5 hours and traveled 2.43 kilometers in a single day,” the review said of a snake followed with radio tracking…. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 6.
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2023-03-14. Volkswagen Will Invest $193 Billion in Electric Cars and Software. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/14/business/volkswagen-electric-vehicles-batteries-investment.html] By Melissa Eddy, The New York Times. Excerpt: Volkswagen said on Tuesday that it would spend $193 billion on software, battery factories and other investments as it aimed to make every fifth vehicle it sold electric by 2025. The automaker, the world’s second biggest after Toyota, will also focus on expanding its presence in North America, where it has struggled for years, and becoming more competitive in China, one of its most important markets, said Oliver Blume, Volkswagen’s chief executive…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2023-03-13. Rivers in the Sky Are Hindering Winter Arctic Sea Ice Recovery. [https://eos.org/articles/rivers-in-the-sky-are-hindering-winter-arctic-sea-ice-recovery] By Rachel Fritts, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Atmospheric rivers are reaching farther north with greater frequency than they were 4 decades ago, according to new research. These lofted highways of water vapor are dumping rain on recovering Arctic sea ice during the winter, when ice should be at its peak. At any given time, multiple atmospheric rivers are moving more than a Mississippi River’s worth of water from the equator to higher latitudes. When researchers first described the phenomenon several decades ago, it was seen as a midlatitude event, associated with flooding in California and snowmelt in the Pacific Northwest. But recently, atmospheric rivers have been snaking their way to the poles as well. A new study definitively links these extreme weather events with broader trends in Arctic sea ice loss…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-03-12. Silicon Valley Bank Collapse Threatens Climate Start-Ups. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/12/climate/silicon-valley-bank-climate.html] By David Gelles, The New York Times. Excerpt: As the fallout of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank continued to spread over the weekend, it became clear that some of the worst casualties were companies developing solutions for the climate crisis. The bank, the largest to fail since 2008, worked with more than 1,550 technology firms that are creating solar, hydrogen and battery storage projects. According to its website, the bank issued them billions in loans. …Community solar projects appear to be especially hard hit. Silicon Valley Bank said that it led or participated in 62 percent of financing deals for community solar projects, which are smaller-scale solar projects that often serve lower-income residential areas. …There are signs that, when the dust settles, the climate tech industry will have a new lender of choice…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-03-11. Inside the Global Race to Turn Water Into Fuel. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/11/climate/green-hydrogen-energy.html] By By Max Bearak, The New York Times. Excerpt: this remote parcel of the Australian Outback for an imminent transformation. A consortium of energy companies led by BP plans to cover an expanse of land eight times as large as New York City with as many as 1,743 wind turbines, each nearly as tall as the Empire State Building, along with 10 million or so solar panels and more than a thousand miles of access roads to connect them all. But none of the 26 gigawatts of energy the site expects to produce, equivalent to a third of what Australia’s grid currently requires, will go toward public use. Instead, it will be used to manufacture a novel kind of industrial fuel: green hydrogen. …the biggest problem that green hydrogen could help solve: vast iron ore mines that are full of machines powered by immense amounts of dirty fossil fuels. Three of the world’s four biggest ore miners operate dozens of mines here…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2023-03-10. Biden Administration Expected to Move Ahead on a Major Oil Project in Alaska. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/10/climate/biden-willow-oil-alaska.html] By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. Excerpt: …the Biden administration is planning to greenlight an enormous $8 billion oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska…. …Willow would be the largest new oil development in the United States, expected to pump out 600 million barrels of crude over 30 years. Burning all that oil could release nearly 280 million metric tons of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. On an annual basis, that would translate into 9.2 million metric tons of carbon pollution, equal to adding nearly two million cars to the roads each year. The United States, the second biggest polluter on the planet after China, emits about 5.6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually. Environmental activists, who have labeled the project a “carbon bomb” have argued that the project would deepen America’s dependence on oil and gas at a time when the International Energy Agency said nations must stop permitting such projects to avert the most catastrophic impacts of climate change…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2023-03-07. Watch the Milky Way’s Black Hole Spaghettify a Cloud. [https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/watch-the-milky-ways-black-hole-spaghettify-a-cloud/] By Monica Young, Sky & Telescope. Excerpt: If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to fall into a black hole, a dusty gas cloud in the galactic center can give you an idea. Observations of the cloud dating back to 2002 show it’s coming apart in the presence of the supermassive behemoth residing there. That black hole, called Sgr A*, exerts tidal forces on any objects nearby, pulling harder on the nearer side than on the farther side, and stretching — or spaghettifying — them in the process. The extent of the black hole’s effects depends on the density of the object itself: A cloud will stretch like taffy while a star is less easily torn apart. …Anna Ciurlo (University of California, Los Angeles) and colleagues show in the February 20th Astrophysical Journal that X7 is on its way toward the black hole. It will pass within some 3,200 astronomical units (a.u.; 18 light-days) of Sgr A* in 2036. Already, the cloud is stretching out: it’s now nine times as long as it is wide. …The fact that X7 won’t survive its upcoming pass puts a limit on its age. Its orbit is only 170 years long, so the cloud can’t be more than that many years old. Ciurlo’s team therefore suggests that the gas was ejected recently when a pair of stars collided…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 6.
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2023-03-10. One of North America’s most dangerous invasive species is hitchhiking on fish. [https://www.science.org/content/article/one-north-america-s-most-dangerous-invasive-species-hitchhiking-fish] By Richard Pallardy, Science. Excerpt: Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) are one of the most catastrophic aquatic invasive species in North America. Native to Russia and Ukraine, these fingernail-size mollusks have spread around the world, often carried in ballast water—used to stabilize boats—as larvae, where they’ve caused billions of dollars of damage to fisheries, water treatment facilities, and other aquatic industries by clogging intake pipes and robbing nutrients from ecosystems. Now, researchers have discovered a new way they invade—by hitchhiking on fish. …The discovery is particularly concerning because fish are highly mobile organisms that don’t have a means of removing these parasites. And lake chub and similar species are often used as bait by anglers, which means they’re frequently carried from one body of water to another…. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 6.
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2023-03-10. A Huge City Polluter? Buildings. Here’s a Surprising Fix. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/10/climate/buildings-carbon-dioxide-emissions-climate.html] By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: On cold mornings in New York City, boilers in the basements of thousands of buildings kick on, burning natural gas or oil to provide heat for the people upstairs. Carbon dioxide from these boilers wafts up chimneys and into the air, one of the city’s biggest sources of global warming emissions. …At the Grand Tier, a 30-story apartment tower on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, the carbon dioxide from its two giant gas boilers is captured, cooled to a liquid and then trucked to a concrete factory in Brooklyn. There, the carbon is mixed with cement and sealed into concrete blocks, where it can’t heat the atmosphere. “This is the first carbon capture system on a building that we’re aware of anywhere in the world,” said Brian Asparro, the chief operating officer of CarbonQuest, the company behind the system. “And we expect that it won’t be the last.” …A sweeping new climate law in New York City aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions from large buildings 40 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. Starting next year, buildings that exceed emissions limits will face steadily escalating fines. …that has turned New York City into a laboratory of sorts, forcing change and innovation as property owners scramble to avoid huge penalties. …New York State is currently funding a round of novel electric heat pump and efficiency projects that could serve as models for other buildings…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 8.
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2023-03-08. China battles alien marsh grass at unprecedented scale. [https://www.science.org/content/article/china-battles-alien-marsh-grass-unprecedented-scale] By Erik Stokstad. Excerpt: Along its 18,000 kilometers of coastline, China has been taken over by a green invader. Smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) grows tall and thick across tidal mudflats, depriving endangered migratory birds of habitat, clogging shipping channels, and ruining clam farms. Now, China aims to beat back 90% of the weed by 2025. …The nationwide effort, launched last month, “is by far the largest action plan for wetland invasive species control in China and even in the world,” says Bo Li, an invasion ecologist at Fudan and Yunnan universities who was not involved in creating the plan. It won’t be simple or cheap, costing hundreds of millions of dollars, Li estimates. And schemes to dig up, drown, or poison the weed all have side effects. …Spartina, native to eastern North America, was brought to China starting in 1979 to stabilize tidal mudflats and turn them into land for agriculture or development. The plan worked, but the Spartina kept spreading and now covers about 68,000 hectares, about the area of New York City. The government has realized, says Yihui Zhang, a wetland ecologist at Xiamen University, that “the harm of Spartina alterniflora outweighs its benefits.” It dominates native salt marshes, outcompeting native plants that provide food for indigenous species such as the reed parrotbill, which has declined as a result…. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 6.
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2023-03-08. In Zimbabwe, drought is driving a hydropower crisis—and a search for alternatives. [https://www.science.org/content/article/zimbabwe-drought-driving-hydropower-crisis-and-search-alternatives] By Andrew Mambondyani, Science. Excerpt: …a prolonged drought has plunged Zimbabwe into a severe energy crisis. Water levels behind Zimbabwe’s main hydropower dam, which produces nearly 70% of the nation’s electricity, have dropped too low to reliably generate power, forcing utility managers to impose rolling blackouts that last for up to 20 hours per day. …The crisis, researchers say, has highlighted the growing threat that an increasingly dry and erratic climate poses to African nations that rely on hydropower. In Zimbabwe, it is prompting the government and researchers to step up the search for more dependable energy supplies for the nation’s 16 million people. …by 2030 “new hydropower dams will no longer be an attractive option across most of Africa.” …the nation’s government is moving to expand coal-fired power plants. But it is also examining sources of energy that won’t add to greenhouse gas emissions, including solar power and biogas made by fermenting organic wastes. “The costs of these technologies have been rapidly dropping; hence they have become more attractive investment options,” Sterl says. …researchers concluded that biogas has the potential to play a bigger role in Zimbabwe’s energy mix. A second recent study, from a team based at Shanghai University, notes that Zimbabwe, which receives some 3000 hours of sunlight per year, also has yet to fully tap the potential of solar power. By building solar panel arrays that are linked to battery storage systems, power producers could reduce their reliance on imported electricity and ensure more reliable power supplies, they reported in the Journal of Renewable Energy and Environmentin August 2022…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2023-03-07. Historic treaty could open the way to protecting 30% of the oceans. [https://www.science.org/content/article/historic-treaty-could-open-way-protecting-30-oceans] By Erik Stokstad, Science. Excerpt: After 2 weeks of intense negotiations, countries agreed this week on a historic treaty to protect biodiversity in international waters. The agreement, announced on 4 March at the United Nations, sets up a legal process for establishing marine protected areas (MPAs), a key tool for protecting at least 30% of the ocean, which an intergovernmental convention recently set as a target for 2030. The treaty also gives poorer countries a stake in conservation by strengthening their research capacity and creating a framework for sharing financial rewards from the DNA of marine organisms. …The treaty, which will enter into force once 60 nations have ratified it, would require a three-quarters vote of member countries to establish an MPA….. [See also article by Catrin Einhorn, The New York Times, Nations Agree on Language for Historic Treaty to Protect Ocean Life.] For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 7.
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2023-03-06. Bee and butterfly numbers are falling, even in undisturbed forests. [https://www.science.org/content/article/bee-butterfly-numbers-are-falling-even-undisturbed-forests] By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science. Excerpt: Habitat destruction, pesticide use, and other human impacts are often blamed for the well-documented decline of insects in recent decades. But even in forests where few humans tread, some bees and butterflies are declining, researchers have found. Over the past 15 years, populations of bees shrank 62.5% and those of butterflies dropped 57.6% in a forest in the U.S. southeast. In addition, the number of bee species there fell by 39%, the team reports this month in Current Biology. Five times between 2007 and 2022, researchers surveyed the insects in three forested areas in the Oconee National Forest in northern Georgia. The sites were relatively undisturbed by humans and didn’t have common invasive plants such as Chinese privet. The team suspects climate change may be warming the region and affecting bee and possibly butterfly survival. Invasive insects may also be to blame…. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 1.
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2023-03-06. 1,000 super-emitting methane leaks risk triggering climate tipping points. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/revealed-1000-super-emitting-methane-leaks-risk-triggering-climate-tipping-points] By Damian Carrington, The Guardian. Excerpt: More than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites gushed the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the Guardian can reveal, mostly from oil and gas facilities. The worst single leak spewed the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67m running cars. Separate data also reveals 55 “methane bombs” around the world – fossil fuel extraction sites where gas leaks alone from future production would release levels of methane equivalent to 30 years of all US greenhouse gas emissions. Methane emissions cause 25% of global heating today and there has been a “scary” surge since 2007, according to scientists. This acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating and seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 3.
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2023-03-06. Meat, dairy and rice production will bust 1.5C climate target, shows study. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/06/meat-dairy-rice-high-methane-food-production-bust-climate-target-study] By Damian Carrington, The Guardian. Excerpt: …Climate-heating emissions from food production, dominated by meat, dairy and rice, will by themselves break the key international target of 1.5C if left unchecked, a detailed study has shown. …the scientists said the temperature rise could be cut by 55% by cutting meat consumption in rich countries to medically recommended levels, reducing emissions from livestock and their manure, and using renewable energy in the food system. …The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, treated each greenhouse gas separately for 94 key types of food, enabling their impact on climate over time to be better understood. Feeding this emissions data into a widely used climate model showed that the continuation of today’s food production would lead to a rise of 0.7C by 2100 if global population growth was low, and a 0.9C rise if population growth was high…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-03-04. ‘Everyone should be concerned’: Antarctic sea ice reaches lowest levels ever recorded. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/04/everyone-should-be-concerned-antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-lowest-levels-ever-recorded] By Graham Readfearn, The Guardian. Excerpt: For 44 years, satellites have helped scientists track how much ice is floating on the ocean around Antarctica’s 18,000km coastline. The continent’s fringing waters witness a massive shift each year, with sea ice peaking at about 18m sq km each September before dropping to just above 2m sq km by February. But across those four decades of satellite observations, there has never been less ice around the continent than there was last week. …Hobbs and other scientists said the new record – the third time it’s been broken in six years – has started a scramble for answers among polar scientists. The fate of Antarctica – especially the ice on land – is important because the continent holds enough ice to raise sea levels by many metres if it was to melt. While melting sea ice does not directly raise sea levels because it is already floating on water, several scientists told the Guardian of knock-on effects that can. …Sea ice helps to buffer the effect of storms on ice attached to the coast. If it starts to disappear for longer, the increased wave action can weaken those floating ice shelves that themselves stabilise the massive ice sheets and glaciers behind them on the land…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-02-27. Who rules Earth? Wild mammals far outweighed by humans and domestic animals. [https://www.science.org/content/article/who-rules-earth-wild-mammals-far-outweighed-humans-and-domestic-animals] By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science. Excerpt: …The study…“is the first that provides quite convincing values for mammals,” says Patrick Schultheiss, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Würzburg. Published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it concludes that wild land mammals alive now have a total biomass of 22 million tons, and marine mammals account for another 40 million tons. Those numbers are relatively puny: Ants alone amount to 80 million tons, …humans, who weigh in at 390 million tons, with their livestock and other hangers-on such as urban rats adding another 630 million tons. It is stark evidence of how the natural world is being overrun, researchers say. …lead author Ron Milo, a quantitative biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science …and his colleagues …In 2018, …grabbed headlines by estimating the global weight of all life; 2 years later, they added the global weight of all humanmade objects and infrastructure, …. They also made a rough estimate of 50 million tons for wild mammals—“a shockingly tiny fraction of the mass of life on Earth,” …On land, much of the wild mammalian biomass is concentrated in a few large-bodied species, including boar, elephants, kangaroos, and several kinds of deer. The top 10 species account for 8.8 million tons—40% of the estimated global wild land mammal biomass…. Rodents—not counting human-associated rats and mice—make up 16% and carnivores account for 3% of that biomass. …In contrast, on the domesticated front, cows collectively weigh 420 million tons and dogs about as much as all wild land mammals, the new study reports. The biomass of housecats is about double that of African elephants and four times that of moose…. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2023-02-27. How Hail Hazards Are Changing Around the Mediterranean. [https://eos.org/science-updates/how-hail-hazards-are-changing-around-the-mediterranean] By Sante Laviola, Giulio Monte, Elsa Cattani and Vincenzo Levizzani, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A new method for studying hailstorms from space offers more consistent and more complete views of how and where hail forms, and how climate change might influence hail’s impacts in the future. The Mediterranean Basin is one of the most vulnerable areas on Earth to the effects of rapid climate change. Observed rates of temperature rise indicate that the region is warming 20% faster compared with the global average, inducing a trend toward drier conditions and changing precipitation regimes. The steep temperature rise increases the vulnerability of the Mediterranean Basin to several hazards that affect ecosystems and human health and security, such as heat waves, droughts, and fires. Along with such events, the frequency and intensity of storm-related hazards also may be amplified around the Mediterranean in a warming climate. Hail is one hazard of interest because of its dangerous and destructive nature, especially when hail particles grow to large sizes. …Our analysis of the 22-year data set demonstrates, despite high interannual variability, that there are statistically significant (significance > 90%) increasing trends in the numbers of large hail and super hail events across the entire Mediterranean Basin …there has been a roughly 30% increase in the incidence of the phenomena in the past decade (2010–2021) with respect to the preceding 1999–2010 period…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-02-27. Mercury Isn’t Alone in Orbit, and Scientists Don’t Know Why. [https://eos.org/articles/mercury-isnt-alone-in-orbit-and-scientists-dont-know-why] By Jure Japelj, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A cloud of dust traces the innermost planet’s orbital path. By all accounts, it shouldn’t be there. …In a new study published in the Planetary Science Journal, scientists tried to trace the genesis of Mercury’s dust. And although they still don’t know how this improbable cloud formed, they do know that it probably has a different origin story than the one escorting our own planet. …Earth’s dust ring formed from the immense cloud of dust, called a zodiacal or interplanetary dust cloud, that pervades the space between planets. …Earth and Venus are massive enough to stall migrating dust, but Mercury is not. That close to the Sun, phenomena including solar winds, solar light, and strong magnetic fields should, quite literally, kick the dust up, and Mercury isn’t large enough to trap the celestial debris in its gravitational pull. …Using data from NASA’s MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging) spacecraft, the team identified two craters larger than 40 kilometers in diameter on Mercury’s surface that might be younger than 50 million years. Perhaps collateral debris from these strikes billowed out into space…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2023-02-27. As Oil Companies Stay Lean, Workers Move to Renewable Energy. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/27/business/energy-environment/oil-gas-renewable-energy-jobs.html] By Clifford Krauss, The New York Times. Excerpt: …Oil and gas companies laid off roughly 160,000 workers in 2020, and they maintained tight budgets and hired cautiously over the last two years. But many renewable businesses expanded rapidly after the early shock of the pandemic faded, snapping up geologists, engineers and other workers from the likes of Exxon and Chevron. …Executives and workers in energy hubs in Houston, Dallas and other places say steady streams of people are moving from fossil fuel to renewable energy jobs…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2023-02-27. ‘Big irony’ as winter sports sponsored by climate polluters, report finds. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/27/big-irony-as-winter-sports-sponsored-by-climate-polluters-report-finds] By Damian Carrington, The Guardian. Excerpt: Winter sports are being sponsored by high-carbon companies despite their pollution helping to melt the snow the sports require to exist, according to a new report. The report found that more than 100 events, organisations and athletes were sponsored by fossil fuel companies, carmakers and airlines. The sponsorships were like “winter sport nailing the lid on its own coffin”, said one Olympic champion. The report, by campaign group Badvertising and thinktank New Weather Sweden, found 83 sponsorship deals from car manufacturers. The largest governing body in winter sports, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS), is itself sponsored by Audi. Almost 90% of the vehicles produced by Audi in 2021 were petrol or diesel driven. The report also found sponsorship deals from 12 fossil fuel companies, including Gazprom and Equinor, and five airlines, including British Airways and SAS. …The European Alps suffered a poor winter for snow in 2023 and recent research found the duration of snow cover there is now 36 days shorter than the long-term average, as CO2 emissions drive up global heating…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-02-26. Desperate for Babies, China Races to Undo an Era of Birth Limits. Is It Too Late?. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/world/asia/china-birth-rate.html] By Nicole Hong and Zixu Wang, The New York Times. Excerpt: In China, a country that limits most couples to three children, one province is making a bold pitch to try to get its citizens to procreate: have as many babies as you want, even if you are unmarried. The initiative, which came into effect this month, points to the renewed urgency of China’s efforts to spark a baby boom after its population shrank last year for the first time since a national famine in the 1960s. …there are plans to expand national insurance coverage for fertility treatments, including I.V.F. But the measures have been met with a wave of public skepticism, ridicule and debate, highlighting the challenges China faces as it seeks to stave off a shrinking work force that could imperil economic growth. Many young Chinese adults, who themselves were born during China’s draconian one-child policy, are pushing back on the government’s inducements to have babies in a country that is among the most expensive in the world to raise a child. To them, such incentives do little to address anxieties about supporting their aging parents and managing the rising costs of education, housing and health care…. For GSS Population Growth chapter 6.
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2023-02-22. Finding Climate History in the Rafters of New York City Buildings. [https://eos.org/features/finding-climate-history-in-the-rafters-of-new-york-city-buildings] By Jenessa Duncombe, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: When renovating in the Big Apple, you might acquire a several-hundred-year-old climate database along with your new kitchen and bath. …Hidden in wooden joists and beams in New York City’s oldest buildings is the largest repository of old-growth timber in the eastern United States, said Rao. These timbers can hold valuable information about past climates—but it can be uncovered only if scientists can get their hands on the timbers before they go to a landfill. …Scientists and engineers estimate that 14,000 cubic meters of old-growth wood are removed from buildings in New York City (NYC) each year during demolitions or renovations; the city is continuously being remade. …Dendrochronology emerged as a tool for studying past events in the late 1800s, when an astronomer, Andrew E. Douglass, recorded the patterns of wide and narrow rings on ponderosa pine stumps near the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz. …Since then, tree rings have become a popular proxy to estimate past meteorological conditions. Ice cores, speleothems, and even bat guano have all revealed Earth’s ancient and historical secrets, but tree rings are unique because trees are so widespread. …The International Tree-Ring Data Bank at NOAA has more than 5,000 tree ring measurements from six continents. …Scientific findings from tree rings can advance climate science and inform regional policies. In 2004, an influential paper in Science suggested that the U.S. Southwest was in the midst of a long-term drought on the basis of tree ring records from the West spanning 600 years. Today, knowledge of this 22-year-long “megadrought” has prompted the widespread adoption of sustainable water practices…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 7.
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2023-02-25. The Salton Sea, an Accident of History, Faces a New Water Crisis. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/climate/salton-sea-colorado-river-drought-crisis.html] By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. Excerpt: The vast California lake relies on runoff from cropland to avoid disappearing. But as farmers face water cuts due to drought and an ever drier Colorado River, the Salton Sea stands to lose again. …As the sea has shrunk it’s become so salty — it’s currently nearly twice as salty as seawater — that only a handful of fish species, including tilapia and the endangered desert pupfish, remain. With fewer fish, bird populations along what is an important migratory flyway have declined. …Human health has been affected, too. The retreating water has exposed huge expanses of lake bed, and with wind stirring up dust from them, air quality in the Imperial Valley is among the worst in the state. That’s led to a high incidence of childhood asthma and other respiratory illnesses among the valley’s 180,000 residents…. For GSS chapter Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-02-23. What’s Inside Earth’s Inner Core? Seismic Waves Reveal an Innermost Core. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/science/earth-core-seismic-waves.html] By Kenneth Chang, The New York Times. Excerpt: Geology textbooks almost inevitably include a cutaway diagram of the Earth showing four neatly delineated layers: a thin outer shell of rock that we live on known as the crust; the mantle, where rocks flow like an extremely viscous liquid, driving the movement of continents and the lifting of mountains; a liquid outer core of iron and nickel that generates the planet’s magnetic field; and a solid inner core. Analyzing the crisscrossing of seismic waves from large earthquakes, two Australian scientists say there is a distinctly different layer at the very center of the Earth. “We have now confirmed the existence of the innermost inner core,” said one of the scientists, Hrvoje Tkalcić, a professor of geophysics at the Australian National University in Canberra. Dr. Tkalcic and Thanh-Son Pham …estimate that the innermost inner core is about 800 miles wide; the entire inner core is about 1,500 miles wide. Their findings were published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. While the cutaway diagram appears to depict clear-cut divisions, knowledge about the deep interior of Earth is unavoidably fuzzy. …Most of what is known about what lies beneath comes from seismic waves — the vibrations of earthquakes traveling through and around the planet. Think of them as a giant sonogram of Earth…. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 3.
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2023-02-22. James Webb telescope detects evidence of ancient ‘universe breaker’ galaxies. [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/22/universe-breakers-james-webb-telescope-detects-six-ancient-galaxies] By Hannah Devlin, The Guardian. Excerpt: The James Webb space telescope has detected what appear to be six massive ancient galaxies, which astronomers are calling “universe breakers” because their existence could upend current theories of cosmology. The objects date to a time when the universe was just 3% of its current age and are far larger than was presumed possible for galaxies so early after the big bang. If confirmed, the findings would call into question scientists’ understanding of how the earliest galaxies formed…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 9.
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2023-02-21. In Search for Sustainable Materials, Developers Turn to Hemp. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/business/hemp-construction-buildings.html] By Kevin Williams, The New York Times. Excerpt: …Interest in hemp as a viable substitute for construction material is growing as developers seek greener building options. Hemp can be used in block form, as it was in the building of the sports center, or poured like traditional concrete using hempcrete, a combination of lime, hemp fibers and a chemical binder. Hemp panels can also be used. …Hemp is already used in a variety of industrial products, including rope, textiles and biofuel. But hemp construction is hampered by high costs and a supply chain that is not fully formed. And proponents must overcome resistance to a product that is often mistakenly tied to recreational drug use. …A building constructed from ready-to-use hemp blocks can chop 20 to 30 percent off the typical production schedule, with no need for cement joints or the drying time required with traditional concrete blocks…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 8.
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2023-02-16. How a Record-Breaking Copper Catalyst Converts CO2 Into Liquid Fuels. [https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2023/02/16/copper-catalyst-converts-co2-into-liquid-fuels/] By Theresa Duque, Berkeley Lab. Excerpt: …new insights could help advance the next generation of solar fuels. …a research team led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has gained new insight by capturing real-time movies of copper nanoparticles (copper particles engineered at the scale of a billionth of a meter) as they convert CO2 and water into renewable fuels and chemicals: ethylene, ethanol, and propanol, among others. The work was reported in the journal Nature last week. …Peidong Yang, a senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Materials Sciences and Chemical Sciences Divisions who led the study …is also a professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at UC Berkeley. “Knowing how copper is such an excellent electrocatalyst brings us steps closer to turning CO2 into new, renewable solar fuels through artificial photosynthesis.”… For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2023-02-16. Will global warming make temperature less deadly? [https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2023/hot-cold-extreme-temperature-deaths/] By Harry Stevens, The Washington Post. Excerpt: Both heat and cold can kill. But cold is far more deadly. For every death linked to heat, nine are tied to cold. The scientific paper published in the June 2021 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change was alarming. Between 1991 and 2018, the peer-reviewed study reported, more than one-third of deaths from heat exposure were linked to global warming. …A month later, the same research group, which is based out of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine but includes scientists from dozens of countries, released another peer-reviewed study that told a fuller, more complex story about the link between climate change, temperature and human mortality. …the second paper reported that between 2000 and 2019, annual deaths from heat exposure increased. But deaths from cold exposure, which were far more common, fell by an even larger amount. All told, during those two decades the world warmed by about 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit, and some 650,000 fewer people died from temperature exposure…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-02-14. The Global Health Benefits of Going Net Zero. [https://eos.org/research-spotlights/the-global-health-benefits-of-going-net-zero] By Kirsten Steinke, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Fossil fuel combustion produces greenhouse gases that heat the planet, but it also emits air pollutants that harm human health. Fine particulate matter and ozone, for example, have been linked to fatal lung and heart issues. And a recent study published in GeoHealth adds to the growing body of research that shows that when countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, the associated improvements in air quality could save countless lives. …The team concluded that particulate matter and ozone caused more than 2.2 million premature deaths each year in G20 countries. Reducing emissions in these countries from power plants alone could reduce that death toll by nearly 300,000 lives by 2040…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-02-17. Why Did a Turkish City Withstand the Quake When Others Crumbled? [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/17/world/middleeast/erzin-turkey-earthquake.html] By Cora Engelbrecht and Nimet Kirac, The New York Times. Excerpt: For miles around the small Turkish city of Erzin, the earth is shattered and buildings are razed, towns and cities turned into tombs of concrete by last week’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake. But Erzin still stands, an oasis of stability near the Mediterranean, where the question of why the city weathered the quake and a powerful aftershock — and so many others did not, leaving more than 40,000 dead in Turkey and Syria — is consuming the population. In Erzin, the mayor said, no one died and not a single building fell. …engineers and scientists credited …factors combining to save the city, like better construction that followed the latest seismic codes, and Erzin’s lucky location on very solid ground. …soft, water-laden sediments make cities and villages uniquely vulnerable to earthquakes,” …When one strikes… “this land, it moves like a wave.” …In contrast, Erzin stands higher above sea level, and is built on hard ground comprising “bedrock and coarser grains than sand,” said Tamer Duman, a geographer. …The hard soil acts as a shock absorber between structures and a quake’s waves, reducing buildings’ sway…. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 2.
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2023-02-16. Scientists Wondered if Warming Caused Argentina’s Drought. The Answer: No. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/climate/argentina-drought.html] By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. Excerpt: Lack of rainfall that caused severe drought in Argentina and Uruguay last year was not made more likely by climate change, scientists said Thursday. But global warming was a factor in extreme heat experienced in both countries that made the drought worse, they said. The researchers, part of a loose-knit group called World Weather Attribution that studies recent extreme weather for signs of the influence of climate change, said that the rainfall shortage was a result of natural climate variability. Specifically, they said, the presence of La Niña, a climate pattern linked to below-normal sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific that influences weather around the world, most likely affected precipitation. La Niña usually occurs once every three to five years, often alternating with El Niño, which is linked to above-normal sea temperatures. But La Niña conditions have persisted for most of the past three years, and central South America has been drier than normal for most of that time…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 7 and Energy Flow chapter 8.
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2023-02-16. New Auroras Found Glowing in the Skies of Jupiter’s Moons. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/science/auroras-jupiter-moons.html] By Robin George Andrews, The New York Times. Excerpt: New research shows auroras can also be seen on the Galilean moons of Jupiter: hypervolcanic Io, icy Europa, quirky Callisto and gigantic Ganymede. …other than Ganymede, the big moons of Jupiter lack magnetic bubbles. Instead, their auroras owe their existence to Io. Its noxious atmosphere — partly supplied by the moon’s epic volcanic eruptions — regularly sheds into space. The castoffs mingle with sunlight and become electrically excited. Plenty gets captured by Jupiter’s colossal magnetic bubble, but some of it slams back into Io’s atmosphere, or into the other three moons’ gassy sheaths. Those impacts are what ignite the moons’ auroral lights…. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 5.
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2023-02-16. Hidden Hydrogen. [https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel] By Eric Hand. Excerpt: IN THE SHADE of a mango tree, Mamadou Ngulo Konaré recounted the legendary event of his childhood. In 1987, well diggers had come to his village of Bourakébougou, Mali, to drill for water, but had given up on one dry borehole at a depth of 108 meters. “Meanwhile, wind was coming out of the hole,” Konaré told Denis Brière, a petrophysicist and vice president at Chapman Petroleum Engineering, in 2012. When one driller peered into the hole while smoking a cigarette, the wind exploded in his face. …The color of the fire in daytime was like blue sparkling water and did not have black smoke pollution. The color of the fire at night was like shining gold, and all over the fields we could see each other in the light. …It took the crew weeks to snuff out the fire and cap the well. …In 2012, …Chapman Petroleum …discovered that the gas was 98% hydrogen. That was extraordinary: Hydrogen almost never turns up in oil operations, and it wasn’t thought to exist within the Earth much at all. …Contrary to conventional wisdom, large stores of natural hydrogen may exist all over the world, like oil and gas—but not in the same places. These researchers say water-rock reactions deep within the Earth continuously generate hydrogen, which percolates up through the crust and sometimes accumulates in underground traps. There might be enough natural hydrogen to meet burgeoning global demand for thousands of years, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) model that was presented in October 2022 at a meeting of the Geological Society of America…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2023-02-14. Could solar geoengineering cool the planet? U.S. gets serious about finding out. [https://www.science.org/content/article/could-solar-geoengineering-cool-planet-u-s-gets-serious-about-finding-out] By Paul Voosen, Science. Excerpt: Any work on solar geoengineering—the notion of artificially making the atmosphere more reflective to cool an overheated planet—is fraught with controversy. …The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is venturing …to understand the types, amounts, and behavior of particles naturally present in the stratosphere. …Research on solar geoengineering—also called solar radiation management—has long been anathema to some climate scientists and activists. They fear it could distract from emissions cuts, could have unforeseen risks, and would not address some impacts of rising carbon dioxide, including ocean acidification. Federal agencies have largely steered clear of the work, even after a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) in 2021 recommended a $200 million research program. …They want to study how such sulfur interacts with organic particles such as soot and the dust of meteorites. Rosenlof says they will also study how soot absorbs the Sun’s heat, causing air parcels to rise and prolonging particle lifetimes in the stratosphere.Hidden Hydr… For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-02-12. Electric vehicle batteries require precious minerals. That old cellphone may be the solution. [https://abcnews.go.com/Business/electric-vehicle-batteries-require-precious-minerals-cellphone-solution/story?id=96977978] By Morgan Korn, ABC News. Excerpt: That old laptop, cellphone and TV remote may have a newfound purpose: powering the next generation of electric vehicles. Luxury brand Audi recently partnered with Redwood Materials, a battery recycling startup, to collect rechargeable batteries found in everyday consumer devices — phones, hearing aides, electric toothbrushes and video game controllers. …Devices dropped off at dealerships are shipped to Redwood’s Nevada facilities for the sorting, recycling and remanufacturing of cobalt and lithium — two minerals required for EV battery production. …Growing interest in EVs has accelerated the push for valuable minerals like cobalt, nickel and lithium that are extracted from overseas mines at heavy environmental and humanitarian costs. Recycling of consumer batteries can reduce the forced extraction of precious minerals and create a domestic supply that meets the government’s and automakers’ EV goals, according to Alexis Georgeson, Redwood’s vice president of government relations and communications. …Redwood also recycles “end-of-life” battery packs from automakers like Toyota, Ford, Volvo, Volkswagen and Audi. Lithium, nickel and cobalt are extracted and remanufactured into cathode — a core component of an EV battery…. See also New York Times article Energy Dept. Will Lend $2 Billion to a Battery Component Maker. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2023-02-10. Cacti replacing snow on Swiss mountainsides due to global heating. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/10/cacti-replacing-snow-on-swiss-mountainsides-due-to-global-heating] By Alessio Perrone, The Guardian. Excerpt: The residents of the Swiss canton of Valais are used to seeing their mountainsides covered with snow in winter and edelweiss flowers in summer. But as global heating intensifies, they are increasingly finding an invasive species colonising the slopes: cacti…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-02-09. Wind Could Power Future Settlements on Mars. [https://eos.org/articles/wind-could-power-future-settlements-on-mars] By Alakananda Dasgupta, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Using a sophisticated global climate model adapted to Mars, space scientists explore the hidden potential of wind energy on the Red Planet. …there’s the question of where to find a viable and steady source of energy that would be required for any human mission to Mars. The answer to that question may be blowing in the Martian wind, according to a new study. …with the atmospheric density of Mars being 1% that of Earth, much larger turbine blades would be needed to generate sufficient energy. …Now, a study published in Nature Astronomy has suggested that wind energy could, indeed, be harnessed to power human settlements on Mars. “We were excited to find that there are many locations across the planet where winds are strong enough to provide a really stable power resource” and compensate for a shortfall in solar power using wind turbines, said Victoria Hartwick, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Ames Research Center. The team tailored a climate model designed for Earth to simulate Martian climatic conditions and assess winds on the Red Planet…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2023-02-06. Battling Lava and Snowstorms, 2.5 Miles Above the Pacific. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/climate/mauna-loa-carbon-dioxide-eruption.html] By Raymond Zhong, The New York Times. Excerpt: Two and a half miles above the Pacific, with the combined exhalations of a vast swath of humankind and its cars and factories blowing toward him, Aidan Colton looked out over the volcano’s snow-streaked summit and lifted up a glass flask the size of a coconut. He held his breath — even the carbon dioxide from his lungs might corrupt the sample. After a moment, he opened the valve. The air he is collecting at Mauna Kea is feeding the world’s longest-running record of direct readings of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. …in November, Mauna Loa erupted for the first time in almost 40 years. No one was hurt, but lava flows up to 30 feet deep toppled the observatory’s power lines and buried a mile of the main road up the mountain. The facility was paralyzed. It took a transoceanic scramble, and a dose of luck, for scientists with the Mauna Loa observatory to restart their readings — by taking them, for the first time, on Mauna Kea, the next volcano over…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 5.
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2023-02-10. As Federal Cash Flows to Unions, Democrats Hope to Reap the Rewards. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/democrats-biden-unions.html] By Jonathan Weisman, New York Times. Excerpt: In places like West Virginia, money from three major laws passed by Congress is pouring into the alternative energy industry and other projects. “I think it’s a renaissance for the labor movement,” said one union official. …Money is just starting to flow from the last Congress’s three huge legislative victories — a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, a $280 billion measure to rekindle a domestic semiconductor industry and the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $370 billion for clean energy to combat climate change…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2023-02-10. Electric Vehicles Could Match Gasoline Cars on Price This Year. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/business/electric-vehicles-price-cost.html] By Jack Ewing, The New York Times. Excerpt: Competition, government incentives and falling raw material prices are making battery-powered cars more affordable sooner than expected…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2023-02-09. Oceans Away. [https://www.science.org/content/article/oceans-away-raising-salmon-land-next-big-thing-farming-fish] By Erik Stokstad, Science. Excerpt: Hundreds of meter-long fish [salmon] swam vigorously in each house-size tank, while an overhead crane delivered a 1-ton sack of feed into an automated dispenser. Rumbling pumps and tanks filled with sand, separated from the fish tanks by a soundproof wall, treated wastewater that had been stripped of fish poop. Nitrogen and phosphorus were diverted to the vast greenhouse while cleansed water recirculated to the salmon. “Sometimes the water is so clean it looks like the fish are swimming in air,” says Summerfelt, an engineer who is head of R&D at the company, called Superior Fresh. …investors have pumped money into what many see as the next big thing in farmed fish. Over the past decade, global sales of pink-fleshed farmed salmon have nearly doubled to $12 billion, and demand is expected to keep growing. Traditionally, that bounty has been raised in large floating cages, called net pens, located in coastal waters. But environmental concerns and limited room for expansion have prompted companies to explore moving operations ashore…. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 7.
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2023-02-09. ‘Monster profits’ for energy giants reveal a self-destructive fossil fuel resurgence. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/09/profits-energy-fossil-fuel-resurgence-climate-crisis-shell-exxon-bp-chevron-totalenergies] By Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Excerpt: Last year’s combined $200bn profit for the ‘big five’ oil and gas companies brings little hope of driving down emissions. …Exxon, the Texas-based oil giant, led the way with a record $55.7bn in annual profit, taking home about $6.3m every hour last year. California’s Chevron had a record $36.5bn profit, while Shell announced the best results of its 115-year history, a $39.9bn surplus, and BP, another London-based firm, notcheda $27.7bn profit. The French company TotalEnergies also had a record, at $36.2bn…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 3.
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2023-02-09. Can China Reverse Its Population Decline? Just Ask Sweden. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/09/upshot/china-population-decline.html] By Andrew Jacobs and Francesca Paris, The New York Times. Excerpt: China’s population has begun to decline, a demographic turning point for the country that has global implications. …China joined an expanding set of nations with shrinking populations caused by years of falling fertility and often little or even negative net migration, a group that includes Italy, Greece and Russia, along with swaths of Eastern and Southern Europe and several Asian nations like South Korea and Japan. …History suggests that once a country crosses the threshold of negative population growth, there is little that its government can do to reverse it. …Two decades ago, Australia tried a “baby bonus” program that paid the equivalent of nearly 6,000 U.S. dollars a child at its peak. At the time the campaign started in 2004, the country’s fertility rate was around 1.8 children per woman. (For most developed nations, a fertility rate of 2.1 is the minimum needed for the population to remain steady without immigration.) …by 2020, six years after the program had ended, it was at 1.6 — lower than when the cash payments were first introduced…. For GSS Population Growth chapter 6.
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2023-02-08. ‘They get the big picture’: the Swedish tech startup helping cities go green. [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/08/they-get-the-big-picture-the-swedish-tech-startup-helping-cities-go-green] By Jon Henley ,The Guardian. Excerpt: Online tool …used in eight countries by a rapidly lengthening list of cities – now more than 50 – including Helsingborg and Malmö in Sweden, Madrid in Spain, Kiel and Mannheim in Germany, Cincinnati in the US, and Bristol and Nottingham in the UK. … “Cities account for more than 70% of global CO2 emissions,” Shalit said. “They are clearly critical to climate action, but they are also complex and highly interconnected systems – and they really lacked the tools to plan and manage their transition.” ClimateOS, the integrated platform developed by Shalit’s Stockholm-based startup, ClimateView, aims to help cities plan and manage their transition to zero carbon by breaking it down into distinct but interconnected “building blocks”…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-02-08. There’s a Ring Around This Dwarf Planet. It Shouldn’t Be There. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/science/quaoar-rings-roche-limit.html] By Kenneth Chang, The New York Times. Excerpt: Quaoar, which orbits the sun in the distant Kuiper belt, is the latest small object shown to have a ring like the ones around Saturn. …Quaoar (pronounced KWA-wahr …is a little less than half the diameter of Pluto and about a third of the diameter of Earth’s moon. It is likely to be big enough to qualify as a dwarf planet, pulled by its gravity into a round shape. …The ring is not visible in telescope images. Rather, astronomers found it indirectly, when distant stars happened to pass behind Quaoar, blocking the starlight. From 2018 through 2021, Quaoar passed in front of four stars, and astronomers on Earth were able to observe the shadow of the eclipses, also known as stellar occultations. However, they also observed some dimming of the starlight before and after the star blinked out. That pointed to a ring obscuring part of the light, an international team of astronomers concluded in Wednesday’s Nature paper…. See also Sky & Telescope article. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2023-02-03. Centuries-Old Archive Reveals Far-Flung Impacts of Major Eruptions. [https://eos.org/articles/centuries-old-archive-reveals-far-flung-impacts-of-major-eruptions] By Shannon Banks, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In 1815, an Earth-shattering explosion sent roughly 130 cubic kilometers of gaseous fumes, ash, and rocks high into the atmosphere above the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. Mount Tambora had blown its top. Temperatures tanked worldwide as sooty debris circulated in the skies of the Northern Hemisphere, blocking the Sun’s rays. The chilling effects lasted through 1816—later dubbed the “Year Without a Summer.” …Alice Bradley and her team of undergraduate researchers at Williams College are studying how Tambora and other major volcanic eruptions affected the climate in New England. Their source material is a weather data set that dates back more than 2 centuries to the Tambora eruption. It has been updated daily by Williams staff and students ever since. …According to the team’s analysis, daily low temperatures after the Tambora and Pinatubo eruptions were often more than 5°C below baseline…. For GSS Life and Climate chapter 11.
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2023-02-03. They Outlasted the Dinosaurs. Can They Survive Us?. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/02/magazine/they-outlasted-the-dinosaurs-can-they-survive-us.html] By Andrew S. Lewis, The New York Times. Excerpt: The American caviar rush began on the lower Delaware estuary, a landscape today crowded with chemical plants, container ports and the sprawl of Philadelphia. But this was the 1870s, when nature edged up to the city’s limits, when probably nowhere else in the country was home to more Atlantic sturgeon: During the spring spawn, an estimated 360,000 adults thronged the reach that marked the brackish threshold between bay and river. …During the fishery’s peak, in 1888, 16,500 Atlantic sturgeon — they can live 60 years and grow to 14 feet and 800 pounds — were “harvested,” or killed. Most were female, and the millions of eggs that each could produce during a spawn never made it into the water within which they were meant to hatch. …For an estimated 10 to 15 million years, Atlantic sturgeon, or Acipenser oxyrinchus oxyrinchus, have spawned in as many as 38 rivers throughout eastern North America. An anadromous fish, it is born in fresh water, spends its adulthood in salt water and returns to its natal rivers to spawn. …today breeding populations remain in only 22 of its 38 natal rivers. In 2012, the species became protected under the Endangered Species Act. At the time, researchers estimated that the Delaware population consisted of 300 or fewer spawning adults per year. While the Delaware Atlantic sturgeon is just one branch of the species, its decline epitomizes the global biodiversity crisis…. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 7.
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2023-02-01. The Role of Insurance in Climate Adaptation. [https://eos.org/articles/the-role-of-insurance-in-climate-adaption] By Jenessa Duncombe, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A new study highlights a way to stave off economic effects by promoting a widespread public insurance plan for Americans. The research supports the growing movement to use insurance—a key tool for managing society’s risk—as a form of climate adaptation. …The hypothetical insurance scheme used in the model is a mandatory nonprofit government-offered policy that is available everywhere at a flat fee. The scheme uses the average rate of insured losses from U.S. hurricanes over the past several decades (50%) tallied by the natural disaster database NatCatSERVICE from the German-based insurance company Munich Re. …a close analog is the National Flood Insurance Program from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). But the program isn’t compulsory and isn’t available to everyone…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-02-03. Global alarm system watches for methane superemitters. [https://www.science.org/content/article/global-alarm-system-watches-methane-superemitters] By Paul Voosen, Science. Excerpt: Methane is a stealthy greenhouse gas, erupting unpredictably from sources such as pipelines and gas fields. Scientists have wanted to catch these emitters in the act. In the past, watchdogs had to monitor likely sites from the ground or by airplane. Now, massive, short-lived leaks can be detected automatically, from space, anywhere in the world—a first step toward plugging them and slowing climate change. …Although so far the technique only captures the largest blowouts, there’s no better place to begin, says Ilse Aben, an atmospheric scientist at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON) and co-author of the new work. …SRON’s automatic methane spotter relies on the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument (TROPOMI) aboard the Sentinel-5 Precursor satellite, launched in 2017 as part of Europe’s Copernicus program of Earth observation…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 3.
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2023-02-03. The man in charge of how the US spends $400bn to shift away from fossil fuels. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/03/us-clean-energy-transition-jigar-shah-interview] By Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Excerpt: Deep in the confines of the hulking, brutalist headquarters of the US Department of Energy, down one of its long, starkly lit corridors, sits a small, unheralded office that is poised to play a pivotal role in America’s shift away from fossil fuels and help the world stave off disastrous global heating. The department’s loan programs office (LPO) was “essentially dormant” under Donald Trump, according to its head, Jigar Shah, but has now come roaring back with a huge war chest to bankroll emerging clean energy projects and technology. Last year’s vast Inflation Reduction Act grew the previously moribund office’s loan authority to $140bn, while adding a new program worth another $250bn in loan guarantees to retool projects that help cut planet-heating emissions. Which means that Shah, a debonair former clean energy entrepreneur and podcast host who matches his suits with pristine Stan Smiths, oversees resources comparable to the GDP of Norway: all to help turbocharge solar, wind, batteries and a host of other climate technologies in the US…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2023-02-02. Swallowed fishing gear and plastic most likely cause of Hawaii whale’s death. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/02/whale-hawaii-swallowed-fishing-gear-plastic] By Associated Press. Excerpt: A sperm whale that washed ashore in Hawaii over the weekend probably died in part because it ate large volumes of fishing traps, fishing nets, plastic bags and other marine debris, scientists said on Thursday, highlighting the threat to wildlife from the millions of tons of plastic that ends up in oceans every year…. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 7.
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2023-02-02. Calls for bigger windfall tax after Shell makes ‘obscene’ $40bn profit. [https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/02/shell-profits-2022-surging-oil-prices-gas-ukraine] By Alex Lawson, The Guardian. Excerpt: The government is under pressure to rethink its windfall tax on energy companies after Shell reported one of the largest profits in UK corporate history, with the surge in energy prices sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushing the oil company’s annual takings to $40bn (£32bn)…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2023-02-01. Rinse and Repeat: An Easy New Way to Recycle Batteries is Here. [https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2023/02/01/an-easy-new-way-to-recycle-batteries-is-here/] By Aliyah Kovner, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionized electronics and enabled an accelerating shift toward clean energy. These batteries have become an integral part of 21st century life, but we’re at risk of running out before 2050. The main elements used in each battery – lithium, nickel, and cobalt metals as well as graphite – are increasingly scarce and expensive, and there is little environmental or fair-labor oversight of some of the remaining international supply chains. There is a pressing need to start reusing the materials we’ve already dug up and to make the battery production process safer and more equitable for all. A team of scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has invented an award-winning new battery material that can check both boxes. Their product, called the Quick-Release Binder, makes it simple and affordable to separate the valuable materials in Li-ion batteries from the other components and recover them for reuse in a new battery…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2023-02-01. Dangerous Fungi Are Spreading Across U.S. as Temperatures Rise. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/fungi-spread-last-of-us-valley-fever-climate-11675260773] By Dominique Mosbergen, Wall Street Journal. Excerpt: Dangerous fungal infections are on the rise, and a growing body of research suggests warmer temperatures might be a culprit. …Climate change might also be creating conditions for some disease-causing fungi to expand their geographical range, research shows. …Deaths from fungal infections are increasing, due in part to growing populations of people with weakened immune systems who are more vulnerable to severe fungal disease, public-health experts said. At least 7,000 people died in the U.S. from fungal infections in 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, up from hundreds of people each year around 1970. …A January study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that higher temperatures may prompt some disease-causing fungi to evolve faster to survive…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-01-31. With rapidly increasing heat and drought, can plants adapt?. [https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/01/31/with-rapidly-increasing-heat-and-drought-can-plants-adapt/] By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: At a time when climate change is making many areas of the planet hotter and drier, it’s sobering to think that deserts are relatively new biomes that have grown considerably over the past 30 million years. Widespread arid regions, like the deserts that today cover much of western North America, began to emerge only within the past 5 to 7 million years. Understanding how plants that invaded these harsh deserts biomes were able to survive could help predict how ecosystems will fare in a drier future. An intensive study of a group of plants that first invaded emerging deserts millions of years ago concludes that these pioneers — rock daisies — did not come unequipped to deal with heat, scorching sun and lack of water. They had developed adaptations to such stresses while living on dry, exposed rock outcroppings within older, more moist areas and even tropical forests, all of which made it easier for them to invade expanding arid areas. The study by University of California, Berkeley, researcher Isaac Lichter-Marck is the first to provide evidence to resolve a long-standing evolutionary debate: Did iconic desert plants, like the stately saguaro cacti, the flaming ocotillos and the Seussian agaves, adapt to arid conditions only after they invaded deserts? Or did they come preadapted to the stresses of desert living? …Lichter-Marck and Bruce Baldwin, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology, curator of the Jepson Herbarium and chief editor of The Jepson Desert Manual: Vascular Plants of Southeastern California(2002), published their study about the evolution of rock daisies in North American deserts this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-01-31. “Hot Jupiter” Is in a Possible Death Spiral. [https://eos.org/articles/hot-jupiter-is-in-a-possible-death-spiral] By Damond Benningfield, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Kepler’s first exoplanet is migrating toward its star, an evolved subgiant that is much bigger than first thought. …Kepler-1658b is the first inspiraling planet discovered around an “evolved” star—one that has moved out of its prime life. The star—Kepler-1658—is about 1.5 times the mass of our Sun and has expanded to almost 3 times the Sun’s diameter in its late stages of life, earning it the designation of subgiant. Should Kepler-1658b maintain its current path, it will meet its fate in about 2.5 million years. …Early in its mission, Kepler recorded such dips from Kepler-1658. However, astronomers had initially cataloged the star as belonging to the main sequence—stars like the Sun that are still burning the hydrogen in their cores. …Kepler-1658b was discarded as a false positive and forgotten about. …That is, until Chontos began looking at vibrations on the surfaces of stars in the Kepler catalog…—a technique known as asteroseismology—revealed details about the stars’ interiors. …they showed that the star was much farther along in life than expected and hence about 3 times bigger. That meant the transiting planet was 3 times larger as well, making it big enough and bright enough to contribute to the system’s overall brightness when it wasn’t eclipsed by the star. “Suddenly, a close-in hot Jupiter made sense,” Chontos said. “That discovery was completely accidental.”… For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 8.
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2023-01-31. Astronomers Find a Dozen More Moons for Jupiter. [https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/astronomers-find-a-dozen-more-moons-for-jupiter/] By Jeff Hecht, Sky & Telescope. Excerpt: The biggest planet in the solar system now has the largest family of moons. Since December 20th, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) has published orbits for 12 previously unreported moons of Jupiter. More publications are expected, says Scott Sheppard (Carnegie Institute for Science), who recently submitted observations of the Jovian system taken between 2021 and 2022. The discoveries bring the list of Jovian moons to 92, a hefty 15% increase from the previous tally of 80. …The new finds put Jupiter’s lunar family count well ahead of Saturn’s 83 confirmed moons. However, while Jupiter may have the most moons for now, Saturn might catch up. A search for objects with sizes down to about 3 kilometers across that are moving along with the gas giantsfound three times more near Saturn than near Jupiter…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2023-01-31. Emissions divide now greater within countries than between them – study. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/31/emissions-divide-now-greater-within-countries-than-between-them-study] By Fiona Harvey, The Guardian. Excerpt: The difference between the carbon emissions of the rich and the poor within a country is now greater than the differences in emissions between countries, data shows. The finding is further evidence of the growing divide between the “polluting elite” of rich people around the world, and the relatively low responsibility for emissions among the rest of the population. It also shows there is plenty of room for the poorest in the world to increase their greenhouse gas emissions if needed to reach prosperity, if rich people globally – including some in developing countries – reduce theirs, the analysis has found. …a growing body of work suggests that a “polluting elite” of those on the highest incomes globally are vastly outweighing the emissions of the poor. …rich people in developing countries have much bigger carbon footprints than was previously acknowledged. In a report entitled Climate Inequality Report 2023, economists from the World Inequality Lab dissect where carbon emissions are currently coming from. The World Inequality Lab is co-directed by the influential economist Thomas Piketty, the author of Capital in the Twenty-first Century, whose work following the financial crisis more than a decade ago helped to popularise the idea of “the 1%”, a global high-income group whose interests are favoured by current economic systems…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-01-30. The Double Whammy Making Italy the West’s Fastest-Shrinking Nation. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/world/europe/italy-birthrate.html] By Jason Horowitz, The New York Times. Excerpt: …Italy’s population is aging and shrinking at the fastest rate in the West, forcing the country to adapt to a booming population of elderly that puts it at the forefront of a global demographic trend that experts call the “silver tsunami.” But it faces a demographic double whammy, with a drastically sinking birthrate that is among the lowest in Europe. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has said Italy is “destined to disappear” unless it changes…. For GSS Population Growth chapter 8.
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2023-01-30. The Alternative, Optimistic Story of Population Decline. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/china-world-population-decline.html] By Wang Feng, New York Times opinion piece. Excerpt: China, the most populous country on the planet for centuries, this month reported its first population decline in six decades, …. By the end of the century China may have only around half of the 1.41 billion people it has now, according to U.N. projections, and may already have been overtaken by India. The news has been met with gloom and doom, often framed as the start of China’s inexorable decline and, more broadly, the harbinger of a demographic and economic “time bomb” that will strain the world’s capacity to support aging populations. …China is only the latest and largest major country to join a club that already includes Japan, South Korea, Russia, Italy and others. …But the alarmist warnings are often simplistic and premature. …Shrinking populations are usually part of a natural, inevitable process, and rather than focus excessively on concerns like labor shortages and pension support, we need to look at the brighter spots for our world. …The number of people on the planet more than tripled in seven decades, from 2.5 billion in 1950 to around eight billion in 2022. Turns out, that was a transitory phase when mortality rates fell faster than fertility rates because of improved nutrition and public health, and relative peace. …The population declines seen today in some countries have come about largely as a happy story of greater longevity and freedom. Fertility rates worldwide dropped from more than five births per woman in the early 1960s to 2.3 in 2020. Credit greater investment in child and maternal health everywhere: A mother who successfully brings her child to term and an infant who survives to childhood lower birthrates because parents often don’t feel the need to try again. Greater availability of free or affordable contraception has also reduced unwanted births. …Compared with a half-century ago, people in many countries are richer, healthier and better educated and women are more empowered. China’s population, for example, is shrinking and aging, but its people are more educated and have a longer life expectancy than at any time in the country’s history. Expanded educational opportunities guarantee a spot in a university for almost every person born today in China, including more women than men. Average world life expectancy has increased from 51 years in 1960 to 73 in 2019, and even more so in China, from 51 in 1962 to 78 in 2019. …Global population will inevitably decline. Rather than trying to reverse that, we need to embrace it and adapt…. For GSS Population Growth chapter 8.
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2023-01-22. A New Way to Hand-Me-Down. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/style/hand-me-downs.html] By Anna Grace Lee, The New York Times. Excerpt: In a San Antonio garage, two millennial mothers …Kara Livingston, 36, and Nicole Boynton, 35, …founders of Hand Me Up, a small business aimed at helping parents shop more responsibly to cut down on children’s clothing waste. …There is little data available about how much children’s clothing is discarded, said Amanda Forster, a materials research engineer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and an author of a 2022 report that looked at how to extend the life of textiles. The report said that a circular approach focused on reuse and repair is key, and Dr. Forster said that the principle applies to children’s wear as well. …“You want to try and keep things circulating back through the economy in their original form as much as possible,” Dr. Forster said. …More children’s wear brands have embraced responsible fashion in recent years, said Sandra Capponi, one of the founders of Good on You, a website and app that rates fashion brands for their impact on people, animals and the planet. …Some major brands have their own reuse or resale initiatives, like Patagonia’s Worn Wear, and North Face’s Clothes the Loop. In 2021, Carter’s teamed with TerraCycle to start a program that allows parents to send unwearable clothes to be recycled into raw materials…. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2022-12-19. California approves roadmap for carbon neutrality by 2045. [https://apnews.com/article/california-agriculture-climate-and-environment-2591f7c60f1a143e08b599610dc49fce] By Sophie Austin, Associated Press. Excerpt: California air regulators voted unanimously Thursday to approve an ambitious plan to drastically cut reliance on fossil fuels by changing practices in the energy, transportation and agriculture sectors, but critics say it doesn’t go far enough to combat climate change. …It aims to do so in part by reducing fossil fuel demand by 86% within that time frame. …It calls for the state to cut liquid petroleum fuel demand by 94% by 2045, and quadruple solar and wind capacity along that same timeframe. …residential and commercial buildings will be powered by electric appliances before the next decade. …The board has already passed a policy to ban the sale of new cars powered solely by gasoline in the state starting in 2035. …It calls for the state to capture 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and store it underground by 2045. …One of the goals is to achieve a 66% reduction in methane emissions from the agriculture sector by 2045…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2023-01-26. Human activity and drought ‘degrading more than a third of Amazon rainforest’. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/26/human-activity-and-drought-degrading-more-than-a-third-of-amazon-rainforest] By Jonathan Watts, The Guardian. Excerpt: Human activity and drought may have degraded more than a third of the Amazon rainforest, double the previous estimate, according to a study that heightens concerns that the globally important ecosystem is slipping towards a point of no return. Fires, land conversion, logging and water shortages, have weakened the resilience of up to 2.5m sq km of the forest, …. This area is now drier, more flammable and more vulnerable than before, prompting the authors to warn of “megafires” in the future. Between 5.5% and 38% of what is left of the world’s biggest tropical forest is also less able to regulate the climate, generate rainfall, store carbon, provide a habitat to other species, offer a livelihood to local people, and sustain itself as a viable ecosystem, the paper observes. …The findings, published in Science on Thursday, are based on a review of existing studies, recent satellite data, and a new assessment of drought impacts by an international team of 35 scientists and researchers, from institutions including Brazil’s University of Campinas (Unicamp), the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and the UK’s Lancaster University. …Deforestation is the total clearance of forest and conversion of the land to other uses, which can be easily identified by satellites. Degradation, on the other hand, is the partial loss of vegetation due to human behaviour, which is often hidden because it takes place under the canopy of bigger trees. To the naked eye, the distinction is as great as that between having your hair shaved off completely and thinned. …The paper says the quantities of carbon released from degradation could even be higher than those from deforestation…. For GSS A New World View chapter 5.
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2023-01-24. Despite opposition, Japan may soon dump Fukushima wastewater into the Pacific. [https://www.science.org/content/article/despite-opposition-japan-may-soon-dump-fukushima-wastewater-pacific] By Dennis Normile, Science. Excerpt: Government says the release poses no risk to marine or human life, but some scientists disagree. The Japanese government is pushing ahead with its plan to release 1.3 million tons of radioactive water from the defunct Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean. …The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which owns the power station, says it is running out of space to store the water on land. Radioactivity levels in the discharged water will be too low to pose a risk to marine life or humans, TEPCO says, and its plan has the blessing of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). …But critics say the risks haven’t been studied in enough detail. TEPCO’s assurances are “not supported by the quantity and quality of the data,” says oceanographer Ken Buesseler of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. …says Robert Richmond, a marine biologist at the University of Hawaii, Manoa: “There is a strong consensus internationally that continued use of the ocean for dumping waste is simply not sustainable.”…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 4.
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2023-01-24. Revealed: how US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/24/us-electric-vehicles-lithium-consequences-research] By Nina Lakhani, The Guardian. Excerpt: By 2050 electric vehicles could require huge amounts of lithium for their batteries, causing damaging expansions of mining….The global demand for lithium, also known as white gold, is predicted to rise over 40 times by 2040, driven predominantly by the shift to electric vehicles. …by 2050 the US alone would need triple the amount of lithium currently produced for the entire global market, which would have dire consequences for water and food supplies, biodiversity, and Indigenous rights. …In the best-case scenario – comparing the status quo in which EV battery size grows and US car dependency remains stable – with ambitious public transit, city density and recycling policies, the lithium demand would be 92% lower…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2023-01-23. Selectively Logged Forests Are Not Broken. [https://eos.org/articles/selectively-logged-forests-are-not-broken] By Erin Martin-Jones, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: …selectively logged forests—where timber is not clear-cut, but instead selectively harvested—now make up about a third of rain forests worldwide. …“The ecological value of logged forests has been underestimated; they are not as broken as they look,” said Yadvinder Malhi, an ecosystem ecologist from the University of Oxford who was involved in a large-scale biodiversity survey of forests and agricultural land in the state of Sabah, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. The results, which were published in December in the journal Nature, showed that logged forests can be buzzing with life and ecological functions and therefore have an important role to play in conservation…. For GSS A New World View chapter 6.
2023-01-23. Earth’s Inner Core: A Shifting, Spinning Mystery’s Latest Twist. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/science/earth-core-reversing-spin.html] By Robin George Andrews, The New York Times. Excerpt: Imagine Earth’s inner core — the dense center of our planet — as a heavy, metal ballerina. This iron-rich dancer is capable of pirouetting at ever-changing speeds. …Seismologists reported Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience that after brief but peculiar pauses, the inner core changes how it spins — relative to the motion of Earth’s surface — perhaps once every few decades. And, right now, one such reversal may be underway. …fret not: Precisely nothing apocalyptic will result from this planetary spin cycle, which may have been happening for eons…. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 3.
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2023-01-23. ‘No miracles needed’: Prof Mark Jacobson on how wind, sun and water can power the world. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/no-miracles-needed-prof-mark-jacobson-on-how-wind-sun-and-water-can-power-the-world] By Damian Carrington, The Guardian. Excerpt: Wind, water and solar can provide plentiful and cheap power, he argues, ending the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis, slashing deadly air pollution and ensuring energy security. Carbon capture and storage, biofuels, new nuclear and other technologies are expensive wastes of time, he argues. …We have wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, electric cars. We have batteries, heat pumps, energy efficiency. We have 95% of the technologies right now that we need to solve the problem.” The missing 5% is for long-distance aircraft and ships, he says, for which hydrogen-powered fuel cells can be developed…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2023-01-23. I tried lab-grown meat made from animals without killing them – is this the future of ethical eating?. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/23/lab-grown-meat-animals-climate] By Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Excerpt: The meat … came from a named pig, an affable-looking swine called Dawn. …a clump of her cells were grown in a lab to create what’s known as “cultivated meat”, a product touted as far better for the climate – as well as the mortal concerns of pigs and cows – and is set for takeoff in the US. …“A harmless sample from one pig can produce many millions of tons of product without requiring us to raise and slaughter an animal each time,” said Eitan Fischer, founder of Mission Barns, a maker of cultivated meat that invited the Guardian to a taste test in an upscale Manhattan hotel. …Mission Barns is one of about 80 startup companies based around San Francisco’s Bay Area now jostling for position after one of their number, Upside Foods, became the first in the country to be granted approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November, a key step in allowing the sale of cultivated meat in the US. On Monday, Upside said it aims to start selling its cultivated chicken in restaurants this year, and in grocery stores by 2028. …In December, a company called Believer Meats broke ground on a $123m facility in North Carolina it claims will be the largest cultivated meat plant in the world, set to churn out 10,000 tons of product once operational. …the “world is experiencing a food revolution”, as the FDA put it, with the rise of cultivated meat holding the promise of slashing the meat industry’s ruinous planet-heating emissions and shrinking its voracious appetite for land, as well as sparing livestock the barbarity of factory farming. …The raising and slaughter of livestock is responsible for more than half of the greenhouse gas pollution of the entire food sector, which in itself is estimated to contribute around a third of total global emissions…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-01-19. Could Air Someday Power Your Flight? Airlines Are Betting on It. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/19/travel/airlines-climate-change-fuel.html] By Paige McClanahan, The New York Times. Excerpt: By the middle of this century, most cars and buses should be powered by renewable energy, while bikes, electric trains and your own two feet will continue to have little impact on the climate. And if global aviation achieves the goal it adopted last year, then your 2050 flight from New York to Hong Kong will result in “net zero” carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. …new technologies are in the works, including hydrogen-powered aircraft, fully electric planes and synthetic jet fuel made from carbon extracted from the atmosphere…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2023-01-20. ‘Super-tipping points’ could trigger cascade of climate action. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/20/super-tipping-points-climate-electric-cars-meat-emissions] By Damian Carrington, The Guardian. Excerpt: …Three “super-tipping points” for climate action could trigger a cascade of decarbonisation across the global economy, according to a report. Relatively small policy interventions on electric cars, plant-based alternatives to meat and green fertilisers would lead to unstoppable growth in those sectors, the experts said. But the boost this would give to battery and hydrogen production would mean crucial knock-on benefits for other sectors including energy storage and aviation. …The tipping points occur when a zero-carbon solution becomes more competitive than the existing high-carbon option. More sales lead to cheaper products, creating feedback loops that drive exponential growth and a rapid takeover. The report, launched at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said the three super-tipping points would cut emissions in sectors covering 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-01-20. White House Aims to Reflect the Environment in Economic Data. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/20/business/economy/economic-statistics-climate-nature.html] By Lydia DePillis, The New York Times. Excerpt: Forests that keep hillsides from eroding and clean the air. Wetlands that protect coastal real estate from storm surges. Rivers and deep snows that attract tourists and create jobs in rural areas. All of those are natural assets of perhaps obvious value — but none are accounted for by traditional measurements of economic activity. On Thursday, the Biden administration unveiled an effort to change that by creating a system for assessing the worth of healthy ecosystems to humanity. The results could inform governmental decisions like which industries to support, which natural resources to preserve and which regulations to pass…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2023-01-18. Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest provider are worthless, analysis shows. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe] By Patrick Greenfield, The Guardian. Excerpt: The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading provider and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation. The research into Verra, the world’s leading carbon standard for the rapidly growing $2bn (£1.6bn) voluntary offsets market, has found that, based on analysis of a significant percentage of the projects, more than 90% of their rainforest offset credits – among the most commonly used by companies – are likely to be “phantom credits” and do not represent genuine carbon reductions…. For GSS A New World View chapter 5.
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2023-01-17. Banks still investing heavily in fossil fuels despite net zero pledges – study. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/17/banks-still-investing-heavily-in-fossil-fuels-despite-net-zero-pledges-study] By Fiona Harvey, The Guardian. Excerpt: Banks and finance institutions that have signed up to net zero pledges are still investing heavily in fossil fuels, research has shown, …. The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) initiative was launched by the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, as one of the main UK achievements in hosting the Cop26 UN climate summit at Glasgow in 2021. The UK boasted at Cop26 that 450 organisations in 45 countries with assets of more than $130tn had signed up to GFANZ, to align their investments with the goal of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. But its members have poured hundreds of billions into fossil fuels since then, according to data compiled by the pressure group Reclaim Finance…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-01-16. Skipped Showers, Paper Plates: An Arizona Suburb’s Water Is Cut Off. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/us/arizona-water-rio-verde-scottsdale.html] By Jack Healy, The New York Times. Excerpt: RIO VERDE, Ariz. — Joe McCue thought he had found a desert paradise when he bought one of the new stucco houses sprouting in the granite foothills of Rio Verde, Ariz. There were good schools, mountain views and cactus-spangled hiking trails out the back door. Then the water got cut off. Earlier this month, the community’s longtime water supplier, the neighboring city of Scottsdale, turned off the tap for Rio Verde Foothills, blaming a grinding drought that is threatening the future of the West. Scottsdale said it had to focus on conserving water for its own residents, and could no longer sell water to roughly 500 to 700 homes — or around 1,000 people. …Almost overnight, the Rio Verde Foothills turned into a worst-case scenario of a hotter, drier climate, showing what happens when unregulated growth collides with shrinking water supplies…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-01-16. China’s Population Falls, Heralding a Demographic Crisis. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/business/china-birth-rate.html] By Alexandra Stevenson and Zixu Wang, The New York Times. Excerpt: …The world’s most populous country has reached a pivotal moment: China’s population has begun to shrink, after a steady, yearslong decline in its birthrate that experts say is irreversible. The government said on Tuesday that 9.56 million people were born in China last year, while 10.41 million people died. It was the first time deaths had outnumbered births in China since the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong’s failed economic experiment that led to widespread famine and death in the 1960s. Chinese officials have tried for years to slow down the arrival of this moment, loosening a one-child policy and offering incentives to encourage families to have children. None of those policies worked. …Government handouts like cash for babies and tax cuts, have failed to change the underlying fact that many young Chinese people simply do not want children…. See also article in The Guardian. For GSS Population Growth chapter 6.
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2023-01-15. Dwindling Snow Leaves Swiss Alpine Villages Staring at an Identity Crisis. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/15/world/europe/switzerland-skiiing-alpine-villages-no-snow.html] By Erika Solomon, The New York Times. Excerpt: …As the planet warms, Europe has faced a bruising year of climate crises. In the summer, many regions suffered severe drought and record heat. Already this year, some areas have seen the highest-recorded winter temperatures — so warm that many ski resorts could not even make snow. For Switzerland, whose glaciers and snowpack form a crucial storehouse for European water supplies, the effect has been especially alarming. The country is warming at more than double the rate of the global mean and its glaciers lost 6 percent of their volume in the last year alone, according to Swiss federal authorities and a glacier monitoring group. The changes pose a risk to some parts of a Swiss ski industry that by some estimates generates around $5.5 billion a year. But in a country where nearly everyone skis, the loss of snow is more than an economic or environmental danger. It is a threat to national identity…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-01-15. Webb Telescope Confirms Earth-size Exoplanet, Tries to Sniff Its Air. [https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/webb-telescope-confirms-earth-size-exoplanet-tries-to-sniff-air] By Monica Young, Sky & Telescope. Excerpt: The James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed its first exoplanet, a rocky Earth-size planet, and attempted to take the measure of its atmosphere. …Although roughly Earth-like in size, this world is nevertheless completely uninhabitable, roasting in its four-day orbit around its middle-aged red dwarf star. …while they can match the data with an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide, those data are also consistent with a completely airless world. Zero atmosphere for a planet several hundred degrees warmer than Earth wouldn’t be a great surprise, especially around the type of star known for its atmosphere-stripping flares…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 8.
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2023-01-14. 850-year-old Supernova Left “Zombie Star” Behind. [https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/amateur-astronomer-discovers-a-weird-supernovas-fireworks] By Govert Schilling, Sky & Telescope. Excerpt: A supernova explosion that skywatchers in the Far East observed almost 850 years ago has produced the most unusual remnant astronomers have ever found. …a paper has been submitted to Astrophysical Journal Letters (preprint available here). In other work presented at the AAS meeting and submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (preprint here), his coauthor Bradley Schaefer (Louisiana State University) argues that the supernova resulted when two white dwarf stars collided, leaving an extremely energetic “zombie” star behind. …the measured expansion velocity of the nebula — some 1,100 kilometers per second — puts its age at 850 years old. …astronomers are now confident about its relation with SN1181, a zero-magnitude supernova that appeared in northern Cassiopeia on August 6th of 1181 AD. Chinese and Japanese observers recorded this “guest star” slowly fading over a period of six months…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 6.
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2023-01-14. Ecuador Tried to Curb Drilling and Protect the Amazon. The Opposite Happened.. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/climate/ecuador-drilling-oil-amazon.html] By Catrin Einhorn and Manuela Andreoni, The New york Times. Excerpt: YASUNÍ NATIONAL PARK, Ecuador — In a swath of lush Amazon rainforest here, near some of the last Indigenous people on Earth living in isolation, workers recently finished building a new oil platform carved out of the wilderness. Teams are drilling in one of the most environmentally important ecosystems on the planet, one that stores vast amounts of planet-warming carbon. …some of the country’s largest oil reserves are found here, too. Ecuador is cash-strapped and struggling with debt. The government sees drilling as its best way out. The story of this place, Yasuní National Park, offers a case study on how global financial forces continue to trap developing countries into depleting some of the most biodiverse places on the planet…. For GSS A New World View chapter 5.
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2023-01-14. A Deal to Help South Africa Is a Breakthrough for the World. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/14/opinion/climate-change-south-africa.html] By The Editorial Board, The New york Times. Excerpt: South Africa generates 80 percent of its electricity by burning coal, more than any other industrialized nation. Some 200,000 people are directly employed by the coal mines, coal transports and coal-fired power plants that dot the flatlands east of Johannesburg, but the prosperity of the rest of the nation also rests on a foundation of black rock. Now, the South African government, with the help of the United States and European nations, is embarking on an audacious plan to quit coal without undermining economic growth. If it works, the proposed transition to solar and wind power could fuel faster growth and create a template for coal-dependent nations to confront climate change. This is a significant opportunity, and it deserves support and attention. The United States has committed more than $1 billion as part of an $8.5 billion international aid package to catalyze South Africa’s shift to renewable energy, and, after two years of talks about the details, the government in Pretoria is to deliver a plan in February for carrying it out. The proposed aid package is part of a broader shift in the international response to climate change. Windy talk about the necessity for wealthy countries to help less wealthy countries is finally turning tangible. In November, a group of nations, including the United States, committed $20 billion for a similar partnership with Indonesia, then made a $15.5 million commitment to Vietnam in December. Talks are underway with other nations, including Senegal and India…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2023-01-13. Sweden Says It Has Uncovered a Rare Earth Bonanza. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/business/sweden-rare-earth-minerals.html] By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: A Swedish mining company said this week that it had found Europe’s largest known deposit of coveted rare earth metals, critical to many green technologies including electric vehicles, in a far northern part of the country within the Arctic Circle. The world’s production of rare earths is dominated by China. The discovery by LKAB, a state-owned company, creates the prospect that Europe could over time develop a domestic source of these minerals. “This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate,” Jan Mostrom, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2023-01-13. Space Dodgers. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/space-debris-game/] By Shikha Subramaniam, Rekha Tenjarla and Christian Davenport, The Washington Post. Excerpt: …the space above Earth has been flooded with thousands of satellites, spent rocket stages and the debris from several catastrophic events. As a result, Earth’s lower orbit has been littered with an increasing amount of junk that is careening through space at intense speeds, threatening satellites and even the International Space Station. Last year, the problem became serious enough to prompt the Biden administration to call for the abolishment of tests that destroy satellites in orbit. The announcement came after Russia blew up a dead satellite in 2021, creating a massive debris field that threatened the ISS astronauts along with other satellites. …Every year there are dozens of near-collisions between active satellites or pieces of debris. …There are more than 6,000 active satellites rotating around Earth as of Jan. 9, according to LeoLabs, a company that tracks satellites and debris in Earth’s lower orbit. …The United States and private companies like LeoLabs track tens of thousands of pieces of space debris, including operational and non-operational satellites, rocket stages and unknown objects. But there are many more pieces too small to see. NASA estimates that there are roughly 500,000 objects between 1 and 10 centimeters in diameter orbiting Earth, and that there are more than 100 million particles larger than 1 millimeter. (The agency said that as of January last year, the amount of material in orbit was more than 9,000 metric tons.)… For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2023-01-11. Deep-Sea Pressure Crushes Carbon Cycling. [https://eos.org/articles/deep-sea-pressure-crushes-carbon-cycling] By Elise Cutts, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: When the research submarine Alvin sank off the coast of Massachusetts in 1968, it took the crew’s lunch with it. …to the shock of the scientists who later returned to recover the wreck, there they remained—practically unspoiled despite sitting more than a kilometer below the surface for nearly a year. A sandwich left out on your countertop or casually thrown into the sea would be lucky to last more than a day or two before going bad or getting gobbled up. So why didn’t something eat the Alvin crew’s lunch? New evidence suggests that the extreme pressures of the deep sea slow down microbial carbon degradation, the process responsible for spoiling sandwiches and recycling organic carbon into carbon dioxide, a critical step in the carbon cycle. The research team behind the new study says that their findings could have important implications for carbon budgets, which are used in climate models, and future geoengineering strategies that propose storing excess carbon on the seafloor. The results were published in Nature Geoscience.… For GSS Life and Climate chapter 8.
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2023-01-09. Relentless rain, record heat: study finds climate crisis worsened extreme weather. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/09/climate-crisis-extreme-weather-heat-rainfall-drought] By Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Excerpt: …some of the most severe weather events that have occurred around the world in the past few years were made far more likely due to the climate crisis, new research has found. …The fingerprint of climate change is being identified across the planet. The risk of extreme drought across California and Nevada was made six times worse by the climate crisis and a strong periodical La Niña climate event from October 2020 to September 2021, while, conversely, extreme rainfall that deluged parts of the UK in May 2021 was 1.5 times more likely due to global heating. A severe hot spell in China in February 2021 was made between four and 20 times more likely because of human-caused climate change, while acute drought in Iran, which it experienced in 2021, is now 50% more likely because of the greenhouse gases humanity has pumped into the atmosphere. …The compendium of research, presented by Noaa at a conference on Monday, draws together some of the latest examples of climate attribution, where scientists have managed to pinpoint the influence of human-induced climate change upon individual weather events and disasters…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 7.
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2023-01-13. Private jet emissions quadrupled during Davos 2022. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/13/private-jet-emissions-quadrupled-davos-2022] By Helena Horton, The Guardian. Excerpt: Private jet emissions quadrupled as 1,040 planes flew in and out of airports serving Davos during the 2022 World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting. Climate campaigners accused the rich and powerful of hypocrisy in flying in on private jets to a conference discussing climate breakdown…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2023-01-12. Extended producer responsibility for fossil fuels. [https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca4e8] By Stuart Jenkins, et al, Environmental Research Letters. Excerpt: …an opportunity: to open a conversation about applying the principle of extended producer responsibility (EPR) to fossil fuels. …Implementing EPR through a combination of geological CO2 storage and nature-based solutions can deliver net zero at comparable or lower costs than conventional scenarios driven with a global carbon price and subject to constraints on CO2 storage deployment. It would also mean that the principal beneficiary of high fossil fuel prices, the fossil fuel industry itself, plays its part in addressing the climate challenge while reducing the risk of asset stranding. …Under EPR as implemented in France, for example, a ‘producer’, meaning ‘any natural or legal person who develops, manufactures, handles, treats, sells or imports waste-generating products’, ‘may be required […] to provide or contribute to the prevention and management of the resulting waste’. This law already applies to household chemicals, but not hydrocarbon fuels, despite the fact that almost 100% of the carbon contained in fossil fuels ending up as waste CO2 dumped into the atmosphere. If the principle of EPR were applied across OECD countries without this exemption, anyone extracting or importing fossil fuels into the OECD would become responsible for permanent disposal of the waste CO2 that those fuels generate…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2023-01-12. Exxon Scientists Predicted Global Warming, Even as Company Cast Doubts, Study Finds. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/climate/exxon-mobil-global-warming-climate-change.html] By Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times. Excerpt: In the late 1970s, scientists at Exxon fitted one of the company’s supertankers with state-of-the-art equipment to measure carbon dioxide in the ocean and in the air, an early example of substantial research the oil giant conducted into the science of climate change. A new study published Thursday in the journal Science found that over the next decades, Exxon’s scientists made remarkably accurate projections of just how much burning fossil fuels would warm the planet. Their projections were as accurate, and sometimes even more so, as those of independent academic and government models. …Yet for years, the oil giant publicly cast doubt on climate science, and cautioned against any drastic move away from burning fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change. Exxon also ran a public relations program — including ads that ran in The New York Times— emphasizing uncertainties in the scientific research on global warming…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-01-12. Cougars Are Heading East. We Should Welcome Them. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/opinion/cougars-migrating-east.html] By Mark Elbroch, New York Times Opinion/Guest Essay. Excerpt: Numerous cougar sightings were reported east of the Mississippi River last fall, encounters that have become more frequent in recent years. …Cougars once had the run of the continent, ranging far and wide. But they were virtually eliminated in the Eastern United States by the early 1900s (except for a small population that survives in Florida), victims of bounty hunting and habitat loss. …Newly published research by me and 12 colleagues has pinpointed over a dozen landscapes large enough to sustain cougars indefinitely in states that border or are east of the Mississippi…. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 6.
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2023-01-11. Oceans were the hottest ever recorded in 2022, analysis shows. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/11/oceans-were-the-hottest-ever-recorded-in-2022-analysis-shows] By Damian Carrington, The Guardian. Excerpt: The world’s oceans were the hottest ever recorded in 2022, demonstrating the profound and pervasive changes that human-caused emissions have made to the planet’s climate. More than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions is absorbed in the oceans. The records, starting in 1958, show an inexorable rise in ocean temperature, with an acceleration in warming after 1990. Sea surface temperatures are a major influence on the world’s weather. Hotter oceans help supercharge extreme weather, leading to more intense hurricanes and typhoons and more moisture in the air, which brings more intense rains and flooding. Warmer water also expands, pushing up sea levels and endangering coastal cities…. See also New York Times article The Last 8 Years Were the Hottest on Record. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-01-11. The New Soldiers in Propane’s Fight Against Climate Action: Television Stars. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/climate/climate-propane-influence-campaign.html] By Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times. Excerpt: An industry group is spending millions of dollars to push back against efforts to move heating away from oil and gas. …The Propane Education and Research Council, or PERC, which is funded by propane providers across the country, has spent millions of dollars on “provocative anti-electrification messaging” for TV, print and social media, …. …“The movement to electrify everything is rapidly gaining momentum, and poses a substantial threat to the sustainability of our industry,” he said, according to meeting minutes…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-01-11. As Storms Hammer California, Homeless Campers Try to Survive Outside. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/us/california-storms-homeless.html] By Shawn Hubler, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Corina Knoll, The New York Times. Excerpt: From rural Sonoma County to the celebrity enclave of Montecito, a brutal parade of atmospheric rivers has tested California’s infrastructure and endurance. Streets have flooded, levees have failed, mudslides have closed highways and wind gusts have knocked out electricity for days. At least 17 people have died since late December. But few have faced as stark a challenge as the more than 170,000 people who are homeless in California. The state not only has the nation’s largest population of homeless residents, but unlike in colder locales, nearly 70 percent of them sleep in tents, vehicles or public open spaces. …The extreme weather driven by climate change has intensified the need for efforts to protect homeless people across the country, where about 230,000 people are living unsheltered, according to an annual estimate coordinated by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. In the Phoenix region, heat-related deaths among unhoused people nearly doubled between 2013 and 2021. In Salt Lake City last month, plunging temperatures claimed the lives of five unsheltered people in a week…. See also Soaked and Battered by Repeating Rainstorms, California Girds for More. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2023-01-09. Earth’s ozone layer on course to be healed within decades, UN report finds. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/09/ozone-layer-healed-within-decades-un-report] By Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Excerpt: The hole in the Earth’s ozone layer, once the most feared environmental peril facing humanity, is set to be completely healed over most of the world within two decades following decisive action by governments to phase out ozone-depleting substances, a new UN assessment has found. The loss of the ozone layer, which risked exposing people to harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun, is on track to be completely recovered by 2040 across the world, aside from the polar regions, according to the report. The poles will take a little longer – the ozone layer will fully bounce back by 2045 over the Arctic and by 2066 over the Antarctic.… See also New York Times article, Restoration of the Ozone Layer Is Back on Track, Scientists Say. For GSS Ozone chapter 9.
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2023-01-10. Where the Bison Could Roam. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/science/bison-prairie-grassland.html] By Jim Robbins, The New York Times. Excerpt: MALTA, Mont. — Around 200 chocolate-brown bison raise their heads, following the low growl of a pickup truck slowly motoring across the sagebrush-studded prairie. …This knot of bison — colloquially referred to as buffalo, though they are not the same species — is part of a project to rebuild a vast shortgrass prairie not only to return large numbers of bison here, but also to eventually restore the complex and productive grassland ecosystem the animals once engineered with their churning hooves, waste, grazing and even carcasses. …Between 30 million and 60 million bison once roamed parts of the United States, primarily in the Great Plains. They were a “keystone” species in a complex ecological web, creating a cascade of environmental conditions that benefited countless other species. Intact grasslands are very productive for biodiversity. In part because of the loss of bison and other megafauna, intact grassland biomes are now among the most endangered in the world, and the numbers of many species that depend on them have collapsed. …The primary task here now, researchers and managers say, is to increase the number of bison and acres. In 2008, more than two dozen ecologists and experts, in a paper known as the Vermejo Statement, estimated that to foster a functioning prairie ecosystem at least 5,000 bison would need to be able to migrate freely on some 450,000 contiguous, fenceless acres. “In virtually every ecosystem currently grazed by bison, all of the grassland songbirds are lining their nest with bison hair,” said Mr. Olson, the co-author of the book “The Ecological Buffalo,” which details the many ways bison are connected to grassland ecosystems. “It insulates and increases chick survival and egg survival by up to 60 percent.”… For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 2.
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2023-01-04. Has the Amazon Reached Its ‘Tipping Point’? [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/magazine/amazon-tipping-point.html] By Alex Cuadros, The New York Times. Excerpt: …In a healthy rainforest, the concentration of carbon should decline as you approach the canopy from above, because trees are drawing the element out of the atmosphere and turning it into wood through photosynthesis. In 2010, when Gatti started running two flights a month at each of four different spots in the Brazilian Amazon, she expected to confirm this. But her samples showed the opposite: At lower altitudes, the ratio of carbon increased. This suggested that emissions from the slashing and burning of trees — the preferred method for clearing fields in the Amazon — were actually exceeding the forest’s capacity to absorb carbon. At first Gatti was sure it was an anomaly caused by a passing drought. But the trend not only persisted into wetter years; it intensified. …When Gatti published her findings in Nature in 2021, it sparked panicked headlines across the world: The lungs of the earth are exhaling greenhouse gases. But her discovery was actually much more alarming than that. Because burning trees release a high proportion of carbon monoxide, she could separate these emissions from the total. And in the southeastern Amazon, air samples still showed net emissions, suggesting that the ecosystem itself could be releasing more carbon than it absorbed, thanks in part to decomposing plant matter — or in Gatti’s words, “effectively dying more than growing.” …Across the Amazon, more forests ultimately burned than in the largest California wildfires in history, putting half a billion tons of carbon back into the atmosphere — the equivalent of more than one year of emissions by Mexico. …the ecosystem is losing its natural resilience, entering an alternate feedback loop. In Gatti’s samples, the 2015-16 drought also marked the moment when, as she put it to me, “the southeastern Amazon went to pot,” and the forest itself started consistently releasing more carbon than it absorbed. Fire does more than destroy trees. It also accelerates the transformations predicted by Nobre’s tipping-point theory…. For GSS A New World View chapter 5.
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2023-01-04. Marine Science Goes to Space. [https://eos.org/features/marine-science-goes-to-space] By Damond Benningfield, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Cassini discoveries added Enceladus to a growing list of possible ocean worlds in our own solar system—bodies with large amounts of liquid water hidden from view. Some of them could contain more water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. And in addition to Enceladus, planetary scientists have counted at least one other member of the list, Jupiter’s moon Europa, among the ranks of the “possibly habitable.” “There could be life in our own solar system, and we may already have flown past it,” said Christopher German, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institutionand a coleader of Network for Ocean Worlds (NOW), a NASA-funded effort to advance research on these intriguing bodies. “Instead of just a sci-fi thing, suddenly we have grounds for wondering if there’s life on these nearby worlds—places we have the technology to reach.” …German said scientists have identified five “confirmed” ocean worlds beyond Earth: Jupiter’s moons Callisto, Europa, and Ganymede and Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan. That list could be just the tip of the planetary iceberg, however. “There are probably 20 candidates from places that haven’t been studied closely since the Voyagermissions of the 1980s,” German said…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2023-01-07. Federal rebates are expected to create a surge in electric vehicle buyers. Key things to know before you make the leap. [https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/federal-rebates-expected-create-surge-090505897.html] By Karl Ebert, USA Today. Excerpt: At the start of 2022, just 5% of vehicles sold in the U.S. were battery-powered electric cars and trucks or plug-in hybrids. That’s expected to rise to 9% by the end of the year and near 50% by 2030 thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act‘s consumer and manufacturer incentives. …There’s a phenomenon known as “range anxiety,” and it remains a real concern for electric vehicle drivers taking longer trips. …This year, the number of vehicles that can go 300 or more miles on a full charge nearly tripled, from five to 14, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. …According to McKinsey and Co., the average person drives 30 miles a day. …it’s very common in a two-car household to have one car that you use to get around town and another car that you use for road trips …In that case, you can get an EV that’s going to be an around-town car…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2023-01-07. Look for Saturn-Venus Conjunction in Southwest January 22-23. [https://skyandtelescope.org/observing/sky-tour-podcast-january-2023/] By Sky & Telescope. Excerpt: As January opens, you can see four bright planets in the sky after sunset, …. Make note of where the Sun goes down, and then look…about 30 to 45 minutes after sunset. …pick out Venus very low above the horizon …the planet Saturn will pop into view to the upper left of Venus. Night by night, Saturn drops deeper into the twilight, and Venus rises a little higher. On the evening of January 22nd, these two planets will pass each other just ½° apart — about the apparent diameter of the Moon. And one evening later, a very thin crescent Moon will perch to the upper left of these paired planets…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 2.
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2023-01-06. A Forest, for the Trees. [https://eos.org/agu-news/a-forest-for-the-trees] By Caryl-Sue Micalizio, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: [January 2023 edition of Eos has articles on forests:] “For Western Wildfires, the Immediate Past Is Prologue,” “Last Tree Standing”, “A Lidar’s-Eye View of How Forests Are Faring,” Free-Air CO2Enrichment technology in the Amazon and the Internet of Things in Germany’s Black Forest…. For GSS A New World View chapter 6.
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2023-01-06. Scientists may have found magic ingredient behind ancient Rome’s self-healing concrete. [https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-may-have-found-magic-ingredient-behind-ancient-romes-self-healing-concrete] By Jacklin Kwan, Science. Excerpt: …when the researchers tried to make their own Roman concrete in the lab with quicklime, they ended up with material that was “identical” to the samples they gathered from Privernum, Masic says. When the team created small cracks in the concrete—as would happen as the material aged—and then added water (as would happen with rainwater in the real world), the lime lumps dissolved and recrystallized, effectively filling in the cracks and keeping the concrete strong, the researchers report today in Science Advances. …Modern concrete typically doesn’t heal cracks larger than 0.2 or 0.3 millimeters across. The team’s Roman-inspired concrete, in contrast, healed cracks up to 0.6 millimeters across. Masic hopes the work will inspire today’s engineers to improve their own concrete, perhaps with quicklime or a related compound. …The material wouldn’t just be less expensive than current self-healing concrete, Masic says, it could also help fight climate change: Cement production accounts for 8% of greenhouse gas emissions…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 6.
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2023-01-05. The Nuclear Dump That Created a Generation of Indigenous Activists. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/05/world/asia/lanyu-taiwan-nuclear-waste.html] By Amy Qin and Amy Chang Chien, The New York Times. Excerpt: …in 1980, when a local pastor saw an article buried in the back of a newspaper, …the islanders found out what the site actually was: a massive nuclear waste dump. …Following the revelation that the site was a nuclear waste facility, the Tao fought vigorously to persuade the government to remove it. For years they staged mass protests on the island and in front of government offices in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital. They became self-taught experts in nuclear waste. …But despite the government’s repeated promises to relocate the site, the dump remains. …efforts to relocate the waste fell short. In 1993, a group of countries voted to permanently ban the practice of dumping all nuclear waste in the ocean. Other potential options, including a plan to export the waste to North Korea, were scuttled. …the authorities agreed to pay the Tao $83 million in compensation, with an additional $7 million to be disbursed every three years…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 4.
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2023-01-04. Sun-powered water splitter produces unprecedented levels of green energy. [https://www.science.org/content/article/sun-powered-water-splitter-produces-unprecedented-levels-green-energy] By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: …The latest iteration of their device uses not only the visible and ultraviolet photons able to split water, but also the less energetic infrared photons. The combined changes enabled the scientists to convert 9.2% of the Sun’s energy into hydrogen fuel, roughly three times more than previous photocatalytic setups, they report today in Nature. …In addition, …the new setup also works well, though somewhat less efficiently, with seawater, a cheap and inexhaustible resource. Being able to convert seawater cheaply into carbon-free fuel would truly be the ultimate in green energy. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2023-01-04. US government approves use of world’s first vaccine for honeybees. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/04/honeybee-vaccine-first-approved] By Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Excerpt: The world’s first vaccine for honeybees has been approved for use by the US government, raising hopes of a new weapon against diseases that routinely ravage colonies that are relied upon for food pollination. …a vaccine created by Dalan Animal Health, a US biotech company, …. …The vaccine, which will initially be available to commercial beekeepers, aims to curb foulbrood, a serious disease caused by the bacterium Paenibacillus larvae that can weaken and kill hives. There is currently no cure for the disease, which in parts of the US has been found in a quarter of hives, requiring beekeepers to destroy and burn any infected colonies and administer antibiotics to prevent further spread. …The US is unusually dependent upon managed honeybee colonies to prop up its food pollination, with hives routinely trucked across the country to propagate everything from almonds to blueberries. This is because many wild bee species are in alarming decline, due to habitat loss, pesticide use and the climate crisis, fueling concerns around a global crisis in insect numbers that threatens ecosystems and human food security and health.… For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 8.
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2023-01-03. Is a Dam in Rural Portugal a Key to Our Alternative Energy Future?. [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/business/energy-environment/portugal-hydroelectric-power-renewable-energy.html] By Stanley Reed, The New York Times. Excerpt: When Portugal’s electrical system needs a boost, a signal activates a power plant buried deep in a hillside in the country’s scrubby, pine-covered north. Inside the man-made cavern, valves, nine feet in diameter, suddenly open, allowing water draining from a reservoir four miles away to begin streaming through four massive turbines. …the 1.5 billion euro ($1.6 billion) complex of concrete, tunnels and water is not just massive. It is also providing an answer to one of the most vexing questions facing renewable energy. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent across the globe on solar energy and wind power. But when the sun goes down, or the breezes become still, where will the electricity come from? Iberdrola’s giant project — which uses water and gravity to generate power on demand, and then pumps the water back to the upper reservoir when rates drop — is part of the solution…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 4.
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2023-01-03. Space Missions to Watch in 2023. [https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/space-missions-to-watch-in-2023/] By Sky & Telescope. Excerpts: …SpaceX’s Starship …Axiom Space’s AX2 … to the International Space Station …ESA’s Euclid space telescope …an infrared instrument, aimed at studying dark matter and dark energy …Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) …X-ray Polarimeter Satellite, …and the Aditya L1 solar mission, headed to the Earth-Sun L1 point. …China’s Xuntian Space Telescope, a sky survey telescope …China also plans to launch two X-ray telescopes in 2023 …The Moon will be bustling in 2023. Three missions [to the Moon] are at least partially NASA-funded through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services. …The Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment (PRIME 1) is set to launch in June, carrying with it The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain. The TRIDENT drill will delve three feet deep to bring lunar regolith up to the surface. …[Russian] Roscosmos’ Luna 25 lander …India …Chandrayaan 3 …German-based Rocket Factory Augsburg might also send up a small lunar orbiter, named Harmony …A Google Xprize alumnus, ALINA will land near the Apollo 17 landing site. …Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon (SLIM) …ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) will …arrive at Jupiter in October 2029. …NASA’s Psyche will depart…for the enigmatic “metal asteroid” 16 Psyche. …Rocket Lab may launch MIT’s ambitious Venus mission in May …drop a small probe into the Venusian atmosphere…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2023-01-02. Astronomy Modeling with Exoplanets course. [https://www.modelinginstruction.org/pd/upcoming-workshops-2/2023-spring-distance-learning-courses/] By the American Modeling Teachers Association. Excerpt: This course gives teacher participants a 45-hour distance learning experience that will ground them in the use of the Modeling Method of Instruction. This course follows AMTA’s initial face-to-face Astronomy Modeling Workshop in 2019 and utilizes newly updated curriculum resources that focus on the modern-day scientific pursuit of discovering and exploring planets around other star systems: exoplanets. …participants …develop models of space and time that enable them to locate objects and map space from the perspective of Earth …examine motion and forces in order to develop a generalizable model of orbital motion. …construct both particle and wave models of light as a mode of energy transfer (and information transfer) via radiation. …develop a model of cosmic evolution, to better understand the history and fate of our universe …consider the probability of life elsewhere in the universe, on exoplanets. …develop skills and knowledge in observational astronomy, image acquisition, stellar photometry, data and image analysis, and how telescopes work …access remote telescopes and collaborate with professional exoplanet astronomers in their own exoplanet observations…. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 8.
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2023-01-02. Hitting Record, Electric Cars Sales in Norway Near 80% in 2022. [https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2023-01-02/hitting-record-electric-cars-sales-in-norway-near-80-in-2022] By Reuters. Excerpt: OSLO (Reuters) -Almost four out of five new cars sold in Norway last year were battery-powered, with Tesla the top-selling brand for the second year in a row, registration data showed on Monday. Seeking to become the first nation to end the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2025, oil-producing Norway has until now exempted battery-powered fully electric vehicles (BEV) from taxes imposed on rivals using internal combustion engines (ICE). The share of new electric vehicles rose to 79.3% in 2022 from 65% in 2021 and from a mere 2.9% a decade ago, the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) said…. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2023-01-01. Extinction Rebellion announces move away from disruptive tactics. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/01/extinction-rebellion-announces-move-away-from-disruptive-tactics] By Robert Booth, The Guardian. Excerpt: The climate protest group Extinction Rebellion is shifting tactics from disruptions such as smashing windows and glueing themselves to public places in 2023, it has announced. A new year resolution to “prioritise attendance over arrest and relationships over roadblocks”, was spelled out in a 1 January statement titled “We quit”, which said “constantly evolving tactics is a necessary approach”. …XR is calling for 100,000 people to “leave the locks, glue and paint behind” and surround the Houses of Parliament on 21 April…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2023-12-31. Greta Thunberg ends year with one of the greatest tweets in history. [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/31/greta-thunberg-andrew-tate-tweet] By Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian. Excerpt: On 27 December, former kickboxer, professional misogynist and online entrepreneur Andrew Tate, 36, sent a boastfully hostile tweet to climate activist Greta Thunberg, 19, about his sports car collection. “Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions,” he wrote. He was probably hoping to enhance his status by mocking her climate commitment. Instead, she burned the macho guy to a crisp in nine words. Cars are routinely tokens of virility and status for men, and the image accompanying his tweet of him pumping gas into one of his vehicles, coupled with his claims about their “enormous emissions”, had unsolicited dick pic energy. Thunberg seemed aware of that when she replied: “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.” Her reply gained traction to quickly become one of the top 10 tweets of all time; as I write, it’s been liked 3.5 million times and shared directly 650,000 or so…. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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