May, 2023

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In Iowa, a Tale of Politics, Power, and Contaminated Water

Circle of Blue

In Iowa, a Tale of Politics, Power, and Contaminated Water Lawmakers silence Chris Jones, a prominent University of Iowa water quality researcher. By Keith Schneider, Circle of Blue – May 25, 2023 IOWA CITY, IOWA – Here in the heart of US farm country, the wretched quality of Iowa waterways is a well-known lament. Farm fields laden with synthetic fertilizers and manure produce bounties of over 2 billion bushels of corn each year, but those same fields also produce a torrent of run-off that

Politics 364
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California Legislature Could Make Overdue Changes to Water Rights if These Three Bills Pass

Union of Concerned Scientists

For the first time in several decades , policy makers in Sacramento seem poised to actually do something about California’s dysfunctional water rights systems. There are three promising policies winding their way through the Legislature this session. All three bills just made it out of the committee review process, and are slated to be voted on by June 2.

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The Upper Atmosphere Is Cooling, Prompting New Climate Concerns

Yale E360

A new study reaffirming that global climate change is human-made also found the upper atmosphere is cooling dramatically because of rising CO2 levels. Scientists are worried about the effect this cooling could have on orbiting satellites, the ozone layer, and Earth’s weather.

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ABB Partners to Build an Offshore Wind Farm to Create Green Hydrogen

Environment + Energy Leader

The ABB Energy Industries is driving the move toward renewable hydrogen with an offshore wind project: SoutH2Port – a project that has two key hurdles, which include the cost of making hydrogen from wind and solar and building offshore wind farms.

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Implementing D.E.J.I. Strategies in Energy, Environment, and Transportation

Speaker: Antoine M. Thompson, Executive Director of the Greater Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition

Diversity, Equity, Justice, and Inclusion (DEJI) policies, programs, and initiatives are critically important as we move forward with public and private sector climate and sustainability goals and plans. Underserved and socially, economically, and racially disadvantaged communities bear the burden of pollution, higher energy costs, limited resources, and limited investments in the clean energy and transportation sectors.

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CMIP6: Not-so-sudden stratospheric cooling

Real Climate

As predicted in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald , the stratosphere has been cooling. A new paper by Ben Santer and colleagues has appeared in PNAS where they extend their previous work on the detection and attribution of anthropogenic climate change to include the upper stratosphere, using observations from the Stratospheric Sounding Units (SSUs) (and their successors, the AMSU instruments) that have flown since 1979.

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The role of regulatory relationships in wastewater innovation

Legal Planet

Read our recent article. Public water and wastewater utilities are increasingly struggling to meet society’s expectations. Their basic infrastructure is aging, budgets are tight, and they face a barrage of stressors, from population growth to climate change and shifting regulatory expectations. What’s more, in addition to performing their traditional function of protecting human health and water quality, many wastewater utilities are being asked to contribute to meeting other goals.

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An A to Z of Fossil Fuel Industry Deception

Union of Concerned Scientists

This year has brought new evidence of what major fossil fuel companies knew and when about the role their products play in climate change, as well as what they did in spite of what they knew. The evidence builds on revelations from the US House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s investigation during the last Congress into Big Oil’s climate disinformation.

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Beyond Factory Farms: A New Look at the Rights of Animals

Yale E360

Philosopher Peter Singer’s book, Animal Liberation , helped launch the animal rights movement nearly 50 years ago. He talks with Yale E360 about the evolution of our understanding of how animals feel pain and how humans are not so different from other species as we once thought.

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Expect $264B of Investment in Electric Vehicle Charging by 2030

Environment + Energy Leader

Global technology company Siemens predicts that the market for wireless EV charging in Europe and North America will reach $2 billion by 2028. The post Expect $264B of Investment in Electric Vehicle Charging by 2030 appeared first on Environment+Energy Leader.

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Evaluation of GCM simulations with a regional focus.

Real Climate

Do the global climate models (GCMs) we use for describing future climate change really capture the change and variations in the region that we want to study? There are widely used tools for evaluating global climate models, such as the ESMValTool , but they don’t provide the answers that I seek. I use GCMs to provide information about large-scale conditions, processes and phenomena in the atmosphere that I can use as predictors in downscaling future climate projections.

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Shaping a Resilient Future: Climate Impact on Vulnerable Populations

Speaker: Laurie Schoeman Director, Climate & Sustainability, Capital

As households and communities across the nation face challenges such as hurricanes, wildfires, drought, extreme heat and cold, and thawing permafrost and flooding, we are increasingly searching for ways to mitigate and prevent climate impacts. During this event, national climate and housing expert Laurie Schoeman will discuss topics including: The two paths for climate action: decarbonization and adaptation.

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James Hansen Warns of a Short-Term Climate Shock Bringing 2 Degrees of Warming by 2050

Inside Climate News

The famed researcher publicly released a preliminary version of a paper-in-progress with grim predictions of short- and long-term warming, but not all climate scientists agree with its conclusions. By Bob Berwyn A team of scientists led by former NASA climate researcher James Hansen, who formally raised the alarm about climate change to U.S. government leaders in his 1988 testimony to Congress , is working on a new study that warns of a possible short-term spike of planetary heating 2 degrees Ce

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HotSpots H2O: Trouble Areas Emerge as Summer Looms

Circle of Blue

Eqypt and its cities like Cairo rely almost exclusively on the Nile for water supplies, yet experts say any unrest upriver in Sudan will have repercussions on Egypt’s water security. J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue Sun-baked fields and dusty reservoirs dot the landscape of southern Spain. Travel east in the Mediterranean and Tunisia is cutting urban water service at night to conserve supplies amid a harsh, multi-year drought.

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California’s Water Rights System is Inequitable, Inadequate, and Possibly, About to Change

Union of Concerned Scientists

During a California State Assembly informational hearing earlier this year, there seemed to be consensus that California’s 19 th century water rights system is not well suited to the social context and climate of the 21st century. Change is necessary and may be coming.  This outdated water rights system is based on historic and continued disenfranchisement and dispossession.

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Finland Drained Its Peatlands. He’s Helping Bring Them Back

Yale E360

Tero Mustonen has led a successful effort to restore roughly 80 areas of ecologically critical peatlands across his native Finland. In an interview, he talks about the importance of bringing Indigenous knowledge to rewilding initiatives in far northern regions and beyond.

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Sustainability at Retail

Sustainability impacts every nation, company, and person around the world. So much so that, in 2015, the United Nations (UN) issued a call for action by all countries to work toward sustainable development. In response to this and as part of a global Sustainability at Retail initiative, Shop! worked collaboratively with its global affiliates to address these critical issues in this white paper.

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DOW on Route to Making Chemicals Using Small Modular Reactors

Environment + Energy Leader

When Dow and X-energy inked an agreement to develop an advanced nuclear reactor at one of Dow’s sites along the Gulf Coast, it was a big deal – a technology the two will license to other industrial customers.

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New Associate Editors 2023: Ecological Solutions and Evidence

The Applied Ecologist

Ecological Solutions and Evidence is delighted to announce 27 new Associate Editors who have joined the Editorial Board following our latest open call across all seven BES journals. At the end of 2022, the British Ecological Society journals conducted an open recruitment process for Associate Editors across all seven BES journals.

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Lab-grown meat could be 25 times worse for the climate than beef

New Scientist

Analysis finds the carbon footprint of cultivated meat is likely to be higher than beef if current production methods are scaled up because they are still highly energy-intensive

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Who Said Recycling Was Green? It Makes Microplastics By the Ton

Inside Climate News

A study finds one plastics recycling plant in the U.K. produces as much as 3 million pounds of microplastics a year—and that’s with filtering. By James Bruggers Research out of Scotland suggests that the chopping, shredding and washing of plastic in recycling facilities may turn as much as six to 13 percent of incoming waste into microplastics—tiny, toxic particles that are an emerging and ubiquitous environmental health concern for the planet and people.

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Why Congress Should Pass the A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act

Union of Concerned Scientists

In March, one of the most comprehensive bills for advancing environmental justice was reintroduced in the US House and Senate: the A. Donald McEachin Environmental Justice for All Act (EJ for All Act). The bill, introduced in the House by Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Barbara Lee, and Sens. Cory Booker and Tammy Duckworth on the Senate side, is named in honor of the late Rep.

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Avian Flu Outbreaks in Marine Mammals Mark New Era for Deadly Virus

Yale E360

A highly pathogenic strain of avian influenza has killed thousands of wild birds and is now infecting seals and other marine mammals. Researchers know the virus can jump from birds to mammals, but they are on alert to see if it can be transmitted from mammal to mammal.

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WWF Proposes Global Ban on ‘High-Risk, Unnecessary’ Single-Use Plastics

Environment + Energy Leader

Research on plastic pollution done by WWF and Eunomia will present the feasibility of banning certain plastics from circulation at the UN plastic pollution treaty talks later this month.

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Mountain Valley Pipeline Pushed Forward on False Claims of Need

NRDC

Claims that MVP is needed for energy security or demand—or that it is nearly built and has no legal hurdles ahead—are contradicted by data.

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The Tragedy on the Financial Horizon is Closer Than You Think

Law Columbia

Credit: Ilmi Granoff In September 2015, then Bank of England Governor Mark Carney gave a landmark speech on the “ Tragedy of the Horizon.” The concept was simple: climate change creates tremendous risk for financial markets, but these mounting risks are ignored by investors due to the market’s tendency towards myopia. The speech marked a significant turning point in finance: the starting gun in the race to internalize climate-related financial risks.

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Eleven Chemical Plants in China and One in the U.S. Emit a Climate Super-Pollutant Called Nitrous Oxide That’s 273 Times More Potent Than Carbon Dioxide

Inside Climate News

Proven, low-cost pollution controls could quickly curb those emissions, but neither China nor the U.S. require abatement measures used by other plants around the world. By Phil McKenna Twelve chemical plants in China and the United States emit a potent climate pollutant with collective emissions equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 31 million automobiles, according to a report published on Thursday by Global Efficiency Intelligence , an industrial decarbonization research and consulti

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Illinois Dust Storm Disaster Is a Warning for Agriculture

Union of Concerned Scientists

On a stretch of interstate highway in central Illinois last week, a freak dust storm caused a series of massive vehicle pileups that killed seven people and injured dozens more. The cause of the tragedy, according to Illinois State Police , was “excessive winds blowing dirt from farm fields across the highway leading to zero visibility.” News reports noted that dust storms are rare in Illinois, but drier, hotter conditions in many farming communities could make such events more frequ

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As Ocean Oxygen Levels Dip, Fish Face an Uncertain Future

Yale E360

Global warming not only increases ocean temperatures, it triggers a cascade of effects that are stripping the seas of oxygen. Fish are already moving to new waters in search of oxygen, and scientists are warning of the long-term threat to fish species and marine ecosystems.

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Rubicon Partners with Atlanta for Sustainable, Efficient Public Works Operations

Environment + Energy Leader

The company's cloud-based smarty city technology will help Atlanta's Department of Public Works implement sustainable operations for its existing fleet.

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A wolf-dog hybrid has been confirmed in India for the first time

New Scientist

A strange canine was spotted in a pack of wolves near Pune in western India, but it stood out for its lighter coat and dog-like facial features.

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Triangle T Water District and the Absurdities of CA Water

NRDC

While it may not be an outlier, the absurdity of the Triangle T Water District is a great example of why people say that in California, water flows uphill towards money.

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Humans evolved to walk with an extra spring in our step

Frontiers

by Angharad Brewer Gillham, Frontiers science writer Image/Shutterstock.com Scientists have discovered that the recoil created by the flexible arch of human feet helps position our legs in the optimal posture for moving forward in bipedal walking. Understanding how our joints help modern humans walk upright could help us track the evolution of bipedalism and improve care for patients with foot problems.

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Investors Need to Know the Full Scope of Corporate Carbon Emissions

Union of Concerned Scientists

The devil is in the details, as the saying goes, and the climate-related details bedeviling many oil and gas company boardrooms this spring sound like a Star Trek galaxy. They’re called Scope 3 emissions, and they are key to understanding the big picture of a company’s impact on the environment. It’s a picture investors are currently missing. First, let me explain the three “scopes” of carbon emissions.

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As Plastics Keep Piling Up, Can ‘Advanced’ Recycling Cut the Waste?

Yale E360

Proponents of a process called pyrolysis — including oil and gas companies — contend it will keep post-consumer plastics out of landfills and reduce pollution. But critics say that by converting waste to petroleum feedstock, it will only perpetuate a dependence on fossil fuels.

Waste 246
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Can European Industry Wean Itself From Russian Natural Gas?

Environment + Energy Leader

McKinsey & Company says European industrials reduced their demand by 25 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But it adds that China and India could replace that by consuming 35 billion cubic meters, which they get at a discount.

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Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

New Scientist

High-frequency brainwaves in specific regions of the brain are thought to be a hallmark of consciousness and memory retrieval – now they have been recorded in two people as they died01

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