Plastic production, and the mountains of waste that creates, are still growing exponentially, Grist shows us in helpful, albeit eye-watering, charts. Whether things start to turn around depends on on thousands of delegates meeting in Geneva this week to try to negotiate an international plastics treaty.
A small city in Kentucky is ground zero for plans to bring uranium enrichment back to the US so nuclear energy can power AI.
The agency was already working on designing a reactor that might one day provide people with electricity on the moon. The Trump administration wants to try to speed things up and build a bigger reactor, Politico reports.
[politico.com]
Called AlphaEarth Foundations, the model stitches together data from actual satellite images, radar, climate simulations, and more to map Earth’s land and coastal waters.
”The Satellite Embedding dataset is revolutionizing our work by helping countries map uncharted ecosystems - this is crucial for pinpointing where to focus their conservation efforts,” Nick Murray, director of the James Cook University Global Ecology Lab and Global Science Lead of Global Ecosystems Atlas, said in a Google DeepMind blog post.
[deepmind.google]
“Stay away from the coast!” the National Weather Service warns. A magnitude 8.7 earthquake off the east coast of Russia has triggered tsunami alerts across the Pacific. The tsunami advisory means that dangerous currents and waves are possible.
San Francisco could see waves arrive around 12:40AM PT on July 30th.
The Trump administration proposed tossing out the landmark 2009 “endangerment finding” that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act.
Greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane cause climate change, of course. Climate change is projected to lead to roughly 250,000 additional deaths each year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat illness between 2030 and 2050, according to the World Health Organization.
The Trump administration wants to build data center projects on Superfund sites, and with as little oversight as possible.
A University of Washington experiment with “a machine to create clouds” was shut down by the city of Alameda — because the scientists didn’t bother to tell the locals what they were up to, Politico writes. They were 20 minutes into the test when city officials ended the experiment.
Donors to the Marine Cloud Brightening Program include “cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen, the philanthropist Rachel Pritzker and Chris Sacca, a venture capitalist.” Can’t wait to find out what new conspiracy theories this spawns!
Plans are in place to revive a shuttered plant in Kentucky. The Trump administration and Big Tech are trying to revitalize the nuclear energy industry to meet growing electricity demand from AI data centers.
It’s part of the company’s new push to support the development of technologies that can store renewable energy for longer periods of time than lithium-ion batteries. It’s the kind of thing that might be able to help Google meet growing data center energy demands and maybe even stop its fossil fuel emissions from continuing to rise.
Google is partnering with the company Energy Dome that uses carbon dioxide to store renewable energy in the form of pressure and heat.
[energy-storage.news]
NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation plan to launch the satellite on July 30th. The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission is supposed to track ice melt and land deformation, helping scientists better understand the impacts of flooding, earthquakes, and more.
[science.nasa.gov]
The announcement over the weekend follows flash floods that inundated subways. The app notifies users of nearby emergencies and crimes. Now, New York City is adding public safety warnings for floods, extreme heat, fires, and more.
An actually good flash flood alert system involves a lot more than sharing weather updates, experts tell The Verge. Officials also have to avoid causing “alert fatigue” if they’re sending out crime and weather alerts through the same platform.
It takes an ‘all of the above’ approach.
It saw a 6 percent rise in planet-heating pollution last year, according to the company’s latest sustainability report. As it expands data centers for AI, Amazon is moving further away from a goal it set in 2019 to reach net zero carbon emissions.
“One of the biggest challenges with scaling AI is increased energy demands for data centers,” Amazon’s sustainability report says.
In Kerr County — one of the most affected by deadly flash floods on July 4th — not everyone received alerts on their cell phones with safety instructions, according to records obtained by NBC News. The investigation adds to questions over why there wasn’t more done to warn people of the catastrophic flooding.
House Democrats are holding a science fair of canceled grants in Washington, DC today to call attention to research projects that the Trump administration has defunded.
The Environmental Protection Agency placed 144 employees on administrative leave, the New York Times reports. The move comes after hundreds of EPA employees signed a letter accusing the Trump administration of “ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters.”
Since Donald Trump stepped back into office, the EPA has worked to roll back dozens of environmental regulations, including plans to weaken protections against forever chemicals in drinking water. DOGE also tore into the agency, making it more difficult to hold companies accountable for breaking environmental laws.
The Senate parliamentarian — a nonpartisan congressional advisor — says Republicans are violating a budget reconciliation rule in their attempt to fast-track some parts of President Trump’s agenda.
That includes measures to undo Biden-era tailpipe pollution standards and repeal funding authorizations for climate programs under the Inflation Reduction Act. Republicans have been getting creative lately, however, with ways to get around the parliamentarian’s objections.
The Trump administration is thinking about scrapping a ban on white asbestos, a material used in roofing, chlorine manufacturing, and more. White asbestos is banned in many countries; exposure to it has been linked to lung cancer and other serious health risks.
“By siding with corporate polluters and willfully ignoring decades of public health evidence, they are dismantling life-saving protections,” Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, said in a press release today.
The Trump administration is apparently trying to shut down the board that investigates chemical explosions in the US. What could go wrong?
Senate Republicans’ version of President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” — similar to the bill the House passed last month — would slash tax incentives for electric vehicles, wind, and solar power.
Industry leaders warn that it could be a killer blow to new energy projects and factories in the US. “This bill will end any hope of onshoring domestic manufacturing,” Mike Carr, executive director of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition, said in a press statement today.
Ten more states joined the suit filed today against President Trump and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Congress recently voted to revoke EPA waivers that allow California to set tougher air pollution standards for vehicles than the nation as a whole, in what the plaintiffs allege was an unlawful use of the Congressional Review Act.
This saga has spanned several administrations since President Obama first tried to enact limits on greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Donald Trump tried to replace those rules with his own, weaker standards, only to be stymied by Joe Biden changing course.
“We are proposing to repeal Obama and Biden rules that have been criticized as regulating coal, oil, and gas out of existence,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced today.
[politico.com]
Climate.gov will soon stop publishing new content after most of the people maintaining the website saw their contacts terminated, the Guardian reports. We don’t know yet if the website will continue to be accessible to the public.
The Trump administration has already faced — and lost — legal battles forcing it to restore other climate and health resources to federal websites. It has also removed climate information from FEMA’s website. The Federal Environmental Web Tracker is documenting these kinds of changes.
