Climate

The Persian Gulf nation has instituted rolling blackouts to cope with surging summer electricity demand, stirring frustration among citizens.

An African penguin who left many offspring in his long life, he belonged to the largest colony of the aquatic bird species in North America, according to the zoo.

The system by Saturday had been dousing Texas and Louisiana with heavy rains for days

A tropical depression may form next week in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Hurricane Center.

In a forecast on Saturday afternoon, the NHC said that an area of low pressure had formed over the Bay of Campeche in the southern area of the Gulf of Mexico. It had been producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms.

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Heat waves are America’s deadliest weather events. It’s time we name them.

After two devastating storms hit Stonington in January, plans are multiplying to raise and fortify wharves, roads and buildings. But will that be enough?

A small team in a remote corner of Colombia is surveying every tree in an effort to better understand how much planet-warming carbon the Amazon actually stores.

Pope Francis is visiting Papua New Guinea, which has been exploited for its natural resources and is imperiled by rising sea levels.

Hottest summer on record continues, with millions from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Seattle under heat alerts

An intense heatwave across the US west has brought unusually warm temperatures to the region – some of the highest of the season – and broken heat records.

Millions of Americans from Phoenix to Los Angeles to Seattle are under heat alerts. Even before this latest bout of extreme weather, which began on Wednesday and is expected to last through the weekend, summer 2024 was already considered the hottest summer on record.

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Soggy summers and warmer winters are hitting sales as climate crisis blurs seasons

When the season switched from summer to autumn, like clockwork clothing stores would swap out the racks of floaty frocks and fill them with heavy coats and jumpers.

Now, as the nights draw in, retailers are having to rejig seasonal ranges as the UK’s unpredictable weather calls for summer jackets and lighter knits.

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This year will more than likely end up the warmest humanity has measured, reports European climate service

Summer 2024 sweltered to Earth’s hottest on record, making it even more likely that this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, the European climate service Copernicus reported on Friday.

And if this sounds familiar, that’s because the records the globe shattered were set just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Niño, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said.

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Post-Covid hunger for travel is taking a heavy toll on the environment amid race to net zero, say experts

For some people, summer holidays are a relaxing break from daily life, a blissful chance to hit the sunbed and lie flat for as long as humanly possible. Other people are on the hunt for new places and adventure – plummeting down a hill on the back of a bike or tied to flimsy fabric and pulled through the air. Others still are on a quest for culture, cuisine or enlightenment – or, ideally, all three and then a nap. Travel is, most people seem to feel, amazing.

The result has been an economic boon for some parts of the world that has shifted money across oceans and into impoverished communities. But it has come at a cost to the planet that travellers have long overlooked.

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Donald Trump gets everything wrong about the climate crisis. The results of the vote in November could reverberate for a million years

Here is the biggest thing happening on our planet as we head into the autumn of 2024: the Earth is continuing to heat dramatically. Scientists have said that there’s a better than 90% chance that this year will top 2023 as the warmest ever recorded. And paleoclimatologists were pretty sure last year was the hottest in the last 125,000 years. The result is an almost-cliched run of disasters: open Twitter/X anytime for pictures of floods pushing cars through streets somewhere. It is starting to make life on this planet very difficult, and in some places impossible. And it’s on target to get far, far worse.

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On a family trip in Montana, a father shares a tradition with his two sons even as climate change threatens the certainty of the rivers he grew up running.

NSW, Victoria, south-western Queensland and parts of central Australia had temperatures climb by 6C to 12C above average, BoM says

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Parts of Sydney and south-west New South Wales faced elevated fire danger on Friday as high winds and unseasonably warm temperatures pushed through south-eastern Australia before a cooler, more settled weekend.

New South Wales, Victoria, south-west Queensland and parts of central Australia experienced temperatures between 6C and 12C above average on Friday, with damaging wind warnings for parts of New South Wales and Victoria.

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The excessive heat worldwide suggests the full year will also be a record-breaker, according to Copernicus, the E.U. agency that tracks global warming.

Though large automakers are delaying their plans to introduce new all-electric models, the E.V. industry is still the future, experts say.

Experts believe the outcome of the race for the White House could determine how ambitious China’s climate efforts will be.

New research shows that cases of valley fever, which in rare cases can be fatal, have risen dramatically in recent years

At least 19 people contracted valley fever, a fungal infection that in rare cases can be fatal, after attending an outdoor music festival in southern California in May, public health officials have reported.

The number of illnesses associated with the five-day Lightning in a Bottle event has almost quadrupled over the last month. Valley fever is caused by inhaling Coccidioides, a fungus endemic to the soil of the US south-west. New research shows that cases of the illness have risen dramatically in recent years.

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Study’s authors say integrity of higher education ‘at risk’ upon finding lack of attention to role of oil and gas firms

Fossil fuel companies’ funding of universities’ climate-focused efforts is delaying the green transition, according to the most extensive peer-reviewed study to date of the industry’s influence on academia.

For the study, published in the journal WIREs Climate Change on Thursday, six researchers pored over thousands of academic articles on industries’ funding of research from the past two decades. Just a handful of them focused on oil and gas companies, showing a “worrying lack of attention” to the issue, the analysis says.

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Throughout his two terms, Governor Gavin Newsom has driven California to the top of the world in clean transportation policies that will improve air quality and fight the climate crisis. Under Newsom, California passed policies to get the state to 100% zero emission vehicle (ZEV) sales, transition large truck fleets from dirty diesel to zero emissions, and fund billions of dollars in incentives and infrastructure for clean transportation.  

But California can’t take the foot off the gas (or uh, accelerator) now and neither can Newsom. As these policies change our transportation future, new hurdles arise, and we need new solutions to address them. 

EVs are abundant in much of the state, but polluting, old vehicles remain in lower-income neighborhoods. They demand electricity to charge while climate-fueled disasters are jeopardizing energy reliability. And there is a snowball of retired EV batteries on the horizon without a responsible party in charge of recycling them. 

Luckily, these new challenges have proven solutions and – look at that! – they were approved by the legislature and are now sitting on Newsom’s desk, awaiting his signature to become law.  

Focus clean vehicle incentives on replacing the oldest, most polluting cars

UCS sponsored AB 2401 by Assemblymember Ting, which would expand the state’s Clean Cars 4 All program to help low-income and high-mileage drivers replace their older, polluting gas cars with EVs. This common-sense, data-backed bill received ZERO “no” votes from any lawmaker and is awaiting a green light from the state’s top executive.  

The bill responds to research conducted by UCS and The Greenlining Institute showing that while pre-2004 vehicles account for fewer than 20% of the cars on California’s roads, they emit nearly 75% of the smog-forming nitrogen oxides emissions. These dirty vehicles are overrepresented in low-income neighborhoods and disproportionately impact the health of these already overburdened communities.  

Adding insult to injury, the state has had several difficult budget cycles in recent years and is bracing for more. This has meant decreasing or cutting funding for clean vehicle incentive dollars that would normally help replace these old vehicles with cleaner alternatives.  

AB 2401 would help California’s limited incentives go further and focus them on the communities that need them the most.  

Use batteries for more than just driving

What if EVs weren’t just a clean transportation solution, but a clean energy solution too? UCS sponsored SB 59 – authored by Senator Skinner – to explicitly give the state the authority to require that all EVs are “bidirectional”, meaning they would have the ability to power homes, appliances, or even the grid with the power stored in their batteries.  

As California rightly electrifies its homes, buildings and vehicles, the state must produce more electricity to meet this new demand. And as demand is increasing, climate-fueled extreme heat and wildfires are straining grid reliability.  

By signing SB 59, Newsom could turn the clean transportation future he was instrumental in building into a clean energy reliability asset. That certainly sounds a lot better than turning to a bunch of new diesel generators for backup power, doesn’t it? 

Recover minerals from old batteries  

UCS has provided a science-based explanation on how EV batteries can and should be recycled, which underpins SB 615 by Senator Allen. This bill would ensure that all EV batteries are reused, repurposed or recycled by: 

1. explicitly making automakers responsible for their products at the end of the products’ lives,
     
2. requiring robust reporting and tracking of EV batteries, and  
   
3. setting up a process to ensure batteries are being sent to cleaner, more efficient recyclers.  

Between now and 2030, battery retirements will increase rapidly and if we do not have a strong policy in place – such as SB 615 – we could end up with batteries in landfills or being abandoned all together.   

By signing SB 615, Newsom can plan ahead for the safe recycling of EV batteries so critical minerals can be recovered and reused, reducing the amount of mining necessary for fully electrifying our cars and trucks over the coming years 

So, Mr. Governor, would you like to borrow a pen? 

It’s been a great year for California policy: we are providing sensible, science-backed solutions to move us from a dirty, extractive economy to a clean, sustainable one. All that needs to happen now is for Newsom to continue his climate leadership.