My Climate Change News

The power plants, due to be shut down, would be kept in reserve to provide electricity if Russia ended shipments of natural gas.

Germany plans to order coal-fired power plants that were due to be shut down to be placed in reserve, as part of a plan to ensure the country can keep the lights on if supplies of natural gas from Russia are abruptly cut.

A bill drawn up this week by the economy ministry, led by Robert Habeck, a member of the Greens, envisions maintaining power plants that burn coal and brown coal, or lignite, so they could be fired up on short notice.

“This means that the short-term use of coal-fired plants in the electricity sector is made possible on demand, should the need arise,” it states. The measure still requires approval by the cabinet of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Natural gas, much of it from Russia, accounted for 15 percent of Germany’s electricity generation in 2021, the ministry said, although it expected that number to be lower ...

Sixteen youth plaintiffs are suing the state of Montana for their right to access a clean and healthful environment in a case scheduled to go to trial next year.

Attorneys for the Oregon-based Our Children’s Trust, the Western Environmental Law Center and Kalispell-based McGarvey Law representing the kids announced the trial date this week. The group says in Held v. Montana, that the state’s support of fossil fuels have contributed to climate change.

According to University of Montana law professor Anthony Johnstone, broad climate change challenges like this one are rare, but they have become more common in recent years.

“Almost all of them have failed for one reason or the other, so this would be the first one in Montana, and possibly the first one in the nation, to get as far as a trial.”

According to Our Children's Trust, the trial will be the first youth climate trial in US history

Johnstone said the lawsuit is unlike similar lawsuits because ...

China will end subsidies for electric and hybrid cars at the end of the year, authorities have announced, saying the strength of sales in the sector meant state support was no longer needed. In a statement published Friday, the Ministry of Finance said purchase subsidies would be reduced by 30 percent from the beginning of 2022 before being scrapped completely by the end of the year.

"Given the growth of the industry for vehicles with new energy, the sales trends and the smooth transition of manufacturers, the subsidies... will end on December 31," the ministry said.

Sales of electric and hybrid cars have boomed in China, with increases of more than 100 percent year-on-year in recent months.

The cars are set to represent 18 percent of all vehicle sales in 2022, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) estimated last week. In 2019, they accounted for only five percent.

Of the 27.5 million vehicles set to be sold this year, according to ...

Libraries in Gloucestershire could play their part in helping to tackle climate change under new plans.

Extra trees will be planted in library car parks to encourage wildlife and electric vehicle charging points are to be installed under the scheme.

Council bosses are now asking for views from members of the public.

The draft strategy also aims to maintain the core service of providing free access to a wide range of books and information.

This has been extended to include an extensive catalogue of e-books and e-magazines that can be accessed from home, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

The library strategy sets out how services will continue to develop to meet changing demands and covers five key themes, including creativity, climate and the community.

Libraries cabinet member, conservative Dave Norman, said he hoped as many people as possible will take part in the consultation.

"The strategy sets out the ambitions of the ...

With responsible forestry, natural climate solutions, regenerative building practices and consumer demand for environmentally responsible products at the forefront, FSC is inviting companies to showcase their leadership and inspire others to raise the bar.

“When focusing on wood products, that’s where FSC comes in. It’s proven to be the most reputable and stringent option; so, we rely on it for all of our projects,” says Katie Stanford of STOK, a leading built-environment sustainability firm, in a recent webinar on responsible forestry. The webinar, produced by Sustainable Brands™, also included Procter & Gamble’s Christopher Reeves and Brad Kahn of Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) US.

A peer-reviewed study by Ecotrust and the University of Washington showed that forests managed to FSC standards are globally significant in their ability to store large quantities of carbon, which is key to mitigating the effects of climate change.

While some have argued that ...

Scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) and James Cook University (JCU) have identified an "exquisite" natural mechanism that helps plants limit their water loss with little effect on carbon dioxide (CO2) intake -- an essential process for photosynthesis, plant growth and crop yield.

The discovery, led by Dr Chin Wong from ANU, is expected to help agricultural scientists and plant breeders develop more water-efficient crops.

Study co-author Dr Diego Marquez from ANU said the findings will have significant implications for the agricultural industry and could lead to more resilient crops that are capable of withstanding extreme weather events, including drought.

"Plants continuously lose water through pores in the 'skin' of their leaves. These same pores allow CO2 to enter the leaves and are critical to their survival," Dr Marquez said.

"For every unit of CO2 gained, plants typically lose hundreds of units of water. This is why plants ...

It was just a piece of junk sitting in the back of a lab at the MIT Nuclear Reactor facility, ready to be disposed of. But it became the key to demonstrating a more comprehensive way of detecting atomic-level structural damage in materials -- an approach that will aid the development of new materials, and could potentially support the ongoing operation of carbon-emission-free nuclear power plants, which would help alleviate global climate change.

A tiny titanium nut that had been removed from inside the reactor was just the kind of material needed to prove that this new technique, developed at MIT and at other institutions, provides a way to probe defects created inside materials, including those that have been exposed to radiation, with five times greater sensitivity than existing methods.

The new approach revealed that much of the damage that takes place inside reactors is at the atomic scale, and as a result is difficult to detect using existing methods. The ...

Using an inexpensive polymer called melamine -- the main component of Formica -- chemists have created a cheap, easy and energy-efficient way to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, a key goal for the United States and other nations as they seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The process for synthesizing the melamine material, published this week in the journal Science Advances, could potentially be scaled down to capture emissions from vehicle exhaust or other movable sources of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning makes up about 75% of all greenhouse gases produced in the U.S.

The new material is simple to make, requiring primarily off-the-shelf melamine powder -- which today costs about $40 per ton -- along with formaldehyde and cyanuric acid, a chemical that, among other uses, is added with chlorine to swimming pools.

"We wanted to think about a carbon capture material that was derived from sources that were really cheap and ...

Concerns regarding scarcity, high prices, and safety regarding the long-term use of lithium-ion batteries has prompted a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to propose a greener, more efficient, and less expensive energy storage alternative.

"The vast majority of rechargeable battery products are based on lithium-ion technology, which is the gold standard in terms of performance," said Dr. Koratkar. "However, the Achilles' heel for lithium-ion technology is cost. Lithium is a limited resource on the planet, and its price has increased drastically in recent years. We are working on an inexpensive, abundant, safe, and sustainable battery chemistry that uses calcium ions in an aqueous, water-based electrolyte."

While the larger size and higher charge density of calcium ions relative to lithium impairs diffusion kinetics and cyclic stability, Dr. Koratkar and his team offer oxide structures containing big open spaces (heptagonal and hexagonal ...

Agri-environment schemes can significantly increase local bird and butterfly populations without damaging food production, a long-term research project has found.

Scientists from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) spent a decade intensively monitoring the impacts of a large-scale Defra-funded experiment at Hillesden, a 1,000-hectare commercial arable farm in Buckinghamshire. Beginning in 2005, this involved creating several wildlife habitats, including seed-bearing plants for birds, wildflowers for pollinators and tussocky grass margins to support a range of birds, insects and small mammals.

The experiment assessed the effectiveness of these agri-environmental measures in reducing biodiversity losses caused by the intensification of UK farming practices since the Second World War, including declines in species that are essential for agricultural production such as pollinators and predators of crop pests.

In the longest-running monitoring study of ...

Blood samples show that children have elevated markers of inflammation, such as interleukin 6, if they were exposed to higher air pollution. Further, higher air pollution was linked to lower cardiac autonomic regulation in children, which impacts how fast the heart beats and how hard it pumps, according to the study.

In the study, published Aug. 3 date in the journal New Directions for Child and Adolescent Research, researchers looked at blood samples from more than 100 healthy children ages 9-11 in the Sacramento area where pollutants near their homes were recorded by the Environmental Protection Agency. The study was authored by Anna M. Parenteau, a doctoral student, and Camelia E. Hostinar, associate professor, both from the UC Davis Department of Psychology. The work took place at UC Davis.

These findings are important because exposure to pollutants released during wildfires has been related to numerous negative health outcomes in children, who have smaller ...

Growth of the Amazon rainforest in our increasingly carbon-rich atmosphere could be limited by a lack of phosphorus in the soil, new research shows.

Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) cause plants to grow more quickly, meaning they store more carbon.

This storage -- especially in huge forests like the Amazon -- helps to limit rising CO2 levels, slowing climate change.

However, plants also need nutrients to grow, and the new study shows that availability of a particular nutrient, phosphorus, could limit the Amazon's ability to increase productivity (growth rate) as CO2 rises.

This could also make the rainforest less resilient to climate change, the researchers warn.

The study, published in the journal Nature, was carried out by an international team led by Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) and the University of Exeter.

"Our results question the potential for current high rates of carbon uptake in Amazonia to ...

A new model developed by Caltech and JPL researchers suggests that Antarctica's ice shelves may be melting at an accelerated rate, which could eventually contribute to more rapid sea level rise. The model accounts for an often-overlooked narrow ocean current along the Antarctic coast and simulates how rapidly flowing freshwater, melted from the ice shelves, can trap dense warm ocean water at the base of the ice, causing it to warm and melt even more.

The study was conducted in the laboratory of Andy Thompson, professor of environmental science and engineering, and appears in the journal Science Advances on August 12.

Ice shelves are outcroppings of the Antarctic ice sheet, found where the ice juts out from land and floats on top of the ocean. The shelves, which are each several hundred meters thick, act as a protective buffer for the mainland ice, keeping the whole ice sheet from flowing into the ocean (which would dramatically raise global sea levels). However, a ...

The concrete industry is just one of many looking at new manufacturing methods to reduce its carbon footprint. These efforts are essential to fulfilling the Paris Agreement, which asks each of its signees to achieve a net-zero carbon economy by 2050. However, a new study from researchers in Japan and Belgium and focusing exclusively on Japan concludes that improved manufacturing technologies will only get the industry within eighty percent of its goal. Using a dynamic material flows analysis model, the study claim that the other twenty percent will have to come from changes in how concrete is consumed and managed, putting expectations on the buyer as well as the seller.

Electric cars, fluorescent lights, water-saving shower heads, these are all examples of efforts to lower our carbon footprint. However, the energy savings are made from the supply side, with companies developing new technologies that reduce the amount of energy consumed for the same amount of use. ...

The work, which was conducted over a 15-year period (2005-2019) through a partnership between scientists from the UPV/EHU and the Centre d'Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive in Montpellier (CEFE-CNRS), focused on two populations of blue tits in the south of France, one located on the outskirts of Montpellier and the other in the northwest of the island of Corsica.

Each year between 2005 and 2019, all breeding blue tits in each population were captured. As a result, researchers from the two institutions were able to gather more than 5,800 observations on the colouring and other characteristics of the blue tits.

The blue tit is characterised by its striking colouring: a blue crest and a yellow breast. The results obtained in the study show a decrease in both populations of blue and yellow colouration between 2005 and 2019. In other words, the blue crests and yellow breasts of blue tits in these two populations are on average less colourful right now than when ...

The worst effects of global warming on the world's largest ice sheet could be avoided if nations around the world succeed in meeting climate targets outlined in the Paris Agreement.

That's the call from an international team of climate scientists, including experts from The Australian National University (ANU) and the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science (ACEAS), who have examined how much sea levels could rise if climate change melts the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS).

The team's research, published in Nature, suggests by limiting global temperatures to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the EAIS is predicted to add less than half a metre to sea-level rise by the year 2500. If the targets aren't met, sea-level rise from the EAIS alone could climb up to five metres in the same time period.

If greenhouse gas emissions are drastically scaled back and only a marginal rise in global warming is recorded, the research team ...

Aerosol particles in the atmosphere have a bigger impact on cloud cover -- but less effect on cloud brightness -- than previously thought, new research shows.

Aerosols are tiny particles suspended in the atmosphere, and they play a key role in the formation of clouds.

With aerosols increasing due to human activities, numerous assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have suggested they could have an important impact on climate change because clouds reflect sunlight and therefore keep temperatures cooler.

However, this cooling impact of aerosols on clouds is difficult to measure, and this has led to significant uncertainty climate change projections.

The new study -- led by the University of Exeter, with national and international academic partners and the UK's Met Office -- used the 2014 Icelandic volcano eruption to investigate this.

"This massive aerosol plume in an otherwise near-pristine environment provided an ideal ...

Previous research, such as that performed by Nobel laureate Giulio Natta's group in the 1960s, created polymers using a technique called asymmetric cationic polymerization. However, their group could not control the molecular weight. Controlling the molecular weight of polymers, especially those used in the engineering of plastics, is important because it affects many of the properties of the plastics. Stiffer-flowing, high molecular weight polymers offer the best performance as they are tougher and more resistant to chemical and environmental damage.

A group that includes Lecturer Mineto Uchiyama and Professor Masami Kamigaito of the Graduate School of Engineering at Nagoya University, and Professor Kotaro Sato of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, has successfully synthesized optically active polymers with controlled molecular weight. To develop the combination technique of asymmetric living cationic polymerization, they combined two existing techniques: their living ...

A common weed harbors important clues about how to create drought resistant crops in a world beset by climate change.

Yale scientists describe how Portulaca oleracea, commonly known as purslane, integrates two distinct metabolic pathways to create a novel type of photosynthesis that enables the weed to endure drought while remaining highly productive, they report August 5 in the journal Science Advances.

"This is a very rare combination of traits and has created a kind of 'super plant' -- one that could be potentially useful in endeavors such as crop engineering," said Yale's Erika Edwards, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and senior author of the paper.

Plants have independently evolved a variety of distinct mechanisms to improve photosynthesis, the process by which green plants use sunlight to synthesize nutrients from carbon dioxide and water. For instance, corn and sugarcane evolved what is called C4 photosynthesis, which allows the plant to ...

Countless studies have sought to quantify various aspects of human impacts on the planet, but sorting through that data to get answers about the effect we're actually having can be a challenge for researchers, policymakers, and the public alike. A team of researchers has centralized over 300 key figures in the Human Impacts Database, hosted at Anthroponumbers.org. In a paper publishing in the journal Patterns on August 3, the authors outline the kinds of data they have gathered -- and how they hope it helps people make sense of the climate crisis.

"Writing from California, as several of the authors are, where we now have a "wildfire season" and a multi-decadal drought, we wanted to develop a deeper understanding of the ways in which human activities might have produced such dramatic and consequential changes in our local and global environment," say the authors, led by Griffin Chure, an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. "In our search for answers…, ...