Meanwhile, back in the real world

There's too much carbon in the atmosphere, so it's hot

It’s possible to become entirely transfixed by the weirdo show every underway in DC. Today’s installments: Donald Trump declares that Joe Biden was killed in 2020 and replaced by a robot clone, Donald Trump won’t read his intelligence briefings so they’re going to be turned into a private tv show with Fox-like anchors, Donald Trump…. We need to pay some attention to the madness, and I hope that everyone is registered to take part in a demonstration on No Kings Day June 14 .

But staying constantly tuned in is debilitating (as Nina Simone would say, ‘Elon Musk made me lose my rest’), and we also need to pay some attention to the actual world around us, if only for the additional motivation to get to work. Like, for instance, what’s that in the air? If you live in the upper Midwest or parts of the northeast, it’s probably smoke, coming from the truly massive wildfires afflicting northern Manitoba, a province largely spared from the last giant round of Canadian forest fires in 2023. As the Washington Post reports:

Air quality alerts are in effect for Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, with the air quality index predicted to reach Level 3 — unhealthy for sensitive groups — or 4, unhealthy for all. These alerts mean people should avoid strenuous outdoor activities, especially those with heart disease and asthma, and keep windows closed to prevent smoke from getting indoors.

I’ve been in some of these parts of northern Canada, where First Nations people predominate: that they’re having to flee these massive blazes is incredibly sad, since they’ve done nothing to cause them. Wab Kinew, the Ojibway-speaking provincial premier, declared a state of emergency on Wednesday—as Julia-Simone Rutgers reports for the Narwhal, he called the situation:

“very, very serious,” especially as large fires spread across several parts of the province at once. “[Normally] you would have one region having a challenge at a given time … this year, it’s all the regions at the same time.”

There had been warning signs in the weeks before the fires: a lack of spring rain, backcountry fire bans and an uncharacteristic May heat wave. A few weeks ago, as one resident explained, “it seemed to totally dry up.”

In case you’re wondering, “will we see a lot more of this?,” the World Meteorological Organization reported this week that temperatures are rising considerably faster than expected and that we will officially pass the 1.5 degree temperature mark in the next two years. (We’ve passed it in the last two years, but we only declare these things to be real in a five-year cycle). Indeed, if you read down to page 7 of the report, it declares that there is now a one percent chance we will top two degrees in the next few years. Let me quote that passage just because it is so mindblowing:

There is now also a non-zero chance (1%) of at least one year exceeding 2°C in 2025-2029.

The scale of all of this is mindblowing: a new study in Nature indicates that one of the strange anomalies on the global temperature map—the “cold blob” south of Greenland—is indeed the result of weakening Atlantic currents (this is the faltering Gulf Stream that scientists have been worrying about for years). As Kui-Yuan Li and Wei Liu of the University of California Riverside put it in Nature:

Here we use observations as a benchmark and climate models as a tool to demonstrate that only models simulating a weakened historical Atlantic overturning can broadly reproduce the observed cooling and freshening in the warming hole region. This, in turn, indicates that the realistic Atlantic overturning slowed between 1900 and 2005, at a rate of −1.01 to −2.97 Sv century⁻¹ (1 Sv = 10⁶ m³ s⁻¹), according to a sea-surface-temperature-based fingerprint index estimate.

The Trump administration, of course, wants this kind of research to stop. The administration’s official budget proposal was released yesterday, and it essentially zeroes out research in geophysics and decimates science funding in general. We probably won’t feel this as quickly as we’ll feel the parallel decimation of FEMA and NOAA funding (especially as hurricane season kicks off today). But we will feel it soon enough.

Let me state it plainly: we are rushing into the most dangerous period in human history, and the Trump administration seems determined that we do it blindly. It’s inconceivably stupid, and it’s entirely real. And the planet doesn’t care: physics will not cut us any slack because we elected a moron.

In other energy and climate news:

+A new study from the International Energy Agency found that EV batteries got 20% cheaper last year, the steepest drop since 2017

Battery pack prices fell in all markets, the report said. But the biggest drops were in—and probably not surprisingly—China. That country has a significant lead in the battery race, both in terms of securing the supply chain and overall technological development.

"China was responsible for 80% of global battery cell production in 2024, while the remainder was produced in the United States, the European Union, Korea and Japan," the study said. "The faster pace of battery cost reduction and innovation in China has been enabled by fierce competition that has driven down profit margins for most producers (though not all), at the same time as driving up manufacturing efficiency and yields, as well as access to a large, skilled workforce."

Interestingly, that study also notes that contrary to what you may think, hybrid batteries are more expensive than EV batteries, despite being significantly smaller. "The price of such components is spread across fewer battery cells, increasing the price per kilowatt-hour," the study said. "In 2024, the average price of a 20 kWh PHEV battery pack—roughly the global sales-weighted average for standard plug-in hybrids—was about the same as a 65 kWh BEV battery pack."

+Some news on the plastics front this week. A new study from the Plastics and Climate project found that the entire plastics lifecycle is producing significant greenhouse gas emissions

First, all phases of the plastics lifecycle — primary production (including extraction of raw materials), product manufacturing, transportation, consumption (i.e., use), and waste — generate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, increasing atmospheric GHG concentrations and accelerating global warming. To date, studies have mostly focused on GHG emissions from the two ends of the plastics lifecycle (primary production and waste management) and have given much less attention to the other phases. These and other data gaps make it difficult to discern the full extent of GHGs emitted across the entire plastics lifecycle. The existing data indicate that the plastics lifecycle is responsible for roughly 4% of total global GHG emissions at present, though the data gaps mean it is almost certainly higher (i.e., the plastics sector may be consuming more of the remaining carbon budget than currently assumed).

Meanwhile, another new study in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences found that microplastics were interfering with photosynthesis, which would be unpleasant.

he researchers found that the presence of microplastics (plastic particles that are less than five millimeters in size) can reduce photosynthesis by as much as 7 to 12 percent, on average. That could range from 6 to 18 percent in terrestrial crops, 2 to 12 percent in marine plants such as seaweed and 4 to 14 percent in freshwater algae. “The exposure to microplastics was not surprising at all,” Eriksen says. “What surprised me was the level of impact.”

A generalized reduction in photosynthesis at such a scale could have major implications for the global food supply, according to the study’s researchers.

With the current rates of worldwide plastic production (and resulting microplastics exposure), farmers could see a 4 to 13.5 percent yield loss per year in staple crops such as corn, rice and wheat over the next 25 years. Additionally, seafood production could drop by up to 7 percent as aquatic ecosystems lose the algae that forms the base of their food webs. This would seriously impact the global economy and exacerbate food insecurity for hundreds of millions of people, according to the study’s authors.

That’s especially bad news because yet another new study has found that that wheat yields around the world would be ten percent higher if we hadn’t ratcheted up the temperature of the planet.

The researchers find that yields of three of the five crops are lower than they would have been without warmer temperatures and other climate impacts in the past 50 years.

Yields were lower than they otherwise would have been by 12-14% for barley, 8-12% for wheat and 4% for maize.

The impacts on soya beans were less clear as there were “significant differences” between data sources. But both datasets show a negative impact on yields, ranging from 2% to 8%.

The effects on rice yields were inconclusive, with one dataset showing a positive effect of around 1% while the other showed a negative effect of about 3%.

By the way, this is just a public service reminder: the studies above are just the sort of things that will disappear as we cut research, send home foreign researchers, and so on. Please call your Senator and tell them this is madness and that they should not go along with the MAGA zealots in the House.

+Feeling the need for some reasonably good news, I interrupt with this useful nugget: the EU actually appears to be more or less on track to cut its greenhouse gas emissions in line with its Paris pledges. A story in the Financial Times has the scoop:

The European Commission will announce next week that the EU is broadly within target to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 55 per cent by 2030 compared with 1990 levels, according to three EU officials with knowledge of the figures. The cuts were projected to be about 54 per cent, one official said. The numbers were “surprisingly good”, said another senior official, adding that even though the bloc would not quite achieve a 55 per cent reduction, it was “as close to the mark as you could get”. The numbers will be a boost for the commission and politicians still defending the bloc’s climate commitments after the European economy was left reeling from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the energy crisis prompted by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and, more recently, Donald Trump’s trade war.

This is possible, of course, because of the rapid fall in the price of renewable energy. And that price keeps falling. In Australia, for instance, robots are installing solar panels. As Giles Parkinson reports:

“We have made great progress with robotics and machine learning in the field, different ways of piling, different ways of laying out modules in an automated fashion,” the head of one solar company explained.

“And so I’m very confident that for Australian conditions, which are, you know, hot remote areas, that we will be able to deploy robotics and automation to help us achieve a much more efficient way of installing solar in our conditions. And that’ll help us drive towards that 30 cents.”

+Needless to say, little of this good news comes from the U.S. Congress is doing everything it can to wreck the nascent EV industry here, from scrapping subsidies to removing the waiver that lets California demand cleaner cars. Veteran analyst Liam Denning:

The House tax bill is a maximalist assault on EV subsidies, canning the 30D credit and tightening conditions for the manufacturing credits like a noose. Making EVs more expensive cuts sales projections which in turn reduces the incentive to build the supply chain, even before the factory credits get gutted. Republican senators may yet protect the latter to some degree, for fear of being seen to explicitly take away promised cleantech jobs and investments from red states, the main beneficiaries. But those subsidies can only do so much if demand projections are bent down.

And the upshot of that, of course, is that the Shanghai Auto Show, already the most important car display on the planet, will become the only show in town. As Wired reports

Names like Jetour, Denza, iCar, Changan, Hongqi and Luxeed won’t ring many bells. Keep walking and you’ll catch a reassuring glimpse of Audi, Lotus, Buick, and Volkswagen, but the spark of familiarity they bring is quickly extinguished by a stark realization: They are no longer in Shanghai to show the fledgling locals how it’s done, as beacons of a Western industry riding high on a century of success. They’re surrounded by younger, fitter, and keener rivals with a hunger to put a ding in the universe.

All of those EVs add up to the best possible news, though comically the way we report it in this country is as bad news. Check out this headline on a (superbly reported) Bloomberg essay:

The Oil Market Has a Bigger Problem Than a Slowing China – India

Demand in the world’s most populous country isn’t growing fast enough.

As the story explains, India—which largely runs on two-wheeled and three-wheeled vehicles—is quickly converting those to electrics.

India has an alternative to oil than China didn’t in the early 2000s: electric vehicles. In India, a significant chunk of gasoline demand comes from two-wheelers rather than cars, making the shift to electric vehicles — in this case, the vehicles are small motorcycles — relatively easy.

That this is presented primarily as a problem for the oil industry is ludicrous, but who cares. From the perspective of the atmosphere it’s crucial good news. India is about where China was on the energy curve fifteen years ago. If it can develop using sunshine and wind, the world will be a different place.

Oh, and by the way, one more score for EVs: a new study finds that because they use regenerative braking, they dramatically reduce “brake dust” from pads against rotors, a nasty form of particulate pollution. This is enough to way more than offset increased “tire dust” from the heavier cars.

+I read this one so you don’t have to. Suffice it to say that a gruesome and deadly fungus called aspergillus is spreading rapidly as the planet warms

+Trump hates windpower above all, but the Guardian has an excellent account of Republican ranchers from rural portions of the state who are doing their best to keep the legislature from damaging the industry.

Research has found existing clean energy projects in Texas will pay more than $12bn in taxes to communities where they are located, funding schools, roads and hospitals, while paying out another $15bn to landowners to lease their properties.

“It’s a hard life out here, there’s rocks, mesquite and coyotes and not a lot else – if there’s anything to make life easier, do it,” said Davis as he stood on his property under the whooshing blades of a wind turbine, one of a ragged line of turbines that make up the Cactus Flats wind project. “See any dead birds here? I’ve never seen one,” added Davis, in reference to one of the most common complaints, voiced by Trump himself, about wind turbines.

Places such as Menard, located in central Texas between two large oil and gas regions, have limited options for new income. Davis has several hundred goats and sheep and raises cattle for wagyu beef on his 1,300-acre property, but 40% of his income now comes from the wind turbines, money he hopes he can push back into the sleepy Menard community.

“I struck wind!” said the ebullient Davis, who likes to restyle Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” mantra into “turn, baby, turn” in recognition of his wind turbines. “I done turned the money into my back ass pocket,” he said.

By the way, that last is an excellent slogan for the clean energy industry

+Your local politician is probably getting swamped with anti-climate mail, because the bad guys have figured out how to “weaponize” chatbots to send it out. Canada’s National Observer reports that

One morning in October of 2024, Fredericton city councillor Margo Sheppard received an email with the subject line: “The Real Policy Crisis: Prioritizing ‘Nature’ Over People.” It was polished — almost algorithmically smooth — and it calmly urged her to reconsider Fredericton’s net-zero policies.

Over the next month, a flood of similar emails followed, all aimed at getting Fredericton to abandon global climate targets. Sheppard is used to emails from organizations on all kinds of issues, but not this many, not on this issue — and not so well crafted. She grew suspicious.

“If we’re getting them in Fredericton,” Sheppard thought, “councillors all across the country must be getting them too.”

They were, in at least five hundred municipalities. But, thank heaven, Canada’s new leader Mark Carney knows enough about climate change to be immune to Grok’s weirdnesses. (Yes, Elon’s own AI is now continually spouting climate denial talking points). Carney calmly told his nation last week that they would need an energy policy that was about something more than just pipelines. It’s not a perfect energy policy, but compared with what’s happening south of the border?

In an interview Tuesday, Carney said his new government will be focused on diversifying the energy sector beyond its roots in Alberta's oilpatch to include other, clean energy resources from across the country. He did not rule out pipelines as part of the discussion, but said he doesn't believe most Canadians see those projects as the be-all-end-all option.

"It's remarkable. In some circles, this conversation starts and ends with pipelines," Carney told CBC's Power & Politics host David Cochrane in Ottawa.

"But that's what it has become politically," Cochrane noted.

"No, that is not what it's become politically. That is not what it's become for Canada. Canada as a nation," Carney said.

"Canadians, yes, they want energy pipelines that make sense. They also want connections between our clean grids. They want actually less carbon, so they want carbon capture and storage … they want broader [mineral exporting] corridors, for example ... that open up whole swaths of the country to new trade so that we are sovereign in the most important components of the future," he continued.

+Oil companies are now being sued over the death of a 64 year old woman in Washington State, who overheated in her car during the epic heat dome of 2021. David Gelles has a superb account in the Times

Experts said Ms. Leon’s case, filed in state court in Washington, was the first time that fossil fuel companies have been sued over the death of an individual as a result of conditions caused by man-made climate change.

The companies named in the complaint are Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66 and Olympic Pipeline Company, a subsidiary managed by BP.

Legal scholars have been anticipating the filing of a case like this for years. In 2023, a paper published in the Harvard Environmental Law Review made the case that prosecutors could charge oil companies with criminal homicide and “every type of homicide short of first-degree murder.”

While Ms. Leon’s complaint is civil, rather than criminal, it follows a similar logic.

“There’s a reasonable framework for a complaint,” said Cindy Cho, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at Indiana University Bloomington and is not involved in the case. “You have a chain of causation, and yes, you have to back it up with that evidence. But the allegations, taken at face value, are reasonable.”

+Under pressure from you know who, the Federal Reserve is disbanding its groups studying the effects of climate change on financial stability. As Alastair Marsh reports

Among those dismantled are the Supervision Climate Committee and the Financial Stability Climate Committee, which were established in early 2021. That’s around the time the Fed — under President Joe Biden — began to speak more openly about the financial implications of a hotter planet and increasingly erratic weather patterns. Former Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard said at the time that the two committees were part of an effort to build “institutional capacity and knowledge” on climate risks and vulnerabilities.

Both committees were shut down in March, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified disclosing confidential information. Two other climate-focused groups — the Climate Committee on Economic Activity and the Climate Data Committee — were also shuttered around that time, the person said.

+Friends of the Earth recommends…not building a massive new $39 billion LNG project in Alaska.

The reason for this still massive price tag is the nature of the project itself. Unlike most other U.S. projects, which are composed of liquefaction terminals and connecting pipelines, Alaska LNG would be a colossal network of infrastructure spanning the entire state. If the project were operational today, it would be the second largest export terminal in the country, shipping 2.55 billion cubic feet of supercooled liquid methane to global markets each day

+Well worth a listen as we build the resistance: veteran journalist Jim Lardner’s interview with the always fascinating Arlie Hochschild on how things sound different to the ears of rural Americans.

+Occasionally I think I’m going insane. We’ve known for many years that painting roofs white can dramatically decrease energy use by reflecting away sunshine. But it turns out there’s literally a “dark roof lobby” composed of companies that make black roofing materials, and that they’re managing to convince state governments to go along with their greed. As Alexander Ames of Floodlight reports":

At least eight states – and more than a dozen cities in other states – have adopted cool-roof requirements, according to the Smart Surfaces Coalition, a national group of public health and environmental groups that promote reflective roofs, trees and other solutions to make cities healthier.

Industry representatives lobbied successfully in recent months against expanding cool roof recommendations in national professional energy efficiency codes – the standards that many cities and states use to set building regulations.

Guys, the climate fight would be hard enough if everyone was acting in good faith. Lobbyists insisting that we have hellish rooftops…well, it’s enough to make one wish for a second that hell were real.

+One of the finest environmental officials on the planet is Brazil’s Marina Silva, rainforest-born and tough as nails. But the country’s president, Lula, who wants to stand up an Amazon oil industry, seems to be cutting her legs out from under, and she was assailed by the resource lobby in the Senate last week. As Jonathan Watts reports

Her thuggish tormentors – all white male politicians on the infrastructure committee – took turns to publicly belittle the 67-year-old black woman, who has done more than anyone to protect the natural wealth of the country – the Amazon rainforest, Pantanal wetlands, Cerrado savannah and other biomes – from rapacious abuse.

One by one, they lined up to attack her for these globally important efforts. Decorum gave way to name-calling and sneering: “Know your place,” roared the committee head, Marcos Rogério, a Bolsonarist who cut Silva’s microphone as she tried to respond. The leader of the centre-rightPSDB, Plínio Valério, told her she did not deserve respect as a minister. The Amazonas senator Omar Aziz – from the Centrão party and a supporter of president Lula – talked over her repeatedly.

Their motives appeared to be partly ideological, partly misogynistic and largely self-interested. All of them were trying to force through economic projects – roads, oilfields, dams or plantations – that are under scrutiny by Silva’s environment ministry. Never mind that this is her job, they seemed to say, how dare she not allow them to have their way?

But she did dare. Despite her frail physique, Silva is a fighter. Born in the Amazon rainforest, she helped to found the Workers’ party alongside Lula during the era of military dictatorship. She campaigned against deforestation alongside Chico Mendes, who was assassinated in 1988. In her first stint as environment minister, between 2003 and 2008, she established a monitoring-and-penalty system that she said reduced forest clearance by 80%. Later, she ran as president for the Green party, securing nearly 20m votes – more than any other Green candidate in world history. Twelve years ago, she founded her own party – the Sustainability Network.

Silva refused to tolerate being abused and silenced, and walked out of the senate meeting. Outside, when she finally had a chance to speak, she turned on her tormentors: “My place is the place to defend democracy, my place is the place to defend the environment, to combat inequality, sustainable development, to protect biodiversity, and infrastructure projects that are necessary for the country,” she said defiantly. “What is unacceptable is for someone to think that because you are a woman, black, and come from a humble background, that you are going to say who I am and still say that I should stay in my place. My place is where all women should be.”

The brewing Lula-Silva standoff should make this November’s global climate conference in Belem sadly more interesting.

+Finally, some baseball, hot dogs, and beer

In LA, the campaign to convince the Dodgers to break up with their fossil fuel sponsors continues apace. As Sammy Roth reports

The Sierra Club Angeles Chapter held its third protest at Dodger Stadium before a game against the Athletics on May 15. Activists cloaked in sackcloth marched outside the parking lots. One played a bagpipe.

“It was a bit hard for the fans to comprehend,” organizer Lisa Kaas Boyle acknowledged.

Still, she believes the cause is righteous.

A former environmental crimes prosecutor and a co-founder of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, Kaas Boyle lost her home in the Palisades fire. She’s also a Dodgers fan, having caught the bug from her husband, whose 89-year-old mom grew up cheering for the team in Brooklyn. She has a special place in her heart for Kiké Hernández.

So when the Dodgers joined other sports teams in pledging $8 million to wildfire relief, she felt the organization was “speaking out of two sides of its mouth.” She pointed to a study concluding that the weather conditions that helped drive the Palisades and Eaton fires were 35% more likely due to climate change.

“If you really care about us fire victims, you wouldn’t be promoting one of the major causes of the disaster,” Kaas Boyle said. “If you really care, you wouldn’t be boosting their image, greenwashing it through baseball.”

Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, a microbrewer reports that his spread of solar panels is what’s keeping him profitable even as some of the country’s craft brewers begin to falter financially

“It’s the idea of sustainability, but I would almost say it’s now survivability,” said David Stewart, owner of Blasty Bough Brewing Company in Epsom. “If the cost of things are going to go up with the current political situation, it becomes an issue of how do you reduce costs so you can stay in business?”

The panels, with a maximum output of 82 kW DC, were installed in November of 2023. Over the course of the year, they produce more electricity than his small brew pub uses. He sells excess electricity back to the utility.