Most recent 20 articles: Grist Climate and Energy
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Ducks love to eat this climate-friendly food. Now you might, too. - Grist Climate and Energy (Oct 09, 2024) |
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Oct 09, 2024 · Like a priceless painting, the beautiful blue and green swirl in a lake or pond presents a look-don’t-touch kind of situation. It’s the work of proliferating cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, which produces toxins that are poisonous to humans and other animals, especially when blooms corrupt freshwater supplies. These toxins, which the microbes evolved to deter herbivores, are linked to ALS and Parkinson’s disease, plus muscle paralysis and liver and kidney failure. One of the toxins, anatoxin-a, is known as Very Fast Death Factor, in case you were doubting that toxicity.
It seemed a shame, then, that a highly nutritious fern called Azolla - that green mat ducks ... Read more ...
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Helene recovery: How to navigate FEMA, flood cleanup, disaster fraud, and more - Grist Climate and Energy (Oct 08, 2024) |
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Oct 08, 2024 · This guide was created in partnership with Blue Ridge Public Radio, so it focuses on western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia. However, there is general information for anyone impacted by flooding or hurricanes (including communities in Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida hit by Hurricane Helene), and instructions for how to find assistance in your state. We’ll update this with more resources as recovery continues. Read this page in plain text here.
After a disaster, there’s so much information swirling around about relief and recovery. Whether you’re looking for financial assistance or trying to stay safe while cleaning your home, there’s an ... Read more ...
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The solar supply chain runs through this flooded North Carolina town - Grist Climate and Energy (Oct 08, 2024) |
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Oct 08, 2024 · Due to a quirk of geology, the purest quartz in all the world comes from the picturesque town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The mineral, created deep within the Earth when silicon-rich magmas cooled and crystallized some 370 million years ago, is essential to the production of computer chips and solar panels.
China, India, and Russia provide high-purity quartz as well, but what’s mined there does not match the quality or quantity of what lies beneath the Blue Ridge Mountains. With Spruce Pine among the scores of Appalachian communities reeling from Hurricane Helene, the sudden closure of quartz mines that have supplied chip manufacturers for decades has rattled the global ... Read more ...
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The solar supply chain runs through this flooded North Carolina town - Grist Climate and Energy (Oct 08, 2024) |
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Oct 08, 2024 · Due to a quirk of geology, the purest quartz in all the world comes from the picturesque town of Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The mineral, created deep within the earth when silicon-rich magmas cooled and crystallized some 370 million years ago, is essential to the production of computer chips and solar panels.
China, India, and Russia provide high purity quartz as well, but what’s mined there does not match the quality or quantity of what lies beneath the Blue Ridge Mountains. With Spruce Pine among the scores of Appalachian communities reeling from Hurricane Helene, the sudden closure of quartz mines that have supplied chip manufacturers for decades has rattled the global ... Read more ...
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The Panama Canal needs more water. The solution could displace thousands. - Grist Climate and Energy (Oct 02, 2024) |
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Oct 02, 2024 · Thousand-foot-long ships chug through the Panama Canal’s waters each day, over the submerged stumps of a forgotten forest and by the banks of a new one, its canopies full of screeching parrots and howler monkeys. Some 14,000 pass through its locks every year, their decks stacked high with 6 percent of the world’s commercial goods, crisscrossing the paths of tugboats on the voyage between oceans.
In early 2023, the weather pattern known as El Niño ushered in a drought that choked traffic through the canal, dropping water levels in Lake Gatun, the canal’s main reservoir, to record lows and revealing the tops of trees drowned when the canal was created at the start of the last ... Read more ...
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The climate fight that’s holding up the farm bill - Grist Climate and Energy (Sep 30, 2024) |
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Sep 30, 2024 · Every five years, farmers and agricultural lobbyists descend on Capitol Hill to debate the farm bill, a massive food and agriculture funding bill that helps families afford groceries, pays out farmers who’ve lost their crops to bad weather, and props up less-than-profitable commodity markets, among dozens of other things. The last farm bill was passed in 2018, and in 2023 Congress extended the previous farm bill for an additional year after its negotiations led to a stalemate. That extension expires today, and Congress seems poised to settle for another one.
House Republicans and Democrats’ primary dispute is over on how much funding will go to food programs like SNAP and the ... Read more ...
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How Germany outfitted half a million balconies with solar panels - Grist Climate and Energy (Sep 26, 2024) |
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Sep 26, 2024 · Matthias Weyland loves having people ask about his balcony. A pair of solar panels hang from the railing, casting a sheen of dark blue against the red brick of his apartment building. They’re connected to a microinverter plugged into a wall outlet and feed electricity directly into his home. On a sunny day, he’ll produce enough power to supply up to half of his family’s daily needs.
Weyland is one of hundreds of thousands of people across Germany who have embraced balkonkraftwerk, or balcony solar. Unlike rooftop photovoltaics, the technology doesn’t require users to own their home, and anyone capable of plugging in an appliance can set it up. Most people buy the simple ... Read more ...
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What was behind the seismic boom that wrapped Earth for 9 days? - Grist Climate and Energy (Sep 25, 2024) |
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Sep 25, 2024 · It was a warning shot picked up by seismometers around the world. Last September, a melting glacier collapsed, sending the mountaintop it propped up careening into the Dickson Fjord in East Greenland. The impact created a 650-foot tall tsunami - twice as tall as the Statue of Liberty - which crashed back and forth between the steep, narrow walls of the channel, booming so loud that the vibrations wrapped the globe in a 90-second interval pulse for 9-straight days.
“It’s like a climate change alarm,” said Stephen Hicks, a seismologist at University College London. Hicks is part of an international team of researchers who finally sleuthed out the source of the vibrations that ... Read more ...
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Net-zero targets are everywhere. But to be effective, they need accountability. - Grist Climate and Energy (Sep 25, 2024) |
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Sep 25, 2024 · Averting a worst-case global warming scenario will require the world’s largest institutions to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases, and do it fast. Over the last decade and a half, a standard form has emerged in which governments and corporations have made their promise to do so: the net-zero target. This is generally a voluntarily self-imposed deadline, usually decades away, by which the institution’s emissions will not necessarily actually reduce to zero, but rather by which they will at least be ostensibly canceled out by carbon offsets.
As a strategy, the net-zero target has been criticized by climate advocates; at its worst, it can be a vague, unenforceable ... Read more ...
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The secret ingredient in Biden’s climate law? City trees. - Grist Climate and Energy (Sep 23, 2024) |
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Sep 23, 2024 · You’ve probably heard that the Biden administration’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, gives people big rebates and tax credits to switch to a heat pump or electric vehicle. But the law also contains a much-less-talked-about provision that could save lives: $1.5 billion for planting and maintaining trees that would turn down the temperature in many American cities.
That money goes to the U.S. Forest Service, which has been doling out the money to hundreds of applicants, including nonprofits and cities themselves. The $1.5 billion is nearly 40 times bigger than what the Forest Service typically budgets for planting and taking care of trees in cities ... Read more ...
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Climate change is sending ticks into new areas. Georgia researchers are on it. - Grist Climate and Energy (Sep 19, 2024) |
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Sep 19, 2024 · On a blisteringly hot, sunny day this summer, Emory University researcher Arabella Lewis made her way through the underbrush in a patch of woods in Putnam County, Georgia, about an hour southeast of Atlanta. She was after something most people try desperately to avoid while in the woods: ticks.
“Sometimes you gotta get back in the weeds to get the best ticks,” she explained, sweeping a large square of white flannel along the forest floor.
The idea was that the ticks could sense the movement of the fabric and smell the carbon dioxide Lewis breathed out and would grab onto the flannel flag.
“My favorite thing about them is their little grabby front arms, the way that ... Read more ...
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In coal-rich Kentucky, a new green aluminum plant could bring jobs and clean energy - Grist Climate and Energy (Sep 15, 2024) |
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Sep 15, 2024 · When John Holbrook first started working as a pipefitter in the early 1990s, jobs were easy to come by in his corner of northeastern Kentucky.
A giant iron and steel mill routinely needed maintenance and repair work, as did the coal “coking” ovens next to it. There was also a hulking coal-fired power plant and a bustling petroleum refinery nearby. Fossil fuels extracted from beneath the region’s rugged Appalachian terrain supplied these industrial sites, which sprung up during the 19th and 20th centuries along the yawning Ohio River and its tributary, Big Sandy.
“Work was so plentiful,” Holbrook recalled on a scorching August morning in Ashland, a quiet riverfront city ... Read more ...
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The Gulf Coast is sinking, making hurricanes like Francine even more dangerous - Grist Climate and Energy (Sep 11, 2024) |
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Sep 11, 2024 · Hurricane Francine barreled into southern Louisiana on Wednesday as a Category 2 storm, packing 100 mph winds and sending a surge of water into coastal communities. Because so much of southern Louisiana sits at or below sea level, the surge could race inland unimpeded. The last hurricane to hit the state was Ida in 2021, which unleashed a catastrophic storm surge and caused $75 billion in damages and killed 55 people.
“Storm surge is really a nasty, nasty thing,” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami. “It’s hurricane winds essentially bulldozing the ocean onto land. It doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”
The Gulf Coast’s storm ... Read more ...
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Why Mississippi coal is powering Georgia’s data centers - Grist Climate and Energy (Aug 27, 2024) |
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Aug 27, 2024 · Last October, Georgia Power approached regulators with what it said was a crisis. Unless they did something soon, they discovered, the growing demand for electricity would outpace production sometime in the winter of 2025. Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp and other state leaders had been courting data centers and new manufacturing plants for some time, and it was all catching up to the aging power grid.
The Georgia Public Service Commission, the elected body tasked with regulating the utility company, had approved Georgia Power’s long-term grid plan, which the company makes every three years, in 2022. Since then, the company said, its projections for the growth of electricity ... Read more ...
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This simple farming technique can capture carbon for thousands of years - Grist Climate and Energy (Aug 22, 2024) |
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Aug 22, 2024 · Simon Kitol’s 25-acre farm in western Kenya teems with maize, tomatoes, and beans, but also an invasive menace: Prosopis juliflora, better known as the mathenge plant. Its long roots steal water from his crops, and the shrub takes up valuable room for growing food. Kitol’s livestock also dine on the mathenge pods, which are loaded with sugar, causing even more problems.
“It damages their teeth, and eventually the cows or goats die,” Kitol said. The thickets also provide cover for predators like wild dogs and hyenas. “They hide there because it is so thick that you can’t see them. At night, when the goats or sheep walk around, they are attacked and killed.”
Last ... Read more ...
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Extreme weather 101: Your guide to staying prepared and informed - Grist Climate and Energy (Aug 20, 2024) |
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Aug 20, 2024 · No matter where you live, extreme weather can hit your area, causing damage to homes, power outages, and dangerous or deadly conditions. If you’re on the coast, it may be a hurricane; in the Midwest or South, a tornado; in the West, wildfires; and as we’ve seen in recent years, anywhere can experience heat waves or flash flooding.
Living through a disaster and its aftermath can be both traumatic and chaotic, from the immediate losses of life and belongings to conflicting information around where to access aid. The weeks and months after may be even more difficult, as the attention on your community is gone but civic services and events have stalled or changed ... Read more ...
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Your guide to voting after a disaster - Grist Climate and Energy (Aug 20, 2024) |
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Aug 20, 2024 · In the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, Louisiana experienced a parade of devastating hurricanes. On August 27, Hurricane Laura hit the state’s southwest coast as a Category 4 storm, bringing winds up to 150 miles per hour, extreme rainfall, and a 10-foot storm surge. Hurricane Delta hit the same region six weeks later as a Category 2. Hurricane Zeta then hit the southeast part of the state a week before the election. The storms made voting a chaotic and difficult process: polling locations damaged, thousands displaced from their state, all the necessary paperwork and IDs lost to floodwaters.
It is an experience that many Americans have found themselves in, ... Read more ...
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Recent Supreme Court decisions are already slowing climate progress - Grist Climate and Energy (Aug 19, 2024) |
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Aug 19, 2024 · During its last session, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority dealt blow after blow to federal agencies’ authority to draft and enforce policies, including those aimed at mitigating climate change. Its decisions have already created upheaval for courts considering issues ranging from the approval of a solar project to vehicle emissions rules. This has upended the legal landscape for judges and for regulators, and could slow climate progress as a result.
The uncertainty has alarmed, but not surprised, legal experts who earlier this summer predicted that four rulings limiting federal authority could curtail the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency and other ... Read more ...
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Hurricane Ernesto arrived way early. It’s an ominous sign. - Grist Climate and Energy (Aug 16, 2024) |
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Aug 16, 2024 · After unleashing widespread flooding and knocking out electricity for half of Puerto Rico, this season’s third hurricane, Ernesto, has turned north, and is approaching Bermuda. In an average Atlantic season, the third hurricane doesn’t spin up until September 7, so Ernesto has arrived way, way early. As of August 9, this summer had already produced a third of the activity in a typical season - with nearly 90 percent of it remaining.
All that makes Ernesto, now a Category 2 hurricane, an ominous sign of what’s still to come in the next few months - and what to expect as the planet rapidly warms. “Being a little more than three weeks ahead of schedule for the third hurricane is ... Read more ...
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Climate change fueled last year’s extreme wildfires - some more than others - Grist Climate and Energy (Aug 15, 2024) |
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Aug 15, 2024 · Starting in March 2023, Canada burned for eight months, with flames licking all 13 provinces and territories in the country’s deadliest ever fire season. At least 150,000 people evacuated, and tens of millions across North America were affected by the drifting smoke. In New York, residents experienced the worst air quality in half a century.
Five months later, Greece was besieged by the European Union’s largest blaze yet, which claimed almost 350 square miles of forests and took the lives of 19 immigrants. Near the equator, the Amazon experienced a record-breaking number of fires. For months, satellite images showed thick plumes of smoke shrouding entire countries and swaths ... Read more ...
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