My Climate Change News

The Philippine Coast Guard on Friday raced to offload 1.4 million liters of industrial fuel oil from a sunken tanker and prevent an "environmental catastrophe" in Manila Bay.

One crew member died when the MT Terra Nova sank in rough seas nearly seven kilometers (4.3 miles) off Limay municipality early Thursday after setting out for the central city of Iloilo.

An oil slick stretching several kilometers was detected in the waterway, which thousands of fishermen and tourism operators rely on for their livelihoods.

Coast guard spokesman Rear Admiral Armando Balilo said Friday the spill was "minimal" and that it appeared to be diesel fuel used to power the tanker and not the industrial fuel oil cargo.

"No oil has been leaking from the tank itself, so we're racing against time to siphon the oil so we can avoid the environmental catastrophe," Balilo said.

The coast guard has set a target of seven days to offload the cargo and prevent what Balilo warned ...

Authorities evacuated nearly 300,000 people and suspended public transport across eastern China on Friday, as Typhoon Gaemi brought torrential rains already responsible for five deaths in nearby Taiwan.

Gaemi was the strongest typhoon to hit Taiwan in eight years when it made landfall on Thursday, flooding parts of the island's second-biggest city.

Typhoon Gaemi exacerbated seasonal rains in the Philippines on its path to Taiwan, triggering flooding and landslides that killed 30 people, according to police figures on Friday.

A tanker carrying 1.4 million liters of oil sank off Manila on Thursday, with authorities racing to offload the cargo and avoid an environmental catastrophe.

It had weakened by the time it made landfall in China's eastern Fujian province shortly before 8:00 pm local time (1200 GMT) on Thursday, state media said.

China is enduring a summer of extreme weather, with heavy rains across the east and south coming as much of the ...

An "out of control" wildfire has devoured up to half of the main town in western Canada's popular Jasper National Park, authorities said Thursday, with 400 foreign firefighters called in to help battle the blaze.

While the fire has so far caused no casualties, as many as 25,000 residents and tourists were evacuated from the area before the conflagration suddenly grew in size, overtaking firefighters.

"There is no denying that this is the worst nightmare for any community," said Danielle Smith, Alberta province's premier, adding that damage to the town was estimated at between "30 to 50 percent."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called images of the damage "heartbreaking," and said his government had asked more than 400 firefighters from Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and South Africa to aid local authorities.

"Thank you for your courage, and for working non-stop to fight these wildfires," he said in a post on social media platform X.

A video ...

Self-healing glass may sound like a science fiction concept, but new research from the University of Central Florida demonstrates it's much closer to reality.

In a new study published in the journal Materials Research Society Bulletin, UCF College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL) Pegasus Professor Kathleen Richardson and colleagues from Clemson University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the incredible self-healing capabilities of a specialized chalcogenide glass after it was exposed to gamma radiation.

Chalcogenide glasses are comprised of chalcogen elements - sulfur, selenium, and tellurium - alloyed with elements like germanium or arsenic to create optical glass materials that may be applied to sensors or infrared lenses.

As part of shared research between the universities, Richardson, who is director of UCF's Glass Processing and Characterization Laboratory (GPCL), and her co-investigators observed this unique transformation while ...

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The Cambrian fossil record indicates that most animal phyla had diversified and inhabited the Earth's oceans approximately 518 million years ago. But even though chordates - the group that includes vertebrates like humans - were part of this early animal diversification, they make up a relatively small portion of fossils from more than 50 Cambrian sites worldwide.

In a new paper published in Royal Society Open Science, Harvard research scientist Rudy Lerosey-Aubril and associate professor Javier Ortega-Hernández present their surprising finding of a new species of chordate, and the first soft-bodied vertebrate to be discovered in the Drumian Marjum Formation of the American Great Basin.

This new fossil was part of a collection of Cambrian soft-bodied fossils deposited in the Museum of Natural History of Utah, a long term collaborator with researchers at Harvard.

The discovery of this new species, dubbed Nuucichthys rhynchocephalus, is a valuable contribution ...

London's Mayor Sadiq Khan on Thursday claimed success for his expanded pollution toll zone for motor vehicles, pointing to a drop in levels of a harmful air pollutant since its controversial introduction.

Levels of nitrogen oxides from cars were 13 percent lower than they would have been had the widened pollution charging scheme not been introduced, according to a City Hall report.

For vans the figure was seven percent.

Khan's expanded scheme mirrored similar low-emission zones to improve air quality in more than 200 cities in 10 countries across Europe.

For both vans and cars, the reduction in nitrogen oxide levels was the equivalent to removing 200,000 cars from the road for one year, according to the report, which covers the first six months of the expansion.

Khan faced a fierce backlash to his Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) scheme when he expanded it to areas of outer London last August.

The mayor, who won a third term of office in May, ...

Lululemon is accused by environmental group of using “misleading” sustainability claims despite growing emissions

Team Canada athletes pose for a photo at the reveal of Lululemon's uniforms for the Paris 2024 Olympics, in April 16, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio

Sports clothing firm Lululemon – the official supplier of kit to Canada’s Olympics team – is portraying itself as a sustainable brand despite its rising greenhouse gas emissions and “highly-polluting” activities, according to a complaint filed to the French authorities on Wednesday.

Environmental advocacy group Stand.earth accused the Vancouver-based apparel company of greenwashing in a “first-of-its-kind complaint” submitted to the French Directorate General for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) days before the Olympics Games opening ceremony in Paris.

Stand.earth has called on the French regulator to investigate Lululemon’s ...

The surface of Uranus' moon Ariel is coated with a significant amount of carbon dioxide ice, especially on its "trailing hemisphere" that always faces away from the moon's direction of orbital motion. This fact presents a surprise because even at the frigid reaches of the Uranian system - 20 times farther from the sun than Earth - carbon dioxide readily turns to gas and is lost to space.

Scientists have theorized that something is supplying carbon dioxide to Ariel's surface. Some favor the idea that interactions between the moon's surface and charged particles in Uranus' magnetosphere create carbon dioxide through a process called radiolysis, in which molecules are broken down by ionizing radiation.

But a new study published July 24 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters tips the scales in favor of an alternative theory - that carbon dioxide and other molecules are emerging from inside Ariel, possibly even from a subsurface liquid ocean.

Using NASA's James Webb ...

While many vintners are forced to grapple with extreme weather brought on by climate change, some regions are seeing more consistent harvests and better-quality wines.

Climate change is transforming wine. We’ve seen devastating wildfires threaten or destroy recent harvests in California, Australia, Chile and Portugal; harsh winters decimate vineyards in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley and the Eastern United States; and spring frosts, an age-old enemy of vignerons, increasingly menacing as warmer average temperatures nudge vines to send out their tender shoots earlier in the spring.

It might seem strange to suggest climate change has produced any winners, but if we look to higher latitudes and higher altitudes, we find surprises. It’s hard to imagine England’s delicious sparkling wines rivaling Champagne’s without an increase in average temperatures in recent decades. Colder regions where grapes have traditionally struggled to ripen are enjoying more consistent ...

A type of invisible, unpredictable air turbulence is expected to occur more frequently in the Northern Hemisphere as the climate warms, according to new research. Known as clear air turbulence, the phenomenon also increased in the Northern Hemisphere between 1980 and 2021, the study found.

The results suggest clear air turbulence will increase in most regions affected by the jet stream, especially over North Africa, East Asia and the Middle East, and that the probability of clear air turbulence will increase with each degree of warming. While most people expect turbulence when flying in an airplane through a thunderstorm or over a mountain range, clear air turbulence hits aircraft unexpectedly. And unlike other, more obvious types of turbulence, there is no easy way to detect and avoid clear air turbulence.

"We know that clear air turbulence is the main cause of aviation turbulence, which causes approximately 70% of all weather-related accidents over the United ...

Crave that cup of coffee in the morning? Globally, consumers drink more than 2.2 billion cups daily. Someone grows all that joe: More than 100 million farmers worldwide produce coffee.

Coffee beans consumed across the globe come from two species: Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora, also known as Robusta (or Conilon) coffee. Historically, coffee drinkers prefer Arabica beans for their specific flavor and aroma, said Felipe Ferrao, a University of Florida research assistant scientist in horticultural sciences.

But by 2050, about 80% of Arabica production is predicted to decrease because of climate change. So, Ferrao and colleagues from France (RD2 Vision) and Brazil (Incaper Institution) are investigating to see if they can find alternative coffee cultivars.

Scientists see two alternatives to supplement Arabica: one, adapt coffee farming practices to new environments and two, focus on species that are more resilient. New UF/IFAS-led research shows that Robusta ...

The maker of a massive wind turbine blade that broke apart off Nantucket Island and washed up on the beaches says a manufacturing problem was responsible.

GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik said on an earnings call Wednesday that insufficient bonding at one of its factories in Canada was responsible for the blade coming apart and that there was no indication of a design flaw. As a result, the company will reinspect all 150 blades that had been made at the factory.

"To identify deviations, we are going to go and do this on every blade. Prudent, thorough process," he told the call. "We're not going to talk about the timeline today. We have work to do. But I have a high degree of confidence that we can do this."

Parts of the blade, which is more than 100 meters (109 yards) long, began to fall into the ocean July 13 at the Vineyard Wind project and crews in boats and on beaches have been collecting truckloads of debris ever since. The company said that the debris ...

A sustainable source for clean energy may lie in old soda cans and seawater. MIT engineers have found that when the aluminum in soda cans is exposed in its pure form and mixed with seawater, the solution bubbles up and naturally produces hydrogen - a gas that can be subsequently used to power an engine or fuel cell without generating carbon emissions. What's more, this simple reaction can be sped up by adding a common stimulant: caffeine.

In a study appearing today in the journal Cell Reports Physical Science, the researchers show they can produce hydrogen gas by dropping pretreated, pebble-sized aluminum pellets into a beaker of filtered seawater. The aluminum is pretreated with a rare-metal alloy that effectively scrubs aluminum into a pure form that can react with seawater to generate hydrogen. The salt ions in the seawater can in turn attract and recover the alloy, which can be reused to generate more hydrogen in a sustainable cycle.

The team found that this ...

In a paper in Physical Review Letters scientists from the department Living Matter Physics at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) propose a mechanism on how energy barriers in complex systems can be overcome. These findings can help to engineer molecular machines and to understand the self-organization of active matter.

In both physics and biology, systems aim to achieve a state of minimum energy: when a ball rolls down a ramp and over an uneven sandy surface, it eventually comes to a stop in a hollow. Without adding more energy from the outside, it will not start moving again, even if there is a slope or deeper hollow close by to lower the energy level even further.

In biology, this phenomenon is also known from protein folding. Especially in complex systems, proteins might fall into a local energy minimum before completing their assembly. This hampers their function and causes them to be trapped in a static equilibrium state from ...

Why GreenBiz is now Trellis by Joel Makower

The banking, electric utilities and automotive sectors have made the largest improvements in sustainability performance, according to a GlobeScan/ERM survey.

The newly released Sustainability Leaders 2024 Survey reveals that although sustainability experts’ perceptions of how well sectors are managing their transition to sustainability have improved over the last few years, only one-third or fewer say performance is excellent, even for the top-rated sectors. Overall, sustainability professionals award mostly poor ratings for all sectors except forest products and life sciences.

While the forest products and life sciences sectors are viewed most positively by experts on managing their transition to sustainable development, all seven top-rated sectors have seen improved performance on sustainability. The largest improvements in performance over the past decade are seen in the banking/finance, electric utilities, ...

High temperatures, droughts and wildfire last year caused some forests to wilt and burn enough to degrade the ability of the land to lock away carbon dioxide.

Earth’s forests lost much of their ability to absorb the carbon dioxide humans pumped into the air last year, according to a new study that is causing concern among climate scientists that a crucial damper on climate change underwent an unprecedented deterioration.

Temperatures in 2023 were so high - and the droughts and wildfires that came with them were so severe - that forests in various parts of the world wilted and burned enough to have degraded the ability of the land to lock away carbon dioxide and act as a check on global warming, the study said.

The scientists behind the research, which focuses on 2023, caution that their findings are preliminary. But the work represents a disturbing data point - one that, if it turns into a trend, spells trouble for the planet and the people on it.

“We ...

A forest fire at a major national park in western Canada reached an evacuated town on Wednesday evening, with the army preparing to send in reinforcements.

The fire was spreading through Jasper National Park and destroyed several buildings in the town of Jasper, which had been evacuated on Monday night, according to park officials.

"Significant loss has occurred within the townsite," a post on the park's page said on social media platform X.

"Firefighters remain in town and are working to save as many structures as possible and to protect critical infrastructure," including the Trans Mountain Pipeline, it said.

Authorities have not specified what infrastructure was destroyed.

Around 25,000 people have been evacuated due to recent forest fires in the region, which is also fighting a heat wave.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday his government had approved a request by Alberta province for federal assistance.

"We're deploying ...

Scientists have used high-tech underwater robots to take a closer look at the deep offshore reefs on the east coast of Bruny Island in Tasmania and have revealed the seabed biodiversity there for the first time.

In a new study, researchers at the University of Tasmania's Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) collected more than 61,000 images of three reef systems in Storm Bay at depths of 30–60 meters. This was achieved using an advanced Autonomous Underwater Vehicle operated in partnership with the University of Sydney's Australian Center for Field Robotics, as part of Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS).

"The imagery we captured has given us an initial understanding of the seabed biodiversity across these deep offshore reefs, and an inventory that provides an important baseline for tracking how that biodiversity changes over time," said IMAS marine ecologist Ashlee Bastiaansen, who is the lead author of the study published in ...