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The creators of the latest vessel from Azimut Yachts went to great lengths to reduce its emissions, but even they won’t call it green.

Reporting from Milan

In the middle of Milan Design Week last month, in the middle of the Bagni Misteriosi - a historic bathing complex in the Porta Romana neighborhood - the Italian luxury shipbuilder Azimut Yachts hosted an unusual exhibition. It was a celebration of the company’s latest offering: the Seadeck 6, which made its debut last year and features interiors by the design team of Matteo Thun and Antonio Rodriguez.

Having been lowered into the facility by crane, the nearly 60-foot vessel was set afloat in an outdoor swimming pool. There it bobbed, traversed by hordes of well-coiffed guests while a concealed apparatus shrouded it in bursts of atmospheric steam. Surreal, elegant, not a little absurd, it was a scene straight out of Fellini, with overtones of Werner Herzog’s boat-hoisting epic “Fitzcarraldo.”

But the ...

Japanese auto giant Honda on Friday logged a record annual profit thanks to improving global vehicle sales, but issued a cautious outlook for the current fiscal year.

The company said net profit for the year to March soared 70 percent to 1.1 trillion yen ($7.1 billion) on sales of 20.4 trillion yen, up 20.8 percent from the previous year.

Honda has made big outlays as it aggressively pursues a target set three years ago of achieving 100 percent electric vehicle sales by 2040.

Its 2023-24 results come two weeks after it announced the largest automotive investment in Canada's history for a new US$11 billion EV battery and vehicle assembly plant.

The company already has a partnership in electric vehicles with Sony, and is exploring collaboration with arch-rival Nissan as they face a "once-in-a-century" upheaval in the car industry - a move analysts say is aimed at catching up with Chinese EV competitors.

On Friday, Honda said global vehicle sales ...

With Mammoth's 72 industrial fans, Swiss start-up Climeworks intends to suck 36,000 tonnes of CO2 from the air annually to bury underground, vying to prove the technology has a place in the fight against global warming.

Mammoth, the largest carbon dioxide capture and storage facility of its kind, launched operations this week situated on a dormant volcano in Iceland.

It adds significant capacity to the Climework's first project Orca, which also sucks the primary greenhouse gas fueling climate change from the atmosphere.

Just 50 kilometers (31 miles) from an active volcano, the seemingly risky site was chosen for its proximity to the Hellisheidi geothermal energy plant necessary to power the facility's fans and heat chemical filters to extract CO2 with water vapor.

CO2 is then separated from the steam and compressed in a hangar where huge pipes crisscross.

Finally, the gas is dissolved in water and pumped underground with a "sort of giant ...

Blood samples were taken from 557 people after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century ripped through the town of Lahaina, killing 101 people.

Just 27 people's screening results came out positive, and subsequent testing showed 15 of them did not have elevated blood lead levels and were determined to have had a false positive, the state health department said.

"While the effects of the August 8 wildfires on the community have been devastating, it's reassuring to know that people in the community are not showing elevated blood lead levels," state Health Director Dr. Kenneth Fink said in a statement. "On the basis of these results with lead as an indicator of exposure, we do not expect to find health impacts caused by toxins in the wildfire ash."

Lead is one of the heavy metals of concern found in significant concentrations in ash from the fires, the health department said.

Founded in 2007 and known as a fast-casual spot serving salads and bowls, Sweetgreen says it will be carbon neutral by 2027 — meaning it plans to offset its own emissions by putting in place strategies that also remove carbon from the atmosphere.

But beef production is incredibly resource-intensive and a contributor to climate change. It's the largest agricultural source of greenhouse gases globally, emitting massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere, and requires extensive land use.

Sweetgreen's rationale for the controversial caramelized, garlic-flavored steak menu addition this week includes using regenerative farming. The chain also says carbon offsets are part of its pledge to combat climate change and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

A Sweetgreen spokesperson referred request for comment to its menu expansion details.

What is regenerative agriculture?

Regenerative agriculture means farming and ranching in a way that not only ...

If a wealthy, advanced economy is having a hard time getting off coal, what does it mean for the rest of the world?

Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel by far, producing more particulate air pollution and global warming gasses than any other, per unit of energy. But for some countries - even ones with the money and the motivation to go green - coal can be hard to quit.

Last month in Italy, members of the G7 - a consortium of industrialized democracies that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union - agreed in a communiqué to “phase out existing unabated coal power generation” by 2035. Such a pledge, if followed through, is meaningful: The bloc is collectively responsible for one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“This announcement is sending a very positive signal,” said Ryna Cui, research director for the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland. “Having a specific ...

Asbestos, “forever” chemicals, E.V.s and endangered species. Here’s what 10 new rules cover, and why the administration has been churning them out.

The Biden administration has been racing this spring to finalize a slew of major environmental regulations, including rules to combat climate change, a first-ever ban on asbestos and new limits on toxic chemicals in tap water.

Many of the rules had been in the works since President Biden’s first day in office, when he ordered federal agencies to reinstate or strengthen more than 100 environmental regulations that President Donald J. Trump had weakened or removed. The president has pledged to cut the emissions that are driving climate change roughly in half by 2030. That’s something that scientists say all industrialized nations must achieve to keep global warming to relatively safe levels.

Lawyers in the Biden administration have sought to use every available tool to protect the rules from being gutted by a future ...

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Yale Climate Connections

Intense storms were brewing Thursday across the southern tier of the United States, marking the fourth day of an unusually prolonged episode of severe weather. The pattern should start winding down by Friday after having caused at least 4 fatalities and widespread damage yet to be tallied. At least two people were killed in Tennessee on Wednesday afternoon by a powerful twister that crossed Interstate 65 south of Nashville.

The main culprits for this week’s rampage of severe weather are a broad, cold upper low bordered by a powerful west-to-east jet stream that’s pushed across the entire northern half of the nation, together with warm low-level inflow from the Gulf of Mexico bearing near-record levels of moisture for early May. Multiple frontal systems along ...

Generative artificial intelligence and social media can undermine efforts to address climate change, argue researchers in a new forum article published in the journal Global Environmental Politics.

UBC professor Dr. Hamish van der Ven and his colleagues argue that generative AI - including large language models like chatGPT - and social media can take attention away from pressing global issues, foster feelings of hopelessness and reduce capacities for creative thinking and problem-solving.

A common conception is that AI, social media and other tech products and platforms are either neutral or potentially net positive in their impact on climate change action.

"Most analysis that we've seen to date focuses on counting the direct emissions associated with the life cycle of tech products," said Dr. van der Ven, assistant professor of sustainable business management of natural resources.

"We know, for example, about the direct impact of internet ...

Resource minister Madeleine King released the party’s future gas strategy which says new sources will be needed 'to 2050 and beyond’

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is facing an internal revolt with Labor backbenchers pushing back against the government’s support for new gas production.

Five inner-city MPs have criticised the government’s gas strategy, arguing it will overshadow progress on clean energy.

The backbench MPs Josh Burns, Jerome Laxale, Sally Sitou, Josh Wilson and Carina Garland issued statements that either criticised or urged caution about the government’s future gas strategy, released on Thursday. Late on Thursday Ged Kearney, the assistant minister for health and aged care, issued her own statement, saying Australia could “not draw out our reliance on fossil fuels any longer than is necessary”.

The strategy, released by the resources minister, Madeleine King, argued gas was an important part of the transition to net zero emissions ...

At a private meeting at Mar-a-Lago, the former president said fossil fuel companies should donate to help him beat President Biden.

Former President Donald J. Trump told a group of oil executives and lobbyists gathered at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago resort last month that they should donate $1 billion to his presidential campaign because, if elected, he would roll back environmental rules that he said hampered their industry, according to two people who were there.

About 20 people attended an April 11 event billed as an “energy round table” at Mr. Trump’s private club, according to those people, who asked not to be identified in order to discuss the private event. Attendees included executives from ExxonMobil, EQT Corporation and the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the oil industry.

The event was organized by the oil billionaire Harold Hamm, who has for years helped to shape Republican energy policies. It was first reported by The Washington Post.

They found that the distributions of real animals were restricted by climate conditions and that the presence of real animals restricted the distributions of trickster animals. In other words, climate conditions indirectly restrict the distribution of trickster animals in folklore.

"These results suggest that ecological factors could restrict the contents of folklore or, more broadly, human culture due to human cognitive biases," said Shota Shibasaki, a researcher at the Center for Frontier Research, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Shizuoka Japan.

The discussion on the links between the environment and cultural ideas has been going on for a long time, but the links between animal folklore and the environment has been understudied. Folklore could conceivably be free of any constraints, except perhaps the limits of human imagination.

But what if there are limits on folklore? Biogeographical studies have found that climate conditions are among the ...

A new paper in Oxford Open Climate Change indicates that extensive bleaching and deaths are widespread at several major coral reefs around the world. This suggests that climate change has resulted in shifting patterns in ocean circulation. Coral reefs may soon be a thing of the past.

Last year, 2023, was the hottest year in recorded history on land and in the oceans, with dramatic and unexpected temperature increases. The highest excess daily air temperatures recorded in 175 countries, as well the most prolonged excessive sea surface temperatures, were centered around Jamaica, and 2023 marked the worst coral bleaching yet in the Northern Hemisphere, with the Southern Hemisphere poised to follow in early 2024.

Areas of high 2023 coral bleaching mortality represent coral reefs included the entire Caribbean region, the east and west coasts of Mexico and Central America, Kiribati, Fiji, Eastern New Guinea, which local observers report to have near total bleaching and ...

Last week, the California Public Utilities Commission released a report evaluating the state’s GoGreen home energy financing program. Residential buildings are responsible for about 10 percent of state greenhouse gas emissions, and home decarbonization routinely ranks among the most challenging of our many emissions reduction challenges.

Our buildings and electrical distribution grid are old, retrofit projects are complex and time-consuming, and few Californians have the energy–let alone the capital–to upgrade their heating and cooling systems, appliances, windows, and more. This problem is, of course, most acute for lower-income homeowners and residents of multifamily buildings.

The GoGreen program seeks to address this challenge through:

GoGreen was initially created in 2013, launched as a pilot in 2016, and became a full-scale program in 2020. It includes both macro-loans (for major retrofits up to $50,000) and micro-loans (for appliance upgrades up to ...

April continued the year's warm streak, with 2024 ranking as the fifth-warmest year on record for the nation so far.

The month also saw a lot of active weather, with more than 100 tornadoes and a powerful winter storm hitting parts of the U.S., according to scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.

Below are more takeaways from NOAA's latest monthly U.S. climate report:

The average April temperature across the contiguous U.S. was 53.8°F (2.7° above the 20th-century average), ranking as 12th-warmest in NOAA's 130-year climate record. Virginia and West Virginia had their fifth-warmest Aprils on record while Kentucky, Maryland and Ohio each saw their top-10 warmest Aprils on record.

The average precipitation for the month was 2.77 inches - 0.25 of an inch above average, which places the month in the wettest third of the historical record. Indiana and Pennsylvania had their fifth-wettest April on record, with South Dakota seeing ...

More companies are purchasing certificates to offset their Scope 3 emissions, a tactic that critics see as a potential new landscape for greenwashing.

As the aviation industry searches for ways to fly net-zero planes, corporations are seeking ways to reduce, or offset, the carbon footprint of their business travel.

Boston Consulting Group is the latest company to reach for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) certificates, which it hopes will boost demand for lower-carbon sources and reduce the effects of its jetsetting employees’ emissions in the process.

The firm announced on May 7 that it would buy SAF certificates equivalent to more than half of its carbon emissions from employee air travel in 2023. The five-year contract with World Energy will deliver CO2 emissions reductions of 100,000 metric tons, about as many as it takes to fly “177,000 economy-class passengers round trip between Boston and London,” according to BCG.

The move is part of an April 17 ...

Costa Rica has become the latest Latin American country to introduce rationing due to drought, announcing Thursday it will limit access to electricity for which it relies heavily on hydro-generation.

Dams that feed the country's hydro-electric plants were low due to the El Niño weather phenomenon, officials said.

"This El Niño has really been the most complicated in the history of Costa Rica," Roberto Quiros, director of the country's ICE electricity institute, told reporters in San Jose.

Rationing will start Monday for an undetermined period.

About 99 percent of Costa Rica's electricity comes from renewable sources - about three-quarters from hydro-electric plants.

"We have not seen a drought like this in 50 years," said Berny Fallas, a climate expert at the ICE, which is Costa Rica's main energy provider.

On Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organization said in a report that Latin America and the Caribbean had their warmest year on ...

The Biden administration pushes federal authority to the brink, all to upgrade U.S. power lines.

High voltage transmission lines in San Francisco, CA. Photo: Shutterstock/Sundry Photography

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced 10 potential corridors for new high-voltage transmission lines on May 8, designed to bring renewable energy from areas where it’s generated to centers of demand and to provide stability to local grids.

The locations of the proposed lines were chosen to help update the grid for the energy transition by mitigating the risk of supply interruptions from intermittent wind and solar power.

Map of potential National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors. Graphic: DOE

"At more than a century old, our power grid is showing its age," said Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm in a statement released by DOE.

Granholm has the authority to designate each corridor as a National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor (NIETC) ...

The dazzling Thai holiday islands made famous by Hollywood film "The Beach" are facing a severe water shortage following a blistering heatwave across Asia, a tourism official and locals said Thursday.

The Koh Phi Phi archipelago, off the west coast of southern Thailand, draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to its pristine beaches and turquoise waters each year.

But a deadly heatwave that has sent temperature records tumbling across the region in recent weeks - as well as a prolonged spell of low rainfall - has seen reservoirs run low.

"The private company that provides water to the islands may have to stop the supply," Wichupan Phukaoluan Srisanya, president of the Krabi Hotel Association, which represents hotels in the area, told AFP.

Island authorities have discussed shipping in water from the mainland if the dry weather continues, she said, but would hold off in the hope of the wet season arriving in May.

"But we want to assure tourists who ...

SAFs are fuels derived from non-petroleum based renewable sources, like waste cooking fats or plant matter, that are capable of being used as a replacement for, or blended with, fossil fuels.

The trial flight from London Heathrow to New York JFK in November last year also showed that SAF can improve local air quality, contribute to a reduction in persistent contrail formation and reduce fuel use.

Crucially, Flight100 did not require any engine, airframe or fuel infrastructure changes and operated on safety standards equivalent to every other commercial flight.

Imperial and Sheffield researchers led the scientific work to assess the climate effects of the flight, with a team of researchers from Imperial completing work to confirm that SAF reduces particulate matter emissions.

The project was enabled by multi-jurisdictional support across aviation authorities, led by the UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

Dr. Marc Stettler, from the Department of ...