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Huy Fong Foods paused production of its spicy red Sriracha, blaming a chile supply that is “too green.”

Jennifer Wunderlich can’t recall the last time Huy Fong Foods’ Sriracha sauce was in stock at her workplace, a New York-based specialty confections and gourmet food distributor.

It’s been “months and months” since Wunderlich said she’s seen the rooster-adorned, green-capped bottles at Nassau Candy, where she works as a customer support and sales specialist. Other distributors said their inventory of the red, garlicky sauce, which has cultivated an ardent popularity, is also depleted - and they worry it won’t be returning any time soon.

This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).

Climate change is everywhere. And when something's everywhere it can feel like it's nowhere. So how do we get our heads around something so huge and abstract - whether it's thinking about extreme weather, or the fossil fuels producing CO2 and driving the problem? I'm joined by one of my all time climate heroes - Katharine Hayhoe - to share some of our favourite ways of thinking about the climate crisis

Support ClimateAdam on patreon: https://patreon.com/climateadam

Also check out @globalweirding for more of Katharine Hayhoe's incredible communication!

THE ESCALATOR (free to republish)

Struggling foreign automakers in China are looking for help from local tech giants to try to stay competitive in the world's biggest electric car market, where shiny smart screens, assisted driving and sophisticated map technology are in high demand.

At the recent Beijing Auto Show, China's biggest car expo, a number of foreign firms announced tech partnerships - from Nissan joining forces with Baidu to Toyota signing a cooperation agreement with Tencent.

The two Japanese companies are among a number of traditional auto juggernauts, once dominant in China, that are now struggling to keep pace with a new generation of local EV startups.

"They are notoriously conservative companies and their competencies aren't technology," Tu Le, managing director of Sino Auto Insights, told AFP.

"They've tried to invest in frontier technology for the automotive space but it doesn't come naturally," he said.

"But they are being forced to try to be more open-minded ...

For the first time, 30% of electricity produced worldwide was from clean energy sources as the number of solar and wind farms continued to grow fast.

Of the types of clean energy generated last year, hydroelectric dams produced the most. That's the same as in most years. Yet droughts in India, China, North America and Mexico meant hydropower hit a five-year low. Research shows climate change is causing droughts to develop more quickly and be more severe.

People used more electricity than ever last year, about 2% more, an increase of about as much as Canada uses in a year. Some of this new demand was for heat pumps, which are an efficient way to both heat and cool buildings, and for electric vehicles. It was also for electrolyzers, special machines used to get hydrogen out of water, for energy. These are all technologies that provide solutions to climate change.

Other increased demand was for electricity to feed new data centers and for air conditioning as ...

Just a few months ago, the Colombian mountain peak of Ritacuba Blanco was covered in an unbroken layer of white ice and snow, just as it had been for as long as anyone can remember.

But with the South American country hit by the warming effects of the El Niño weather phenomenon since late last year, large cracks have suddenly appeared in the glacier covering the peak, exposing the rock underneath.

Experts say the glacier is melting at dizzying speeds, with climate change intensifying the effects of El Niño - which makes an appearance every two to seven years, and lasts about nine to 12 months.

The UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has said that record temperatures since June 2023 were partly caused by El Niño, "but heat-trapping greenhouse gases are unequivocally the main culprit."

"The El Niño phenomenon is perhaps the worst thing that can happen to our snowy peaks or glaciers," said Jorge Luis Ceballos, a glaciologist at the Institute of ...

South Korean tech giant Samsung said Wednesday it will buy French artificial intelligence company Sonio to boost its cutting-edge medical diagnostic systems.

The use of AI has exploded in recent years in a wide range of disciplines and industries, including medical care, and firms around the world are investing heavily to incorporate it into their products.

The purchase of Sonio by medical equipment maker Samsung Medison, an affiliate of global chip and smartphone giant Samsung Electronics, would boost maternal care through AI-enhanced ultrasound systems, according to a company statement.

"Collaboration with Sonio will bring together best-in-class ultrasound AI technology and reporting capabilities to bring a paradigm shift in the prenatal ultrasound exam," said Yong Kwan Kim, CEO of Samsung Medison.

Samsung will acquire all Sonio's shares for 126 billion won (around $92 million), according to public financial records.

The deal is subject to ...

The nation's largest public utility is moving ahead with a plan for a new natural gas plant in Tennessee despite warnings that its environmental review of the project doesn't comply with federal law. The Tennessee Valley Authority announced in April that it would replace the aging coal-burning Kingston Fossil Plant with gas amid growing calls for the agency's new board of directors to invest in renewables.

The board, with six of nine members appointed by President Biden, is expected to meet on Thursday in Nashville, a day after a planned protest by a coalition of environmental groups demanding Tennessee Valley stop investing in fossil fuels.

Decommissioning the Kingston plant, site of a massive 2008 coal ash spill, is part of Tennessee Valley's overall plan to reduce its reliance on coal. In analyzing alternatives to replace the plant, the corporation considered either a new 1,500 megawatt gas plant or 1,500 megawatts of solar combined with 2,200 megawatts of ...

On Curaçao, visitors can explore the trees’ habitat, where colorful birds roost on tangled branches and trunks, and small paths through the greenery beckon.

The Curaçao Rif Mangrove Park offers guided tours, elevated boardwalks, programs for local schoolchildren and a tiered entrance-fee system for residents and overseas visitors.Credit...Frank Meyer for The New York Times

Elisabeth Goodridge is the deputy editor for travel at The New York Times.

It was a sunny afternoon in February at the height of the high season on the Caribbean island of Curaçao, but my partner, Aaren, and I were far from lounging on a white-sand beach, snorkeling over a coral reef or strolling among the Easter-egg-colored buildings of Willemstad, Curaçao’s capital and a UNESCO World Heritage site - typical activities for travelers to this former Dutch colony.

Instead, on a kayak tour with Serlon St Jago, a guide from the Curaçao Rif Mangrove Park, we were learning about the ...

Accelerating the growth of the electric vehicle market requires capital to fund manufacturing, infrastructure and innovation.

Investment in electric vehicles rose to $42 billion in 2023, up from $18 billion the previous year. Source: Shutterstock/pogonici

In the future, you can bet transportation will be electric. And the future is coming fast. By 2030, electric vehicles are expected to make up about half of new car sales.

With transportation holding its position as the largest source of pollution in the U.S. economy, the transition away from gas and diesel vehicles couldn't come at a more crucial time.

However, the shift to EVs is not just about reducing pollution. It is a seismic economic opportunity - not just for auto and truck manufacturers and other industry players, but also for banks. Investment in electric vehicles boomed during the past two years - $42 billion in 2023, up from $18 billion the previous year.

But spurring on this growing ...

In 2040, around 14 million discarded batteries are expected to be discarded. Recycling the materials makes sense, but is expensive and technically demanding. It would therefore be better and more sustainable to re-use the batteries, for example as stationary electricity storage units. But this requires a sound assessment of their remaining performance capability and safety.

13 indicators characterize the aging process

So far, the reduced charging capacity and an increase in internal resistance have served as an indication of the condition of a used battery. However, this is not sufficient for a decision on a possible second-life use. For this reason the researchers analyzed lithium-ion cells that had been used in vehicles under real conditions and identical new ones in the laboratory.

During repeated charging and discharging cycles, they recorded 31 different parameters and then checked how well they represented the aging condition of the batteries. Thirteen ...

Amazon said Tuesday it would invest US$9 billion in Singapore over the next four years to expand its cloud computing capabilities in the city.

The announcement comes after fellow tech titan Microsoft unveiled billions of dollars of investment in the same sectors in Southeast Asia last week as firms look to take advantage of growing demand in the region.

Amazon said the figure doubles its investment in the city-state and will help it meet growing demand for cloud services and adopt artificial intelligence.

"AWS (Amazon Web Services) is doubling down on its cloud infrastructure investments in Singapore from 2024 to 2028 to support customer demand, and help reinforce Singapore's status as an attractive regional innovation launchpad...," Priscilla Chong, Country Manager of Singapore for AWS, said.

Amazon said its investment will support some 12,000 jobs in Singaporean businesses each year.

It is also partnering with the Singapore government to help ...

In their paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes how they used several climate models and various factors that allowed them to find patterns that might be linked to the reduction of aerosols emitted into the atmosphere by China.

Over the past decade, the north Pacific has experienced multiple heat waves, leading to fish die-offs, toxic algae blooms and missing whales. Such heat waves have been generally attributed to global warming, but to date, no research has been able to pinpoint how global warming could cause such sudden and variable increases in a specific part of the planet.

In this new effort, the research team noted that the onset of the heat waves appeared to follow successful efforts by the Chinese government to reduce aerosol emissions from their country's factories. Beginning around 2010, factories and power generating plants in China began dramatically reducing emissions of aerosols such as sulfate, ...

At the same time, the researchers note that the shipping companies' investments in the much-discussed technology, where exhaust gases are "washed" and discharged into the sea, have already been recouped for most of the ships. This means that the industry is now making billions of euros by running its ships on cheap heavy fuel oil instead of cleaner fuel.

"We see a clear conflict of interest, where private economic interests come at the expense of the marine environment in one of the world's most sensitive seas," says Chalmers doctoral student Anna Lunde Hermansson, who is one of the authors of the new study, published in Nature Sustainability.

The study has been prompted by the ongoing discussion of a potential ban on scrubber water discharge—where large volumes of polluted water are produced and discharged from the ships' exhaust gas cleaning systems. The issue is on the agenda at multiple levels within the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and is ...

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) has helped determine the viability of pressure relief valves for liquid natural gas tanks in the event of a train derailment for the Federal Rail Administration (FRA). The report from the FRA shows that a study conducted by SwRI demonstrates that the pressure relief valves work as designed to prevent overpressurization and explosion if a derailment occurs.

"The pressure relief valves on tanks that transport liquid natural gas via rail are designed to vent the headspace of the liquid natural gas in the event of a derailment or a fire," said SwRI's Matt Gacek, who led the testing.

"The tanks are double-walled and insulated with cryogenic liquid, but there is still a little bit of heat that makes it into the cold liquid natural gas and starts to boil it off. As that pressure builds, the pressure valve vents the fluid in the tank to prevent overpressurization of that railcar."

According to the Bureau of Transportation ...

For the first time, UC Riverside researchers have determined how these structures work on a molecular level, as well as where and how they form. This information is described in two new Nature Communications papers.

Scientists have long studied membrane-bound compartments, called organelles, in plant cells, such as the Golgi apparatus, mitochondria, and most significantly, the nucleus, where DNA gets copied and transcribed into RNA.

However, much less is known about the membrane-free organelles that can dynamically assemble and disassemble inside the nucleus, such as the photobodies that help to sense light and temperature in plants.

"At one time, people called these photobodies 'garbage cans,' because they didn't understand them. When people don't understand something, they call it useless. But they aren't useless at all," said UCR botany professor Meng Chen, senior author of both papers. "They are a new frontier in science."

Part of the challenge in ...

A brutal Asian heat wave has closed schools in the Philippines, killed people in Thailand and set records there and in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives and Myanmar. Record temperatures — especially at night when it just won't cool down — have hit many parts of Africa. Flooding devastated Houston, and the United States as a whole just had its second highest number of tornadoes for the month of April.

In a world growing increasingly accustomed to wild weather swings, the last few days and weeks have seemingly taken those environmental extremes to a new level. Some climate scientists say they are hard pressed to remember when so much of the world has had its weather on overdrive at the same time.

"Given that we've seen an unprecedented jump in global warmth over the last 11 months, it is not surprising to see worsening climate extremes so early in the year," said University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck. "If this record pace of warming ...

In the ever-expanding search for energy resources, a new study has emerged from Mozambique's Maniamba Basin. A team led by Nelson Nhamutole, a Ph.D. student at the University of the Witwatersrand, and his team of scientists from around the world, shared in an article published in the South African Journal of Geology that Mozambique's Maniamba Basin could be a big source of natural gas.

Spanning an impressive 8,000,000 km2, the Maniamba Basin is a geological marvel. Its layers of Permian to Early Triassic rocks hold the secrets of the earth's ancient past, now thought to be ripe with organic material capable of producing natural gas. This revelation is a beacon for energy prospects in a world craving sustainable sources.

Nelson and his research team embarked on a meticulous journey, analyzing samples from four outcrops within the basin. Employing cutting-edge techniques like Rock Eval Pyrolysis, they deciphered the organic richness of different types of rock, ...

They’re delivering solar power after dark in California and helping to stabilize grids in other states. And the technology is expanding rapidly.

How California powered itself in April 2021 …

and in April 2024.

Peak demand

average daily generation, by fuel type

Peak demand

25k

megawatts

Imports

20k

15k

Gas

Solar power

Batteries

Solar power

10k

Wind

5k

Hydro

Nuclear

0

12a.m.

5a.m.

10a.m.

3p.m.

8p.m.

12a.m.

5a.m.

10a.m.

3p.m.

8p.m.

How California powered itself in April 2021 …

and in April 2024.

average daily generation, by fuel type

Peak demand

25k

megawatts

Imports

20k

15k

Gas

Solar power

Batteries

Solar ...

The Arctic region has warmed nearly four times faster than the global average since 1979, with far-reaching global implications. However, model projections of Arctic warming rates are uncertain and one key component is the ocean heat transport (OHT) into the Arctic Ocean. Here we use high-resolution historical and future climate simulations to show that the OHT through the Bering Strait exerts a more substantial influence on Arctic warming than previously recognized. The high-resolution ensemble exhibits a 20% larger warming rate for 2006–2100 compared with standard low-resolution model simulations. The enhanced Arctic warming in the high-resolution simulations is primarily attributable to an increased OHT through the narrow and shallow Bering Strait that is nearly four times larger than in the low-resolution simulations. Consequently, the projected rate of Arctic warming by low-resolution climate simulations is likely to be underestimated due to the model resolution being ...

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