No good deed goes unpunished—and that includes trying to slow climate change. By cutting greenhouse gas emissions, humanity will spew out fewer planet-cooling aerosols—small particles of pollution that act like tiny umbrellas to bounce some of the sun’s energy back into space. “Even more important than this direct reflection effect, they alter the properties of … Read more
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Last week, the Biden administration made it official: American cars are really going electric. The US Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule, long in the works, that will require automakers selling in the United States to dramatically boost the number of battery-powered vehicles sold this decade, putting a serious dent in the country’s carbon emissions … Read more
The Biden administration on Monday announced it will distribute up to $6 billion to curb planet-warming emissions in some of America’s most polluting industries, including chemical, metal and cement operations. The awards, which the administration called the “largest investment in industrial decarbonization in American history,” are aimed at both advancing the administration’s climate goals and … Read more
Global energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) hit a record high last year, driven partly by increased fossil fuel use in countries where droughts hampered hydropower production, International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday. Steep cuts in CO2 emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, will be needed in the coming years if targets to limit a global rise in … Read more
“The answer ended up being, yes, in all US states, on average heat pumps will reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” says Eric Wilson, a senior research engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the lead author of the new paper. “Even if it’s a relatively low-efficiency heat pump that relies on electric resistance heating during … Read more
So whatâs going on here? For one, the oceans have been steadily warming over the decades, absorbing something like 90 percent of the extra heat that humans have added to the atmosphere. âThe oceans are our saviors, in a way,â says biological oceanographer Francisco Chavez of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California. âThings … Read more
While everyone’s been focused on accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles to cut carbon emissions, a technological hero has been rapidly ascending under the radar: the heat pump. Instead of burning natural gas or coal to produce heat, this fully electric device extracts warmth from outdoor air—even when it’s freezing outside—and pumps it inside to … Read more
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In this graph, the orange line shows the global sea surface temperature throughout 2023. The other squiggles are previous years, with the uppermost dashed black line being the average between 1982 and 2011. The dark black line at upper left is where we’re starting out 2024. Notice it’s already at a sky-high level several months … Read more
In California, the Bay Area’s Contra Costa County will get $15 million, for instance, to deploy more than 100 chargers at its libraries. In Alaska, the Chilkoot Indian Association will get $1.4 million for a charging station in the disadvantaged community of Haines. The city of Mesa, in Arizona, will get $12 million for a … Read more
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In addition to burying solid carbon or sprinkling it on fields, researchers are also turning waste biomass into liquid carbon—oil, essentially, that they pump back into the ground instead of pumping the fossil variety up. “What we do at the highest level is we make barbecue sauce—or liquid smoke for barbecue sauce—and then we inject … Read more
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