Stay Current with GSS
The GSS google group receives “Stay Current” weekly emails with excerpts and links to articles. To join, email gssmail@berkeley.edu with subject line “Join GSS” and in the body your name, city, state, country, and school (if any).
“Stay Current” links are in the Contents table in each book. If a news source limits the number of articles one person can read for free, try “divide and conquer” with different students reading and reporting to the class on different articles.
See updates from 2024 -|- 2023 -|- 2022 -|- 2021
RECENT UPDATES (2025)
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2025-03-21. France hits hydrogen jackpot: World’s largest reserve valued $92 trillion found. By Sujita Sinha, Interesting Engineering. Excerpt: Scientists in France have made a groundbreaking discovery that could transform clean energy production. Beneath the soil of Folschviller, in the Moselle region, researchers have uncovered an astonishing 46 million tons of natural hydrogen …providing a new source of carbon-free fuel. The discovery was made by scientists from the GeoRessources laboratory and the CNRS while they were searching for methane. Instead, at a depth of 4,101 feet (1,250 meters), they found an enormous deposit of white hydrogen. This form of hydrogen is naturally occurring and does not require industrial production, unlike green hydrogen, which is made using renewable energy, or gray hydrogen, which is derived from fossil fuels. To put this discovery into perspective, the newly found deposit represents more than half of the world’s annual gray hydrogen production—but without the environmental costs. If extracted efficiently, this resource could provide a clean, low-cost energy solution that eliminates CO₂ emissions entirely. Media reports estimate the discovery’s value to be approximately $92 trillion…. Full article at https://interestingengineering.com/energy/france-worlds-largest-hydrogen-deposit. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-03-18. Instant sand: Scientists grow carbon-negative construction materials in seawater. By Alessandro F. Rotta Loria, Nishu Devi et al, Wiley, Advanced Sustainable Systems. Excerpt: This lab-grown “sand” could help reduce the construction industry’s climate footprint. Northwestern University. Sand may seem like an infinite resource, but it’s an essential ingredient in building materials and we’re actually depleting it fast, Now, researchers have devised a way to grow sand-like materials from seawater—and by doing so, lock away carbon and reduce the construction industry’s environmental footprint. Currently, the sand used in concrete, gravel, paints, plasters, and other materials is taken straight from sandy spots like coastlines and riverbeds. But a team of researchers has figured out how to make calcium- and magnesium-based minerals like those in sand—“not by digging into the Earth, but by harnessing electricity and CO2,” lead author Alessandro Rotta Loria explains in a statement. First, the researchers applied an electric current to seawater, which naturally contains calcium and magnesium ions. Then, with that current running, they bubbled carbon dioxide into the water. This ultimately led to the creation of calcium carbonate and magnesium hydroxide. …If further tests show the new “sand” can be used to make strong concrete and other useful materials the process could help reduce the construction industry’s massive contributions to climate change. By using renewable electricity and placing production plants on or near the sea, the materials “would truly become carbon sinks.”… Full paper at https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adsu.202400943. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2025-03-18. Lonnie Johnson’s $75M Battery Bet: EVs That Go Twice As Far. By Stephen Key, Forbes. Excerpt: Lonnie Johnson…After nearly three decades of self-funded, against-all-odds research, the Hall of Fame inventor and his team have delivered a game-changer: A true all-solid-state battery that is safer, more powerful, and cheaper than today’s standards—meaning it has the potential to transform energy storage for electric vehicles, renewable power, and more. …“I’ve had this long-term interest in energy and awareness of the impact our use of fossil fuels has had on the environment,” he shared in an interview. That vision drove him to launch Johnson Energy Storage (JES) and chase a dream others deemed too daunting: A solid-state battery that’s safer, more powerful, and cheaper than what’s available today. …Unlike other “solid-state” contenders that sneak in liquid electrolytes or rely on pricey, unstable materials, Dr. Johnson’s glass electrolyte delivers by boasting higher conductivity, suppressing dangerous shorts, and thriving across a wide temperature range—all while slashing production costs. “It’s all ceramic, glass, and metal materials,” he explained. “It’s not flammable, won’t burst open, and doesn’t need the cooling systems lithium-ion requires.” Picture an EV you can drive twice as far without charging, renewable energy grids that store power more efficiently, and consumer gadgets that don’t overheat. …Preliminary results from having the batteries independently tested by UL have confirmed to Johnson and his team at JES that they are well on the technical path to producing a true all-solid-state battery….. Full article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenkey/2025/03/18/lonnie-johnsons-15m-battery-bet-evs-that-go-twice-as-far/. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2025-03-14. Impact that formed the Moon struck a practically newborn Earth. By Paul Voosen, Science. Excerpt: …the Moon formed some 65 million years after the start of the Solar System—and only tens of millions of years after Earth. The findings promise to resolve decades of debate about the Moon’s age, says Thorsten Kleine, a cosmochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research who presented new work here at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC). Several strands of research are converging on a new and older age for the Moon, he says: “It’s about 4.5 billion years.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/impact-formed-moon-struck-practically-newborn-earth. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2025-03-13. Sunlight drives the abiotic formation of nitrous oxide in fresh and marine waters. By Elizabeth Leon-Palmero et al, Science. Abstract: Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a potent greenhouse gas and the main stratospheric ozone-depleting agent, yet its sources are not well resolved. In this work, we experimentally show a N2O production pathway not previously considered in greenhouse gas budgets, which we name photochemodenitrification. Sunlight induces substantial and consistent N2O production under oxic abiotic conditions in fresh and marine waters. We measured photochemical N2O production rates using isotope tracers and determined that nitrite is the main substrate and that nitrate can also contribute after being photoreduced to nitrite. Additionally, this N2O production was strongly correlated to the radiation dose. Photochemodenitrification exceeded biological N2O production in surface waters. Although previously overlooked, this process may contribute considerably to global N2O emissions through its occurrence in fresh and marine surface waters. …This is a natural process, but it’s likely being altered by human activity, just as the biological production of N2O by microbes is natural, but it’s also promoted by the addition of nitrogen, like from agricultural runoff. The fact that human beings are increasing the amount of nitrogen in freshwater and coastal areas—that could be enhancing the sunlight reaction as well. Full paper at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq0302. For GSS Climate Change chapter 3.
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2025-03-TEMPLATE. . By . Excerpt: . Full article at URL. For GSS chapter .
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2025-03-15. Massive energy project forges ahead after US government withdraws support: ‘Determined to achieve its ambitious objectives’. By Leo Collis, The Cool Down (TCD). Excerpt: The National Bank of Canada is pressing ahead with lending for renewable energy projects as part of efforts to reach net-zero targets. Investment Executive reported on the bank’s commitment, which will see CA$20 billion allocated by 2030. The publication observed that this announcement comes at a time when United States President Donald Trump has indicated an intention to repeal clean energy programs and slow the transition to pollution-free energy…. Full article at https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/national-bank-renewable-energy-lending/. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-03-14. World’s most powerful underwater tide-riding turbines to power 15,000 homes annually. By Jijo Malayil, Interesting Engineering. Excerpt: One of the most powerful underwater tide-riding turbine projects has secured funding from the European Union’s Innovation Fund. NH1 project by tidal energy developer Normandie Hydroliennes in France has been granted €31.3 million in funding from the European Union’s 2023 Innovation Fund. The grant will fast-track NH1, one of France’s first commercial tidal energy pilots, boosting marine renewables. The project aims to install four horizontal-axis turbines in Normandy, delivering 34 GWh annually to the French grid by 2028…. Full article at https://interestingengineering.com/energy/underwater-tide-riding-turbines-project-funding-boost. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-03-14. UK hoping to work with China to counteract Trump’s climate-hostile policies. By Fiona Harvey, The Guardian. Excerpt: The UK is hoping to shape a new global axis in favour of climate action along with China and a host of developing countries, to offset the impact of Donald Trump’s abandonment of green policies and his sharp veer towards climate-hostile countries such as Russia and Saudi Arabia. Ed Miliband, the UK’s energy and net zero secretary, arrived in Beijing on Friday for three days of talks with top Chinese officials, including discussions on green technology supply chains, coal and the critical minerals needed for clean energy. The UK’s green economy is growing three times faster than the rest of the economy, but access to components and materials will be crucial for that to continue…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/mar/14/uk-hoping-to-work-with-china-to-counteract-trumps-climate-hostile-policies. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2025-03-11. Astronomers discover 128 new moons orbiting Saturn. By Hannah Devlin, The Guardian. Excerpt: Astronomers have discovered 128 new moons orbiting Saturn, giving it an insurmountable lead in the running tally of moons in the solar system. Until recently, the “moon king” title was held by Jupiter, but Saturn now has a total of 274 moons, almost twice as many as all the other planets combined…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/mar/11/astronomers-discover-128-new-moons-orbiting-saturn. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2025-03-10. Greenhouse gases reduce the satellite carrying capacity of low Earth orbit. By William E. Parker et al, Nature Sustainability. Abstract: Anthropogenic contributions of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere have been observed to cause cooling and contraction in the thermosphere, which is projected to continue for many decades. This contraction results in a secular reduction in atmospheric mass density where most satellites operate in low Earth orbit. Decreasing density reduces drag on debris objects and extends their lifetime in orbit, posing a persistent collision hazard to other satellites and risking the cascading generation of more debris. This work uses projected CO2 emissions from the shared socio-economic pathways to investigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the satellite carrying capacity of low Earth orbit. The instantaneous Kessler capacity is introduced to compute the maximum number and optimal distribution of characteristic satellites that keep debris populations in stable equilibrium. Modelled CO2 emissions scenarios from years 2000–2100 indicate a potential 50–66% reduction in satellite carrying capacity between the altitudes of 200 and 1,000 km. Considering the recent, rapid expansion in the number of satellites in low Earth orbit, understanding environmental variability and its impact on sustainable operations is necessary to prevent over-exploitation of the region. Full article at https://gss.lawrencehallofscience.org/wp-admin/post.php?post=23034&action=edit. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-03-10. More carbon dioxide in oceans could harm carbon-eating microbes, speed climate change. By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: The carbon dioxide (CO2) spewing from human activities is not only changing Earth’s atmosphere, it’s also rapidly acidifying the planet’s oceans. In 50 years, that acidification could reduce the oceans’ ability to absorb CO2 by 10% as it takes a toll on phytoplankton, microscopic single-cell organisms that feed on the gas through the process of photosynthesis, a new study suggests. Reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the effect could in turn cause atmospheric CO2 to build up faster and accelerate warming of the global climate…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/more-carbon-dioxide-oceans-could-harm-carbon-eating-microbes-speed-climate-change. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2025-03-07. Tropical forests in the Americas are changing too slowly to track climate change. By Jesús Aguirre-Gutiérrez et al, Science. Editor’s Summary: Species are expected to shift their ranges as the climate changes, but shifts may not occur fast enough, especially for immobile species such as plants. Two papers in this issue assess the degree to which plant species are tracking climate change in the American tropics, where data availability has constrained inference. Ramírez-Barahona et al. show that in Mesoamerican cloud forests, climate change and deforestation together have led to a mean upward shift in species ranges since 1979, mainly due to contracting lower range edges. In tropical forests across the Americas, Aguirre-Gutiérrez et al. found that tree traits are not shifting fast enough to track climate change based on trait-climate relationships, with smaller shifts in montane forests. —Bianca Lopez. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl5414. For GSS A New World View chapter 5.
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2025-03-07. US exits fund that compensates poorer countries for global heating. By Nina Lakhani, The Guardian. Excerpt: The Trump administration has withdrawn the US from a global agreement under which the developed nations most responsible for the climate crisis pledged to partly compensate developing countries for irreversible harms caused by global heating. The loss and damage fund was agreed at the Cop28 UN climate summit in late 2023 – a hard-won victory after years of diplomatic and grassroots advocacy by developing nations that bear the brunt of the climate crisis despite having contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions. The fund signalled a commitment by developed, polluting countries to provide financial support for some of the irreversible economic and noneconomic losses from sea level rise, desertification, drought and floods already happening. The US …had so far pledged only $17.5m (£13.5m) to the loss and damage fund, which became operational on 1 January this year. Now the US, the biggest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, will no longer participate in the initiative…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/07/us-exits-fund-that-compensates-poorer-countries-for-global-heating. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2025-03-06. Butterfly populations are plummeting across the United States. By Erik Stokstad, Science. Excerpt: The American lady (Vanessa virginiensis) is one of the most common and widespread butterflies across the United States. But over the past 2 decades, this orange-and-black beauty—along with almost all other species of butterfly—have become less abundant, according to a nationwide study published today in Science. Such losses don’t just make the world less pretty. In the caterpillar stage of their life, butterflies are a vital source of food for birds. They are also important pollinators, including of crops. …Five butterfly species have gone extinct in the U.S. since 1950. Another 29 are considered endangered. Yet protecting butterfly habitats and using pesticides more sparingly may help remaining butterfly populations recover…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/butterfly-populations-are-plummeting-across-united-states. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 1.
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2025-03-06. Firms to produce first fully US-made silicon solar panels, target 1GW output yearly. By Kapil Kajal, Interesting Engineering. Excerpt: In a significant development for the U.S. solar industry, three manufacturers, Suniva, Heliene, and Corning, have unveiled plans to produce solar modules that will be exclusively available within the domestic market. This initiative marks a notable advancement in enhancing local manufacturing capabilities of renewable energy components. Corning is set to supply the necessary wafers and polysilicon for the modules, while Suniva will provide monocrystalline silicon solar cells. Heliene will handle the assembly of these components into finished modules. …The wafers and polysilicon will be produced in Michigan, with the solar cells fabricated in Georgia. …This development is particularly relevant in light of the Investment Tax Credit (ITC), a crucial element of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which aims to encourage increased domestic production of renewable energy components and materials. The ITC offers financial incentives that could make these modules more competitive in a rapidly evolving market. With the new partnership, the firms aim to produce 1 GW of solar modules per year, which is enough to power about 173,000 homes. …With the new partnership, the firms aim to produce 1 GW of solar modules per year, which is enough to power about 173,000 homes…. Full article at https://interestingengineering.com/energy/first-fully-us-made-silicon-solar-panels. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-03-05. Wind and solar power overtake coal in US for first time. By Ben Cooke | Yennah Smart, The Times. Excerpt: The milestone highlights the rapid growth of renewable energy despite political headwinds since President Trump’s re-election. …The two renewable energy sources accounted for 17 per cent of the country’s electricity mix while coal fell to an all-time low of 15 per cent. Solar was the fastest-growing energy source, increasing 27 per cent from the year before, while wind increased 7 per cent. Gas generation continued to grow, at three times the rate of coal’s decline. The use of coal has been declining since 2007 but as recently as 2017 it was generating more than twice as much electricity as wind and solar…. Full article at https://www.thetimes.com/article/fbd63edb-9573-425f-a5b5-535ed8096b22. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-03-05. Earth’s rocks hold whiffs of air from billions of years ago. By Paul Voosen, Science. Excerpt: Earth’s atmosphere…has changed dramatically over time. Bubbles of ancient air trapped in polar ice cores provide reliable archives of the past 6 million years—but that’s less than 0.2% of Earth’s history. …now a small group of researchers is …analyzing minute pockets of ancient liquid and gas trapped inside salts, veins of quartz, and crystallized magma …that stretch back more than 3 billion years, …extracting direct records of noble gases, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. …Much of what researchers are learning from these samples is still preliminary …presented late last year at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), …verifying some assumptions about atmospheric history—and upending others. …for example, that oxygen levels were high enough to support animal respiration long before the first animals appeared less than 800 million years ago. …in the beginning, 4.5 billion years ago, Earth’s surface was an ocean of magma. It gained an atmosphere as gases seeped out of that magma and were released by later volcanic eruptions and the impacts of asteroids and comets. …nitrogen grew to dominate the air, because it’s …stable and too heavy…to escape to space. Oxygen was largely absent until about 3 billion to 3.5 billion years ago, when the first photosynthesizing microbes began to release it…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/earth-s-rocks-hold-whiffs-air-billions-years-ago. For GSS Life and Climate chapter 5.
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2025-03-04. Great Barrier Reef Corals Hit Hard by Marine Heat Wave. By Anupama Chandrasekaran, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: When an intense marine heat wave sent ocean temperatures soaring in 2023 and 2024, coral reefs around the world bleached. New research on the Great Barrier Reef’s One Tree Island shows that more than 50% of surveyed coral colonies that bleached died of heat stress and starvation. And even heat-resistant corals weren’t immune. When corals are stressed by warm water, they can lose the algae that live in their tissues. This process turns the coral white, earning it the name “coral bleaching.” Sometimes corals can recover, but if the stress is too intense, they die and eventually crumble into rubble and sand. “What we noticed in more recent times, when it gets really hot, they often die before they even fully bleach,” said marine biologist Maria Byrne at the University of Sydney…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/great-barrier-reef-corals-hit-hard-by-marine-heat-wave. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 7.
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2025-03-03. Extreme Heat and Rain Turned These Arctic Lakes Brown. By Larissa G. Capella, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Jasmine Saros, a lake ecologist at the University of Maine, has been studying Arctic lakes in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, since 2013, …in 2023, they returned to find many once-clear lakes had turned brown. …Lake browning often results from high concentrations of dissolved organic carbon, primarily from decaying vegetation. It can also be caused by an increase in iron, typically resulting from natural processes such as weathering of iron-rich soils and rocks into the water, as well as anthropogenic influences such as agricultural runoff and industrial discharges. Data from the fifth-generation European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts atmospheric reanalysis (ERA5)…showed that nine atmospheric rivers had dumped precipitation over the area between September and October of 2022. Atmospheric rivers are known for transporting moisture, but they can also carry warm air. The ERA data also highlighted that September 2022 was the hottest and wettest September on record in West Greenland since 1940. By early July 2023, when Saros and her colleagues were back on the lake, dissolved organic carbon levels had risen by 22% compared to the 2013–2023 average. Iron concentrations had increased 1,000%. …“Those atmospheric rivers drove not only record precipitation but also record heat,” Saros said. Higher temperatures caused precipitation to fall as rain instead of snow. The heavy rainfall saturated the landscape, thawed permafrost, and released organic material and iron into the lakes, turning them brown, she explained. The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.… Full article at https://eos.org/articles/extreme-heat-and-rain-turned-these-arctic-lakes-brown. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-03-02. Private lunar lander Blue Ghost aces moon touchdown with a special delivery for NASA. By MARCIA DUNN, Associated Press. Excerpt: A private lunar lander carrying a drill, vacuum and other experiments for NASA touched down on the moon Sunday, the latest in a string of companies looking to kickstart business on Earth’s celestial neighbor ahead of astronaut missions. Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander descended from lunar orbit on autopilot, aiming for the slopes of an ancient volcanic dome in an impact basin on the moon’s northeastern edge of the near side. …An upright and stable landing makes Firefly — a startup founded a decade ago — the first private outfit to put a spacecraft on the moon without crashing or falling over. Even countries have faltered, with only five claiming success: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan. …the lander carried 10 experiments to the moon for NASA. The space agency paid $101 million for the delivery, plus $44 million for the science and tech on board. It’s the third mission under NASA’s commercial lunar delivery program, intended to ignite a lunar economy of competing private businesses while scouting around before astronauts show up later this decade…. Full article at https://apnews.com/article/nasa-firefly-aerospace-blue-ghost-moon-landing-07b00840da07441e1e24b48509458f3f. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 2.
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2025-03-01. How Fungi Move Among Us. By Alan Burdick, The New York Times. Excerpt: Mycorrhizal fungi are the supply chains of the soil. With filaments thinner than hair, they shuttle vital nutrients to plants and tree roots. In return, the fungi receive carbon to grow their networks. In this way, 13 billion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide — one-third of fossil-fuel emissions worldwide — enter the soil each year. These fungi cannot live on their own; they need the carbon from plants. In turn, 80 percent of the world’s plants rely on fungal networks to survive and thrive. The two are dependent trade partners. …“Fungi are super clever,” said Toby Kiers, an evolutionary biologist and director of the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, a research organization. “They’re constantly adapting their trade routes. They’re evaluating their environment very precisely. It’s a lot of decision-making.” …with an imaging robot, the team tracked the growth of the networks nonstop for days, measuring how the organisms reshaped their trade routes in response to different conditions. [The research team’s] study was published on Feb. 26 in the journal Nature…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/science/climate-mycorrhizal-fungus-networks.html. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 9.
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2025-02-28. Stars made from only primordial gas finally spotted, astronomers claim. By Daniel Clery, Science. Excerpt: Staring deep into space and far back in time, a team of astronomers may have spotted a galaxy full of stars made from only the primordial gas created in the Big Bang. Such “population III stars” would have formed from hydrogen and helium and nothing else, and researchers have been searching for them for decades…. If confirmed, the discovery, made with NASA’s JWST space observatory, opens a window on the starting point of the chemical enrichment of the universe, in which the heavier elements needed to make planets and life began to be forged in stellar explosions. …The nature of population III stars remains uncertain. Most theorists think they were huge, with masses up to 1000 times that of the Sun, 10 times larger than any star around today. …The gigantic stars that resulted would also burn hot and fast, ending in a supernova explosion after just a few million years. That brief first flash of population III stars is hard for astronomers to spot in galaxies that went on to shine steadily for billions of years with smaller, longer lived stars. But the spectrum of the light from the giant stars might give them away. Different elements absorb and emit characteristic wavelengths of light. Population III stars would produce very strong emission lines for hydrogen and helium and would lack completely spectral lines produced by heavier elements. …Rohan Naidu, an astronomer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his colleagues found a way to speed up the search, as they described in a preprint posted to the arXiv server last month…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/stars-made-only-primordial-gas-finally-spotted-astronomers-claim. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 9.
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2025-02-27. Deep Groundwater Might Be a Sustainable Solution to the Water Crisis. By Claudia Bertoni, Fridtjov Ruden, Elizabeth Quiroga Jordan and Helene Ruden, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Groundwater supplies 50% of the world’s drinking water and 25% of the water used globally in agriculture. …in arid regions of Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere, …groundwater [is] a critical resource supporting the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. Groundwater is typically sourced from relatively shallow depths belowground…within about 400 meters of the ground surface. …two key factors are contributing to these conventional groundwater resources becoming increasingly unreliable. First, contamination from natural processes and human activities …. Second, droughts and overdevelopment result in overuse …. …a growing global water crisis …threatens access to clean water and food production around the world—and it has scientists, policymakers, and others searching for sustainable solutions. …what we call deep aquifers, at depths between 400 and a few thousand meters—remain largely unexplored and untapped. …deep groundwater may be more common than previously thought, …. Without proper planning, though, aquifers like the Nubian (which should last several centuries with abstraction rates on the order of 1,000 cubic meters per second) can face overexploitation as extraction exceeds natural replenishment [Ruden, 2016]. In contrast, the example of the Guarani System demonstrates that sustainable management is possible. Shared by Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, the Guarani aquifers are managed collaboratively through monitoring, conservation, and contamination prevention, keeping water use within recharge limits and serving as a model for transboundary aquifer management….. Full article at https://eos.org/opinions/deep-groundwater-might-be-a-sustainable-solution-to-the-water-crisis. For GSS Population Growth chapter 5.
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2025-02-26. Where the Wetlands Are. By Rebecca Owen, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In classic literature, wetlands—ecosystems characterized by permanently or periodically water-saturated land—have too often been depicted as dangerous, gloomy, desolate places. “Look at Tolkien…Dickens or Austen,” said Christian Dunn, an environmental scientist at Bangor University in Wales. “The wetlands are where the ne’er-do-wells and villains hang out.” In reality, though, wetlands are …vibrant ecosystems, especially important in a changing climate. Wetlands are biodiversity hot spots and provide carbon sequestration. They also manage water—storing it quickly during heavy rain events and releasing it slowly during dry spells. “Wetlands are the superheroes of natural ecosystems when it comes to the power they have to help us combat the two biggest crises that we’re facing: climate breakdown and biodiversity loss,” said Dunn. In the past 100 years, Europe has lost 80% of its wetlands, a diverse array of inland and coastal ecosystems that include peatlands, riparian zones, marshes, bogs, swamps, and floodplains. …knowing the locations of wetlands across the continent is important for preserving and protecting what exists today. A new tool to help identify areas for conservation and restoration is the recently released European Wetland Map, which merges different types of geographic information system (GIS) data to create a comprehensive guide that can be used by researchers, developers, landowners, and residents to help protect Europe’s wetlands for the next 100 or more years…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/where-the-wetlands-are. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 4.
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2025-02-28. The Clean Energy Revolution Is Unstoppable. By Eric Beinhocker and J. Doyne Farmer, The Wallstreet Journal. Excerpt: Since Donald Trump’s election, clean energy stocks have plummeted, major banks have pulled out of a U.N.-sponsored “net zero” climate alliance, and BP announced it is spinning off its offshore wind business to refocus on oil and gas. Markets and companies seem to be betting that Trump’s promises to stop or reverse the clean energy transition and “drill, baby, drill” will be successful. …But this bet is wrong. The clean energy revolution is being driven by fundamental technological and economic forces that are too strong to stop. …Our research shows that once new technologies become established their patterns in terms of cost are surprisingly predictable. …
Since 1990, the cost of wind power has dropped by about 4% a year, solar energy by 12% a year and lithium-ion batteries by about 12% a year…. Full article at https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/thecleanenergyrevolution-is-unstoppable-88af7ed5. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2025-02-26. 2025 Spring Package. By Climate Central. Excerpt: Climate Central analyzed 55 years of temperature data and found that meteorological spring (March – May) has warmed across the U.S. from 1970 to 2024. The spring season has warmed in 234 (97%) of the 241 U.S. cities analyzed — by 2.4°F on average. Unusually warm spring days now happen more often. Four out of every five cities now experience at least one more week of warmer-than-normal spring days than in the 1970s. Spring has warmed the most across the southern tier of the country, particularly in the Southwest. Spring warming can prolong seasonal allergies, worsen wildfire risk, and limit snow-fed water supplies…. Full article at https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters/2025-spring-package. For GSS chapter 4.
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2025-02-26. Extreme Heat Linked to Accelerated Aging in Older Adults, Study Finds. By Mohana Ravindranath, The New York Times. Excerpt: Extreme heat can be particularly dangerous for older people, putting them at increased risk for heat stroke and death. But could it also affect how their DNA functions, and accelerate the aging process itself? A new study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, suggests it could. The analysis of over 3,600 older adults in the United States found that those living in neighborhoods prone to extreme heat — classified as 90 degrees or above — showed more accelerated aging at a molecular level compared with those in areas less prone to extreme heat. The findings suggest that heat waves and rising temperatures from climate change could be chemically modifying people’s DNA and speeding up their biological aging. The study authors estimated that a person living in an area that reached 90 degrees or above for 140 days or more in a year could age up to 14 months faster than someone in an area with fewer than 10 extreme heat days a year…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/well/heat-aging-older-people.html. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-02-24. NASA cuts off international climate science support. By Paul Voosen, Science. Excerpt: The world’s nations convened this week in Hangzhou, China, to plan the next major international assessment of climate science—but without the United States. Late last week, President Donald Trump’s administration denied officials permission to travel to the meeting and cut off a technical support contract for the report, the seventh assessment of the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The decision, first reported by Axios, is the first time the administration has targeted international climate science. The news caught climate scientists off guard. During the first Trump administration there was no interference with IPCC …. The U.S. has long been a leader of IPCC, which for decades has brought volunteer scientists together, unpaid, to produce influential reports every seven or so years. Katherine Calvin, NASA’s chief scientist, was set to co-lead IPCC’s third working group, focused on climate mitigation, for its seventh assessment, due near the end of the decade. Former President Joe Biden’s administration committed roughly $1.5 million for a technical support unit (TSU), a small team that would help with creating graphics and websites, running meetings, and editing the group’s report…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/nasa-cuts-international-climate-science-support. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2025-02-24. Diversity in Coho Salmon Could Be Key to Species Survival. By UC Berkeley Stone Center for Environmental Stewardship. Excerpt: New research published today in Ecology Letters found that coho salmon, one of five Pacific salmon species, have more dynamic migration patterns than previously thought. The study reveals these alternative life histories made coho populations more stable over time, which could be a missing piece in conservation research and action more broadly. …Like all salmon, coho hatch in freshwater, migrate to the ocean as juveniles, and return to their natal, freshwater habitat as adults to breed. In this study researchers documented something unique: prior to reaching the ocean, a subset of the coho population in Willow Creek left their natal habitat and spent three to four months in a wetland complex in the lower stretches of the creek (one type of “non-natal” habitat). This time in non-natal habitat provided these fish with abundant food sources and safety from high river flows in the winter. It also may have helped them time their entry to the ocean to coincide with good growth conditions. …Read the full paper here. For more about salmon and freshwater research at UC Berkeley, visit the Berkeley Freshwater site.… See also Detection of ferrihydrite in Martian red dust records ancient cold and wet conditions on Mars. Full article at https://nature.berkeley.edu/stewardship/news/2025/02/diversity-in-coho-salmon-could-be-key-to-species-survival. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 7.
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2025-02-24. Ancient beaches testify to long-ago ocean on Mars. By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: Mars today is a cold, dry, dusty planet with its only obvious water locked up in frozen polar ice caps. But billions of years ago, it appears to have had sandy beaches lapped by waves along the shoreline of a vast ocean. The evidence for beaches on Mars comes from a Chinese rover, called Zhurong, that landed on the planet in 2021. During its short life it detected evidence of underground beach deposits in an area thought to have once been the site of an ancient sea, bolstering the idea that the planet long ago had large bodies of water. …between May 2021 and May 2022, Zhurong traveled 1.9 kilometers (1.2 miles) roughly perpendicular to escarpments thought to be an ancient shoreline from a time — 4 billion years ago — when Mars had a thicker atmosphere and a warmer climate. Along its path, the rover used ground penetrating radar (GPR) to probe up to 80 meters (260 feet) beneath the surface. …“The structures don’t look like sand dunes. They don’t look like an impact crater. They don’t look like lava flows. That’s when we started thinking about oceans,” said Michael Manga, a University of California, Berkeley, professor of earth and planetary science. …Manga is the contributing author of a paper about the Zhurong measurements to be published the week of Feb. 24 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2422213122]…. Ancient ocean coastal deposits imaged on Mars. Full article at https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/02/24/ancient-beaches-testify-to-long-ago-ocean-on-mars/. See also Detection of ferrihydrite in Martian red dust records ancient cold and wet conditions on Mars and Gulf of Mars: Rover finds evidence of ‘vacation-style’ beaches on Mars. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2025-02-20. New research shows mosquitoes may be able to adapt to warming temperatures. By UC Berkeley Public Health. Excerpt: A new study led by a UC Berkeley School of Public Health Environmental Health Sciences postdoctoral scholar shows that mosquitoes may be more able to adapt to climate change and rising temperatures than previously thought. “The most common prediction of how global change will affect mosquitoes and mosquito-borne disease is that populations will shift to higher altitudes and higher latitudes,” said lead author Lisa Couper. “That is assuming mosquitoes won’t adapt to heat. But mosquitoes have all sorts of adaptive capabilities.” Mosquito-borne diseases collectively cause nearly one million deaths each year world-wide, including dengue, malaria, and West Nile virus, among others. …The study raised mosquito larva in both normal and high temperatures, then sequenced the genome of more than 200 individual insects. The genetic analysis showed that mosquitoes raised in the high temperature setting had …structural changes to their DNA–that showed adaptations to the hotter conditions. The heat tolerance the research team saw “exceeds that of projected climate warming,” according to the published paper, which appeared in PNAS in January…. Full article at https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/news-media/research-highlights/mosquitoes-may-be-able-to-adapt-to-warming-temperatures. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-02-18. Jupiter’s Moon Callisto Is Very Likely an Ocean World. By Sarah Stanley, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A closer look at previously disregarded observations reveals stronger evidence that a deep ocean lies beneath Callisto’s icy surface. …Cochrane et al. have revisited the Galileo data in more detail. Unlike in prior studies, this team incorporated all available magnetic measurements from Galileo’s eight close flybys of Callisto. Their expanded analysis much more strongly suggests that Callisto hosts a subsurface ocean…. Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/jupiters-moon-callisto-is-very-likely-an-ocean-world. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2025-02-18. New Theory Increases Probability of Intelligent Life beyond Earth. By Science News. Excerpt: In 1983, the theoretical physicist Brandon Carter concluded that the time it took for humans to evolve on Earth — relative to the total lifespan of the Sun — suggests that our evolutionary origin was intrinsically unlikely and that comparable human-like observers beyond Earth are exceedingly rare. In new research, scientists from Penn State, the University of Munich and the University of Rochester critically reevaluated core assumptions of Carter’s ‘hard-steps’ theory through the lens of historical geobiology. Specifically, they propose an alternative theory where there are no hard steps, and evolutionary singularities required for human origins can be explained via mechanisms outside of intrinsic improbability. Furthermore, if Earth’s surface environment was initially inhospitable not only to human life, but also to certain key intermediate steps required for human existence, then the timing of human origins was controlled by the sequential opening of new global environmental windows of habitability over Earth history…. Full article at https://www.sci.news/astronomy/hard-steps-model-intelligent-life-13678.html. For GSS Life and Climate chapter 11.
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2025-02-16. On a Mission to Heal Gila Monsters. By Emily Anthes, The New York Times. Excerpt: …pharmacies fill millions of prescriptions for Ozempic and related drugs, which have become popular for their weight-loss effects, every month. But in the beginning, …there was just a strange, venomous lizard with a flair for intermittent fasting. The Gila monster, which is native to the deserts of North America, can survive on just a few meals a year, thanks to a digestion-slowing hormone in its venom. The discovery of this hormone paved the way for Ozempic, making the Gila monster an enormously profitable gift to modern medicine. And last summer one particular Gila monster, a former pet named Pebbles, needed medicine in return. Pebbles…had been infected with a parasite called Cryptosporidium. Hard to kill, the parasite colonizes the digestive tract and is typically a death sentence for reptiles. …Tim Cernak, a pharmaceutical chemist at the University of Michigan ….had worked at the pharmaceutical giant Merck, developing drugs for people with cancer, H.I.V., diabetes and other conditions. …he had helped develop cutting-edge approaches, involving robots and artificial intelligence, to speed up the invention of new human drugs. A few years ago, however, Dr. Cernak decided that he wanted to use those tools to make medicines for ailing plants and animals, forging a new field he called “conservation chemistry.” Gila monsters weren’t the only species that had inspired human drugs. There were antibiotics derived from fungi, anticancer drugs from plants and painkillers from animal venom. Dr. Cernak thought it was time for pharmaceutical chemists to give back. “To me it’s this full circle thing,” he said. “We’re attempting to solve the ultimate health inequity.”…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/16/science/gila-monsters-cryptosporidium.html. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 1.
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2025-01-29. Variable vertical land motion and its impacts on sea level rise projections. By https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads8163 et al, Science. Abstract: Coastal vertical land motion (VLM), including uplift and subsidence, can greatly alter relative sea level projections and flood mitigations plans. Yet, current projection frameworks, such as the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, often underestimate VLM by relying on regional linear estimates. Using high-resolution (90-meter) satellite data from 2015 to 2023, we provide local VLM estimates for California and assess their contribution to sea level rise both now and in future. Our findings reveal that regional estimates substantially understate sea level rise in parts of San Francisco and Los Angeles, projecting more than double the expected rise by 2050. Additionally, temporally variable (nonlinear) VLM, driven by factors such as hydrocarbon and groundwater extraction, can increase uncertainties in 2050 projections by up to 0.4 meters in certain areas of Los Angeles and San Diego. This study highlights the critical need to include local VLM and its uncertainties in sea level rise assessments to improve coastal management and ensure effective adaptation efforts. Full paper at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ads8163. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-18. Giant Batteries Are Transforming the World’s Electrical Grids. By EnergyNow Media. Excerpt: Global energy storage capacity has tripled in recent years, thanks to an industry that barely existed a decade ago. …The rapid growth of large-scale energy storage is driven by plunging battery prices, rising electricity demand and a recognition among operators, utilities and public officials that grids are less reliable than they once were. “Energy storage has become a linchpin” for avoiding disruptions, says Joseph Williamson, vice president for projects at esVolta LP, the company that developed and owns the Hummingbird facility, which will store electricity delivered by a nearby PG&E substation. EsVolta will sell the energy back to grid customers as needed…. Full article at https://energynow.com/2025/01/giant-batteries-are-transforming-the-worlds-electrical-grids/. See also U.S. Power Grids are Vulnerable to Extreme Weather. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2025-02-21. The GSA is shutting down its EV chargers, calling them ‘not mission critical’. By Andrew J. Hawkins.The Verge. Excerpt: The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages buildings owned by the federal government, is planning to shut down all of its electric vehicle chargers nationwide, describing them as “not mission critical.” The agency, which manages contracts for the government’s vehicle fleets, is also looking to offload newly purchased EVs. The GSA currently operates several hundred EV chargers across the country, with approximately 8,000 plugs that are available for government-owned EVs as well as federal employees’ personally owned vehicles. …Under the Biden administration, the GSA was in charge of implementing the president’s plan to phase out the federal government’s use of gas-powered vehicles in favor of EVs. The federal government owns approximately 650,000 vehicles, more than half of which were to be replaced with EVs. …the GSA had ordered over 58,000 EVs and begun installing more than 25,000 charging ports, adding to the 8,000 already in use across the government. An interactive map showing the location of all GSA-owned chargers has been taken offline as of February this year. (An older version is available through the Wayback Machine.)…. Full article at https://www.theverge.com/news/617235/the-gsa-is-shutting-down-its-ev-chargers-calling-them-not-mission-critical. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2025-02-21. Outcry as Trump withdraws support for research that mentions ‘climate’. By Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Excerpt: The Trump administration is stripping away support for scientific research in the US and overseas that contains a word it finds particularly inconvenient: “climate.” The US government is withdrawing grants and other support for research that even references the climate crisis, academics have said, amid Donald Trump’s blitzkrieg upon environmental regulations and clean-energy development. Trump, who has said that the climate crisis is a “giant hoax”, has already stripped mentions of climate change and global heating from government websites and ordered a halt to programs that reference diversity, equity and inclusion. A widespread funding freeze for federally backed scientific work also has been imposed, throwing the US scientific community into chaos. …Kaarle Hämeri, chancellor of the University of Helsinki in Finland, said the descriptions for Fulbright grants had been changed to remove or alter the words “climate change”, as well as “equitable society”, “inclusive societies” and “women in society”…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/21/trump-scientific-research-climate. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2025-02-20. Cutting AI Down To Size. By Sarah Crespi, Sandeep Ravindran, Martin Enserink, Science. Excerpt: TinyML (the ML stands for machine learning) is a low-cost, low-power implementation of AI that is being increasingly adopted in resource-poor regions, especially in the Global South. In contrast to the large language models (LLMs) that have dominated the news with their versatility and uncanny knack for humanlike expression, tinyML devices currently have modest, specialized capabilities. Yet they can be transformative. Murugan’s tinyML-equipped drones, for example, have been able to identify cashew leaves with the fungal disease Anthracnose with 95% to 99% accuracy. They should save farmers time they would otherwise spend looking for signs of disease themselves. And their ability to target treatments to diseased plants removes the need to indiscriminately spray pesticides on all the plants, which is both expensive and damaging to health and the environment. …once the AI model is trained on a personal computer, it can often run for weeks on low-power tinyML devices powered by everyday batteries, sipping as little electricity as a typical laser pointer. …TinyML – $2–$60 Cost per device (including sensors); Average power consumption per device ≤1–100 milliwatts. LLMs – $25K–$70K Average cost per AI chip, requires tens of thousands of chips; Average power consumption per AI chip: 700–1200 Watts… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/what-s-tinyml-global-south-s-alternative-power-hungry-pricey-ai. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-02-20. Move over lithium: Sodium batteries could one day power a green economy. By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: Lithium-ion batteries are ubiquitous, not just in earbuds, phones, and cars, but also in massive facilities that store renewable energy for when the Sun doesn’t shine or the wind dies down. But lithium itself is relatively scarce and available from just a few countries. A world that runs on renewable energy would need 200 times more battery capacity than exists today—and that probably means a different kind of battery. …A decades-old technology may be rising to the challenge: batteries that use sodium rather than lithium ions to carry and store charge. Sodium is everywhere, in seawater and salt mines, so supply and cost aren’t a problem. But the metal isn’t as good at storing charge as lithium because its ions are three times bigger, hampering their ability to slip in and out of existing battery electrodes. Labs worldwide are developing new electrode materials to address that shortcoming, …. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/move-over-lithium-sodium-batteries-could-one-day-power-green-economy. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2025-02-19. Farm fertilizer could suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: If humanity wants to avoid a climate catastrophe, sucking up the carbon dioxide (CO2) it has already spewed into the atmosphere may be its last hope. One approach is to use naturally abundant minerals as CO2 sponges, but the process is slow. Now, a study reported in Nature suggests a way to accelerate it: by converting those minerals to compounds that bind CO2 faster and are similar to others already widely used in farming. …direct air capture (DAC)…requires building expensive CO2 capture plants and consumes some 2 megawatt hours of energy for every ton of CO2 wrung from the air. …Another approach is carbon mineralization: spreading vast amounts of crushed alkaline rocks—usually abundant magnesium silicates, such as olivine and serpentine—on soils worldwide. The pulverized rock binds CO2, permanently locking it away in mineral form. Nature already performs carbon mineralization on a grand scale, in a process known as weathering. But natural weathering takes millennia. …Unlike magnesium silicates, calcium silicates react quickly with CO2. If implemented on a global scale, say, by adding these crushed minerals to agricultural soils, the process could draw down billions of tons of atmospheric CO2 per year, Kanan and his postdoctoral assistant Yuxuan Chen estimate in the new research…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/farm-fertilizer-could-suck-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2025-02-10. Rice Paddies, Like Cows, Spew Methane. A New Variety Makes Them a Lot Less Gassy. By Matt Simon, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: …cows are really gassy, and that’s really bad for the planet: Microbes in their guts produce methane—a greenhouse gas up to 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide—which comes out as burps. Consequently, livestock is responsible for 30 percent of humanity’s methane emissions. …Rice cultivation, surprisingly enough, accounts for another 12 percent of humanity’s global methane emissions. …Growing rice requires flooding fields, called paddies, with staggering quantities of water. Microbes known as archaea multiply in the wet, oxygen-poor conditions, releasing methane. One way to reduce those emissions is to inundate the fields less often, but that’s not always feasible given local irrigation infrastructure, and less water can lead to reduced yields. …Now, though, scientists have gone to the source, announcing a breakthrough in breeding a variety of rice they say reduces methane emissions by 70 percent—while delivering yields nearly twice the global average. “The only drawback is that it cannot be cultivated throughout the whole of China, because the climate is so different in the different regions,” said Anna Schnürer, a microbiologist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and coauthor of the paper published in the journal Molecular Plant. “We are still working on finding additional varieties that can handle different temperatures.”… Full article at https://eos.org/articles/rice-paddies-like-cows-spew-methane-a-new-variety-makes-them-a-lot-less-gassy. For GSS Climate Change chapter 10.
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2025-02-10. Earth’s inner core might harbor volcanoes and landslides. By Hannah Richter, Science. Excerpt: More than 5000 kilometers beneath our feet, Earth’s iron inner core seems to be spinning, growing, and occasionally speeding up or slowing down. It’s also likely changing shape, according to research published today in Nature Geoscience, with some areas rising and falling up to 1 kilometer within a few years. Although most changes are likely subtle bumps in the iron landscape, some could mirror rising mountains and tumbling landslides. Though these movements—picked up as seismic waves traveling through the planet—have scant effect on us surface dwellers, they help bring into focus a more dynamic picture of Earth’s insides. …As for what drives these deformations, there are a slew of ideas. Because the freezing point of iron is a balmy 1500ºC, Vidale thinks material at the boundary between the inner and outer core may be continually melting and freezing into new structures. There may also be “burps” of iron bubbling out of the inner core to its surface. Or the inner core’s surface could be getting more bumpy and textured as it’s pushed around by gravity and the flowing outer core…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/earth-s-inner-core-might-harbor-volcanoes-and-landslides. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 3.
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2025-01-31. Asteroid 2024 YR4 reaches level 3 on the Torino Scale. By Center for NEO Studies (CNEOS), JPL/CalTech. Excerpt: CNEOS analysis of near-Earth asteroid 2024 YR4, which is estimated to be about 40 to 90 meters wide, indicates it has a more than 1% chance of impacting Earth on Dec. 22, 2032 — which also means there is almost a 99% chance this asteroid will not impact. These analyses will change from day to day as more observations are gathered. The CNEOS analyses are used for NASA’s contribution to the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN). After the impact probability for this asteroid reached 1%, IAWN issued its official notification for the potential impact…. Full article at https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news210.html. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7. See also: International Asteroid Warning Network – https://iawn.net/obscamp/2024YR4/index.shtml, explanation of the Torino Scale on Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale, European Space Agency Near-Earth Objects Coordination Center – https://neo.ssa.esa.int/-/latest-cafs, https://neo.ssa.esa.int/documents/d/guest/close-approach-fact-sheet-for-asteroid-2024yr4-version-1-0-, and Planetary Defense at NASA – https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-defense/.
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2025-02-07. Renewables provided 90% of new US capacity in 2024 – FERC. By Michelle Lewis, Elektrek. Excerpt: Renewable energy – solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, biomass – accounted for more than 90% of total US electrical generating capacity added in 2024, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and reviewed by the SUN DAY campaign. Solar alone accounted for over 81% of the new capacity. Moreover, December was the 16th month in a row in which solar was the largest source of new capacity. …In its latest monthly “Energy Infrastructure Update” report (with data through December 31, 2024), FERC says 105 “units” of solar totaling 4,369 megawatts (MW) came online in December, along with two units of wind (324 MW) and two units of biomass (45 MW). Combined, they accounted for 86.9% of all new generating capacity added during the month. Natural gas provided the balance: 717 MW…. Full article at https://electrek.co/2025/02/07/renewables-90-percent-new-us-capacity-2024-ferc/. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-02-07. Trump administration suspends $5bn electric vehicle charging program. By Maya Yang, The Guardian. Excerpt: The Trump administration has ordered US states to suspend a $5bn electric vehicle charging station program in a further blow to the environmental movement since the president’s return to the White House. In a memo issued on Thursday to state transportation directors, the transportation department’s Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) ordered states not to spend any funds allocated to them under the Biden administration as part of the national electric vehicle infrastructure (NEVI) program…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/07/trump-electric-vehicle-charging-station-program. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2025-02-06. Clean energy costs to continue to fall this year, report says. By Reuters. Excerpt: The cost of clean energy technologies worldwide, such as wind, solar and battery storage, are expected to fall further this year, a report by BloombergNEF showed on Thursday, despite rising protectionism in the form of tariffs on green energy imports. …On average, the China can produce a megawatt-hour of electricity from major power-generating technologies 11-64% cheaper than other markets, the report said. …The cost of clean power technologies is expected to fall further by 2-11% in 2025. While trade barriers could stall declines temporarily, BNEF expects the levellized cost of electricity for clean technologies to fall by 22-49% by 2035…. Full article at https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/clean-energy-costs-continue-fall-150909361.html. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-02-06. Disappearing landscapes: The Arctic at +2.7°C global warming. By Julienne C. Stroeve et al, Science. Abstract: Under current nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, global warming is projected to reach 2.7°C above preindustrial levels. In this review, we show that at such a level of warming, the Arctic would be transformed beyond contemporary recognition: Virtually every day of the year would have air temperatures higher than preindustrial extremes, the Arctic Ocean would be essentially ice free for several months in summer, the area of Greenland that reaches melting temperatures for at least a month would roughly quadruple, and the area of permafrost would be roughly half of what it was in preindustrial times. These geophysical changes go along with widespread ecosystem disruptions and infrastructure damage, which, as we show here, could be substantially reduced by increased efforts to limit global warming…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads1549. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8. See also Arctic Ice Is Getting Smoother and Moving Faster (Eos/AGU).
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2025-02-05. Climatic and ecological responses to Bennu-type asteroid collisions. By Lan Dai and Axel Timmermann, ScienceAdvances. Abstract summary: Asteroid Bennu has a 0.037% chance of colliding with Earth in 2182 CE. The potential collision of such medium-sized asteroids would inject dust into the atmosphere and disrupting climate, vegetation, and marine productivity. Simulations show global temperature drop of 4°C, reduced precipitation, and significant decreases in terrestrial and marine net primary productivity…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adq5399. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 1. See also Life’s Building Blocks Found in Bennu Samples (Eos/AGU)
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2025-02-05. Supply-side relief for the world’s largest coral reef. By Robert Steneck et al, ScienceAdvances. Abstract: Zoning to prevent fishing on 30% of the Great Barrier Reef yields 50% more larvae and biomass of coral grouper on fished reefs…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adv5639. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 7.
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2025-02-03. Increased crevassing across accelerating Greenland Ice Sheet margins. By Thomas R. Chudley et al, Nature Geoscience. Excerpt: The Greenland Ice Sheet, which measures more than 3 kilometers at its thickest point and covers an area three times the size of Texas, is the world’s second largest body of ice. If all of it were to melt, the world’s oceans would rise a whopping seven meters. And while such a complete meltdown would likely take thousands of years, Greenland—already one of the largest contributors to sea level rise—is poised to add up to 30 centimeters by 2100. Now, new research published in Nature Geoscience has revealed that this enormous mass of ice is breaking apart faster than expected…. Full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-024-01636-6. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-02-01. They Give Moth Holes a Makeover. By Emma Orlow, The New York Times. Excerpt: Emma Villeneuve …and …Bjorn Eva Park …opened Eva Joan in 2021, …a kind of business …where mending, alterations, embroidery and education could be brought under the same roof. They also wanted to sell one-of-a-kind pieces and hard-to-come-by fabrics for others to pursue their own projects. …mending jobs were also a way to salvage supposedly unsalvageable items languishing in the back of closets. …As many people confront the reality of clothing waste and the environmental damage wrought by cheap, mass-produced fashion, Eva Joan joins spots in New York …which are introducing a younger generation to clothing repair…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/style/eva-joan-clothing-repair-shop.html. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2025-01-31. Warmer, more crowded cities bring out the rats. By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science. Excerpt: Climate change emerged as a driving factor behind urban rat swarms, the researchers report today in Science Advances. As temperatures rise, they conclude, and people flock to urban areas and convert formerly “green” spaces into neighborhoods and shopping centers, they created a perfect storm for rat populations to explode. And the city that’s fared the worst over the past decade? Washington, D.C….. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/warmer-more-crowded-cities-bring-out-rats. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-30. Climate change has really messed up polar bears’ lives. By Louise C. Archer et al, Science. Summary: …polar bear populations have declined over the past 50 years as the extent of sea ice has decreased. Archer et al. used data collected from polar bears in the western Hudson Bay Area over nearly all of that time…. Energetic patterns at the individual level successfully predicted larger-scale population dynamics. A single driver, energy limitation, emerged as being responsible for the population decline, confirming that polar bears face food shortages due to the loss of ice. —Sacha Vignieri…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp3752. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-31. A new ‘mini-CRISPR’ flexes its editing power in monkey muscles. By Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Science. Excerpt: In the years since the gene-editing strategy CRISPR burst onto the scene, it’s run into a big limitation: The classic CRISPR system is too unwieldy to get into many of the body’s tissues and do its slicing and dicing. Now, researchers from a company co-founded by Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize for helping develop CRISPR, are reporting what they hope will be a significant step forward. In a preprint posted last night, the team describes a “mini-CRISPR” successfully shipped into muscle cells in mice and monkeys, where it efficiently edited a gene linked to neuromuscular disorders…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/new-mini-crispr-flexes-its-editing-power-monkey-muscles. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 4.
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2025-01-29. Abundant ammonia and nitrogen-rich soluble organic matter in samples from asteroid (101955) Bennu. By Daniel P. Glavin et al, Nature Astronomy. Abstract Excerpt: Organic matter in meteorites reveals clues about early Solar System chemistry and the origin of molecules important to life…. Samples returned from the B-type asteroid Bennu by the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer mission …show that Bennu samples are volatile rich, with more carbon, nitrogen and ammonia than samples from asteroid Ryugu and most meteorites. …Bennu’s parent asteroid developed in or accreted ices from a reservoir in the outer Solar System where ammonia ice was stable. …The transport and delivery of organic compounds from these bodies could have been a source of molecules available for the emergence of life on Earth and potentially elsewhere…. Full article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02472-9. See also Nature article An evaporite sequence from ancient brine recorded in Bennu samples [Brines …are environments in which life could have evolved or might persist in the Solar System] For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2025-01-29. Wide range of Earth’s species are showing a decline in diversity. By Elizabeth Pennisi, Science. Excerpt: Variety is more than just the spice of life. Genetic variation is what allows a species to adapt as climate changes, new diseases arise, and novel predators come on the scene. A slightly different genetic makeup can ensure at least some individuals will still do OK in times of crisis. But just as the number of species is declining worldwide, so, too, is the genetic diversity within many species, an international team reports today in Nature…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/wide-range-earth-s-species-are-showing-decline-diversity. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 1.
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2025-01-28. Scientists Finally Get a Good Look at a Disintegrating Exoplanet. By Javier Barbuzano, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The James Webb Space Telescope offers astronomers a rare glimpse into the chemical composition of a rocky planet’s interior—and the results are “very surprising.” …disintegrating planet, K2-22b, …Discovered in 2015, …orbits a small star 787 light-years away, completing one orbit every 9 hours. …The spectroscopic results are “very surprising,” said University of Leeds astronomer Richard Booth, who wasn’t involved with the study. “We expected to see a composition akin to Earth’s mantle with minerals like magnesium silicate, and they see hints of that,” Booth said. “You just wouldn’t expect any icy material surviving at these temperatures.”…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/scientists-finally-get-a-good-look-at-a-disintegrating-exoplanet. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 8.
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2025-01-28. Chevron Joins Race to Generate Power for A.I.. By Rebecca F. Elliott, The New York Times. Excerpt: The artificial intelligence boom has turbocharged demand for electricity, and everyone who is anyone in the U.S. energy industry wants a piece of the action. The latest entrant is Chevron, the country’s second-largest oil and gas company, which sees opportunity in building natural gas-fueled power plants that will feed energy directly to data centers…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/business/energy-environment/chevron-power-plant-ai.html. For GSS Energy Use chapter 4.
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2025-01-24. Nevada’s Lithium Could Help Save the Earth. But What Happens to Nevada? By Meg Bernhard, The New York Times. Excerpt: …the expansion of renewable-energy infrastructure is fundamentally reshaping the landscape of the West, often at the expense of ecosystems. Lithium mining in particular alarms conservationists. Depending on the type of process used, mining can pollute groundwater, emit carbon dioxide, create toxic waste and destroy habitats. As companies scramble to acquire mineral rights, in many cases under an antiquated mining law, some conservationists are criticizing the fact that there isn’t a federal plan to protect the landscape, without which they fear a ruinous mining free-for-all. This rush to mine has put them in tension with proponents of the federal government’s green-energy projects, who warn against slowing an urgent process. Conservationists, in turn, worry that those supporters are being shortsighted in their disregard for the value of biodiversity…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/magazine/nevada-lithium-mines.html. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2025-01-24. Antarctic krill vertical migrations modulate seasonal carbon export. By A. J. R. Smith et al, Science. Editor’s summary: Shrimp-like krill constitute the greatest biomass of any living animal: up to 379 million tonnes in the Southern Ocean. Dead krill and their feces sink and are assumed to export tens of millions of tons of carbon annually; however, these data are gleaned from patchy observations. Smith et al. deployed a seafloor lander carrying an echosounder, camera, lights, and other equipment offshore of East Antarctica to provide consistent direct observational data, including difficult-to-obtain winter data, to feed into a carbon flux model. The year-long observations showed heterogeneous migratory behaviors by krill, including strong seasonal shifts. Migration means that recirculation of carbon can occur, so krill may make a smaller contribution to net carbon storage than what is found in current estimates. —Caroline Ash. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.adq5564. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 5.
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2025-01-24. Put some wiggle in your mowing. Bees will love it. By Erik Stokstad, Science. Excerpt: Mowing along curves, rather than straight lines, can boost the abundance and diversity of butterflies and wild bees, researchers report this week in Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/put-some-wiggle-your-mowing-bees-will-love-it. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2025-01-23. Mechanically robust and stretchable organic solar cells plasticized by small-molecule acceptors. By Zhenye Wang et al, Science. Editor’s summary: Stretchable organic solar cells for powering wearable devices have been achieved by blending a ductile donor semiconductor polymer with a plasticizing small-molecule acceptor to overcome the inherent brittleness of the photoactive components. Wang et al. have shown that the acceptor actually enhances ductility in the blend and maintains electron mobility despite its lack of crystallinity. Devices achieved a power conversion efficiency of greater than 16% and could maintain 80% of that efficiency at 80% strain. —Phil Szuromi
Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp9709. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-01-23. Variable impacts of land-based climate mitigation on habitat area for vertebrate diversity. By Jeffrey R. Smith et al, Science. Editor’s summary: Nature-based solutions are increasingly part of the strategy for achieving net zero carbon emissions to curb climate change. However, promoting tree growth in previously forested areas (reforestation) or unforested areas (afforestation) and planting bioenergy crops may help or harm biodiversity in the process. Smith et al. modeled projected vertebrate biodiversity responses to these land use changes in 2050. Although both strategies had positive effects on biodiversity by reducing climate change, local effects through habitat conversion were much stronger. Because most modeled species inhabit forests, forest growth had a mean positive effect, whereas bioenergy cropping had a mean negative effect. Reforestation can benefit many vertebrates, but models suggest that for most nonforest areas, doing nothing is better for biodiversity than afforestation or bioenergy cropping. —Bianca Lopez …“This research shows fighting climate change is not enough to safeguard biodiversity,” said co-author Susan Cook-Patton in a statement. “It’s critical that, in our work to address climate change, we do not inadvertently worsen the biodiversity crisis,” added lead author Jeffrey Smith…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adm9485. For GSS A New World View chapter 6.
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2025-01-22. Astronomers just deleted an asteroid because it turned out to be Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster. By Mark Zastrow, Astronomy. Excerpt: On Jan. 2, the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced the discovery of an unusual asteroid, designated 2018 CN41. First identified and submitted by a citizen scientist, the object’s orbit …came less than 150,000 miles (240,000 km) from Earth, closer than the orbit of the Moon. That qualified it as a near-Earth object (NEO) — one worth monitoring for its potential to someday slam into Earth. But less than 17 hours later, the Minor Planet Center (MPC) issued an editorial notice: It was deleting 2018 CN41 from its records because, it turned out, the object was not an asteroid. It was a car. To be precise, it was Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster mounted to a Falcon Heavy upper stage, which boosted into orbit around the Sun on Feb. 6, 2018…. Full article at https://www.astronomy.com/science/astronomers-just-deleted-an-asteroid-because-it-turned-out-to-be-elon-musks-tesla-roadster/. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2025-01-21. A Seychelles Shoreline Resists the Rising Seas. By Caroline Hasler, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: With global sea levels projected to rise 44 centimeters (17 inches) by the end of the century, atolls such as Aldabra—a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in Seychelles and home to the world’s largest population of giant tortoises—may be at risk of sinking into the ocean. A new study, however, shows that despite consistently rising sea levels, most of Aldabra’s shoreline hasn’t changed since 1960. …An atoll forms when corals attach to the margins of a volcanic island or platform in the ocean. Over time, the volcano is eroded and subsides into the sea, leaving a ring-shaped reef. Winds and waves deposit crushed coral from surrounding reefs on top of the ring, ultimately forming islands that rise above sea level. …“Our research shows that Aldabra’s resilience to sea level rise is likely linked to its high protection status. This serves as a crucial lesson, especially now, when a significant tourism development within the Aldabra group of islands just started,” Constance wrote…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/a-seychelles-shoreline-resists-the-rising-seas. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-01. These homeowners’ PG&E bills reveal California’s dramatic shift on solar. By Chase DiFeliciantonio, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt: When the California Public Utilities Commission slashed the price PG&E had to pay to buy electricity from solar customers, the industry nearly collapsed. But experts say the goal was equity — and a sustainable model that encouraged installing batteries to store power locally. …In late 2022, [California] state regulators voted to slash the level of that payment by around 75% to bring it closer to market prices. …“We were on a completely unsustainable path,” said UC Berkeley energy economist Severin Borenstein. “Households producing solar were compensated at the full retail price — at least double the market value of the electricity — for the quantities they sold back to the grid.” That money had to come from somewhere, and the result was that customers in PG&E’s service area who did not have solar panels were effectively subsidizing those that did, according to Borenstein and some experts. One state analysis found that solar credits were on track to increase the power bills of consumers without panels by an average of 25% by the end of 2024, to the tune of $8.5 billion. …The high price from PG&E for electricity also had another consequence, motivating solar owners to sell their excess power back to the utility rather than storing it locally in batteries. The lower compensation that took effect in April 2023 was meant to reverse that topsy-turvy incentive structure and encourage more consumers to buy batteries. Though they represent a higher up-front cost to consumers, batteries decentralize the power system and help relieve stress on the grid…. Full article at https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/california-solar-cpuc-pge-nem3-batteries-19970591.php. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-01-23. Can green hydrogen replace fossil fuels? By Robert F. Service, Science. Excerpt: Hydrogen is often touted as the future of green energy, and the allure is clear. When burned or run through a fuel cell, the fuel produces water as exhaust, not carbon dioxide (CO2). It is energy-rich enough to drive semitrailer trucks, cargo ships, and other heavy-duty vehicles that are tough to power with batteries. And for many industrial processes requiring high-temperature reactions, such as fertilizer production and steel manufacturing, hydrogen is basically the only alternative to fossil fuels, says Kathy Ayers, a water electrolysis expert at Nel Hydrogen, a Norwegian electrolyzer producer. “Low-carbon hydrogen is absolutely essential if we are going to address the climate crisis.” …According to the International Energy Agency, the world needs to churn out more than 300 million tons of green hydrogen annually if it is to have a shot at limiting global warming to 1.5°C by 2050. Yet today, operating green hydrogen plants, mostly in Europe and China, produce just 1 million tons per year. …Manufacturers already produce some 97 million tons of it, largely to make fertilizer and refine oil. But almost all of it comes from steam methane reforming, which …spews roughly 1 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere—equivalent to Japan’s emissions—to make so-called gray hydrogen. Green hydrogen comes instead from electrolyzers powered by renewable electricity. …“Hydrogen may be the best way to decarbonize some sectors of the economy,” Schrag says. “But it’s a lot more expensive than people are portraying.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/will-new-generation-water-splitting-devices-help-green-hydrogen-replace-fossil-fuels. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-01-23. Bloomberg charity to cover UN funds revoked with Paris Agreement withdrawal. By Zack Budryk, The Hill. Excerpt: Businessman and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said this week his philanthropic foundation will contribute the U.S.’s financial obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) after President Trump announced he would withdraw the U.S. from the agreement. In a statement Wednesday through Bloomberg Philanthropies, Bloomberg said the organization will both cover the U.S.’s funding gap and its reporting requirements for planet-warming emissions. The announcement does not specify a dollar amount the organization will contribute, but it committed about $15 million to the UNFCCC between 2017 and 2020 after Trump announced the withdrawal of the U.S. from the agreement in his first term. The U.S. ordinarily pays about a fifth of the UNFCCC budget, which amounted to about $7.5 million in 2024. “Bloomberg Philanthropies has made significant investments in empowering local leaders, providing businesses with the data to track emissions while driving economic growth, and building coalitions across public and private sectors. Now, philanthropy’s role in driving local, state, and private sector action is more crucial than ever — and we’re committed to leading the way,” Bloomberg said in a statement…. Full article at https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5103697-bloomberg-philanthropies-paris-climate-agreement-withdrawal. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2025-01-22. Microplastics in the bloodstream can induce cerebral thrombosis by causing cell obstruction and lead to neurobehavioral abnormalities. By Haipeng Huang et al, Science. Abstract: Human health is being threatened by environmental microplastic (MP) pollution. MPs were detected in the bloodstream and multiple tissues of humans, disrupting the regular physiological processes of organs. Nanoscale plastics can breach the blood-brain barrier, leading to neurotoxic effects. …This work uses high-depth imaging techniques to investigate the MPs within the brain in vivo. We show that circulating MPs are phagocytosed and lead these cells to obstruction in the capillaries of the brain cortex. These blockages …cause reduced blood flow and neurological abnormalities in mice. Our data reveal a mechanism by which MPs disrupt tissue function indirectly through …interference with local blood circulation, rather than direct tissue penetration. This revelation offers a lens through which to comprehend the toxicological implications of MPs that invade the bloodstream…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr8243. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2025-01-21. Geological ammonia: Stimulated NH3 production from rocks. By Yifan Gao et al, Joule. Paper summary: Although ammonia production is crucial for global agriculture, it comes with substantial carbon footprints. [ammonia production is the chemical industry’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter] Here, for the first time, we propose and demonstrate a different method for stimulated (proactive) and in situ geological ammonia (Geo-NH3) production directly from rocks. Our approach demonstrated that NH3 can be efficiently generated by reacting natural (Fe,Mg)2SiO4 (olivine) minerals with nitrate-source water at 130°C–300°C and 0.25–8.5 MPa, and even at ambient temperature and pressure. Using both actual rocks and synthetic mineral Fe(OH)2, we investigated mechanisms and optimized conditions through experiments and theoretical calculations. We revealed the basic chemistry enabling Geo-NH3 production: Fe2+ contained in rocks reduces the nitrate source to NH3. Our approach, involving only the injection of nitrate-source water into the subsurface to utilize in situ subsurface heat and pressure, requires no external H2 or electric current and emits no direct CO2, offering a feasible alternative to sustainable NH3 production at scale…. Full article at https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(24)00541-5. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-01-21. A minute-by-minute account of the Pompeii eruption, revealed in agonizing detail. By Evan Howell, Science. Excerpt: Mount Vesuvius …79 C.E. eruption that entombed Pompeii and Herculaneum…. New research refines the eruption’s timeline and behavior in remarkable detail, …that unfolded over 32 agonizing hours…. Geologists have long recognized two major phases of the infamous 79 C.E. Vesuvius eruption: an initial rain of debris, followed by lethal pyroclastic currents—scalding, fast-moving flows of gas and debris that devastated the surrounding area. …[The new research’s] timeline was pieced together by looking at volcanic deposits and cross-referencing them with Pliny the Younger’s vivid eyewitness accounts, who witnessed the eruption from across the Bay of Naples. Now, in two studies published this month, volcanologists from the University of Naples Federico II have mapped the deposits in unprecedented detail and uncovered previously undetected eruption pulses. Study author Claudio Scarpati says the findings enable a minute-by-minute reconstruction, extending the timeline of the eruption from 19 to 32 hours and revealing a complex event with 17 destructive pyroclastic currents…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/minute-minute-account-pompeii-eruption-revealed-agonizing-detail. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 2.
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2025-01-21. U.S. Wind Power Faces Huge Challenges After Trump Orders a Crackdown. By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: President Trump launched a broad attack on the wind power industry in the United States, with a sweeping executive order that could block not just new offshore wind farms in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans but potentially many smaller wind farms on federal land and even on private property across the country. The order…would halt all leasing of federal lands and waters for new wind farms pending a fresh government review of the industry. It also directs federal agencies to stop issuing permits for all wind farms anywhere in the country for the time being, a move that could disrupt projects on private land, which sometimes need federal wildlife or other environmental permits. While the order does not call for a freeze on wind projects that are already under construction, Mr. Trump directed the U.S. Attorney General and secretary of the interior to explore the possibility of “terminating or amending” any leases that have already been issued. That means projects that have already received federal approvals could face new hurdles. Taken together, the moves could prove crippling for the U.S. wind industry, which provides 10 percent of the nation’s electricity and is a major source of power in Republican-led states like Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas. The wind industry currently has nearly 40 gigawatts worth of projects — enough to power tens of millions of homes — under development in the Atlantic Ocean and in states like Wyoming, Montana and North Dakota…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/21/climate/wind-power-executive-order-trump.html. For GSS Climate Change chapter 9.
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2025-01-21. Early supernovae may have filled the universe with planet-forming dust. By Hannah Richter, Science. Excerpt: “Dust is the building block of the universe,” says Melissa Shahbandeh, an astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI). Over millions of years, specks of cosmic dust and gas clump together to form large, dense clouds from which planets and stars are born. But the dust’s own origins have been mysterious. Now, in data from NASA’s JWST space observatory, Shahbandeh and her colleagues have found a source for the dust that filled the early universe: giant stellar explosions called interacting supernovae, whose intense shockwaves can blast out dusty plumes that accumulated in the supernovae’s surroundings. These results, presented last week at the meeting of the American Astronomical Society and submitted to The Astrophysical Journal are “impressive,” says Lifan Wang, an astrophysicist at Texas A&M University who was not involved in the work. …The findings…deepen understanding of where Earth and everything on it came from, Shahbandeh says. “If we can understand how [dust] formed from the early times … then maybe we can understand how we got here.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/early-supernovae-may-have-filled-universe-planet-forming-dust. For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 6.
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2025-01-16. The growing threat of multiyear droughts. By David L. Hoover and William K. Smith, Science. Excerpt: Droughts have major societal and ecological impacts, including drinking water shortages, crop failures, tree mortality, wildfires, and reduced ecosystem productivity (1). Shifts in the hydrological cycle and continued warming with climate change are leading to rapidly evolving droughts that are more intense and longer lasting (2). Extreme but short-term droughts (<1 year) can have a wide range of consequences, depending on the severity and timing of the drought as well as an ecosystem’s resistance (3, 4). However, as a drought extends to a multiyear event, these ecological effects can amplify because short-lived buffering from physiological adaptations or water storage may weaken, leading to longer-lasting results (4). On page 278 of this issue, Chen et al. (5) report that increasing precipitation anomalies and atmospheric moisture demands are leading to multiyear droughts with growing impacts on vegetation. This highlights the need to better understand the ecological responses to such drought events…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu7419. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-16. Climate change may be driving spread of a deadly fungus from U.S. Southwest. By Meredith Wadman, Science. Excerpt: …The disease [Coccidioides fungus] causes …Valley fever is familiar in the Southwest, where it has infected wildland firefighters; carrot, beet, and radish pickers; solar power farm builders; and cast and crew members on a Ventura County film set. …the fungal spores, nourished in the warm, wet confines of the lung, morph into structures called spherules that burst to release boatloads of tiny endospores that become new spherules, continuing the cycle. Most of these people have a flulike illness lasting weeks or months. But 5% to 10% of cases result in lifelong lung infections, sometimes forcing people to be on powerful antifungal medications permanently. …cases are escalating fast. Diagnoses …have ballooned from about 2800 annually at the turn of the century to about 20,000 in 2023, with at least 200 people dying each year. Arizona and California, where roughly 97% of U.S. cases are reported, have seen dramatic increases recently: Incidence in Arizona has grown by 73% in the past 10 years—to 146 cases per 100,000 people. In California, incidence quadrupled between 2014 and 2023 to 23.2 cases per 100,000 people. …One likely contributor is a warming climate. The fungus thrives in hot, dry soil where it can get the best of competitors by going dormant during drought, then rebounding after rain returns. Valley fever cases tend to spike after wet winters that follow droughts, says Tom Chiller, chief of the mycotic diseases branch at CDC…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/climate-change-may-be-driving-spread-deadly-fungus-u-s-southwest. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-16. Drought in a warmer, CO2-rich climate restricts grassland water use and soil water mixing. By Jesse Radolinski et al, Science. Summary: With climate change, droughts are expected to become more frequent and severe in many regions, but temperature and elevated CO2 may modify its effects on soil, water, and vegetation: temperature by increasing plants’ water needs and CO2 by decreasing them. Radolinski et al. conducted a field experiment in an Austrian montane grassland to determine the effects of these changes on soil water. Under drought, elevated CO2, and warming, plants reduced transpiration, conserving water. Plants treated in this way (but not those with only one manipulated factor) used a larger proportion of recently precipitated water from large pores and with little mixing, showing that future drought will likely fundamentally change how water moves in soil. —Bianca Lopez. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado0734. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 5.
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2025-01-16. A Meteorite Is Caught on Camera as It Crashes Outside a Front Door. By Amanda Holpuch, The New York Times. Excerpt: A couple in Canada were returning home from walking their dogs some months ago when they found a burst of dusty debris on their walkway. They turned to their security-camera footage for answers and found it showed a mysterious puff of smoke appearing on the tidy walkway where the mystery splotch was. The source of the splotch was officially registered on Monday as the Charlottetown meteorite, named after the city on Prince Edward Island, in eastern Canada, where it landed…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/science/meteorite-debris-security-camera-canada.html. [includes video of the camera] For GSS A Changing Cosmos chapter 7.
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2025-01-12. Rising tides could wipe out Pacifica, but residents can’t agree on how to respond. By Connor Letourneau, San Francisco Chronicle. Excerpt: “When people fight the ocean,” [Pacifica, City Council member Christine] Boles said, “the ocean always wins.” …Pacifica, a picturesque surf town of roughly 35,000 just south of San Francisco, has become an important case study for the increasingly urgent questions climate change raises for many coastal communities. Should residents stay to defend their homes from rising tides that grow fiercer by the year? Or, should they admit defeat and cede the land back to nature? …“Managed retreat” — a term coined by geologists to describe the process of removing people, homes and businesses from at-risk areas — is at the root of the debate. …“We can’t build seawalls high enough to protect us forever,” said Gary Griggs, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz. “So, in the long run, it’s either going to be managed retreat or unmanaged retreat. It’s up to each community to decide.”… Full article at https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/pacifica-climate-change-rising-oceans-20007281.php. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-10. “Exceptional” Global Warming Spike Continued in 2024. By Kimberly M. S. Cartier, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: More than 3 billion people experienced their hottest year ever in 2024 because of anthropogenic climate change. The world is speeding toward its 1.5°C warming target. …“Even if we likely exceeded [1.5°C] this year, that doesn’t mean that we’ve exceeded it in the context of the Paris accord, which is over a longer time period,” Schmidt said. “But I will say that we anticipate future global warming as long as we are emitting greenhouse gases, and until we get to net zero, we will not get a leveling off of global mean temperature.”…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/exceptional-global-warming-spike-continued-in-2024. For GSS Climate Change chapter 4.
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2025-01-09. Grazing can reduce wildfire risk amid climate change. By Valério D. Pillar and Gerhard E. Overbeck, Science. Excerpt: Over half of Earth’s land surface is covered with fire-prone vegetation, with grassy ecosystems—such as grasslands, savannas, woodlands, and shrublands—being the most extensive. In the context of the climate crisis, scientists worldwide are exploring adaptation measures to address the heightened fire risk driven by more frequent extreme climatic conditions such as droughts and heatwaves, as well as by non-native plant invasions that increased fuel loads and altered fire regimes. Although fire is intrinsic to grassy ecosystems, rising exposure to wildfire smoke harms human health and the environment. Here, we argue that grazing management in grassy ecosystems could help reduce wildfire risk and its consequences…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu7471. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2025-01-09. Built to remove carbon. By Christopher Bataille, Science. Excerpt: According to current climate science, global temperatures will continue to rise until net carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reach zero (1)—that is, when the amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere is balanced by the amount removed. Given current projected emissions, 2 billion to 15 billion tonnes (Gt) of CO2 may need to be removed from the atmosphere annually to meet the goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming below 2°C and preferably to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures (2, 3). …Van Roijen et al. (4) report that replacing traditional building materials with CO2-storing alternatives could sequester carbon at the billion-tonne level. …Building materials such as asphalt, wood, stone, steel, and concrete are foundational to human civilization and have large global demands, …~30 Gt of concrete are used each year in the world (5). Some of these materials are also major contributors to CO2 emissions. …Cement production accounts for 7.8% of CO2 and 5.1% of greenhouse gas emissions (6). …Van Roijen et al. performed quantitative analyses of CO2 storage capacities of key building materials based on 2016 global consumption of each material. …Although several different building materials were analyzed for their CO2 storage potential, asphalt aggregates, bricks, cement, and concrete aggregates demonstrated the largest storage potentials because of their sheer demands. Van Roijen et al. show that replacing just traditional cement and concrete aggregates with CO2-storing materials could remove 13.1 Gt of atmospheric CO2 annually…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu7379. For GSS Energy Use chapter 8.
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2025-01-08. Darker, Less Cloudy Earth Contributed to Record Heat. By Nathaniel Scharping, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In a string of ever-hotter years, 2023 stood out: It was the warmest on record (though 2024 will likely surpass it), with temperatures 1.4°C (2.5°F) above the preindustrial average and 0.17°C (0.3°F) above the previous record set in 2016. One cause for the spike may have been that Earth was just a little darker than it’s been in recent history. Earth’s albedo, a measure of how reflective the surface is, hit a record low in 2023, according to the authors of a study in Science. That record was due mainly to a dearth of bright, low-level clouds, which reflect more solar radiation than land or ocean. The answers to why these clouds were absent and, crucially, whether the trend will continue are still unclear…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/darker-less-cloudy-earth-contributed-to-record-heat. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 6.
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2025-01-08. Warm Seawater Encroaches on Major Antarctic Ice Shelf. By Sarah Stanley, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The vast Antarctic Ice Sheet holds more than half of Earth’s freshwater. In several places around the continent, the ice extends over the ocean, where it forms large floating shelves. Observations suggest many of these ice shelves are thinning as they melt from below, with implications for ocean dynamics, global sea level, and Earth’s climate. For now, the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf—one of Antarctica’s biggest, extending over the Weddell Sea—appears to be relatively stable, thanks to near-freezing currents circulating over the continental shelf beneath it. However, climate models predict that shifting ocean currents may bring warmer water to the continental shelf in the future. To gain a clearer picture of the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf’s future, Steiger et al. analyzed water temperature and velocity data from 2017 to 2021. …In this study, researchers found that the summertime flow of warm water occurs not just along the Filchner Trough but also along a second, smaller trough to the east and that the relative importance of each path varies from year to year. During warmer-than-average years, the warm water flows more rapidly across the continental shelf…. (Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023JC020700, 2024). Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/warm-seawater-encroaches-on-major-antarctic-ice-shelf. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-07. The Fleet-Winged Ghosts of Greenland. By Caroline Van Hemert, bioGraphic. Excerpt: …Peregrine falcons hold near-mythical appeal in our collective imagination, and for good reason. Topping out at speeds of more than 320 kilometers (200 miles) per hour, they’re the fastest species on Earth, plummeting from the sky like amber-eyed missiles. …Perhaps more cosmopolitan than any other wild bird species, peregrine falcons live on every continent except Antarctica, in habitats ranging from polar deserts to subtropical rainforests. They’re flexible in what they eat—from songbirds to seabirds, carrion to chickens—and in where they nest—on cliffs, in trees, on the ground, or on buildings. Some individuals barely budge throughout their lifetimes, whereas others, like the Greenlandic variety, embody the roots of their scientific name—Falco peregrinus, or “wandering falcon”—making migrations upwards of 25,000 kilometers per year. …Since birds like peregrines feed high on the food chain, contaminants accumulate in their bodies and cause severe eggshell thinning, among other health impacts …making the species an unfortunate poster child highlighting the hazards of DDT to living creatures. Rachel Carson’s influential “Silent Spring” unveiled the environmental crisis that postwar scientists had created: by attempting to improve agriculture through the production of pesticides, they had inadvertently poisoned the world. By the early 1970s, humans had decimated peregrine populations across much of their native range. …For Greenlandic peregrines, the impacts of warming are decidedly mixed. …extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall and large temperature swings, can be fatal for nesting birds. …Warmer summers have also given rise to new residents such as mosquitoes, which have moved into the Pituffik area within the past two decades. …mosquitoes can carry diseases such as avian malaria, which, though not yet detected in Greenland, has infected falcons elsewhere in their range and decimated other bird species on remote islands. Even insects themselves can be deadly. In northern Canada, for instance, peregrine nestlings have been killed by hordes of biting black flies, whose abundance has been linked to warming-induced weather events. …Despite such challenges, peregrines have again demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt. An increasing number of peregrines have nested at Pituffik over the past three decades, with birds venturing hundreds of kilometers north of their previously described range limits and possibly even edging out long-resident gyrfalcons. This trend is likely to continue…. As the ultimate shapeshifters of the avian world, such flexibility bodes well for their future…. Full article at https://www.biographic.com/the-fleet-winged-ghosts-of-greenland/. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 6.
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2025-01-09. Dietary breadth in kangaroos facilitated resilience to Quaternary climatic variations. By Samuel D. Arman et al, Science. Editor’s summary: Much can be said about what a species ate based on the form of their teeth. In Australia, it has been hypothesized that the extinction of many large marsupial species by about 40,000 years ago may have been due to a narrow diet in the face of a changing climate. Arman et al. looked at extant and extinct kangaroo species using a tooth microwear approach and concluded that most species were generalists, not specialist grazers or browsers, and thus were adapted to deal with climate-driven vegetation changes. Thus, their demise was likely not driven by climate change, leaving humans as the probable cause. —Sacha Vignieri. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq4340. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 1.
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2025-01-09. 2024 was the hottest year on record, breaching a critical climate goal and capping 10 years of unprecedented heat. By Laura Paddison, CNN. Excerpt: It’s official: 2024 was the hottest year on record, breaking the previous record set in 2023 and pushing the world over a critical climate threshold, according to new data from Europe’s climate monitoring agency Copernicus [https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2024-first-year-exceed-15degc-above-pre-industrial-level]. Last year was 1.6 degrees hotter than the period before humans began burning large amounts of fossil fuels, Copernicus found. It makes 2024 the first calendar year to breach the 1.5-degree limit countries agreed to avoid under the Paris climate agreement in 2015. Scientists are much more concerned about breaches over decades, rather than single years — as above that threshold humans and ecosystems may struggle to adapt — but 2024’s record “does mean we’re getting dangerously close,” said Joeri Rogelj, a climate professor at Imperial College London…. Full article at https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/climate/2024-hottest-year-record/index.html. See also https://berkeleyearth.org/global-temperature-report-for-2024/. For GSS Climate Change chapter 4.
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2025-01-08. New research shows a quarter of freshwater animals are threatened with extinction. By CHRISTINA LARSON, AP. Excerpt: Nearly a quarter of animals living in rivers, lakes and other freshwater sources are threatened with extinction, according to new research published Wednesday. “Huge rivers like the Amazon can appear mighty, but at the same time freshwater environments are very fragile,” said study co-author Patricia Charvet, a biologist at Brazil’s Federal University of Ceará. Freshwater habitats – including rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, bogs and wetlands – cover less than 1% of the planet’s surface, but support 10% of its animal species, said Catherine Sayer, a zoologist at the International Union for Conservation of Nature in England. The researchers examined around 23,500 species of dragonflies, fish, crabs and other animals that depend exclusively on freshwater ecosystems. They found that 24% were at risk of extinction – classified as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered – due to compounding threats from pollution, dams, water extraction, agriculture, invasive species, climate change and other disruptions. …The tally, published in the journal Nature, is the first that time researchers have analyzed the global risk to freshwater species…. Full article at https://apnews.com/article/freshwater-species-threatened-extinction-cec91afc657bb0922c1d2966adf031ee. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 1.
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2025-01-08. ‘Good boy!’ Truffle-sniffing dogs are helping uncover hidden underground ecosystems. By Christie Wilcox, Science. Excerpt: Mere moments after getting out of the car, Rye—a golden retriever with a nose for truffles—has already sniffed out something in this oak forest about an hour east of Portland. “What’d you find, Rye?” Heather Dawson asks. She puts what looks like a brown, lumpy pebble to her nose and inhales a somewhat garlicky odor. “Tuber candidum,” she says. “Good boy,” she tells Rye as she tosses a blue and orange tennis ball, his reward for finding a truffle. …Whereas most people train their dogs to find the region’s two tastiest treasures—Oregon white truffles (Tuber oregonense) and Oregon black truffles (Leucangium carthusianum)—Dawson has embraced, and benefited from, Rye’s ability to sniff out a wider range of fungi. …Because of their intimate ecological relationships with plants, truffles play critical roles in ecosystems. Yet their biology and diversity are poorly understood because of the inherent difficulty in studying species that live their whole lives up to a meter and a half underground. Mycologists suspect many may be vulnerable to extinction, the victims of habitat loss, human activities, and climate change. To gather data, researchers such as Dawson are turning to dogs…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/good-boy-truffle-sniffing-dogs-are-helping-uncover-hidden-underground-ecosystems. For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 5.
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2025-01-06. Ancient Romans likely breathed lead pollution. By Taylor Mitchell Brown, Science. Excerpt: From 27 B.C.E. to 180 C.E., Rome enjoyed a period of relative peace and prosperity, the Pax Romana. It witnessed the beginning of the Roman Empire, the building of the Colosseum, and the expansion of the empire to encompass the entire Mediterranean and much of the British Isles. However, the industrial-scale silver smelting that accompanied such prosperity came with a dark side: lead pollution. In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists for the first time quantified atmospheric levels of this pollutant and found the toxic metal likely led to diminished IQs for many ancient Romans. …No matter its impact, ancient Rome produced the earliest “unambiguous” example of widespread human pollution of the environment, McConnell says. “I leave it to epidemiologists and historians to determine if, and by how much, it changed history.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/ancient-romans-likely-breathed-lead-pollution. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2025-01-03. Antarctic Ice Melt May Fuel Eruptions of Hidden Volcanoes. By Madeline Reinsel, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A slow climate feedback loop may be bubbling beneath Antarctica’s vast ice sheet. The continent…includes volcanic giants such as Mount Erebus and its iconic lava lake. But at least 100 less conspicuous volcanoes dot Antarctica, with many clustered along its western coast. Some of those volcanoes peak above the surface, but others sit several kilometers beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Climate change is causing the ice sheet to melt, raising global sea levels. The melting is also removing the weight over the rocks below, with more local consequences. Ice sheet melt has been shown to increase volcanic activity in subglacial volcanoes elsewhere on the globe. Coonin et al. ran 4,000 computer simulations to study how ice sheet loss affects Antarctica’s buried volcanoes, and they found that gradual melt could increase the number and size of subglacial eruptions. The reason is that this unloading of ice sheets reduces pressure on magma chambers below the surface, causing the compressed magma to expand. This expansion increases pressure on magma chamber walls and can lead to eruptions…. Full article at https://eos.org/research-spotlights/antarctic-ice-melt-may-fuel-eruptions-of-hidden-volcanoes. For GSS Energy Flow chapter 2.
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2025-01-03. A New Tornado Database Helps Researchers Worldwide. By Andrew J. Wight, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In the past 70 years, more than 75,000 tornadoes have been recorded in the United States. Recordkeeping of these phenomena outside this region has been largely fragmented, sitting isolated in books, government databases, and research archives. But a new effort to scour as many publicly accessible records as possible is highlighting the scale of this hazard around the world. In a new study, Malcolm Maas, an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a team of tornado researchers compiled a tornado database that they hope will boost tornado research globally. …The United States accounts for 21,548 of the recorded fatalities in the database published by Maas and his collaborators. But tornadoes in other countries wreak havoc as well: Bangladesh accounts for 8,325 fatalities in the database, India has seen 1,473, and the rest of the world combined accounts for 3,824…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/a-new-tornado-database-helps-researchers-worldwide. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-02. Disentangling the drivers of wildfires. By Jianbang Gan, Science. Excerpt: Wildfire occurrence and scale worldwide have risen over recent decades, with the most destructive wildfires in North America taking place in the past decade (1, 2). …On page 91 of this issue, Wang et al. (3) report the key drivers of burn severity…. …These studies led to the development of predictive models that are used to project wildfire effects under different scenarios over time in locations where no historical fires have been recorded. However, the drivers of wildfire effects are complex and involve multiple interlinked factors, such as climate, vegetation, topography, and human activity. …Among all the factors, fuel aridity, which reflects the abundance and moisture content of flammable vegetative fuels, was determined to be the primary driver for most Canadian forest fires between 1981 and 2020. …Wang et al. found a large increase in burn severity in northern Canada compared with other regions in Canada. …Whereas weather condition was the dominant driver of the effect of wildfires in northern Canada, fuel aridity and vegetation type were key drivers of wildfires in southern areas. …From an ecological perspective, the increase in fire activity in boreal forests, especially in the northern regions of the world, has raised grave concerns about the health and function of biomes that act as important carbon sinks (11). …Cooperation between the US, Canada, and Russia, which share 93% of the global boreal forest, is needed to effectively manage fire while preserving this valuable ecosystem of the northern hemisphere (12)…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adu5463. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-01. The Panama Canal Has a Big Problem, but It’s Not China or Trump. By Dennis M. Hogan, Guest Essay for The New York Times. Excerpt: In 2023, …July, the middle of Panama’s rainy season. But the rains had been sparse, and water levels in the canal had sunk to troubling lows. Without freshwater from rain, our guide explained, the locks on the canal could not operate. …the true threat to U.S. commerce through Panama. If the goal is securing affordable access to the transit point over the long term, it is climate change, not Chinese influence, that U.S. policymakers should worry about. …Sending a single ship through the canal’s locks can use around 50 million gallons of water, mainly freshwater collected from Lake Gatún. Though the canal is, for the moment, operating at full capacity, a drier climate and greater demand for drinking water have in recent years reduced the volume of available water. That has forced the state-run Panama Canal Authority at times to limit the number of daily passages through the canal, at one point by as much as 40 percent. …With less rain, the reservoirs fill up more slowly, which means less water available to operate the locks, which means fewer ships can pass. Hence, the 2023-24 drought, among the worst on record, slowed transits and drove up transit prices, causing long delays, more expensive consumer goods and greater instability in shipping routes. …The limited number of passages has led to auctions for passage rights that further inflated the growing cost of shipping goods through the canal. (The canal authority increased tolls just before the 2023 drought began.) … Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/01/opinion/panama-canal-trump-china-drought.html. For GSS Climate Change chapter 8.
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2025-01-03. John Deutch recalls how Jimmy Carter left his mark on energy research. By Jeffrey Mervis, Science. Excerpt: John Deutch …joined President Jimmy Carter’s energy team shortly after the Georgia Democrat took office in January 1977. And for the next 3 years Deutch had a front-row seat to history as Carter, who died on 29 December 2024 at age 100, worked to make the country less dependent on imported oil and in the process reshaped the direction of federal energy research. …Within 6 months Deutch would become the founding director of the Office of Energy Research at the newly created Department of Energy (DOE), the successor to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the short-lived Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). …Meeting DOE’s mandate also meant launching programs outside the legacy energy sources, notably fossil fuels and nuclear power, that had been the mainstay of DOE research under its predecessor agencies. …Although the Carter administration tried hard to get people in the U.S. to conserve energy and to find alternatives to foreign oil, including putting solar panels on the White House, climate change was not a significant part of OER’s portfolio under Deutch. …“But there was really no competence in that area within the department at the time,” he says. “And its importance was not yet clearly recognized except among a very restricted set of environmentalists.”… Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/john-deutch-recalls-how-jimmy-carter-left-his-mark-energy-research. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-01-03. E.V. Demand Leads Automakers to a Strong 2024 Finish. By Neal E. Boudette, The New York Times. Excerpt: General Motors was the biggest winner in U.S. sales in the final quarter, with a gain of 21 percent. It more than doubled its electric vehicle sales. …Ford Motor sold more than 530,000 vehicles in the quarter, a gain of nearly 9 percent. Ford’s E.V. sales climbed 16 percent, to more than 30,000 vehicles. …Analysts said the year-end jump in E.V. sales might also have been spurred somewhat by President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has suggested he will eliminate the $7,500 federal tax credit on electric vehicles priced under $80,000. The tax credit has helped manufacturers offer the attractive lease deals…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/03/business/ford-gm-vehicle-sales.html. For GSS Energy Use chapter 9.
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2025-01-03. Wind and solar power drive Germany’s renewable energy surge. By DW. Excerpt: Europe’s largest economy saw a rise in renewable energy generation in 2024. Germany made a notable shift toward renewable energy sources last year, according to a report from the Federal Network Agency released on Friday. Renewable energy accounted for 59% of the country’s total electricity generation, up from 56% in 2023. Wind energy was the leading source, contributing 31.9% to the nation’s energy mix, while solar energy contributed 14.7%. …Last year also marked Germany’s first full year without nuclear power, following the final shutdown of its nuclear plants in April 2023. The country aims to be climate-neutral by 2045…. Full article at https://www.dw.com/en/wind-and-solar-power-drive-germanys-renewable-energy-surge/a-71213890. For GSS Energy Use chapter 10.
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2025-01-03. California tribes celebrate historic dam removal: ‘More successful than we ever imagined’. By Gabrielle Canon, The Guardian. Excerpt: Explosions roared through the canyons lining the Klamath River earlier this year, signaling a new chapter for the region that hugs the Oregon-California border. In October, the removal of four hydroelectric dams built on the river was completed – the largest project of its kind in US history. …The work to restore the river, which winds 263 miles (423km) from the volcanic Cascade mountain range in Oregon to the Pacific coast in northern California, is now under way. Already it’s been among the most hopeful environmental stories of past years. “It has been more successful than we ever imagined,” said Ren Brownell, the spokesperson for the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, a non-profit created to oversee and implement the removal, adding: “There’s an incredible amount of joy.” …In recent decades, the climate crisis has turned up the dial, deepening droughts and fueling a rise in catastrophic fire as the region grows ever hotter. The impacts only increased as more water was diverted to support the farming and ranching in the region, and more habitat was altered by mining and logging. Twenty-eight types of salmon and steelhead trout, seen as indicator species that represent the health of the ecosystems they live in, have been listed as threatened or endangered. …In late November, threatened coho salmon were seen in the upper Klamath River basin for the first time in more than 60 years, according to the California department of fish and wildlife. Other animals are benefiting, too, including north-western pond turtles, freshwater mussels, beavers and river otters. …The roughly 2,800 acres of land sacred to the Shasta Indian Nation that had been drowned and buried under a reservoir created by one of the dams has been returned to them…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/03/california-klamath-dam-removal. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7.
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2025-01-02. Farmers are abandoning land worldwide. What should happen to it? By Dan Charles, Science. Excerpt: …“This is a worldwide phenomenon,” says Peter Verburg, a land use researcher at the Free University Amsterdam. Global trade in food has fueled the clearing of forests in Brazil and Bolivia for agriculture, but elsewhere it has sidelined small farms with rocky soil, steep hills, or scarce water. “People give up because they cannot compete,” Verburg says. …Farmers, or their children, are walking away from land in Eastern Europe, southern France, South Korea, Japan, and mountainous parts of India. It’s difficult to measure the exact extent of the trend. Land is often abandoned, then reclaimed and farmed again. But an estimated 120 million hectares have been left fallow in Europe alone since 1990. Globally, the figure since 1950 could be as high as 400 million hectares—half the area of Australia. “Abandonment will continue, I think there’s no doubt,” Verburg says. In fact, climate change is likely to accelerate it as droughts afflict more farming areas. The phenomenon raises thorny questions that ecologists and policymakers are now debating. What sort of nature will reclaim this land? Does it add up to environmental restoration or degradation? Should policymakers step in to steer the fate of the land or even stop it from being abandoned?…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/farmers-are-abandoning-land-worldwide-what-should-happen-it. For Ecosystem Change GSS chapter 6.
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