Stay Current with GSS

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

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

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

RECENT UPDATES (2026)

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2026-04-10. Britain’s Most Iconic Fish Nears Breaking Point. By Johnny Sturgeon, Inside Climate News. Excerpt: Consumers in the U.K. are being warned to “completely avoid” all home-caught cod by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS). The nation’s cod stocks have declined over the last decade, driven by overfishing and sea temperature changes, warns the environmental charity.  …In September, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) issued scientific findings to the U.K. and European Union calling for a zero catch of North Sea cod in 2026… any commercial fishing could threaten reproduction rates. The Denmark-based fishery board warned fishermen to avoid catching off the west coast of Scotland, in the North Sea and in the English Channel. …With 97 percent of UK households eating fish, the MCS has recommended consumers choose more sustainable alternatives such as Icelandic cod or European hake. …However, this is not the first reckoning for British fisheries in recent months. Last year’s MCS guide warned that mackerel stocks were nearing a breaking point from overfishing. As a result, grocery retailer Waitrose announced it would suspend all sales of mackerel beginning next month…. Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/10042026/uk-cod-shortages-warming-overfishing/. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 7.

2026-04-09. Europeans want more renewables, even if it increases energy bills. By Elena Giordano, Politico. Excerpt: Public enthusiasm for clean energy comes as the Iran war exposes Europe’s vulnerability to global oil and gas markets…. Full article at https://www.politico.eu/article/poll-europeans-back-renewables-despite-higher-energy-costs/. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-04-08. Land subsidence on Java Island and its contributions to relative sea level change. By Leonard O. Ohenhen et al, Science. Abstract: Rising sea levels and land subsidence combine to determine relative sea level (RSL) rise, which is intensifying coastal hazards. However, many densely populated regions lack the observational infrastructure to identify and quantify land subsidence contribution to RSL, hindering effective planning of responses. Here, we used satellite radar observations to generate a high-resolution assessment of land subsidence across Java Island, Indonesia, and evaluate its contribution to 21st-century RSL change. We identify widespread and temporally evolving subsidence with rates ranging from 1 to 15 cm/year in multiple coastal cities. …we attribute the dominant subsidence mechanisms to resource extraction across various geographic and geological settings. …contemporary subsidence will dominate RSL budgets over the next 25 years along >75% of the coast. These findings underscore the urgent need to integrate subsidence into sea level risk and adaptation assessments in vulnerable coastal regions…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aec0172. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-04-08. Trump’s EPA chief Zeldin gives keynote speech at climate-denying group’s event. By Dharna Noor, The Guardian. Excerpt: Lee Zeldin opens conference for Heartland Institute, which once compared climate advocates to the Unabomber. …He derided previous administrations’ heeding of climate scientists’ warnings about the dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, and for ignoring “what’s good and necessary about carbon dioxide for the life of the planet”…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/08/epa-chief-zeldin-climate-denying-group-event. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-04-07. As Japan warms, cherry blossom displays are fading. By Rachel Nuwer, Science. Excerpt: Last week in the International Journal of Biometeorology, researchers reported that cherry trees are not only blooming earlier in the year, but in some parts of Japan, they are failing to reach full bloom at all. Although the problem is currently confined to southern Japan, the authors warn that in a matter of decades, milder winters may start to take a toll on major cherry blossom–viewing hot spots in Kyoto, Tokyo, and Osaka, as well as around the world…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/japan-warms-cherry-blossom-displays-are-fading. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-04-07. A Peculiar Polymer Paired with Sunlight Could Remove PFAS. By Emily Gardner, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Because they are used in everything from cosmetics to dental floss to nonstick pans, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are frustratingly abundant in our environment, including in our food, rain, and drinking water. They’re persistent, too, earning their nickname “forever chemicals,” and have been linked to health effects ranging from cancers to liver toxicity to reduced fertility. A new method described in RSC Advances seeks to remove PFAS from drinking water by combining a specialized polymer and a photocatalyst with a resource that is even more abundant than PFAS: sunlight…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/a-peculiar-polymer-paired-with-sunlight-could-remove-pfas. See also these articles from Inside Climate News: Severe Exposure to ‘Forever Chemicals’ During Pregnancy Could Lead to Childhood Asthma and California Bill Aims to Keep Toxic PFAS off Its Crops. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 7.

2026-04-05. Trump Administration Targets Bison on Federal Grazing Lands. By Blaine Harden, Inside Climate New. Excerpt: PHILLIPS COUNTY, Mont.—The American buffalo…have joined wind turbines, electric cars and climate researchers in the cross hairs of the Trump administration. …Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in January proposed canceling leases for buffalo grazing on federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. …But the BLM, long nicknamed the “Bureau of Livestock and Mining,” has traditionally prioritized leasing the rangelands it oversees for cattle grazing. …with Interior reversing the Biden administration’s determination that conservation is a use of BLM land on par with grazing and resource extraction, Burgum has ruled that since bison here in north-central Montana are not being raised for “production-oriented purposes,” they have no legal right to roam…on land leased from the bureau. If the ruling becomes final…more than 950 buffalo will be evicted from tens of thousands of acres of federal land…. Cows will then mosey on in, and their owners will benefit from the hugely discounted grazing leases available from the BLM. It charges a per-animal fee that is about 90 percent cheaper than fees charged for grazing livestock on privately owned land in this state. …The anti-buffalo wording of Bergum’s proposed decision, however, is resounding far beyond this lonesome precinct of Montana. …Buffalo are grazing behind fences on scores of Indian reservations and on BLM allotments in Colorado, New Mexico, the Dakotas and elsewhere in Montana—and have been doing so without legal objection from Interior for more than four decades, until this year’s order overturning BLM’s 2022 decision to allow American Prairie to graze bison on seven allotments in Phillips County…. Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05042026/trump-interior-proposal-cancels-bison-grazing-leases-public-land/. See also Science article U.S. Forest Service unveils extensive closures of research facilities. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 2.

2026-04-02. Titanic Shake-Up Could Explain Saturn’s Young Rings and Strange Moons. By Matthew R. Francis, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A new model shows how the migration of Titan could have destroyed another moon, creating Saturn’s rings and the moon Hyperion. And, the model suggests, this all happened in the past billion years…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/titanic-shake-up-could-explain-saturns-young-rings-and-strange-moons. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 7.

2026-04-02. Acclaimed Physicist And His Daughter Are Burying Tiny Nuclear Reactors A Mile Underground. By Christopher Helman, Forbes. Excerpt: Liz Muller convinced her dad Richard to forego retirement and become an entrepreneur…a revolutionary approach to making atomic energy cheaper and safer. For more than a decade, Elizabeth Muller and her father have taken a three-mile hike…through the hills of Berkeley, California…. …Richard A. Muller, who devised the modern carbon dating method used to determine the age of ancient plant and animal remains before he was 33 and won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award at 38…, after 40 years of teaching at the University of California at Berkeley, the 82-year-old physicist is on the verge of having his greatest commercial impact,…. …says Liz, 47… “As a kid growing up in Berkeley, all my teachers and friends were anti-nuclear….” She too leaned anti-nuke, …. …she moved to Paris in 1999 to earn a master’s at ESCP Business School…. In France, she explains, everyone supported nuclear power as a “clean, reliable global warming solution.” …In 2022, …the Mullers hatched the idea behind their nuclear power startup, Deep Fission…surprisingly simple: Drill a 30-inch-diameter borehole a mile into the earth, fill it with water, then insert a teeny-tiny nuclear reactor that will boil the water at the bottom and send it up a separate pipe to run a steam turbine. Each hole will generate 15 megawatts, enough to power 12,000 homes. Put 70 of them in a field and you can power a one-gigawatt artificial intelligence data center…. Full article at https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2026/04/02/acclaimed-physicist-and-his-daughter-are-burying-tiny-nuclear-reactors-a-mile-underground/. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 4.

2026-03-31. Climate Science Has No Place in Scientific Reference Manual for Judges, Attorneys General Say. By Emily Gardner, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A chapter on climate science has been removed from a manual designed to be an independent, neutral source of scientific information for judges. Judges aren’t always scientific experts, but they are responsible for determining whether scientific evidence is admissible and for making rulings in scientific cases. That’s why the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, jointly produced by the Federal Judicial Center (FJC) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), was introduced more than 30 years ago: to inform judges about fundamental truths of various areas of science. …In December 2025, the manual was updated for the first time in 15 years to include new chapters on computer science, artificial intelligence, and climate science. The chapter on climate science met with backlash almost immediately. In late January, 27 Republican state attorneys general wrote a letter to the FJC asking that the 90-page chapter on climate science be removed, calling it “inappropriate” and “advocacy-based.” FJC director Robin Rosenberg responded 6 February, stating that the climate science chapter had been removed. Scientists and legal experts have spoken out against this decision, arguing that its removal “deprives judges of a resource needed to do their jobs.”… Full article at https://eos.org/articles/climate-science-has-no-place-in-scientific-reference-manual-for-judges-attorneys-general-say. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-03-30. As Ice Recedes and Land Rebounds, Antarctica’s Mineral Resources Come into Focus. By Grace van Deelen, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: A warming climate could expose a Pennsylvania-sized chunk of ice-free land in Antarctica by 2300, which could drastically reshape Antarctic geopolitics as well as the continent’s geography. A study published in Nature Climate Change is the first to incorporate glacial isostatic adjustment—how land beneath heavy ice sheets uplifts after the ice retreats—into projections of ice-free land emergence in Antarctica. …Within the area that Lucas and the research team projected would be ice-free by 2300 lie known or suspected deposits of copper, gold, silver, iron, and platinum—critical minerals used in manufacturing and valuable metals in and of themselves. In particular, the study found the largest land emergence in Antarctica is likely to occur over territories claimed by Argentina, Chile, and the United Kingdom and contains a range of mineral deposits, including copper, gold, silver, and iron. …Currently, commercial mineral extraction is not allowed in Antarctica, though the Antarctic Treaty does allow for activities related to mineral resources if they are conducted strictly for scientific purposes…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/as-ice-recedes-and-land-rebounds-antarcticas-mineral-resources-come-into-focus. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

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2026-04-. TEMPLATE. By . Excerpt: … Full article at URL. For GSS BOOK, chapter .

2026-04-04. Why Trump’s ‘God Squad’ Is Not Like the God Squads Before It. Inside Climate News Interview by Jenni Doering, Living on Earth. Excerpt: On March 31, a panel known as the “God Squad,” consisting mostly of Trump cabinet members, voted to exempt the oil and gas industry operating in the Gulf of Mexico from the Endangered Species Act, or ESA. The Endangered Species Committee was established by Congress decades ago to evaluate cases where the ESA could pose a threat to the national interest or security. If courts do not intervene, this most recent decision would waive the standard ESA requirements for the oil and gas industry to take steps to protect the endangered species living in the area. One of them is the critically endangered Rice’s whale, of which there are only a few dozen left…. Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04042026/trump-god-squad-endangered-species-oil/. See also New York Times article, The ‘God Squad’ Waives Environmental Rules for Offshore Drilling. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 8.

2026-04-03. Candy makers quietly change recipes as climate change hits cocoa industry. By Deema Zein, PBS. Excerpt: Cocoa prices have swung sharply in recent years, driven by climate change and production issues in West Africa, where most cocoa is grown. Prices hit a record high at the end of 2024. And although they have fallen since, candymakers, who buy months ahead, are still feeling the impact…. Full article at https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/candy-makers-quietly-change-recipes-as-climate-change-hits-cocoa-industry. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-04-02. Gravitational lensing could break the Hubble tension. By Science Advisor, AAAS. Excerpt: …The rate of cosmic expansion, known as the Hubble constant, is so important for cosmologists that the disagreement among researchers over its value has its own name: the Hubble tension. Astronomers measure it one way, using stars or supernovae with predictable brightness. Cosmologists have another way, studying ripples in the echo of the Big Bang and winding the clock forward to today. The two techniques have become increasingly precise, but they steadfastly disagree with each other. A third method is needed to break the deadlock . That may come through the magic of gravitational lensing, which can cause a supernova—a star exploding at the end of its life—to appear to explode again and again. If a supernova is situated behind a large mass, such as a galaxy or cluster of galaxies, then as its light passes by the mass, its gravity bends the light along different paths, producing multiple images that show the explosion at different times when viewed from Earth. Using the time delays and path lengths, researchers can calculate the distance to the supernova and so calculate the Hubble constant. Only a handful of such lensed supernovae have been found so far, but several upcoming survey telescopes, including the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, are expected to find them by the dozen and, hopefully, to ease the Hubble tension…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/how-fast-universe-expanding-cosmic-illusions-may-hold-answer. See also Science article Cosmic Expansion. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 9.

2026-04-02. Spectacular fossil treasure trove pushes back origins of complex animals. By EurekaAlert AAAS. Excerpt: A newly discovered fossil site in southwest China has transformed our understanding of how complex animal life emerged on Earth, revealing that many key animal groups had already evolved before the start of the Cambrian Period. The study, led by researchers at Oxford University’s Museum of Natural History and Department of Earth Sciences as well as Yunnan University in China, has been published today (02 April) in Science. One of the most transformative events in Earth’s history was the rapid diversification of animal life, resulting in a dramatic increase in complexity and diversity from simpler life forms. Up to now, this was thought to have occurred at the start of the Cambrian Period, in an event known as the Cambrian explosion, starting around 535 million years ago. The new study, however, shifts this timeframe back by at least 4 million years, to the end of the Ediacaran period…. Full article at https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1121553. For GSS Life and Climate, chapter 4.

2026-04-02. Why Doesn’t Texas, the Leader of Onshore Wind Energy, Have Any Offshore? By Arcelia Martin, Inside Climate News. Excerpt: Texas state officials have led a successful and concerted effort to prevent offshore wind developments in the Gulf. …even as five offshore wind projects resume construction this month after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s stop-work order for the developments, Texas has none in the mix. The U.S. has a small number of projects operating off the East Coast, totalling some 40 gigawatts. Texas leads the nation in wind energy, producing more than a fifth of the country’s wind-sourced electricity. Studies show the region could have similar success offshore, especially given the state’s experience building oil and gas rigs in the Gulf. Yet an auction of federal seabed leases nearly three years ago saw no bids. …chief among [the reasons] is the political hostility from state leaders, and, more recently, the federal government, toward this type of renewable energy…. Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02042026/texas-offshore-wind-energy-battles/. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-04-01. Don’t Blink: The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Is Revolutionizing Astronomy. By Caryl-Sue Micalizio, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: The awe-inducing Vera C. Rubin Observatory does not blink. From its sky-high altitude in the Chilean Andes, Rubin will image every point in the skies over the Southern Hemisphere 800 times over a 10-year period. The observatory is already issuing astronomers 800,000 alerts a night and eventually might send 10 million a night. “The whole field of astronomy is about to be completely revolutionized by this dataset,” says astronomer Sarah Greenstreet in Kimberly Cartier’s beautiful, breathless introduction to the observatory, “Small, Faint, or Fast, Rubin Will Find It.” So what is Rubin going to find? Asteroids. …astronomers think Rubin might find 4 million more. Comets. Rubin’s unblinking eye will help astronomers trace comets and other trans-Neptunian objects in the icy reaches of the outer solar system. Planet 9. “This is the survey that will determine whether Planet 9 is real or not,” says astronomer Meghan Schwamb in Cartier’s feature. Rubin is far from the only instrument…. The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array is offering scientists nothing less than a “New View of the Solar System”. And astronomers have long realized the value of cataloging temporal variations in celestial objects. Transits, rotations, and orbital dynamics have helped astronomers identify hot Jupiters, cold Earths, and planets that just shouldn’t be there…. Full article at https://eos.org/agu-news/dont-blink-the-vera-c-rubin-observatory-is-revolutionizing-astronomy. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 2.

2026-04-01. The Alaskan permafrost is thawing. Here’s why that’s so worrying. By Jackie Flynn Mogensen, Scientific American. Excerpt: A Wisconsin-sized region of frozen soil is thawing fast, releasing three trillion more gallons of water per year than it did just four decades ago. Thawing permafrost is among climate science’s worst “positive feedback loops”: As the world warms, permafrost—essentially frozen soil—thaws, releasing fresh water and carbon into the environment. That release further fuels climate change, driving more warming. (Thawing permafrost has also raised concerns about unleashing new pathogens on humanity.) …And in Alaska, the loop seems to be speeding up…. Full article at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-alaskan-permafrost-is-thawing-heres-why-thats-so-worrying/. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-04-01. He Helped Write the Clean Air Act. He Fears for Its Future. By Karen Zraick, The New York Times. Excerpt: Thomas Jorling, adviser to Republicans who cosponsored the 1970 law, disputes the Trump administration’s claim that it shouldn’t apply to planet-warming greenhouse gases. …When the Trump administration took the extraordinary step this year of killing the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases, it made a simple argument: The Clean Air Act doesn’t allow it. Thomas Jorling, who helped write the Clean Air Act, disagrees. The 1970 Clean Air Act became law …when climate change wasn’t as widely recognized a threat. But Mr. Jorling said in a recent interview that he and the other authors of the legislation had known that scientists would continue learning about new pollutants, and so the bill was meant to be flexible enough to encompass them. Regulating planet-warming emissions is “perfectly consistent with the Clean Air Act,” he said. …In February, the Environmental Protection Agency revoked what is known as the “endangerment finding,” a 2009 scientific conclusion by the agency that greenhouse gases endanger human health…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/climate/thomas-jorling-endangerment-finding-clean-air-act-epa.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-03-31. Judge Rules Alabama Power Can Keep Its Solar Fee, Among the Nation’s Highest. By Dennis Pillion, Inside Climate News. Excerpt: Despite a sunny climate, Alabama ranks 49th among U.S. states in residential solar installations—lower than Alaska. Advocates say the steep solar fee is part of the reason why. …A federal judge ruled last week that Alabama Power can continue charging its small solar customers one of the highest standby charges in the nation, dismissing a lawsuit that argued the fee was illegal under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act…. Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31032026/alabama-power-solar-fee-ruling/. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-03-31. How did ancient bugs get so big? The prevailing theory may be wrong. By aylor Mitchell Brown, Science. Excerpt: Flying insect respiratory systems suggest abundant oxygen can’t explain ancient gigantism. About 300 million years ago, giant dragonflylike insects with half-meter wing spans buzzed through hot and swampy forests on the former supercontinent of Pangaea. Scientists have long debated what allowed griffenflies, as they’re known, and similar fearsome flying bugs to grow so big during the Carboniferous period. The atmosphere at the time held more oxygen than it does today, and the textbook hypothesis suggests these giant insects developed more respiratory tubes to deliver that gas to their muscles, enabling them to grow and grow. But a new analysis of the anatomy of insect flight muscles, published last week in Nature, undercuts that idea, suggesting past ferocious fliers didn’t incorporate oxygen into their muscles any more generously than their smaller counterparts do today. …During the Carboniferous, 50-meter-tall mosses and other plant life pumped massive amounts of oxygen into the atmosphere. Back then, oxygen made up about 30% of Earth’s atmospheric air, compared with 21% today…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/how-did-ancient-bugs-get-so-big-prevailing-theory-may-be-wrong. For GSS Life and Climate, chapter 5.

2026-03-28. How Clean Energy Firms Are Trying to Survive the Trump Era. By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: Clean energy isn’t dead in the Trump era. But it does look different these days. Since returning to office, President Trump has dismantled federal efforts to fight climate change and vowed to stop new wind turbines from going up. His administration has canceled billions of dollars in funding for technologies that might one day help reduce planet-warming emissions, and it has instead pushed to expand domestic oil and gas drilling. Those moves have taken a brutal toll on America’s budding clean energy industry, including canceled offshore wind farms, shuttered electric-car factories and layoffs at climate technology start-ups. Yet many clean energy executives say they are finding ways to adapt, and some promising technologies that might help slow global warming are moving forward. Some industries, such as geothermal energy or nuclear power, still receive support from the Trump administration. Start-ups that could help cut emissions from factories are figuring out how to survive without federal support. Others, such as battery companies, are looking to pitch themselves as a solution for the artificial intelligence and data center boom. More than 300 start-ups attended a major annual energy industry summit this week, known as CERAWeek by S&P Global, showcasing ideas for investors and policymakers like advanced batteries that can store power for multiple days and lower-emission jet fuel…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/climate/clean-energy-trump-renewable.html. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

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2026-03-25. US has caused $10tn worth of climate damage since 1990, research finds. By Oliver Milman, The Guardian. Excerpt: The US has caused an eye-watering $10tn in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself, new research has found. By being the largest carbon emitter in history, the US has caused greater harm to worldwide economic growth than any other country, ahead of China, now the world’s largest emitter that is responsible for $9tn in GDP damage since 1990, according to the findings of the paper. About 25% of this GDP dampening has occurred in the US itself, although other countries have borne a heavy toll, with economic losses disproportionately felt in the poorest countries. Since 1990, US emissions have caused an estimated $500bn of economic damage to India and $330bn in damage to Brazil, the research finds. …The new study, published in Nature on Wednesday, attempts to attach dollar amounts to “loss and damage” – a term used to sum up the harm suffered by societies baked by dangerously rising global temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/25/us-climate-damage-research. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 10.

2026-03-24. Maryland Supreme Court Strikes Down Local Climate Suit Against Big Oil. By Karen Zraick, The New York Times. Excerpt: The Maryland Supreme Court on Tuesday dealt a major blow to cities and other local governments looking to sue oil companies over climate change. The court ruled against reviving climate lawsuits brought by Baltimore, Annapolis and Anne Arundel County that were struck down by lower courts. Those governments had sued 26 multinational oil and gas companies to recover damages caused by the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, accusing them of deceiving the public about the dangers of using their products. Some three dozen similar lawsuits have been filed nationwide in the past decade…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/climate/baltimore-climate-lawsuit.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-03-23. Lightning bolts on Jupiter pack more than 100 times the power of Earth’s flashes. By Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: Jupiter, the most massive planet in our solar system, has correspondingly humongous storms…. Some of these storms also generate terrific bolts of lightning, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley scientists. Some flashes are 100 times more powerful than lightning on Earth — and possibly much stronger. The results come from analysis of data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting the planet since 2016 and scanning the atmosphere with its microwave radiometer, which can detect radio emissions from lightning similar to the radio interference created by lightning on Earth. …lead author Michael Wong, a planetary scientist at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory… study was published March 20 in the journal AGU Advances…. Full article at https://news.berkeley.edu/2026/03/23/lightning-bolts-on-jupiter-pack-more-than-100-times-the-power-of-earths-flashes/. See also Eos article Stealth Superstorms Reveal Lightning on Jupiter: Beyond the Superbolt and Science article Jupiter’s weather forecast: cloudy with a chance of nukes. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 7.

2026-03-23. Trump Administration to Pay $1 Billion to Energy Giant to Cancel Wind Farms. By Maxine Joselow and Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: The Trump administration will pay the French energy giant TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its plans to build wind farms off the East Coast, the Interior Department said on Monday at an energy conference in Houston. …In exchange, TotalEnergies would invest that money in oil and gas projects in the United States, including a facility in Texas that would export liquefied natural gas to global markets. The company would also commit to producing more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and said it was developing some additional gas-burning power plants to meet rising electricity demand from data centers…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/climate/offshore-wind-gas-trump-total.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-03-22. The Balance That Keeps Climate Stable Is Out of Whack, U.N. Report Finds. By Eric Niiler, The New York Times. Excerpt: The Earth is out of balance. That’s the message from a United Nations report released late Sunday that looked at how much energy from the sun is absorbed by the Earth or reflected back into space. Researchers found the gap between the two is the biggest since measurements began in 1960, meaning more of the sun’s heat energy is now staying on Earth. And that energy imbalance is heating up the oceans, atmosphere, and frozen regions of the world, according to the World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Global Climate report. …said Dr. Deoras, who was not associated with the report… “…all these greenhouse gases, they are just trapping more and more heat. The planet is just not getting a chance to cool down.”… Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/climate/energy-imbalance-un-report.html. See also Inside Climate News article Report Shows Earth’s Climate is Out of Balance, as Indicators Hit New Extremes. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 1.

2026-03-22. More Air-Conditioners Crank Up as Heat Wave Wilts Large Part of U.S.. By Alan Blinder and Sonia A. Rao, The New York Times. Excerpt: San Francisco hit 90 degrees on Friday, the first day of spring. …As these kind of spikes have become more common, there has been a rush to add air conditioning in the region. More than half of the San Francisco area’s homes now have air-conditioning, a first for the famously cool region…. It is not just the Bay Area: The United States has become a lot more air-conditioned in recent years, both fueling climate change and taming its day-to-day consequences. About 93 percent of occupied American housing units had primary air-conditioning in 2023, according to the most recently published federal data. Eight years earlier, about 89 percent did. …Compared to other countries…the United States was “oddly obsessed with air-conditioning.” …one issue is that relatively few American buildings, especially in places historically unaccustomed to intense heat, were designed to embrace alternate cooling methods, such as external shading. But the nation’s air-conditioner-centric culture did not help…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/22/us/heat-wave-air-conditioning-california-utah-colorado-oklahoma.html. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 8.

2026-03-20. Earth’s Climate Records Are Melting. By Emily Gardner, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In 2019, researchers collected a 9.5-meter ice core from Austria’s Weißseespitze ice cap, which covers the top sections of Gepatschferner Glacier in the eastern Alps, near the Austrian-Italian border. They analyzed 18 trace elements and organic acids in the core to paint a picture of Earth’s climate and atmosphere over more than a thousand years. But Weißseespitze Glacier is melting quickly: As of 2025, the ice was only 5.5 meters thick in the area where scientists collected the core. “When this glacier disappears, we don’t lose only the ice: We’ll lose irreplaceable knowledge about the Earth’s climate history and how it has evolved and how human activity has influenced it,” said Azzurra Spagnesi, a paleoclimatologist at Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia and lead author of the new research published in Frontiers in Earth Science…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/earths-climate-records-are-melting. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-03-20. ‘Yes to fields of wheat, no to fields of iron’: how the world’s greenest country soured on solar. By Ajit Niranjan, The Guardian. Excerpt: In one telling of the story, the golden fields of a proud farming nation are under attack. Besieged by an industrial sprawl of solar panels, they are being smothered at the behest of an urban elite. That narrative has failed to thrive in conservative heartlands such as Texas and Hungary, which have embraced solar power while lambasting green rules. But it is taking root in Denmark, the most climate-ambitious nation on Earth. “We say yes to fields of wheat,” said Inger Støjberg, the leader of the rightwing populist Denmark Democrats in a speech in 2024. “And we say no to fields of iron!” …in Denmark, which generates 90% of its electricity from renewables and aims to cut planet-heating pollution faster than any other wealthy country, the spread of solar power has alarmed some regions in which construction is concentrated. Solar tripled from 4% of Danish power production in 2021 to 13% in 2025. And a handful of villages have found themselves surrounded by silicon…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/20/solar-power-renewable-energy-denmark-backlash-national-elections. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-03-19. Earth’s “Green Wave” Is on the Move. By Saugat Bolakhe, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Zoom out from Earth and take a satellite view of the planet in time-lapse: One of the most obvious and notable changes would be the surge of greenness sweeping seasonally across the globe. Scientists call this [the “green wave”, a] seasonal pulse of vegetation growth, which intensifies in the Northern Hemisphere during boreal summer and in the Southern Hemisphere during austral summer, Now, in a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, researchers analyzed 40 years of this green wave data and tracked the center of mass of global greenness [that] has been shifting northward and eastward and that this movement has accelerated over the past decade…. Full article at https://eos.org/articles/earths-green-wave-is-on-the-move. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-03-19. New Analysis by UC Berkeley Highlights Japan’s Port Decarbonization Leadership. By UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy. Excerpt: BERKELEY, Calif. (March 19, 2026) — A new study, “An Analysis of Japan’s Carbon Neutral Port Initiative and Yokohama Port and Harbor Decarbonization Plan,” (download the Japanese version here) from the University of California, Berkeley examines Japan’s innovative approach to decarbonizing maritime ports. Japan’s Carbon Neutral Port (CNP) certification framework and the City of Yokohama’s port decarbonization initiatives represent serious and forward-looking efforts to address the complex challenge of maritime emissions reduction. The study comes as momentum builds for decarbonization of the international shipping industry,…. Full article at https://gspp.berkeley.edu/research-and-impact/news/recent-news/new-analysis-by-uc-berkeley-highlights-japans-port-decarbonization-leadership. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-03-15. Mining made this US tribal area a toxic wasteland. This Indigenous nation brought it back to life. By Todd Price, The Guardian. Excerpt: The Quapaw Nation is the only US Native community to carry out a cleanup of one of the country’s worst sites of environmental contamination. …They call this land the Laue. In the late 1800s, part of these 200 acres of grassland inside the Quapaw Nation were allotted to tribal citizen Charley Quapaw Blackhawk. …After forcing dozens of tribes into Indian territory before the civil war, the US government then parceled out reservations and property to individual members. …for the last century, little grew on the Laue. Half of it was buried beneath towering mounds of toxic rock known as chat piles. The waste rock, laced with chemicals, was left after miners extracted millions of tons of lead and zinc from the Tri-State Mining District …. By 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had designated 40 sq miles that include nearly all the Quapaw Nation as the Tar Creek Superfund site…. Informally called a “megasite”, Tar Creek remains one of the largest and most complex environmental disasters in the country. After years of cleanup, …The ground has been restored and tested. The soil is healthy again. Like hundreds of acres across the Quapaw Nation, it has returned to agriculture. And the Quapaw, a community with more than 6,000 members, have led this revitalization themselves as the first and only tribal nation in the country to manage and carry out a Superfund cleanup. By cleaning contaminated ground – a slow process that began 40 years ago and will likely continue for decades – the tribe can expand its farming efforts and food production on its own terms. …The bison herd surrounding the tribe’s Downstream Casino Resort… is both sustenance and symbol. The greenhouses and gardens of the tribe’s food sovereignty division raise tomatoes, cucumbers and also traditional medicines. The Quapaw meat-processing plant, the first opened by a tribe, is a business that also ensures a steady supply of protein to the tribe…. Full article at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/mar/15/quapaw-nation-oklahoma-superfund-cleanup. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 2.

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2026-03-19. 24 States Sue the E.P.A. for Renouncing Its Power to Fight Climate Change. By Lisa Friedman, The New York Times. Excerpt: A coalition of 24 states, along with a dozen cities and counties, sued the Trump administration on Thursday over its decision to relinquish the government’s legal authority to fight climate change. The lawsuit was filed in the ​U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It is expected to be consolidated with a case that environmental groups filed in February, making for one of the largest legal challenges to date against the Trump administration’s unraveling of federal climate policy. The states are arguing that the Environmental Protection Agency acted illegally when it rescinded a 2009 scientific conclusion that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. That determination, known as the endangerment finding, formed the legal basis for the E.P.A. to regulate emissions from automobile tailpipes, power plant smokestacks, oil and gas wells, and other sources…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/climate/epa-endangerment-states-lawsuit.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-03-19. Floating wetlands boost water quality, slash greenhouse emissions. By Claudia Steiner, Science. Excerpt: …researchers have found a way to clean water with fewer emissions: portable wetlands. A recent preprint on EarthArXiv shows floating platforms covered in wetland plants helped reduce water pollution and even lowered greenhouse gas emissions at a wastewater site in Australia. …Human activities cause nutrients including phosphorus and nitrogen to build up in wastewater. …it must be decontaminated, usually by microbes…[that] release 1.6% of all human-driven greenhouse gas emissions. …this microbial breakdown accounts for 7% to 10% of global emissions of methane and nitrous oxide, which have far higher heat-trapping potential than carbon dioxide, in the short term. But …Floating wetland plants, with roots growing in the water, can remove pollutants by physically trapping debris and directly absorbing nutrients through their roots and leaves. To test …Schuster’s team worked with a company to construct a buoyant platform the size of roughly two tennis courts covered in jointed rush, marsh club rush, and common reeds—all native wetland plant species. …By the end of the [2-year] study period, they found the side with the wetland enjoyed nitrogen levels 12% lower than the other part of the lagoon. More surprisingly, the team found that after only 4 months, methane emissions were lower on the treatment side, with carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide emissions also dropping after 7 months… 22% lower in the wetlands side of the lagoon—with methane emissions falling most dramatically…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/floating-wetlands-boost-water-quality-slash-greenhouse-emissions. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 7.

2026-03-19. The Weather Is Getting Wilder, and Some See a Dire Signal in the Data. By David Gelles, The New York Times. Excerpt: Scientists who study global warming are currently wrestling with a question that, while seemingly technical, is profoundly consequential: Is climate change accelerating? The debate spilled into the open this month, after new research found that the rate of global warming has nearly doubled over the last decade. The findings set scientific circles buzzing, and not all researchers agree with the conclusion. But while the debate about accelerating global warming remains unsettled, a growing number of scientists do agree on another troubling development: The effects of climate change are intensifying in ways that have surprised even experts. Many of the consequences of global warming — such as more intense storms, warming oceans and melting glaciers — are arriving faster and more powerfully than many scientists had expected…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/19/climate/the-weather-is-getting-wilder-and-some-see-a-dire-signal-in-the-data.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-03-18. FEMA to Relaunch Climate Resiliency Grants, Complying With Court Order. By Scott Dance, The New York Times. Excerpt: The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Wednesday it would relaunch a canceled grant program that had helped states invest billions of dollars in projects that made local communities more resilient to floods, fires and other disasters. The announcement came days ahead of a deadline imposed by a federal judge who ruled in December that the Trump administration’s decision to end the program, known as Building Resilient Communities and Infrastructure, or BRIC, last April was illegal. In a March 6 court order, Judge Richard G. Stearns of U.S. District Court for Massachusetts gave FEMA two weeks to comply with his ruling and reinstate the program. FEMA’s announcement on Wednesday did not mention the ruling. The agency said officials were reviving the grant program — which FEMA created during President Trump’s first administration — after completing an evaluation. It concluded that under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the program had become too “focused on ‘climate change,’” but that the Trump administration would “reconstitute the BRIC program in a way that reflects good stewardship of taxpayer money,” the announcement said…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/climate/fema-bric-grants-relaunch.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-03-17. Earth’s Rotation Is Changing at a Speed Not Seen in 3.6 Million Years. By Melissa Fleur Afshar, Newsweek. Excerpt: Days are getting longer as a result of climate change, as warmer temperatures lead to a slowing of Earth’s rotation at a rate scientists say has not been seen for at least 3.6 million years. New research shows that rising sea levels caused by melting ice sheets are redistributing mass across the planet, reducing how fast Earth spins and gradually lengthening the day. Researchers found that days are currently increasing by about 1.33 milliseconds per century due to climate-related factors, a pace that stands out sharply in the planet’s recent geological history. …unprecedented at least since the late Pliocene, 3.6 million years ago. …Even though the changes are only milliseconds, they can cause problems in many areas, for example in precise space navigation, which requires accurate information on Earth’s rotation.”… Full article at https://www.newsweek.com/earth-rotation-changing-speed-not-seen-before-11684824. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

2026-03-16. Oil and gas prices are soaring. Some countries are ready with solar panels and EVs. By Julia Simon, NPR. Excerpt: As the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran continues, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, cutting off a quarter of oil and natural gas supplies from the rest of the world. …energy experts say some countries are better positioned to weather this energy crisis than they would have been just a few years ago. That’s because of the rapid growth of renewable energy, battery systems and electric vehicles, says Jan Rosenow, energy and climate professor at Oxford University. …”That’s not a coincidence,” Rosenow says. “It’s a deliberate strategy to move away from [imported oil] and electrify.” In China, more than half of new car sales are now electric. In Nepal, it’s more than 70%. As oil prices rise, residents with EVs are less vulnerable than if they had to rely on fuel. “It’s an energy security solution and it’s a cost solution,” says Kingsmill Bond, analyst at the energy think tank Ember.… Full article at https://www.npr.org/2026/03/16/nx-s1-5732984/energy-iran-war-solar-pakistan-crisis-renewable-evs. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-03-15. Iceland’s Chief ‘Lava Cooler’ Is Bracing for the Next Eruption. By Amelia Nierenberg and Egill Bjarnason, The New York Times. Excerpt: As a swarm of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions began to rip through southwestern Iceland in late 2023, a firefighter named Helgi Hjorleifsson jumped into action. Lava was heading toward the already evacuated town of Grindavik, a power plant and the Blue Lagoon — one of Iceland’s most popular tourist attractions. Mr. Hjorleifsson was tapped to lead a team of firefighters trying to do the unimaginable: Cool the lava enough to control it. The firefighters and other emergency responders managed to protect the power plant, the lagoon and most of the houses. But now, another eruption could be imminent. And when it comes, Mr. Hjorleifsson, 47, will be ready. …The theory of how to do that was almost absurdly simple, he said: “If you put a lot of water on hot stuff, it is going to be cold.” They gathered all the spare pumps and hoses they had, but soon realized the equipment was too small. So Iceland bought enormous pumps and hoses the width of dinner plates, which branched off like arteries into smaller hoses to move the water faster. Firefighters lugged those up the barriers and pointed the nozzles at the edge of the flowing lava…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/world/europe/iceland-lava-volcano-eruption-grindavik.html. For GSS Energy Flow, chapter 2.

2026-03-13. Trump Administration Readies Plans to Dismantle Renowned Science Lab. By Eric Niiler, The New York Times. Excerpt: The Trump administration is reviewing proposals to break up one of the world’s leading climate and weather laboratories, transfer its work to universities and private companies, take away its aircraft, and sell its property in Boulder, Colo. The laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has been targeted for months by the Trump administration. In a social media post in December, Russell Vought, the White House budget director, called the Colorado center “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country.” The center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in understanding of weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in forecasting weather events and disasters. Scientists say the move to dismantle the center would weaken research that is crucial to understanding the atmosphere, space and oceans, air pollution and climate change. It would leave emergency officials and planners less prepared for extreme weather events, critics said…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/climate/ncar-breakup-plan-nasa-noaa.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

2026-03-12. Sunlight-driven process upcycles polystyrene waste and elemental sulfur into valuable organic compounds. By Mason Wakley, Chemistry World. Excerpt: Sunlight can be used to convert polystyrene waste and excess sulfur into valuable organic products. The team that created the new process hopes that it could be a way to tackle the millions of tonnes of polystyrene waste generated every year, without the need for energy intensive methods. …Exposing polystyrene and elemental sulfur to sunlight for as little as two minutes under ambient conditions generated several organic products. This included a diphenylated thiophene, used in semiconductor materials, and 1,3,5-triphenylbenzene, a versatile organic building block that can cost up to $400 (£300) per kg…. Full article at https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/sunlight-driven-process-upcycles-polystyrene-waste-and-elemental-sulfur-into-valuable-organic-compounds/4023084.article. For GSS Ecosystem Change, chapter 7.

2026-03-12. What’s the catch of the day? By Joseph Travis and David Reznick, Science. Excerpt: The inexorable warming of Earth and its oceans will upend many biological systems on which humans depend. A large question looming on this horizon is what food will the world’s oceans and rivers provide in a warmer world. Aquatic systems supply protein to billions of people, and this need is projected to grow as the human population increases. …Increasing temperatures cause the average body sizes of harvested fish, and therefore fishery yields, to decline (1). On page 1167 of this issue, Kozlowski et al. (2) report a model that predicts that adaptive evolution in fishery species will substantially magnify this loss. Fish mortality rates increase as water temperature increases (3, 4). …Evolution causes fish to sacrifice their size but improves the odds of surviving long enough to reproduce…. Full article at https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aef5605. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 7.

2026-03-10. What soaring gas prices mean for California’s EV market. By Caroline Petrow-Cohen, Blanca Begert, Los Angeles Times. Excerpt: EV sellers could soon receive a boost from an unexpected source: The war in Iran is pushing up gas prices. As Americans look to save money at the pump, more will consider switching to an electric or hybrid vehicle. Average gas prices in the U.S. have risen nearly 17% since Feb. 28 to reach $3.48 per gallon. In California, the average is $5.20 per gallon…. Full article at https://www.aol.com/news/soaring-gas-prices-mean-californias-100000351.html. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 9.

2026-03-10. Courts Reject Trump Wind War. From Nature’s Voice Spring 2026 (Natural Resources Defense Council—NRDC). Excerpt: It’s been one legal blow after another against the Trump administration’s war on wind energy. In December, a federal court ruled that the administration’s blanket ban on new wind projects is illegal. That was followed in quick succession by five separate court rulings preliminarily halting the administration’s attempt to stop construction on five multibillion-dollar wind projects off the East Coast. Says Kit Kennedy, managing director for power at NRDC: “The administration should use this string of court losses as a wake-up call and get out of the way of the expansion of renewable energy.”… Source at https://issuu.com/nrdc/docs/nature_s_voice_spring_2026 (page 2). For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9. (and Energy Use chapter 10)

2026-03-06. Asteroid-Smashing NASA Mission Sped Up Space Rocks’ Journey Around the Sun. By Katrina Miller, The New York Times. Excerpt: In 2022, NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into a small asteroid named Dimorphos. The goal of this interplanetary smashup was to prove that if a killer space rock ever threatened Earth in the future, humans could deflect it and save our world. The mission, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, worked: The crash shortened Dimorphos’s orbit around a larger asteroid, Didymos, by 32 minutes. It also generated a giant cloud of dust and debris captured by telescopes around the world and in space. A new study shows that DART achieved more than that. Scientists found that the spacecraft’s impact shifted not only the orbit of Dimorphos around its parent asteroid, Didymos, but also the trajectory of the pair around our sun…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/science/nasa-dart-asteroid-sun-orbit.html. For GSS A Changing Cosmos, chapter 7.

2026-03-05. ‘Reprogramming’ our gut bacteria could be key to fighting disease. By Charlotte Khadra, Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley News. Excerpt: UC Berkeley’s Carlotta Ronda explains how CRISPR is turning our gut microbes into tiny, health-boosting factories in just 101 seconds. …“If you think about the genetic diversity we have in our gut, they are little factories that are constantly producing a lot of metabolites. They affect our immune system, how we age, everything. So we are trying to reprogram them for our health,” Ronda said. “It’s a gene therapy of the microbiome.”
… Full article at https://news.berkeley.edu/2026/03/05/reprogramming-our-gut-bacteria-could-be-key-to-fighting-disease/. For GSS Losing Biodiversity, chapter 4.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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2026-02-13. Renewables soar globally despite US climate pullback. By Tom Chivers, SEMAFOR. Excerpt: Renewables are being deployed aggressively across much of the world even as the US, historically the world’s biggest emitter, overturned a landmark domestic climate ruling. …Elsewhere in the world, however, green technology is being implemented at pace: Africa’s solar capacity expanded 17% last year, with 20 of the continent’s nations setting import records, and data this week showed that China’s emissions may already be falling thanks in large part to its huge outlay on clean power. Meanwhile, the International Energy Agency said renewables and nuclear will account by half of global power supply by 2030…. Full article at https://www.semafor.com/article/02/13/2026/renewables-soar-globally-despite-us-climate-pullback. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10.

2026-02-10. Climate Change Is Erased From a Manual for Federal Judges. By Karen Zraick, The New York Times. Excerpt: In a new attack on the science of climate change, a federal agency has stripped a chapter on global warming from a manual written to help judges understand important scientific questions they may face in their courtrooms…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/10/climate/judge-manual-climate-change-chapter.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

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

2026-02-11. Trump Orders the Pentagon to Buy More Coal-Fired Electricity. By Brad Plumer, The New York Times. Excerpt: President Trump on Wednesday directed the Pentagon to start buying more electricity from coal-burning power plants as part of his efforts to revive the declining coal industry…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/climate/trump-coal-pentagon-electricity.html. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9 and Energy Use chapter 4.

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

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

2026-02-09. Trump set to repeal landmark climate finding in huge regulatory rollback this week. By Valerie Volcovici and David Shepardson, Reuters. Excerpt: The administration of President Donald Trump is set this week to overturn an Obama-era scientific finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health, removing the legal basis for federal greenhouse gas emissions regulations. The move, which the administration formally proposed in July, would mark the Republican administration’s most sweeping climate change policy rollback to date, and follows a string of regulatory cuts and other moves intended to unfetter fossil fuel development and stymie the rollout of clean energy…. Full article at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-repeal-landmark-climate-finding-huge-regulatory-rollback-wsj-reports-2026-02-10/. See also New York Times articles, Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change and What to Know About the E.P.A.’s Big Attack on Climate Regulation. Also from the American Geophysical Union, AGU Denounces Trump Administration’s Repeal of the EPA Endangerment Finding. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 9.

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2026-02-07. A Groundbreaking Geothermal Heating and Cooling Network Saves This Colorado College Money and Water. By Phil McKenna, Inside Climate News. Excerpt: GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—The discussions started roughly a decade ago, when an account manager at Xcel Energy, the electricity and gas utility provider, expressed confusion, officials at Colorado Mesa University recalled. A public school on the state’s remote western slope, Colorado Mesa had recently doubled in size, but its energy usage had hardly budged as it began installing an advanced geothermal heating and cooling system. Since its geothermal buildout began in 2008, the university has saved more than $15 million in energy costs, money it has passed on to students through lower tuition and more scholarship funding.  Hundreds of boreholes drilled approximately 500 feet beneath athletic fields and parking lots tap low-temperature thermal energy to help heat and cool campus buildings in what is now one of the largest such networks in the nation. …A boiler that provides backup heat is rarely used. A bigger challenge is managing excess heat in the summer when thermal energy is drawn from buildings to keep them cool. Much of this heat is pumped underground and stored for winter use. Additional heat is used to warm the university’s swimming pool, showers and campus irrigation system. These creative uses of waste heat reduce the university’s need for conventional cooling towers that rely on evaporation. Sound Geothermal estimates that CMU reduced its annual water consumption from the highly constrained Colorado River watershed by 10 million gallons. Xcel Energy commissioned a report on Colorado Mesa’s geothermal system that confirmed the system’s energy savings. A “key advantage” of the University’s thermal network is its ability to share heating and cooling loads, the 2023 report concluded. “This load sharing can happen from room to room, floor to floor, and building to building.” The report measured the system’s “coefficient of performance,” or overall efficiency. A gas boiler, for example, can theoretically have a coefficient of performance as high as one, meaning that for every unit of gas that flows into the boiler, one unit of heat is produced. Air source heat pumps, by comparison, are more efficient. They typically have a higher coefficient of performance, ranging from 2 to 4, because they don’t generate heat; instead, they use fans and compressors to extract heat from outdoor air. …Colorado Mesa’s system, which draws on geothermal energy, stores heat seasonally in underground borefields, and balances heating and cooling loads between buildings, had a much higher coefficient of performance, ranging from 3.6 to 8.9, depending on the time of year. …There are now more than twenty utility-led thermal energy networks under development or completed nationwide, according to the Building Decarbonization Coalition. Xcel Energy is currently working on three thermal energy network projects, two in Colorado and one in Minnesota, a spokesperson said in a written statement. …Geothermal heating and cooling tax credits approved under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 cover 30 percent or more of the total project cost. Unlike its cuts to wind and solar tax credits, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump in July, largely left geothermal tax credits intact…. Full article at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07022026/colorado-college-geothermal-network/. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 8.

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

2026-02-04. A Trump ‘Blockade’ Is Stalling Hundreds of Wind and Solar Projects Nationwide. By Brad Plumer and Rebecca F. Elliott, The New York Times. Excerpt: A week before the 2024 election, Idaho’s largest electric utility struck a 35-year deal to buy power from a wind farm under development in Wyoming. The Jackalope Wind project would span an area the size of Chicago, with hundreds of wind turbines generating clean electricity by 2027. But the wind farm soon became a casualty of President Trump’s efforts to slow — and sometimes revoke — federal approvals for wind and solar projects. A key environmental review of Jackalope by the Interior Department was stalled for months, and the project is now effectively dead. Similar stories are unfolding nationwide. While Mr. Trump’s attacks on offshore wind have been highly visible, his administration has also been hobbling solar and wind energy projects on land by halting or delaying federal approvals that were once routine…. Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/climate/wind-solar-projects.html. For GSS Energy Use, chapter 10 (and Climate Change chapter 9).

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

2026-02-03. As the world warms, freezing rain shifts to the U.S. South. By Hannah Richter, Science. Excerpt: Over the weekend of 24–25 January, a major winter storm blanketed the eastern United States in soft snow. …in many places, the powder gave way to freezing rain, glazing trees and roads in heavy, dangerous ice, bringing down power lines, and depriving 1 million people of light and heat. Freezing rain is a stealth winter hazard, says Zong-Liang Yang, an earth systems scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. …“…[freezing rain is] relatively understudied.” …a handful of scientists are studying how this rare but destructive form of precipitation might be changing in a warming world, drawing on long-term records, new measurements, and computer modeling. One early result: Freezing rain isn’t vanishing—but it is shifting in location and timing. “We want to make an urgent warning that these kinds of winter hazards won’t be less frequent under a warmer climate,” says postdoctoral researcher Chenxi Hu, who works with Yang. Instead, in the U.S., they are occurring later in winter, and moving toward the southeast, Yang said in a presentation in December 2025 at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU’s) annual meeting…. Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/world-warms-freezing-rain-shifts-u-s-south. For GSS Climate Change, chapter 8.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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