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Extreme heat continues to scorch large parts of Asia
The Straits Times (Singapore)
Large swathes of Asia are sweltering through a heatwave that has topped temperature records from Myanmar to the Philippines and forced millions of children to stay home from school.
In India, record temperatures have triggered a deadly heatwave and concerns about voter turnout in the nation’s marathon election. Extreme heat has also forced Bangladesh to close all schools across the country.
Extreme temperatures have also been recorded in Myanmar and Thailand, while huge areas of the Philippines are suffering from a drought.
Summer heat hits Asia early, killing dozens as one expert calls it the "most extreme event" in climate history
CBS News
It's still spring but hundreds of millions of people across South and Southeast Asia have already faced scorching hot temperatures. The summer heat has arrived early, setting records and even claiming lives, and it's expected to get much worse through May and June as summer actually begins.
At the beginning of May, severe heat waves were already blamed for nearly three dozen deaths across the vast region. Schools have been forced to close weeks ahead of summer vacations and huge swaths of new crops have withered in parched farmland. […]
"Thousands of records are being brutalized all over Asia, which is by far the most extreme event in world climatic history," weather historian Maximiliano Herrera said in a social media post last week.
Kenya flood toll rises to 181 as homes and roads are destroyed
Reuters
Floods and landslides across Kenya have killed 181 people since March, with hundreds of thousands forced to leave their homes, the government and Red Cross said on Wednesday, as dozens more were killed in neighbouring Tanzania and Burundi.
Torrential rain and floods have destroyed homes, roads, bridges and other infrastructure across the region. The death toll in Kenya exceeds that from floods triggered by the El Nino weather phenomenon late last year. […]
Last year's rains followed the worst drought in large parts of East Africa in decades.
Eco-Collapse Hasn’t Happened Yet, But You Can See It Coming
Stan Cox @ TomDispatch
Something must be up. Otherwise, why would scientists keep sending us those scary warnings? There has been a steady stream of them in the past few years, including “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency” (signed by 15,000 of them), “Scientists’ Warning Against the Society of Waste,” “Scientists’ Warning of an Imperiled Ocean,” “Scientists’ Warning on Technology,” “Scientists’ Warning on Affluence,” “Climate Change and the Threat to Civilization,” and even “The Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future.”
Clearly, there’s big trouble ahead and we won’t be able to say that no one saw it coming. In fact, a warning of ecological calamity that made headlines more than 50 years ago is looking all too frighteningly prescient right now.
Have the world’s coral reefs already crossed a tipping point?
Grist
About a year ago, the seas got unusually hot, even by our current, overheated standards. Twelve months of broken records later, the oceans are still more feverish than climate models and normal fluctuations in global weather patterns can explain.
When the seas turn into bathwater, it threatens the survival of the planet’s coral reefs, home to a quarter of all marine life and a source of sustenance for many people living along the world’s coasts. Mostly clustered in the shallow waters of the tropics, coral reefs have one of the lowest thresholds for rising temperatures of all the possible “tipping points,” the cascading feedback loops that set off large, abrupt changes in the ecosystems, weather patterns, and ice formations on Earth. Stable, existing systems wind up in new, completely different states: The lush Amazon rainforest, for example, might collapse into a grassy savanna. Coral reefs might transform into seaweed-smothered graveyards.
Earlier this month, the world officially entered its fourth — and probably worst — mass coral bleaching event in history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the International Coral Reef Initiative. Hot water causes corals to expel the tiny algae that live in their tissues, which provide them with food (through photosynthesis) and also a rainbow of pigments. Separated from their algae, corals “bleach,” turning ghostly white, and start to starve.
Tire Toxicity Faces Fresh Scrutiny After Salmon Die-Offs
KFF Health News
For decades, concerns about automobile pollution have focused on what comes out of the tailpipe. Now, researchers and regulators say, we need to pay more attention to toxic emissions from tires as vehicles roll down the road.
At the top of the list of worries is a chemical called 6PPD, which is added to rubber tires to help them last longer. When tires wear on pavement, 6PPD is released. It reacts with ozone to become a different chemical, 6PPD-q, which can be extremely toxic — so much so that it has been linked to repeated fish kills in Washington state.
The trouble with tires doesn’t stop there… As car tires wear, the rubber disappears in particles, both bits that can be seen with the naked eye and microparticles… And what’s in those particles is a mystery, because tire ingredients are proprietary.
Reforestation study finds only a few tree species can survive a century of rapid climate change
University of Vienna via Phys.org
Europe's forests have already been severely affected by climate change. Thousands of hectares of trees have already died due to drought and bark beetles. Scientists from the University of Vienna and the Technical University of Munich TUM have now investigated which trees can be used for reforestation.
Their findings indicate only a few tree species are fit for the future, such as English oak in the UK. However, mixed forests are important for the survival of forests, otherwise the forest ecosystem as a whole could be weakened. The results of the study were published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. […]
Depending on the region, between a third and a half of the tree species found there today will no longer be able to cope with future conditions. "This is an enormous decline," says lead author Johannes Wessely, "especially when you consider that only some of the species are of interest for forestry."
Solar is now being installed faster than any technology in history
Renew Economy (Australia)
In 2023, solar PV and wind comprised about 80% of global generation capacity additions (and 99% in Australia). This is compelling market-based evidence that solar PV and wind are the best options for new generation capacity. New solar capacity is being installed faster than anything else in history.
Cumulative global installed solar capacity passed 1.4 Terawatts (TW) which is tenfold larger than ten years ago, and it is doubling every 3 years. Global solar capacity surpassed nuclear installed capacity in 2017; wind in 2022; and hydro in 2023.
At current growth rates (20% per annum), solar will pass fossil gas in 2024 and coal in 2025. Current growth rates also suggest that solar will approach 9 TW in 2031, when there will be more solar generation capacity than everything else combined.
A Solar Panel Standoff Threatens U.S. Climate Plans
E&E News via Scientific American
A flood of Chinese solar components is casting a shadow on President Joe Biden's climate priorities.
That's creating deep divisions in the U.S. solar industry and causing political headaches for the president. American manufacturers are calling for additional trade restrictions on Asian imports amid what they say are market-flooding practices by China that are undermining U.S. plans to build a fleet of solar factories.
But those calls are colliding with the interests of some renewable energy developers that rely on China-linked companies for components that are fueling a solar building spree in the U.S. They contend new trade barriers could hinder U.S. efforts to eliminate climate pollution in the electricity sector — a pillar of Biden's environmental agenda.
America’s Wind Power Production Drops for the First Time in 25 Years
Bloomberg via Yahoo!
US wind power slipped last year for the first time in a quarter-century due to weaker-than-normal Midwest breezes, underscoring the challenge of integrating volatile renewable energy sources into the grid.
Power produced by turbines slipped 2% in 2023, even after developers added 6.2 gigawatts of new capacity, according to a government report Tuesday. The capacity factor for the country’s wind fleet — how much energy it’s actually generating versus its maximum possible output — declined to an eight-year low of 33.5%. Most of that decline was driven by the central US, a region densely dotted with turbines.
New US climate rules for pollution cuts ‘probably terminal’ for coal-fired plants
The Guardian
New climate rules imposed by Joe Biden’s administration requiring huge cuts in carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants will accelerate the decline of an industry that until recently provided most of America’s power, experts say, potentially even dealing a death blow to coal in the US.
Coal… is being driven out of the power sector by cheaper renewables and gas and now faces an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation, finalized last week, that demands all coal plants not retiring by 2039 to slash their carbon emissions 90% within the coming decade.
EPA Proposes Ban on Pesticide Widely Used on Fruits and Vegetables
ProPublica
The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a proposal this week to ban a controversial pesticide that is widely used on celery, tomatoes and other fruits and vegetables.
The EPA released its plan on Tuesday, nearly a week after a ProPublica investigation revealed the agency had laid out a justification for increasing the amount of acephate allowed on food by removing limits meant to protect children’s developing brains.
In calling for an end to all uses of the pesticide on food, the agency cited evidence that acephate harms workers who apply the chemical as well as the general public and young children, who may be exposed to the pesticide through contaminated drinking water.
Acephate, which was banned by the European Union more than 20 years ago, belongs to a class of chemicals called organophosphates.
A Major Technology for Long-Duration Energy Storage Is Approaching Its Moment of Truth
Inside Climate News
The need for long-duration energy storage, which helps to fill the longest gaps when wind and solar are not producing enough electricity to meet demand, is as clear as ever. Several technologies could help to meet this need. […]
The Department of Energy has identified the need for long-duration storage as an essential part of fully decarbonizing the electricity system, and, in 2021, set a goal that research, development and investment would help to reduce the costs of the technologies by 90 percent in a decade.
A variety of companies and technologies are competing for a share of the market. This includes several types of long-duration batteries, and some resources that have been around for a while, such as pumped hydro storage at hydroelectric dams.
How rioting farmers unraveled Europe’s ambitious climate plan
Vox
In February 2021, in the midst of the deadly second year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Grégory Doucet, mayor of Lyon, France, temporarily took red meat off the menus of the city’s school cafeterias. While the change was environmentally friendly, the decision was driven by social distancing protocols: Preparing one hot meal that could be served to meat-eaters, vegetarians, and those with religious restrictions rather than serving multiple options was safer and more efficient.
The response from the French agricultural establishment was hysterical… It may have seemed a tempest in a teacup — a quintessentially French squabble. But it was a microcosm of European agricultural politics, reflecting the great paradox of European Union (EU) farmers’ relationship to the state. […]
Agribusiness interests have been working to foil the Farm to Fork strategy, the crown jewel of the Green Deal meant to overhaul Europe’s food system, since its inception in 2020. This year, with the specter of right-wing populism looming over upcoming European Parliament elections (part of the EU’s legislative branch), farmers’ protests across the continent have succeeded at not only stalling new sustainability reforms, but also undermining existing environmental regulations. Now, plans to make Europe a global leader in sustainable agriculture appear to be dead on arrival.
Climate change has disproportionately impacted these vulnerable US communities, experts say
ABC News
Researchers have been warning for years that the world's most vulnerable populations will suffer the most dire consequences of climate change.
But the disproportionate impacts of climate change on the poorest communities – the members of which contribute the least amount of greenhouse gas emissions – are already affecting pockets of the U.S. as extreme weather events are exacerbated by warming global temperatures, events in recent years have shown.
In the U.S., immigrant communities are often on the frontline of increasingly more severe extreme weather events, including wildfire smoke, extreme heat, and flooding, Ahmed Gaya, senior strategist for climate and social justice for the Climate Justice Collaborative, a nonprofit that focuses on providing support to climate-displaced people, told ABC News.
Democrats say Big Oil misled public for decades about climate change
NBC News
Major oil companies have misled Americans for decades about the threat of human-caused climate change, according to a new report released Tuesday by Democrats in Congress.
The 65-page report was the result of a three-year investigation and was made public hours before a Senate Budget Committee hearing about the role that oil and gas companies have played in global warming.
“They could’ve been the environmental Paul Revere but, instead, they were more like Rip Van Winkle, wanting everyone to go to sleep,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said about fossil fuel companies’ efforts to mislead and distract the American public for more than 60 years. “The thing that gets me the most is thinking back to the decades when ‘Big Oil and Gas’ understood the problem in a way almost no one in the country or the world did.”
Democrats’ investigation revealed research, transcripts and even video recordings that show the fossil fuel industry knew the consequences of its emissions since at least the 1960s. Their report also showed how oil and gas companies initially tried to hide that information but employed new tactics to downplay the urgency of eliminating emissions.