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Scientists Predict an ‘Above Normal’ Atlantic Hurricane Season
The forecast, which follows a record season in 2020, arrives as hurricanes are becoming more destructive over time.
By John Schwartz
May 20, 2021
Federal scientists on Thursday forecast that 2021 could see in the range of 13 to 20 named storms, six to 10 hurricanes, and three to five major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher in the Atlantic. Ben Friedman, the acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said, “an above-normal season is most likely.”
Hurricane season runs from June 1 until Nov. 30, though the last six years have seen storms form before its official start.
This year’s announcement comes after a record-shattering 2020 season of 30 named storms — so many that we ran through the alphabet for only the second time and resorted to using Greek letters.
Hurricanes have become more destructive over time, in no small part because of the influences of a warming planet. Climate change is producing more powerful storms, and they dump more water because of heavier rainfall and a tendency to dawdle and meander; rising seas and slower storms can make for higher and more destructive storm surges. But humans play a part in making storm damage more expensive, as well, by continuing to build in vulnerable coastal areas.
Matthew Rosencrans of NOAA’s climate prediction center said “we do not expect the 2021 hurricane season to be as active” as last year’s, but added that “it only takes one dangerous storm to devastate communities and lives.” The agency will issue another forecast later in the summer, before the height of hurricane season.
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Thursday’s forecast is based on NOAA’s updated “period of prediction” for storms, part of a once-per-decade revision of the statistics used to determine how a season stacks up, and reflects the growing number of storms in the Atlantic over the decades. That 30-year average number of storms has edged up from 12 named storms, six hurricanes, and three major hurricanes in the previous period’s version to 14 named storms and seven hurricanes. The number of major hurricanes has stayed the same.
The science of forecasting the effects of individual storms has seen “huge progress,” said Suzana Camargo of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Technological advances are giving people far more accurate warnings of hurricane tracks, rainfall and surge risk as well as understanding of the connections between the storms and climate change.
The United States is approaching this hurricane season as those who respond to the nation’s disasters are stretched thin. On top of wildfires in the West, pounding rains and extensive flooding in parts of Louisiana and Texas, many areas are still struggling to recover from last year’s record hurricane season and the February freeze.
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At the same time, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has diverted thousands of personnel to help run the country’s coronavirus vaccination campaign, as well as help shelter unaccompanied children crossing the southern border.
Compounding disasters:Facing hurricane and wildfire seasons during a pandemic, FEMA is already worn down.
Some climate experts have argued that the annual forecast is unhelpful. Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, groused on Twitter last year that it “is not very valuable and yields little actionable information.” He added that anyone on the Gulf or East Coast should prepare for the season, because “in any year, you have a small chance of getting hammered,” and “over a few decades, your chance of getting blasted by a big storm is pretty good.”
There is no serious scientific disagreement over whether greenhouse gases generated by human activity are causing the planet to warm, and growing agreement about some of the possible connections between that warming and storms. But there are still areas of sharp disagreement in the scientific community over some of those possible connections.
Getting the connections right is not just important for countering denialist thinking about climate change, but also to curb the tendency to overstate the science when it comes to the effects of warming. As public awareness of the risks of climate change grows, there is a tendency in the news media and among politicians to attribute every weather-related disaster to climate change, said Kerry Emanuel, a climate expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “That’s such a temptation, and it has to be resisted.”
ImageBlue tarps on damaged roofs in Lake Charles, La., which was struck by two hurricanes last year.
Blue tarps on damaged roofs in Lake Charles, La., which was struck by two hurricanes last year.Credit...William Widmer for The New York Times
One way that people oversimplify climate change, Dr. Camargo said, is asking whether climate change “caused” a storm. That “is not the right way to frame the problem,” she said. Instead, it should be “how much has climate change contributed to this hurricane?”
So what are some of those connections?
Thomas Knutson, a climate scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has published a series of papers since 2019, including a recent review of research at the site sciencebrief.org that underscores the links with the strongest evidence. Those researchers acknowledged that a warming world is likely fueling more powerful tropical storms and contributing to increased flooding because of rising sea levels. The scientists also stated that rainfall in tropical storms is likely to increase, since a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. The team also suggested that the proportion of severe storms has increased, though the overall number of storms worldwide has stayed about the same.
“We’re seeing a rise in the proportion of hurricanes that reach major hurricane status, Category 3 and above,” Dr. Emanuel said. “That’s what we’re unequivocally seeing in the satellite data.”
James Kossin, also with NOAA, has done research lending further support to the idea that hurricanes are getting more powerful. With continued warming, he suggested, “you’ll start to see intensities like you’ve never seen before,” even storms packing 250-mile-per-hour winds. (Major hurricanes, beginning with Category 3, have wind speeds between 111 and 129 miles per hour. A Category 5 storm, currently the most powerful classification, is 157 m.p.h. and above.) “It’s only a matter of time,” he said.
Other research suggests that hurricanes may be weakening more slowly after landfall, increasing their destructive abilities, and that storms are slowing down, lingering as they approach and stretching out the damage over longer time periods.
Between the greater water vapor in the atmosphere and the storm slowdowns, Dr. Kossin said, there has been a 41 percent increase in local rainfall associated with storms that move over land. In addition, he said, the tracks of storms are shifting away from the tropics and are heading farther north, with a subsequent expansion of the range of storm risk.
The area of strongest debate concerns whether climate change has a role in the rising number of hurricanes in the Atlantic. Recent research suggests a strong role for human actions, though not all of those actions are directly related to climate change.
The more conservative faction of scientists attributes much of the rise in storms to natural variability and a cycle of ocean warming and cooling known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation; NOAA scientists cited the phenomenon as one of the main factors in the rise in last year’s forecast of an active season. Other climate scientists, including Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, have cast doubt over whether the oscillation exists at all.
Dr. Emanuel of M.I.T. is one of a growing number of scientists who state that the large increase in the number of Atlantic storms is caused by humans, but not mainly because of global warming. The fact that the number of storms dipped in the 1970s and 1980s is in no small part related to pollution, they say — in particular, atmospheric sulfur pollution floating out over the Atlantic from Europe during the postwar boom that cleared up as environmental regulation began cleaning up the skies. “Almost certainly, the hurricane drought of the ’70s and ’80s was an aerosol-related phenomenon,” Dr. Emanuel said.
The finding, he said, “reminds everybody that our influence on climate goes beyond greenhouse gases.”
Christopher Flavelle contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/climate/atlantic-hurricane-outlook.html
The 5 mass extinction events that shaped the history of Earth — and the 6th that's happening now
https://www.livescience.com/mass-extinction-events-that-shaped-Earth.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab
He says: "It's an extraordinary point of leverage for regulators, for finance institutions, to influence them in order that rather than producing from fossil fuels, they produce plastic that's recycled."
He adds that until now the emphasis of efforts to curb plastic pollution has been on the individual choices that consumers can make.
"But we need to go after the tap, to turn off the tap of fossil fuel plastics and we need to create plastics from recycled material."
The report finds that plastic production is set to expand by 30% in the next five years, increasing carbon emissions as well as creating more plastic waste.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-57149741
Nope, we're good again - disruption at the laundromat!..
So much for success - weezefooked:
https://www.iea.org/news/global-carbon-dioxide-emissions-are-set-for-their-second-biggest-increase-in-history
More expressions from human assholes:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ddt-barrels-toxic-waste-dump-pacific-ocean-california/
Big problem of ocean plastic pollution - some success:
2 min vid
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-56937300
There’s a Booming Business in America’s Forests. Some Aren’t Happy About It.
The fuel pellet industry is thriving. Supporters see it as a climate-friendly source of rural jobs. For others, it’s a polluter and destroyer of nature.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/climate/wood-pellet-industry-climate.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Hope ur relocating the little froggies from that lawn!..
.. always reminded (for some unknown reason ;) of a C.S. Lewis
book when considering the mortality of the lowly frog..
When Ransom finds him again, surrounded by ripped-apart frogs, Weston is no longer human:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Weston
[back to my own inhuman massacre of small trees ;[
I am mowing now at least once a week. And yes it is very noisy at night.
Why researcher is concerned about Japan's cherry bloom
Japan just recorded its earliest cherry blossom bloom in 1,200 years. Scientists warn it's a symptom of the larger climate crisis. CNN's Selina Wang reports. Source: CNN
https://www.cnn.com/videos/travel/2021/04/05/cherry-blossom-japan-2021-selina-wang-pkg-vpx.cnn?
Florida declares state of emergency as reservoir holding millions of gallons of radioactive wastewater 'could collapse' at any time
Sophia Ankel,Yelena Dzhanova
Sun, April 4, 2021, 6:18 AM
https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-declares-state-emergency-reservoir-101805130.html
But the time for polite conversation about the environment is over. What's crucial is having a clearer sense of environmentalism's purpose — because that purpose will make sustained action possible.
It's precisely this last point that steers Saul away from despair. As he says, "If there is a problem that unites us, then there is also a goal that unites us."
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/environmentalists-what-are-we-fighting-for-an-environmentalist-argues-it-s-not-clear-1.4917208
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=162922891
EPA dismisses dozens of key science advisers picked under Trump
The Biden administration says it needs to restore trust in the agency by “resetting” membership on two key science advisory panels
By Dino Grandoni
March 31, 2021 at 4:33 p.m. GMT+1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/03/31/epa-advisory-panels/?%20environment_1
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan will purge more than 40 outside experts appointed by President Donald Trump from two key advisory panels, a move he says will help restore the role of science at the agency and reduce the heavy influence of industry over environmental regulations.
The unusual decision, announced Wednesday, will sweep away outside researchers picked under the previous administration whose expert advice helped the agency craft regulations related to air pollution, fracking and other issues.
Critics say that under Trump, membership of the two panels — the EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) — tilted too heavily toward regulated industries and their positions sometimes contradicted scientific consensus.
"Science is back," new EPA administrator says
The Biden administration said the move is one of several to reestablish scientific integrity across the federal government after what it characterizes as a concerted effort under the previous president to sideline or interfere with research on climate change, the novel coronavirus and other issues.
“Resetting these two scientific advisory committees will ensure the agency receives the best possible scientific insight to support our work to protect human health and the environment,” Regan said in a statement.
Environmental advocates cheered the decision, saying that remaking the composition of the panels is necessary after the Trump administration illegally barred academics who received EPA grants from serving on them.
Under Trump, the EPA had argued scientists who received research funding from the agency would not be able to offer impartial advice. But environmental and public health advocates, along with some former career officials within the agency, said the policy effectively elevated experts from industry while muzzling independent scientists.
The Trump administration ended up rescinding the restriction on grant recipients after being ordered to do so last year by a federal court. But it didn’t change any of its appointments after the ruling.
“It’s absolutely warranted,” Christopher Zarba, a retired EPA employee who directed the office that coordinates with scientific committees, said of the newly announced shake-up. “Lots and lots of the best people were excluded from being considered.”
He added that none of the people picked by Trump’s EPA chiefs, Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler, were individually unqualified to serve. “However, the mix of people did not accurately represent mainstream science,” he said.
For example, Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox, who was tapped by Pruitt in 2017 to lead the advisory panel on air pollution, is a consultant who has worked for several government agencies but also for the oil, chemical and health-care industries.
Cox dismissed the EPA’s methods for tabulating the public health benefits of smog regulations as “unreliable, logically unsound, and inappropriate.” His position distressed many air pollution scientists, and two published a paper in the journal Science that warned Cox was trying to undo “the time-tested and scientifically backed” process that resulted in important public health protections.
The EPA is calling for new applications for the two panels. Nick Conger, an EPA spokesman, said advisers dropped from the committees are “eligible and encouraged to reapply” if they choose. Normally, the agency would have asked for new applications for a handful of the positions in October.
The action Wednesday is one of several steps Regan says is necessary to rebuild the scientific integrity of the EPA and restore staff morale.
Regan recently, for instance, revived an EPA webpage on climate change deleted during Trump’s first weeks in office. And In a memo to staff last week, Regan said the agency is reviewing policies that impeded science and is encouraging career employees to “bring any items of concern” to the attention of scientific integrity officials as they review Trump-era actions.
“When politics drives science rather than science informing policy,” Regan wrote to staff, “we are more likely to make policy choices that sacrifice the health of the most vulnerable among us.”
On the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, Trump-picked members advised the EPA to keep the standards for ozone at the current level, even as public-health experts outside the agency argued they should be tightened to help protect poor and minority communities. The agency followed the committee’s advice and declined to issue stricter standards for the smog-forming pollutant, which has been linked to asthma and lung disease.
The clean air panel, meanwhile, was split on whether to recommend tougher rules for particulate matter, another pollutant emitted by power plants and cars. The agency ultimately decided last year against ratcheting up the rules, even as evidence accumulated that soot raised the risk of dying of covid-19.
In an interview earlier this month, Regan suggested the agency may revisit those decisions for acceptable pollution levels. “We want to take a close look at ozone. We want to take a look at all the NAAQS [National Ambient Air Quality Standards] that we believe are questionable.”
Genna Reed, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a research and advocacy group, said reconstituting the panel will aid in any reassessment of air quality standards.
“It only makes sense for the agency to go back to the drawing board,” she said.
Headshot of Dino Grandoni
Dino Grandoni
Dino Grandoni is an energy and environmental policy reporter and the author of PowerPost's daily tipsheet on the beat, The Energy 202. Before The Post, he was the climate and energy reporter at BuzzFeed News, where he covered the intersection of science, industry and government. Follow
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/03/31/epa-advisory-panels/?%20environment_1
A coal to solar good news story
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56506529
Bitcoin’s Climate Problem
As companies and investors increasingly say they are focused on climate and sustainability, the cryptocurrency’s huge carbon footprint could become a red flag.
By Andrew Ross Sorkin
March 9, 2021
“Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind, and so it’s not a great climate thing.”
That was what Bill Gates recently told me.
At a time when companies and investors increasingly say they are focused on climate and sustainability issues, some of them may be about to collide with the reality of another financial trend, one currently worth about $1 trillion: Bitcoin.
The cryptocurrency has become inescapable, with big companies like Tesla and individual investors alike rushing to stock up on the digital token.
But depending on which study you read, the annual carbon emissions from the electricity required to mine Bitcoin and process its transactions are equal to the amount emitted by all of New Zealand. Or Argentina.
To put this into perspective, one Bitcoin transaction is the “equivalent to the carbon footprint of 735,121 Visa transactions or 55,280 hours of watching YouTube,” according to Digiconomist, which created what it calls a Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index. (Critics of this comparison point out that the average Bitcoin transaction is worth about $16,000, while the average Visa transaction is worth $46.37, but you get the point.)
And as Bitcoin becomes more popular, the more resources its ecosystem consumes. What’s happening, in a nutshell: So-called miners verify transactions involving the cryptocurrency by using computers to solve increasingly complex mathematical equations. They earn bitcoins for their work, meaning that the more popular the currency becomes, the more competition there is to mine new tokens.
“As the resource intensity of running Bitcoin has increased over recent years, it has become a serious concern for its potential impact on health and climate,” Alex de Vries, a data scientist who put the index together, wrote in the journal Energy Research & Social Science.
All of which raises a crucial question: Does the movement among investors toward companies that rank highly for environmental, social and governance issues pose an existential threat to Bitcoin’s success?
After all, Laurence D. Fink, the chief executive of BlackRock — the largest money manager in the world, with $9 trillion under management — has said that all investments the company makes in the future will be evaluated, in part, on how they plan to meet the climate challenge. Perhaps more important, investors are clamoring for companies to disclose their carbon footprint, and a group called the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures is working on creating a global standard.
If that’s the case, how will investors view the likes of PayPal, which has been a vocal proponent of climate initiatives — but last fall announced plans to allow customers to conduct transactions in Bitcoin?
Or what about Square, the payments company founded by Jack Dorsey? It has become one of the most public proponents of Bitcoin, both dealing with transactions and also keeping the cryptocurrency on its own balance sheet. It holds about 5 percent of its cash reserves in Bitcoin, whose price has historically been deeply volatile.
Then there is Tesla — a company whose entire premise is to help reduce climate change through lower carbon emissions — which has invested more than $1.5 billion of its balance sheet in Bitcoin. How would its Bitcoin holdings affect its sustainability score?
Other companies are also considering whether to add Bitcoin to their balance sheets. And financial firms like Guggenheim Partners have already invested in Bitcoin while Bank of New York Mellon says it will start financing Bitcoin transactions.
Even Mr. Fink’s BlackRock has started to, in the words of a senior executive, “dabble” in the cryptocurrency by potentially allowing two of its funds to invest in Bitcoin futures. Rick Rieder, the firm’s chief investment officer of fixed income, cited investors’ interest in the asset and its increasing adoption by younger, tech-savvy customers.
So far, Bitcoin’s carbon problem hasn’t slowed down its price, which was hovering Monday night around $50,000 for a token, up from about $8,000 a year ago.
Its carbon problem is hardly a secret. As The Independent recently noted, Hal Finney, one of the early cryptologists, posted on Twitter in 2009: “Thinking about how to reduce CO2 emissions from a widespread Bitcoin implementation.”
Will owning Bitcoin become a status symbol — or a scarlet letter for a new generation of climate-focused investors wise to the challenges it poses?
The answer is complicated.
Bitcoin supporters say that estimates of its carbon footprint are overstated. And if the computers that mine and help transact bitcoins are attached to an electric grid that uses wind and solar power, they add, mining and using it will become cleaner over time.
“We believe that cryptocurrency will eventually be powered completely by clean power, eliminating its carbon footprint and driving adoption of renewables globally,” Mr. Dorsey of Square said in a statement as part of a commitment for his company to be net-zero on carbon emissions by 2030. The company committed $10 million to invest in new “green energy technologies within Bitcoin mining, and aims to accelerate its transition to clean power.”
On this point Mr. Gates, who considers himself a Bitcoin skeptic unrelated to the climate issues, says it is possible that the challenges could be overcome, but he wasn’t convinced just yet.
“If it’s green electricity and it’s not crowding out other uses, eventually, you know, maybe that’s OK,” he said.
Several companies are working on some counterintuitive ideas to turn Bitcoin green. On Monday, Seetee, an investment company involved in cryptocurrency, said it planned to invest in Bitcoin “mining operations that transfer stranded or intermittent electricity without stable demand locally — wind, solar, hydro power — to economic assets that can be used anywhere.”
In other words, the company plans to build wind and solar in places that might not be perfectly situated for the technology and will use the extra power to mine Bitcoin, making money in the process. “Bitcoin is, in our eyes, a load-balancing economic battery, and batteries are essential to the energy transition required to reach the targets of the Paris agreement,” the company said in its announcement.
There are also new ways to conduct greener Bitcoin transactions. For example, users could batch transactions on something called a Lightning Network, essentially a payment channel between two users that would use less power to process transactions.
PayPal, too, argues that those new protocols may change Bitcoin’s carbon footprint: “Not only are we assessing the climate impact of cryptocurrency, which is concentrated on Bitcoin, but also the entire industry is evolving in the assessment and measurement standards of the potential environmental impacts and more energy-efficient protocols are emerging.”
In the near term, nearly two-thirds of all Bitcoin mining is taking place in China, and “mining activities can also be found in regions with coal-heavy power generation, such as in the province of Inner Mongolia,” according to a study in the scientific journal Joule, which also raises the idea of imposing a carbon tax. “Regulating this largely gambling-driven source of carbon emissions appears to be a simple means to contribute to decarbonizing the economy.”
As for Mr. Fink of BlackRock, he said he was still skeptical of the entire idea of Bitcoin, before he can even contemplate the climate issues. “We are watching it,” he said. “Right now I’m more focused on efficacy.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/business/dealbook/bitcoin-climate-change.html
How Green Are Electric Vehicles?
In short: Very green. But plug-in cars still have environmental effects. Here’s a guide to the main issues and how they might be addressed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/climate/electric-vehicles-environment.html
By Hiroko Tabuchi and Brad Plumer
Published March 2, 2021
Updated March 8, 2021
Around the world, governments and automakers are promoting electric vehicles as a key technology to curb oil use and fight climate change. General Motors has said it aims to stop selling new gasoline-powered cars and light trucks by 2035 and will pivot to battery-powered models. This week, Volvo said it would move even faster and introduce an all-electric lineup by 2030.
But as electric cars and trucks go mainstream, they have faced a persistent question: Are they really as green as advertised?
While experts broadly agree that plug-in vehicles are a more climate-friendly option than traditional vehicles, they can still have their own environmental impacts, depending on how they’re charged up and manufactured. Here’s a guide to some of the biggest worries — and how they might be addressed.
It matters how the electricity is made
Broadly speaking, most electric cars sold today tend to produce significantly fewer planet-warming emissions than most cars fueled with gasoline. But a lot depends on how much coal is being burned to charge up those plug-in vehicles. And electric grids still need to get much, much cleaner before electric vehicles are truly emissions free.
One way to compare the climate impacts of different vehicle models is with this interactive online tool by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who tried to incorporate all the relevant factors: the emissions involved in manufacturing the cars and in producing gasoline and diesel fuel, how much gasoline conventional cars burn, and where the electricity to charge electric vehicles comes from.
If you assume electric vehicles are drawing their power from the average grid in the United States, which typically includes a mix of fossil fuel and renewable power plants, then they’re almost always much greener than conventional cars. Even though electric vehicles are more emissions-intensive to make because of their batteries, their electric motors are more efficient than traditional internal combustion engines that burn fossil fuels.
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An all-electric Chevrolet Bolt, for instance, can be expected to produce 189 grams of carbon dioxide for every mile driven over its lifetime, on average. By contrast, a new gasoline-fueled Toyota Camry is estimated to produce 385 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. A new Ford F-150 pickup truck, which is even less fuel-efficient, produces 636 grams of carbon dioxide per mile.
But that’s just an average. On the other hand, if the Bolt is charged up on a coal-heavy grid, such as those currently found in the Midwest, it can actually be a bit worse for the climate than a modern hybrid car like the Toyota Prius, which runs on gasoline but uses a battery to bolster its mileage. (The coal-powered Bolt would still beat the Camry and the F-150, however.)
“Coal tends to be the critical factor,” said Jeremy Michalek, a professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “If you’ve got electric cars in Pittsburgh that are being plugged in at night and leading nearby coal plants to burn more coal to charge them, then the climate benefits won’t be as great, and you can even get more air pollution.”
The good news for electric vehicles is that most countries are now pushing to clean up their electric grids. In the United States, utilities have retired hundreds of coal plants over the last decade and shifted to a mix of lower-emissions natural gas, wind and solar power. As a result, researchers have found, electric vehicles have generally gotten cleaner, too. And they are likely to get cleaner still.
How Does Your State Make Electricity?
“The reason electric vehicles look like an appealing climate solution is that if we can make our grids zero-carbon, then vehicle emissions drop way, way down,” said Jessika Trancik, an associate professor of energy studies at M.I.T. “Whereas even the best hybrids that burn gasoline will always have a baseline of emissions they can’t go below.”
Raw materials can be problematic
Like many other batteries, the lithium-ion cells that power most electric vehicles rely on raw materials — like cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements — that have been linked to grave environmental and human rights concerns. Cobalt has been especially problematic.
Mining cobalt produces hazardous tailings and slags that can leach into the environment, and studies have found high exposure in nearby communities, especially among children, to cobalt and other metals. Extracting the metals from their ores also requires a process called smelting, which can emit sulfur oxide and other harmful air pollution.
And as much as 70 percent of the world’s cobalt supply is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a substantial proportion in unregulated “artisanal” mines where workers — including many children — dig the metal from the earth using only hand tools at great risk to their health and safety, human rights groups warn.
The world’s lithium is either mined in Australia or from salt flats in the Andean regions of Argentina, Bolivia and Chile, operations that use large amounts of groundwater to pump out the brines, drawing down the water available to Indigenous farmers and herders. The water required for producing batteries has meant that manufacturing electric vehicles is about 50 percent more water intensive than traditional internal combustion engines. Deposits of rare earths, concentrated in China, often contain radioactive substances that can emit radioactive water and dust.
Focusing first on cobalt, automakers and other manufacturers have committed to eliminating “artisanal” cobalt from their supply chains, and have also said they will develop batteries that decrease, or do away with, cobalt altogether. But that technology is still in development, and the prevalence of these mines means these commitments “aren’t realistic,” said Mickaël Daudin of Pact, a nonprofit organization that works with mining communities in Africa.
Instead, Mr. Daudin said, manufacturers need to work with these mines to lessen their environmental footprint and make sure miners are working in safe conditions. If companies acted responsibly, the rise of electric vehicles would be a great opportunity for countries like Congo, he said. But if they don’t, “they will put the environment, and many, many miners’ lives at risk.”
Recycling could be better
As earlier generations of electric vehicles start to reach the end of their lives, preventing a pileup of spent batteries looms as a challenge.
Most of today’s electric vehicles use lithium-ion batteries, which can store more energy in the same space than older, more commonly-used lead-acid battery technology. But while 99 percent of lead-acid batteries are recycled in the United States, estimated recycling rates for lithium-ion batteries are about 5 percent.
Experts point out that spent batteries contain valuable metals and other materials that can be recovered and reused. Depending on the process used, battery recycling can also use large amounts of water, or emit air pollutants.
“The percentage of lithium batteries being recycled is very low, but with time and innovation, that’s going to increase,” said Radenka Maric, a professor at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
A different, promising approach to tackling used electric vehicle batteries is finding them a second life in storage and other applications. “For cars, when the battery goes below say 80 percent of its capacity, the range is reduced,” said Amol Phadke, a senior scientist at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “But that’s not a constraint for stationary storage.”
Various automakers, including Nissan and BMW, have piloted the use of old electric vehicle batteries for grid storage. General Motors has said it designed its battery packs with second-life use in mind. But there are challenges: Reusing lithium-ion batteries requires extensive testing and upgrades to make sure they perform reliably.
If done properly, though, used car batteries could continue to be used for a decade or more as backup storage for solar power, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found in a study last year.
Snowflakes as You’ve Never Seen Them Before
Whether made with setups using sapphire and carbon fiber or an old mitten and a standard camera, these photographic approaches allow close-ups of the tiny masterpieces formed when snow falls.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/10/science/snowflakes-photos-nathan-myhrvold.html
Sextillions of snowflakes fell from the sky this winter. That’s billions of trillions of them, now mostly melted away as spring approaches.
Few people looked at them closely, one by one.
Kenneth G. Libbrecht, a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, has spent a quarter-century trying to understand how such a simple substance — water — could freeze into a multitude of shapes.
“How do snowflakes form?” Dr. Libbrecht said during an online talk on Feb. 23 that was hosted by the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn. “And how do these structures appear — and just, as I like to say, literally out of thin air?”
One of the people intrigued by Dr. Libbrecht’s snowflake research and photography was Nathan P. Myhrvold, a former chief technology officer at Microsoft who has since pursued projects in myriad scientific disciplines, including paleontology, cooking and astronomy.
Dr. Myhrvold, an avid photographer, first met Dr. Libbrecht more than a decade ago, and in the spring of 2018, he decided he wanted to take pictures of the intricate frozen crystals himself. He recalled thinking, “Oh, we’ll just throw something together, and we’ll be ready for the winter.”
But, as with many of his projects, things were not as simple as Dr. Myhrvold planned.
“It turned out to be massively more complicated than I thought,” Dr. Myhrvold said. “So it took 18 months to build the damn thing.”
The “damn thing” was the camera system for photographing snowflakes. He wanted to use the best digital sensors, ones that captured a million pixels. “The real snowflake is very, very fragile,” he said. “It’s super intricate. So you want high resolution.”
But that kind of sensor is much larger in area than the images generally produced by the lenses of microscopes, a result of decisions that microscope manufacturers made close to a century ago.
That meant he needed to find a way to stretch the microscope image to fill the sensor.
In his tinkering, “I came up with a custom optical path that will actually allow it to work,” he said.
Then there is the housing for the optics. That is typically made of metal, but metal expands when warm and shrinks when cold. Moving the apparatus from the warm indoors to a frigid balcony where he would collect the snowflakes “would screw up the whole microscope,” Dr. Myhrvold said, making it impossible to keep everything in focus.
Instead of metal, he used carbon fiber, which does not appreciably expand or shrink.
Dr. Myhrvold also found a special LED, manufactured by a company in Japan for industrial uses, that would emit bursts of light 1/1,000th as long as a typical camera flash. This minimizes heat emitted from the flash, which might melt the snowflake a bit.
To look at something under a microscope, a specimen is typically placed on a glass slide. But glass retains heat. That also melts the snowflakes. So he switched from glass to sapphire, a material that cools more readily.
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Nathan Myhrvold capturing snowflakes to photograph.
Nathan Myhrvold capturing snowflakes to photograph.Credit...3ric Johanson/Modernist Cuisine Gallery, LLC
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Dr. Myhrvold’s camera setup.
Dr. Myhrvold’s camera setup.Credit...3ric Johanson/Modernist Cuisine Gallery, LLC
By February 2020, he was ready. But where to find the most beautiful snowflakes to photograph? At first, he thought he could just head to a ski resort town — perhaps Aspen or Vail in Colorado or Whistler in British Columbia.
But these places were not cold enough.
“Powder snow that a skier might like to ski through is, in fact, pretty much powder,” Dr. Myhrvold said. “There’s not a lot of beauty in those things.”
Indeed, the snowflakes that fall on most people most of the time are rarely what people think of as snowflake-shaped.
Water is a simple molecule consisting of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen. When temperatures drop below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the molecules start sticking to one another — that is, they freeze.
A snowflake is born in a cloud when a water droplet freezes into a tiny ice crystal. The shape of the water molecules causes them to stack together in a hexagonal pattern. That is why the archetypical snowflake has six arms.
Then the crystal grows, absorbing water vapor from the air and other droplets nearby evaporate to replenish the vapor. “It takes maybe 100,000 water droplets evaporating to make one snow crystal,” Dr. Libbrecht said.
Video
Cinemagraph
Snowflakes “grown” in Dr. Libbrecht’s lab. Video by Kenneth G. Libbrecht
But how the crystal grows depends on the temperature and the humidity. In the 1930s, a Japanese physicist, Ukichiro Nakaya, was the first to grow artificial snowflakes in his laboratory, and by varying the conditions, he was able to catalog which types form under most conditions.
When temperatures are just below freezing, the snowflakes are generally simple hexagon plates. At about 20 degrees Fahrenheit, the prevalent shape is hexagonal columns. It is between 15 degrees and -5 degrees Fahrenheit that the archetypically beautiful snowflakes usually form.
At these temperatures, the points of the hexagon grow into branches. The branches then spawn other branches and smaller hexagonal plates. Slight variations in the temperature and humidity affect the growing pattern, and the conditions are constantly changing as the snowflake falls toward the ground.
“Because it has this complicated path through the clouds, it gives a complicated shape,” Dr. Libbrecht said. “They’re all following different paths, and so each one looks a little different, depending on the path.”
Thus, to find the beautiful snowflakes, Dr. Myhrvold went north, much farther north. He and a couple of assistants lugged about a thousand pounds of equipment to Fairbanks, Alaska; Yellowknife, the largest community in the Canadian Northwest Territories; and Timmins, Ontario, about 150 miles north of Lake Huron.
A month later, the coronavirus pandemic put the endeavor on hiatus. But Dr. Myhrvold was able to take what he calls the highest resolution images of snowflakes ever.
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A snowflake photographed by Dr. Libbrecht of the California Institute of Technology.
A snowflake photographed by Dr. Libbrecht of the California Institute of Technology.Credit...Kenneth G. Libbrecht
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Dr. Libbrecht is interested in how snowflakes form. “How do these structures appear — and just, as I like to say, literally out of thin air?” he said.
Dr. Libbrecht is interested in how snowflakes form. “How do these structures appear — and just, as I like to say, literally out of thin air?” he said.Credit...Kenneth G. Libbrecht
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A snowflake photographed by Don Komarechka, who takes a decidedly lower-tech approach.
A snowflake photographed by Don Komarechka, who takes a decidedly lower-tech approach.Credit...Don Komarechka
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“I think it’s a little over-engineered,” Mr. Komarechka said of Dr. Myhrvold’s process.
“I think it’s a little over-engineered,” Mr. Komarechka said of Dr. Myhrvold’s process.Credit...Don Komarechka
That claim has irked others in the snowflake world, including Don Komarechka, a Canadian photographer who takes a decidedly lower tech approach. He uses a store-bought digital camera with a high-power macro lens. He does not even use a tripod — he just holds the camera while the snowflakes sit on a black mitten that his grandmother had given him.
“Incredibly simplistic,” Mr. Komarechka said. “It’s so approachable for anybody with any camera.”
He said of Dr. Myhrvold’s custom-built system: “I think it’s a little over-engineered.”
Mr. Komarechka also takes a different approach to illumination, using light reflected off a snowflake, while Dr. Myhrvold’s images capture light passing through. “You get to see surface texture, and sometimes beautiful rainbow colors in the center of a snowflake,” Mr. Komarechka said.
The rainbow effect is the same as what you see in soap film, but the colors are “often much more solidly displayed than you would see in a soap film or anything else,” he said. “It’s almost psychedelic colors, almost looking like a tie-dye T-shirt.”
To counter Dr. Myhrvold’s claims, Mr. Komarechka took an image that he says was even higher resolution. Dr. Myhrvold responded with a lengthy rebuttal explaining why his images were, nonetheless, more detailed.
In practical terms, Dr. Myhrvold’s images are sharper when printed on paper at expansive sizes. They are available for purchase at sizes up to 2 meters by 1.5 meters.
“In that very narrow sense, yep, that’s what Nathan is claiming, and he’s not wrong,” Mr. Komarechka said.
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Credit...Nathan Myhrvold/Modernist Cuisine Gallery, LLC
Kenneth Chang has been at The Times since 2000, writing about physics, geology, chemistry, and the planets. Before becoming a science writer, he was a graduate student whose research involved the control of chaos. @kchangnyt
Major offshore wind farm using 187-meter high turbines starts to produce power
PUBLISHED MON, MAR 1 202110:42 AM EST
Anmar Frangoul
KEY POINTS
The turbines, from Danish firm Vestas, have been described as “amongst the most powerful operating anywhere in the world.”
The North Sea, where the Triton Knoll offshore wind farm is located, is home to a number of large-scale facilities.
As technology develop, the size of wind turbines is increasing. This image does not show the type of turbine that will be used at Triton Knoll.
Rini Kools | iStock | Getty Images
A major wind farm off the U.K.’s east coast featuring huge turbines has produced its first power, in the latest example of how the sector’s technology is growing in size.
The 857 megawatt (MW) Triton Knoll Offshore Wind Farm will be able to power the equivalent of more than 800,000 homes in the U.K. once fully operational, according to a statement on the project’s website.
The development is using 9.5 MW turbines from Danish firm Vestas which have a tip height of around 187 meters.
On its website, Triton Knoll has described the Vestas turbines as “amongst the most powerful operating anywhere in the world … capable of energising a typical UK household for more than 29 hours with just a single turn of the blades.”
RWE, Kansai Electric Power and J-Power are joint owners of Triton Knoll, with RWE responsible for managing its construction, operation and maintenance.
The North Sea, where Triton Knoll is located, is now home to a number of large-scale offshore wind facilities.
These include the 1.2 gigawatt (GW) Hornsea One development, which is located in waters off Yorkshire, England, and uses wind turbines that are 190 meters tall.
Looking ahead, major projects planned for the North Sea include the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, which will have a total capacity of 3.6 GW, and the 3.1 GW East Anglia Hub.
UK No. 1, but China not far behind
News of the development at Triton Knoll helps to cement the U.K’s position as a world leader in the offshore wind sector.
It is currently the No. 1 market for cumulative offshore wind installations, with over 10.2 GW of capacity, according to recent figures from the Global Wind Energy Council. China is close behind, however, with just under 10 GW of installations.
The world added more than 6 gigawatts (GW) of new offshore wind capacity in 2020, with China responsible for over half of these installations, according to the GWEC.
As technology has developed, the size of wind turbines has increased. GE Renewable Energy’s Haliade-X turbine, for example, stands 260 meters tall and can be configured to 12, 13 or 14 MW.
Elsewhere, Vestas has announced plans for a 15 MW offshore wind turbine, with the firm hoping to install a prototype next year before ramping up production in 2024, while Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy is working on a 14 MW turbine which can also be boosted to 15 MW if required. Both Vestas and Siemens Gamesa say the height of their turbines will be site-specific.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/01/major-offshore-wind-farm-using-huge-turbines-starts-to-produce-power.html
That is really good news!
Global Action Is ‘Very Far’ From What’s Needed to Avert Climate Chaos
New climate pledges submitted to the United Nations would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by less than 1 percent, the world body announced.
1d ago
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/climate/paris-agreement-emissions-targets.html
Haaland, With a Key Vote in Her Column, Appears Headed for Confirmation
Senator Joe Manchin III, who oversees the confirmation hearing, said he would support Representative Deb Haaland, President Biden’s nominee to lead the Interior Department.
3d ago
By CORAL DAVENPORT
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/climate/deb-haaland-interior-secretary.html
David Attenborough Still Has Hope for Our Future
At 94, the beloved British naturalist remains curious and optimistic. He talked about his new docu-series, “A Perfect Planet,” and why the coronavirus may prove to have some positive consequences.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/arts/television/david-attenborough-perfect-planet.html
By Etan Smallman
Dec. 25, 2020
LONDON — Take away the state-of-the-art drones and the gyro-stabilized 4K cameras from the BBC’s latest blue-chip natural history series, “A Perfect Planet.” Strip out the luscious score and the stunning close-ups of nature at its most intimate.
What you are left with are the same clipped tones and breathy, awe-struck commentary that entertained and educated the viewers of grainy black-and-white nature programs in the 1950s.
It is hard to find anything in modern television that has endured since the middle of the last century. Yet there is the British naturalist Sir David Attenborough and his reassuring, occasionally chiding, voice-of-God narration, virtually undimmed by age, still lending gravitas and luster to sequences of lesser flamingos in Tanzania, land iguanas on the Galápagos Islands and flamboyant cuttlefish off the coasts of Indonesia.
Repeatedly voted both the most trusted and popular person in his home country, Attenborough may be the most traveled human in history. (For his landmark 1979 series “Life on Earth” alone, he traveled 1.5 million miles.) “If the world is, indeed, to be saved,” writes the environmental journalist and activist Simon Barnes, “then Attenborough will have had more to do with its salvation than anyone else who ever lived.”
TV executives have been planning his retirement for more than 30 years, but at 94, Attenborough is still at the top of his food chain and being asked to front some of the most lavish and expensive productions to hit our screens.
ImageLand iguanas in the Galapagos are among the creatures explored in “A Perfect Planet,” which was filmed in 31 countries over four years.
Land iguanas in the Galapagos are among the creatures explored in “A Perfect Planet,” which was filmed in 31 countries over four years.Credit...Tui De Roy/Silverback Films
His latest, which debuts on Jan. 4 in the United States on the streaming service Discovery+, was filmed in 31 countries over four years (and six volcanic eruptions). Across five episodes, it will examine the forces of nature that shape all life: volcanoes, sunlight, weather, oceans and the newest: humans.
On a video call from his own habitat — the book-lined study of his home in the leafy London suburb of Richmond — Attenborough talked about his 67 years onscreen, the silver lining of the pandemic and why Joe Biden had him jumping out of his chair. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Was there a scene in your new series that had the most poignant echo for you of something you saw in the field decades ago — something that has been transformed since by climate change?
That’s not the focus of this particular series — climate change is what it’s not about. In a way, it’s an antidote to climate change gloom. It is showing the extraordinary resilience of the natural world and the marvelous way in which everything interdigitates, just forms a perfect mesh. In a way, that’s a biological obviousness in that things evolve to fit one another. If you’ve got a 50-million-year circumstance, it’s not surprising it ends up interlocking in many kinds of ways. It’s about how, in fact, in this age, when we’re worrying so much — and correctly — about the problems of the natural world, there are marvelous marvels to be seen and we’re showing some of them. We’ve had enough for the moment about disasters.
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Are there ways you hope we can come out of this pandemic with an improved chance of meeting our obligations to the planet?
I think that what this pandemic has done, in a very strange way, is made an awful lot of people suddenly aware of how valuable and important the natural world is to our psychic well-being. We’re busy about our ways, going on the underground railway, dashing into offices, turning on lights. I am more aware of the changes that there have been in the natural world, around London, than I have been in decades. During the summer, I went for walks in my garden twice a day, at least. It’s only a pocket-handkerchief size — it’s not a big garden — but nonetheless, there was something to be found, every time. And I was listening to birds. I’m a rotten bird watcher — I don’t know one bird from the other — but I know a bit more this year than I did last, I’ll tell you that.
Are you surprised how little attention has been given to the role our abuse of animals has played in this pandemic — from the wet markets in Wuhan to mink farms in Denmark? We don’t seem to learn how our exploitation of living creatures can come back to bite us.
Well, that may be so. The markets of the Far East are notorious. Everybody concerned with animal welfare knows that these are the hellholes of the natural world, really. I remember seeing pangolins in the wet market in Indonesia in 1956. Whether there was a pandemic or not, there are parts of the natural world where animals are regarded as objects and treated as though they had no feeling, without any sympathy of any kind. And it’s prevalent all over the world. It’s a horrible thing to see.
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Bears at Kurile Lake in Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, as seen in an episode about how volcanos shape life on earth.
Bears at Kurile Lake in Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, as seen in an episode about how volcanos shape life on earth.Credit...Toby Nowlan/Silverback Films
With the departure of President Trump, we will almost certainly see a change in terms of climate policy and treaties. Do you think there’s still a chance to undo his cultural legacy?
Yes, I mean, we’re the spectators of what happens over there. But the fact remains that the United States is one of the major driving forces in the world. I have to say that at the Paris C.O.P. meetings [the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2015], I was there with the British chief scientist, Sir David King. As we left the hall together after the announcement that they were going to sign, he said: “We’re there! We’re there!,” and he was walking on air.
When President Trump declared that they were going to withdraw from that, it was an equally, commensurate-in-size blow and very, very gloomy indeed. I actually jumped out of my chair when we heard Biden say he will renew membership of that agreement. I got up and said: “Rah! Rah!” [clenches his fists in the air]. This coming autumn, the meetings in Glasgow are going to be absolutely crucial to the survival of the natural world. But with the United States back in there, the world can say, “Yes, we’re still in there with a chance.” And it’s only a chance! It’s by no means certain.
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Flamingos and chicks at Lake Natron in Tanzania. The pandemic has made more people “aware of how valuable and important the natural world is to our psychic well-being,” Attenborough said.
Flamingos and chicks at Lake Natron in Tanzania. The pandemic has made more people “aware of how valuable and important the natural world is to our psychic well-being,” Attenborough said.Credit...Darren Williams/Silverback Films
Are politicians ever candid with you one-to-one about why they’ve found it so hard to make headway?
I know why they find it so hard. They know that within three, four, five years, they’re going to be standing in front of the electorate again and saying, “Put me back in power.” It’s easy enough to pay lip service to the bigger disasters, but if you don’t ever look beyond your own electoral life, then you’re short changing the electorate.
The paradox, it seems, is that I thought when the pandemic started, people would say: “Oh well, don’t worry me about what’s going to happen in 50, 100 years’ time. I’m desperately worried about what’s going to happen with the pandemic.” And people did say [that last part], but they didn’t say the future doesn’t matter. On the contrary, I feel that the C.O.P. talks in Glasgow, which should have been just about finished by now had the original plan happened, stand a better chance of success in about a year’s time. More people are aware of the fragility and value of the natural world as a result of the pandemic.
I was struck by a line of yours about rockhopper penguins in the oceans episode: You said their success depends on both judgment and luck. How lucky have you been, with your career having coincided with the advent of television and commercial air travel?
Yes, I think for a naturalist, you might say that my title for my career would be: “A Perfect Career.” I’ve been fantastically lucky — it’s nothing to do with merit but being there at the right time. Having spent all my life trotting around the world and getting other people to pay for it in order to see the most wonderful things you could ever wish to see … how could I not but say that was a perfect career? It was just incredibly fortunate.
Death has been such a presence this year, and there’s plenty of it in this series. Has a life spent studying the natural world given you a healthier attitude toward it?
I have a very, very healthy attitude toward death, yeah. [Laughs.] No, I don’t think it’s changed me. If you’re a biologist, you’re always aware of death. And you know how long species live and what their optimum is and so on.
Do you fear death?
No, not particularly. I ought to be thinking more about it because people are going to clear up after me. I’m not entirely indifferent to material objects, and I think about my poor son and daughter who are going to have clear it all up. That’s my main concern really.
I was a paleontologist at university, and I’ve always loved fossils and so on, so wherever I’ve gone on these trips, I’m liable to put hunks of rock in the bottom of my suitcase. If I were a decent scientist, I would have stuck a label on each one. So what I’ve been doing in this pandemic is I’ve been into the cellar and found hunks of rock lying around there and thinking, “What on Earth is that?”
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“I think the best commentary is almost the least commentary,” Attenborough said.
“I think the best commentary is almost the least commentary,” Attenborough said.Credit...Huw Cordey/Silverback Films
Your voice was voted Britain’s best loved in a recent Virgin Media poll. It’s a crucial tool of your trade. Over the years, in what ways have you refined how you deliver your voice-over?
Well, I think, biologically, your voice changes. Mine hasn’t changed all that much, actually; I think it’s dropped a bit in pitch. I’ve seldom seen a program that I’ve written and narrated where I haven’t said at the end of it, “Not bad, but too many words.”
I think the best commentary is almost the least commentary, and fortunately one of the ways in which natural history editors work, at least the best ones, is that they make the story vivid in images, and you can watch the story without any words at all. If you can see it in the picture, you shouldn’t spend your time saying: “This is a glorious sight!” If the viewers aren’t convinced by the pictures, you’re actually making them feel dissatisfied. So, by and large, I eschew adjectives and metaphors and high-flown language and just try and produce the facts that are required to make sense of the pictures.
Nowadays, you generally do only the narration on these landmark series. What do you miss most about being out in the field?
Oh, just the air. Just being en plein-air, as they say. And the sound of the birds and one thing or another. And blossoms. And being able to be proactive, being able to turn over that leaf to see what’s underneath it. Alastair [Fothergill, Attenborough’s executive producer] actually paints birds, and that’s a way of focusing your attention about the natural world. I’m probably the least proactive naturalist that I know. I tend just to sit around and just watch.
Michael Regan, Biden’s E.P.A. Pick, Faces ‘Massive Reconstruction and Rebuilding’
Mr. Regan, if confirmed, will take over an agency central to achieving the new administration’s climate agenda.
By Lisa Friedman
Published Dec. 17, 2020
Updated Dec. 21, 2020
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has selected Michael S. Regan, North Carolina’s top environmental regulator, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Mr. Biden’s transition team announced Thursday. The decision elevates for the first time a Black man to lead the powerful department, which is central to achieving the new administration’s climate change agenda.
Mr. Regan was not the president-elect’s first choice, and he lacks some of the political star power of Mr. Biden’s other cabinet picks. But he will be on the front lines of the incoming administration’s effort to undo one of President Trump’s most sprawling transformations of the federal government: the unraveling of a half-century of pollution and climate regulations, and the diminishment of the science that underpinned them.
“He faces a massive reconstruction and rebuilding operation,” said Jody Freeman, a Harvard University law professor who served as White House counselor for energy and climate change in the Obama administration.
Mr. Regan “has to go in and restore the morale of the career staff,” she said. “He has to make it clear that science and integrity are back. He’s got a raft of rules that he’s got to rescind and replace and strengthen.”
And, Ms. Freeman added, “He’s got to do this under some time pressure.”
The decision rounded out Mr. Biden’s emerging climate team, which will be led by two political heavyweights: Gina McCarthy, who served as President Barack Obama’s E.P.A. chief, will lead a new White House Office of Climate Policy to coordinate domestic efforts, and John Kerry, the former secretary of state, will be Mr. Biden’s international climate envoy.
Mr. Biden also chose Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico to lead the Department of Interior. She would be the first Native American to lead the department and is expected to curtail the oil and gas leasing on federal lands that Mr. Trump has overseen. Brenda Mallory, an experienced former federal lawyer, will lead the Council on Environmental Quality.
But no agency will be more fundamental to the politically sensitive work of actually reducing United States planet-warming emissions than the E.P.A.
Mr. Biden has vowed to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and, along the way, eliminate fossil fuel emissions from the power sector by 2035. With a partisan, deadlocked Congress, those tasks will fall almost entirely to E.P.A.
The new administrator will need to first eliminate barriers that the Trump administration erected to make new rules difficult to enact, and then to expand Obama-era efforts to curb greenhouse gases from power plants, automobiles and oil and gas sites.
Environmental activists in North Carolina praised Mr. Regan’s work in the state. He is credited with reaching the largest coal-ash cleanup settlement in the country and for ordering the chemical company Chemours, a former DuPont subsidy, to take fresh steps to clean up the toxic substances known as PFAS from the Cape Fear River.
Such contaminants have been called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down in the environment and can build up in human bodies.
Mr. Regan also has been a key figure in helping Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, carry out his pledge to achieve carbon neutrality in North Carolina by 2050, and oversees the state’s climate change interagency council, a working group of state agencies set up to meet that goal. In 2018 he created an environmental justice and equity board at the state’s environmental agency.
“He has navigated well through really tough terrain,” said Megan Mullin, associate professor of environmental politics at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. “North Carolina is as tough a place as any to uphold environmental laws in the face of opposition from utilities, the farm lobby, and hostile legislators.”
But Mr. Regan also has faced criticism, including from groups that focus on environmental justice, who have accused him of not standing up enough to fossil fuel and agricultural interests.
Under Mr. Regan, the state agency granted a water quality certification to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would have carried natural gas across the Appalachian Trail. This year, Duke Energy and Dominion Energy announced they had canceled plans for the project in the face of environmental opposition.
Mr. Biden’s transition declined to comment. But Mr. Regan has won praise from other environmental groups for giving poor and minority communities a larger voice in the state’s decision-making.
A longtime air quality specialist at the E.P.A. under both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, Mr. Regan later worked for the Environmental Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group. In 2017, after defeating Pat McCrory, the Republican incumbent, Gov. Cooper appointed Mr. Regan to lead North Carolina’s environmental agency.
There, he replaced Donald R. van der Vaart, an ally of Mr. Trump who has questioned the established science of climate change and fought Obama-era rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and championed a pro-business agenda of deregulation in North Carolina.
Supporters of Mr. Regan said he improved low morale and emphasized the role of science at the department. Several called it an obvious parallel to what he would be expected to do at E.P.A. where Andrew Wheeler, President Trump’s administrator and a former coal lobbyist, has discouraged the agency from working on climate change, and where independent auditors have identified a “culture at the top” of political interference in science.
Mr. van der Vaart disputed the assertion that morale at the state agency had declined under his leadership.
Mike Sommers, chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, an industry group, said in a statement that the oil industry was “ready to work” with Mr. Regan. But he added, “We will also be watching closely to ensure that the incoming administration keeps President-elect Biden’s campaign promises to the energy work force and protects the millions of jobs supported by our industry.”
The selection of Mr. Regan is in many ways a conventional choice. Democratic presidents have a history of poaching E.P.A. leaders from state environmental agencies. Gina McCarthy and Lisa Jackson, who both ran the agency under President Obama, had been the heads of state environmental agencies; Ms. McCarthy in Connecticut and Ms. Jackson in New Jersey.
Ms. Jackson was the first Black person to lead the E.P.A.
Mr. Regan only emerged as a leading contender on Sunday. For weeks before, it appeared that Mary D. Nichols, California’s air quality regulator, had a lock on the E.P.A. job.
Ms. Nichols, who has worked on clean air and climate change policy since 1979, is arguably the most experienced climate change official in the country. She worked as the E.P.A.’s top clean air official during the Clinton administration. During the Obama administration, it was Ms. Nichols who helped broker a deal with the federal government and the nation’s largest automakers, which took California’s stringent regulations on planet-warming auto emissions and applied them nationwide.
Mr. Trump rolled back those rules, but Mr. Biden hopes to reinstate them as one of his first major actions on climate change — and had seen Ms. Nichols as the obvious person to do that.
Ms. Nichols had been expected to face fierce opposition from Republicans, something for which the Biden team was prepared. But, several people close to the Biden transition said, the president-elect was caught off guard by intense criticism of Ms. Nichols from liberals who argued that the cap-and-trade policies she helped design for California had allowed industry to continue to pollute in a way that disproportionately harms poor communities and communities of color.
This month, a group of more than 70 environmental justice groups wrote to the Biden transition charging that Ms. Nichols had a “bleak track record in addressing environmental racism.”
The letter apparently resonated. One of Mr. Biden’s key campaign pledges was a promise to address environmental justice, highlighting the need to protect poor and minority communities that are exposed to more pollution than rich communities.
Coral Davenport contributed reporting.
Correction: Dec. 17, 2020
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Gina McCarthy’s leadership experience as a regulator. She has headed the state environmental agency in Connecticut, not Massachusetts.
Lisa Friedman reports on federal climate and environmental policy from Washington. She has broken multiple stories about the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal climate change regulations and limit the use of science in policymaking. @LFFriedman
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/17/climate/michael-regan-epa.html
Wintry Scenes From a Swedish Wonderland
With his foreign assignments canceled for the year, a photographer refocuses on his homeland — and finds plenty to admire.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/travel/swedish-lapland.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55382209
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THE YEAR IN CLIMATE
2020 was a crisis year: a pandemic, economic turmoil, social upheaval. And running through it all, climate change. Here’s some of the best reporting from The Times’s Climate Desk.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/2020-climate-change.html?referrer=masthead
Every Place Has Its Own Climate Risk. What Is It Where You Live?
By Stuart A. Thompson and Yaryna SerkezSept. 18, 2020
For most of us, climate change can feel like an amorphous threat — with the greatest dangers lingering ominously in the future and the solutions frustratingly out of reach.
So perhaps focusing on today’s real harms could help us figure out how to start dealing with climate change. Here’s one way to do that: by looking at the most significant climate threat unfolding in your own backyard.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/18/opinion/wildfire-hurricane-climate.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
At Climate Week, America’s Cascading Disasters Dominate
This year’s events come amid a climate reckoning in the world’s richest country. Here are the takeaways.
Somini Sengupta
By Somini Sengupta
Sept. 25, 2020
It’s been a very different Climate Week in New York City this year, and not just because of social distancing. The annual gathering, meant to showcase efforts against global warming worldwide, came as climate disasters pummeled the host country.
There were fire tornadoes in the American West; a slow-moving hurricane drowned northwest Florida; children in Silicon Valley breathed a bit of the foul air that children in the shanties of Delhi grow up with.
In other words, the year climate change took center stage as a problem that also affects the richest country in the world, not just low-lying islands of the Pacific and arid swaths of Africa.
It was also a year of big promises.
Two of the world’s three biggest economies, China and the European Union, pledged to act more quickly to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. And climate change became an issue in the United States presidential race. When asked recently about the links between global warming and the fires racing across California, President Trump said, “I don’t think science knows,” even though scientists say the connection is inextricable. The Democratic candidate, Joseph R. Biden Jr., responded by calling him a “climate arsonist.”
Titans of global business and finance, under pressure from shareholders, customers and employees, also pledged to do better, with company after company talking up their voluntary climate ambitions over the last few days during online events. Even so, the world as a whole is nowhere close to where it needs to be to avert the worst effects of a warming world, like more wildfires, fatal heat waves and the inundation of coastal cities.
So, what needs to happen next? Here are three key takeaways.
ImagePresident Xi Jinping of China addressed the United Nations General Assembly by video on Tuesday.
President Xi Jinping of China addressed the United Nations General Assembly by video on Tuesday. Credit...Mary Altaffer/Associated Press
There’s a lot riding on the U.S. election
The richest people in the world, because of what they consume, have produced a huge share of greenhouse-gas emissions, and in a very short period of time. Emissions into the atmosphere of carbon dioxide and other gases, largely from the burning of fossil fuels, trap the sun’s heat, contributing to global warming.
A recent analysis conducted by Oxfam and the Stockholm Environment Institute found that around half of all the planet-warming gases produced between 1990 (when the first United Nations climate report was published) and 2015 (when the Paris climate accord was reached) came from the world’s richest 10 percent.
If you divvy up emissions by countries, nearly half, about 44 percent, of all emissions that have accumulated since 1990 come from the United States, the nations of Europe, and China. That’s why any chance of actually averting climate catastrophes depends largely on what these economies do.
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In September came some signs of movement. Two of the three announced plans to make sharp cuts, though many details remain unknown.
In mid-September, the European Union president, Ursula von der Leyen, proposed more aggressive emissions cut by the 27-member bloc in the next decade. Her new target, which is yet to be approved by the European Parliament: trim emissions by 55 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. The European Union has already committed, by law, to become carbon neutral by 2050, which means reducing carbon dioxide emissions and offsetting those that remain by figuring out how to offset their impact.
A week later, President Xi Jinping of China announced in an address to the United Nations that his country, too, would speed up its climate plans, with a target to be carbon neutral before 2060.
That leaves the United States. And it makes the results of the November elections crucial to global efforts to avert catastrophic climate change.
Mr. Trump rejects climate science, has pulled the United States out of the Paris accord, an international agreement designed to slow down temperature rise and avert the worst climate impacts, and rolled back a series of environmental regulations. His challenger, Mr. Biden, has promised to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement and proposed to invest $2 trillion to address climate change by, among other things, spurring the development of clean energy infrastructure.
By the time the United Nations convenes a meeting on Dec. 12 for world leaders to update their climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, the United States will be out of the accord or on its way back in.
“Climate disruption is daily news,” the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, said Thursday, “from devastating wildfires to record floods.”
“We must urgently reverse course,” he added.
Image
A coal-fired power plant in Baotou, China.
A coal-fired power plant in Baotou, China.Credit...David Gray/Reuters
Companies must follow through
At Climate Week, which started Monday and wraps up Sunday, a range of companies said they would reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions faster than they had pledged before. Walmart said it would aim to be carbon neutral without relying on offsets, like planting trees, which is how many companies plan to meet their climate targets.
A dozen big companies that sell food joined an effort to get some of their suppliers to cut food waste in half, and gave themselves a decade to get there. Food waste, when it ends up in landfills, produces methane, a supercharged greenhouse gas.
Some of the largest institutional investors joined together to push companies they invest in to disclose climate risks more fully.
General Electric said it would stop building new coal-fired power plants, but it came at a time when the demand for new coal fired power plants is plummeting. The oil giant BP this month declared the end to the growth of oil demand. And Morgan Stanley, financial backer of many fossil fuel projects, announced this week it would aim to neutralize the emissions that result from its investments, but revealed few details.
All of these commitments are voluntary. Whether they abide by their promisers remains to be seen.
Image
Protesters at a rally against climate change in Bern, Switzerland, this week.
Protesters at a rally against climate change in Bern, Switzerland, this week. Credit...Anthony Anex/EPA, via Shutterstock
A chance to rewire the global economy
The coronavirus pandemic, having inflicted a million deaths so far, offered a chance to reset — both at the individual and collective level. There were numerous calls to use this moment to pivot to a sustainable economy that isn’t driven by fossil fuels. By and large, that has not happened so far.
Governments continue to subsidize fossil fuels, including in countries in the European Union. India has recently opened up its coal mining sector to foreign investors, with an eye to ramping up its coal production. Australia remains bullish on coal exports (partly to India).
In the world’s 20 biggest economies, the Group of 20, as they’re known, coronavirus recovery packages doled out $212 billion to fossil fuels, and a far smaller share to renewable energy sources, according to an analysis by a consortium of research and advocacy groups.
Another analysis, by the Rhodium Group, an independent research firm, concluded that only the European Union had committed to devote as much as 20 percent of its total stimulus spending to sustainability, compared to only 1 percent to 3 percent in coronavirus stimulus packages by the United States, China and India.
Around this time last year, during Climate Week 2019, millions of young people thronged the streets of world capitals with a message for world leaders: “You had a future, and so should we,” they chanted.
The coronavirus shuttered their street protests for months. This Friday, they plan to hit the streets again for their first mass protests in cities where they say it’s safe to hold outdoor public gatherings. Their message is increasingly pivoting to the present moment.
“The climate crisis is our reality, we’re striking for our survival,” said Disha Ravi, 22, an activist in India.
Somini Sengupta is an international climate correspondent. She has also covered the Middle East, West Africa and South Asia for The Times and received the 2003 George Polk Award for her work in Congo, Liberia and other conflict zones.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/25/climate/climate-week-2020.html
Trump Administration Finalizes Plan to Open Arctic Refuge to Drilling
The department cleared the way for the government to auction off leases to companies interested in drilling inside the refuge’s coastal plain.
The plan sets the stage for what is expected to be a fierce legal battle over the fate of a vast, remote Alaska habitat.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/climate/alaska-oil-drilling-anwr.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Honey it's time to move.
Hurricane, Fire, Covid-19: Disasters Expose the Hard Reality of Climate Change
Twin emergencies on two coasts this week — Hurricane Isaias and the Apple Fire — offer a preview of life in a warming world and the steady danger of overlapping disasters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/climate/hurricane-isaias-apple-fire-climate.html
Hurricane Forecast: ‘One of the Most Active Seasons on Record’
Scientists at NOAA updated their prediction for the 2020 hurricane season, and now expect as many as 25 named storms.
2d ago
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/climate/hurricanes-noaa-prediction.html
E.P.A. Inspector General to Investigate Trump’s Biggest Climate Rollback
The agency’s watchdog office said Monday it would investigate whether the reversal of Obama-era fuel efficiency standards violated government rules.
July 27, 2020
By CORAL DAVENPORT and LISA FRIEDMAN
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/climate/trump-fuel-efficiency-rule.html
I hope his resume is current.
A Heat Wave, the Coronavirus: Double Spikes of Risk Hit Communities
The South and Southwest hit record temperatures over the weekend and meteorologists warned that heat will rise in the East and High Plains.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/climate/heatwave-coronavirus.html
Inquiry Prompted by Trump’s Hurricane Dorian Claim Is Being Blocked, Investigator Says
The Commerce Department is impeding findings into whether it coerced the top NOAA official to support President Trump’s inaccurate claim that Dorian would hit Alabama, the department’s inspector general said.
22h ago
By CHRISTOPHER FLAVELLE
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/climate/trump-dorian-noaa-investigation.html
A Disastrous Summer in the Arctic
By Carolyn Kormann
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/a-disastrous-summer-in-the-arctic?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=tny&utm_mailing=TNY_Daily_062720&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=5e9085bb2a077c71cb2757b9&cndid=60597413&hasha=3b6708353eb4d86d1549f97d1e8d7b46&hashb=bc977ce3598d2fbbb13c67ae84681e08bb9b4987&hashc=a71e6fd8006525b673d739a4f126007371e8394c0eaa253c5fcd4665f021001b&esrc=Auto_Subs&utm_term=TNY_Daily
A Soft-Handed Predator Masquerading in Manliness
How we treat animals tells us something about how we treat one another.
Timothy Egan
By Timothy Egan
Contributing Opinion Writer
June 19, 2020
The Trump administration has made it easier for hunters to kill bear cubs and wolf pups in Alaska.
The Trump administration has made it easier for hunters to kill bear cubs and wolf pups in Alaska.Credit...Getty Images
One of the most famous men to kill a wolf was Aldo Leopold, who, as a 22-year-old forest ranger more than a century ago, slaughtered a mother and her cubs in Arizona’s Apache National Forest. Thereafter, he was forever haunted by the “fierce green fire dying” in the eyes of the elder wolf.
Slaying a wolf with its family, for Leopold, was an epiphany of conscience that helped fortify the convictions of a budding conservationist. But to the Trump administration, it’s now just another way to kill in the wild. For it will again be legal on some federal lands to kill wolves and pups in the season when they wean their young. Hunters also are free to harass and shoot bears newly roused from their dens by spotlights and bait, and to gun down swimming caribous from a boat.
You judge the character of a nation by how it treats fellow humans. Putting kids in cages, ignoring the warning signs of a virus that has killed more than 118,000 people in America, and using force to clear a park of peaceful protesters are among the most awful things that will follow Donald Trump into his dungeon of history.
But you should also judge the character of a nation by how it treats fellow living creatures. Because how we treat animals tells us something — a lot, in fact — about how we treat one another.
So, this is how you can now kill a bear on some federal preserves in Alaska: You put stale doughnuts or dog food drenched in honey outside a bear’s lair, and then shoot the drowsy and hungry animal that stumbles out to take the bait. This crude policy was banned by wildlife experts in the Obama administration, who said it was biologically unsound and unsportsmanlike.
There’s that curious and archaic word — sportsman, someone who follows the rules of engagement. Good hunters give their prey a chance. Bad hunters shoot hibernating mothers and their babies because they don’t have the patience or skill to track an animal in the wild.
Don’t be fooled by the stated excuse for the government’s turn to barbarism: that the feds are merely aligning themselves with the practices allowed by the State of Alaska.
This change is all about appeasing trophy hunters. Well, one trophy hunter — Donald Trump Jr. You may have heard the recent report that taxpayers spent $75,000 for junior to hunt and kill a rare argali sheep in Mongolia last year while in the secure silo of the Secret Service.
Trump Jr. is a hunter of privilege, jetting into an exotic locale, getting special treatment from the local government and a permit issued retroactively, using the best guides and equipment. The package was completed by Instagram posts of the entitled rich kid in camo atop a horse in Mongolia.
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He snuffed the life from that magnificent animal, a species threatened with extinction and the largest sheep in the world, using a laser-guided rifle that allowed him to hunt at night, according to a story in ProPublica. If there was fierce green fire in the animal’s dying eyes, Trump probably missed it.
I’m not against hunting. I have family members and friends who are experts with gun and crossbow, including a nephew in Montana who has a freezerful of the most wild, organic, free-range meat you’ll find on the planet. He makes a terrific bear Bolognese.
But trophy hunters like Trump Jr. are another breed — soft-handed predators masquerading in manliness. In February, Junior gave a speech in Reno and auctioned himself off on a “dream hunt” in Alaska, to the Safari Club International, a trophy hunting club that pushed for the changes in the Last Frontier State. The Humane Society described the Reno event as a gathering of people who “celebrate the senseless killing, buying and selling of dead animals for bragging rights.”
You can only wonder what thrill it might bring little Donnie and the other big men who are now free to shoot mothers and their cubs. Trump Jr. likes to brag about “triggering the libs” with his behavior. But he just wants to pull a trigger at some defenseless animal.
By sucker-punch-killing bears and wolves, trophy hunters improve their chance at felling prized moose or caribous. The more ferocious animals must be “harvested” in order to increase the “bag limits” of the other species that are their prey. This kind of rigged hunting throws the natural ecology out of whack in order to appease the Trump Juniors of the world.
By far, most animal cruelty is not in the wild, but on American farms. And here the Trump administration has been characteristically inhumane. In 2018, Trump’s government threw out Obama-era rules providing some protection to cattle and chickens raised on organic farms. These measures were designed to allow creatures to breathe fresh air or move about somewhat freely.
From the beginning of his presidency, Trump has been toxic to the natural world. He has reversed more than 100 environmental laws, allowing more chemicals in our fruit and reducing air quality to such a degree that it may result in thousands of premature deaths. He is a doge of desecration.
It’s almost as if Trump has a master plan to make life miserable for all creatures great and small. But as with most things in his presidency, he has no plan. He’s just getting played by those who do.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/opinion/trump-jr.html
Trump Insider Embeds Climate Denial in Scientific Research
An Interior Department official has pushed climate-denial language into scientific reports, including misleading claims about carbon dioxide’s benefits.
5h ago127 comments
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/climate/goks-uncertainty-language-interior.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Take One Last Look at the (Many) Plastic Bags of New York
With a new state ban going into effect, we bid farewell to the purple flower, the smiley face and the THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU designs that have adorned city life for decades.
By ANNALISA QUINN and TONY CENICOLA
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/28/arts/design/ny-plastic-bag-ban.html
We in the West, with our way of thinking of the natural world, we are not the norm — we're the anomaly. Most societies around the planet have these extraordinarily rich relationships where they never see people as part of the problem, but part of the essential solution — because it's only people that can maintain the cosmic balance of the world.
Anthropology never calls for the preservation of anything. And when people often ask why did these other cultures matter, or why does ancient wisdom matter in the modern world? I answer that with two words: climate change.
Not to suggest we go back to pre-industrial past, but the very existence of these other alternatives, these other visions of life, so rich in their complexity put the lie to those of us in our own society who say that we cannot change, as we know we all must change the fundamental way we treat the planet.
And so I draw great inspiration from the diversity of ideas that we've come up with across a whole range of the human spirit.
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/saving-the-planet-means-listening-to-indigenous-peoples-wade-davis-1.5467071
The End of Australia as We Know It
What many of us have witnessed this fire season feels alive and monstrous. With climate change forcing a relaxed country to stumble toward new ways of work, leisure and life, will politics follow?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/15/world/australia/fires-climate-change.html
Hot Models
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/xbnhBgLe8HtJoKSSoHnLgQ--~A/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjtzbT0xO3c9ODAw/https://media.zenfs.com/en/bloomberg_markets_842/e33f0708baf813a3265b8743fbeeba2f
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-03/climate-models-are-running-red-hot-and-scientists-don-t-know-why?utm_source=pocket-newtab
NOAA Leaders Privately Disowned Agency’s Rebuke of Scientists Who Contradicted Trump
Newly released emails show officials at NOAA told the agency’s scientists it did “not approve or support” a controversial agency statement issued after the president falsely said that Alabama was at risk from Hurricane Dorian.
By LISA FRIEDMAN, JOHN SCHWARTZ and MARK WALKER
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/climate/noaa-trump-hurricane-dorian.html
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This board is for the accumulation of articles, pictures and anything else related to natural disasters and the many changes currently underway on our planet.
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The methodic demise of natural earth, by Dr. Michael Castle.
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https://twitter.com/ClimateDesk
https://www.facebook.com/theclimatedesk/
BBC Science and Environment
http://www.bbc.com/news/science_and_environment
British Antarctic Survey
https://www.bas.ac.uk/
Scientific Committee on Antarctic research
https://www.scar.org/
Climate Research AWI
https://www.awi.de/en.html
Global Carbon Project
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/
Center for International Climate Research
https://www.cicero.uio.no/en
River of Souls
https://riveroflostsouls.com/
The Conversation
https://theconversation.com/us/environment
Zero Hour
http://thisiszerohour.org/
SECURING THE LEGAL RIGHT TO A SAFE CLIMATE
https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/
Mother Earth Project™A Global Environment-Saving Initiative Creating and Activating Sustainable Communities
https://motherearthproject.org/
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