A PBS reporter "digs into a new report covering the plastic industry's tactics to push recycling — and avoid regulation," according to a new video from PBS News Weekend: A new report by the Center for Climate Integrity, an environmentalist group, says newly uncovered statements from oil and plastics executives underscore the industry's decades-long secret skepticism about the viability and efficacy of recycling. The authors of the report reviewed old investigations and new documents, including previously unknown assertions from industry executives. In 1994, one Exxon Chemical executive put the industry's support for plastics recycling in blunt terms, saying "we are committed to the activities, but not committed to the results." Another representative from Dupont noted in 1992 that recycling goals were set knowing full well "they were unlikely to meet them." In the video NPR correspondent Michael Copley says "I think it's always striking, when you see a report like this that unearths new statements, new quotes, and to see the way in which they really seem to view recycling as sort of public relations tool, as opposed to an environmental tool that they sort of presented publicly..." I think the other reason why this matters is, it could potentially be legally problematic for the industry. And by that I mean the oil and gas industry right now is facing dozens of lawsuits from states and localities, based in part on statements it made about climate change and fossil fuel, going back decades. We know that the state of California has opened an investigation into the role of oil and gas companies and the petrochemical industry in the creation of the plastic waste crisis that we're facing. And the group that put out the report, the Center for Climate Integrity, was upfront, saying that it was compiling this to serve as kind of the fact basis, or the basis of evidence, for potential legal action. A plastics trade group accused the report of citing "outdated, decades-old technologies" and "mischaracterizing the current state of the industry," saying they're looking to have all plastic packaging be "reused, recycled, and recovered by 2040." But PBS's reporter counters that there's "deep skepticism" of the economics from market analysts — as well as from material scientists. "Obviously the industry has put out this promise. I think that its critics will say, 'We have been hearing these promises, or promises like it, for decades now, and that there's nothing in the record to think that now is any different." He adds that activists and businesses agree that government regulation will ultimately play a big role. "That gets back in large part to the economics of this. If companies don't have to deal with these costs, it's hard to imagine that they will in a sustained way create systems to deal with this if they don't have to." So what's the solution? Some ideas being seriously discussed: Reducing plastic production "to a level that is more manageable with recycling systems."Getting rid of types of plastic that are "especially hard to recycle or you can't recycle.""Being more transparent about what chemicals go into this stuff that again make recycling hard."

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According to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the world's oceans have hit a new temperature record every day since mid-March last year, fueling concerns for marine life and extreme weather across the planet. From a report: Global average ocean temperatures in 2023 were 0.25 degrees Celsius warmer than the previous year, said Gregory C. Johnson, a NOAA oceanographer. That rise is "is equivalent to about two decades' worth of warming in a single year," he told CNN. "So it is quite large, quite significant, and a bit surprising." Scientists have said ocean heat is being supercharged by human-caused global warming, boosted by El Nino, a natural climate pattern marked by higher-than-average ocean temperatures. The main consequences are on marine life and global weather. Global ocean warmth can add more power to hurricanes and other extreme weather events, including scorching heat waves and intense rainfall. [...] "At times, the records (in the North Atlantic) have been broken by margins that are virtually statistically impossible," Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School told CNN. If very high ocean temperatures continue into the second half of 2024 and a La Nina event develops -- El Nino's counterpart that tends to amplify Atlantic hurricane season -- "this would increase the risk of a very active hurricane season," Hirschi said. About 90% of the world's excess heat produced by burning planet-heating fossil fuels is stored in the oceans. "Measuring ocean warming allows us to track the status and evolution of planetary warming," Schuckmann told CNN. "The ocean is the sentinel for global warming."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Only seven countries are meeting an international air quality standard, with deadly air pollution worsening in places due to a rebound in economic activity and the toxic impact of wildfire smoke, a new report has found. Of 134 countries and regions surveyed in the report, only seven -- Australia, Estonia, Finland, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and New Zealand -- are meeting a World Health Organization (WHO) guideline limit for tiny airborne particles expelled by cars, trucks and industrial processes. The vast majority of countries are failing to meet this standard for PM2.5, a type of microscopic speck of soot less than the width of a human hair that when inhaled can cause a myriad of health problems and deaths, risking serious implications for people, according to the report by IQAir, a Swiss air quality organization that draws data from more than 30,000 monitoring stations around the world. While the world's air is generally much cleaner than it was in much of the past century, there are still places where the pollution levels are particularly dangerous. The most polluted country, Pakistan, has PM2.5 levels more than 14 times higher than the WHO standard, the IQAir report found, with India, Tajikistan and Burkina Faso the next most polluted countries. But even in wealthy and fast-developing countries, progress in cutting air pollution is under threat. Canada, long considered as having some of the cleanest air in the western world, became the worst for PM2.5 last year due to record wildfires that ravaged the country, sending toxic spoke spewing across the country and into the US. In China, meanwhile, improvements in air quality were complicated last year by a rebound in economic activity in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the report finding a 6.5% increase in PM2.5 levels. The most polluted urban area in the world last year was Begusarai in India, the sixth annual IQAir report found, with India home to the four most polluted cities in the world. Much of the developing world, particularly countries in Africa, lacks reliable air quality measurements, however. The WHO lowered its guideline for "safe" PM2.5 levels in 2021 to five micrograms per cubic meter and by this measure many countries, such as those in Europe that have cleaned up their air significantly in the past 20 years, fall short. But even this more stringent guideline may not fully capture the risk of insidious air pollution. Research released by US scientists last month found there is no safe level of PM2.5, with even the smallest exposures linked to an increase in hospitalizations for conditions such as heart disease and asthma.

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According to a United Nations report, humans are producing electronic waste almost five times faster than we're recycling it. "While e-waste recycling has benefits estimated to include $23 billion of monetized value from avoided greenhouse gas emissions and $28 billion of recovered materials like gold, copper, and iron, it also comes at a cost -- $10 billion associated with e-waste treatment and $78 billion of externalized costs to people and the environment," reports The Register. "Overall, this puts the net annual economic monetary cost of e-waste at $37 billion. And this is expected to reach $40 billion by 2030 if improvements in e-waste management and policies aren't made." From the report: The 2024 Global E-waste Monitor (GEM) [PDF] was prepared by the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). The report reveals that annual generation of e-waste -- discarded devices with a plug or battery -- is growing at a rate of 2.6 million metric tons per year (a metric ton is equivalent to roughly 2,204.62 pounds -- all units in this story are metric) and is expected to reach 82 million tons by 2030, from 62 million tons in 2022. Those 62 million tons, the report suggests, would fill 1.55 million 40-ton trucks, which would roughly encircle the equator -- if you parked them end-to-end and paved the relevant oceans. And that's to say nothing of the economic consequences of taking so many trucks out of service and disrupting global shipping routes with an equatorial parking structure, so let's not. Of the 62 million tons of e-waste generated globally in 2022, an estimated 13.8 million tons was documented, collected, and properly recycled. Another 16 million tons is said to have been recycled through undocumented channels in high and middle-income countries with developed waste management infrastructure. A further 18 million tons, it is estimated, was processed in low and middle-low income countries without developed e-waste management systems -- through which toxic chemicals get released. And the final 14 million tons are said to have been thrown away to end up mainly in landfills -- also not ideal. The rate of e-waste creation and recycling varies by region. In Europe, per capita e-waste generation is 17.6 kg and recycling is 7.5 kg. In Oceania, it's 16.1 kg and 6.7 kg respectively. In the Americas, it's 14.1 kg and 4.2 kg. The annual average formal collection and recycling rate in Europe is 42.8 percent, compared to 41.4 percent in Oceania, 30 percent in the Americas, 11.8 percent in Asia, and 0.7 percent in Africa. The report calls for stronger formal e-waste management and for policy makers to make sure that initiatives to promote renewable energy don't end up undermining environmental concerns. It notes, for example, that e-waste from photovoltaic panels -- to generate solar power -- is expected to quadruple from 0.6 million tons in 2022 to 2.4 million tons in 2030.

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Food prices and overall inflation will rise as temperatures climb with climate change, a new study by an environmental scientist and the European Central Bank found. From a report: Looking at monthly price tags of food and other goods, temperatures and other climate factors in 121 nations since 1996, researchers calculate that "weather and climate shocks" will cause the cost of food to rise 1.5 to 1.8 percentage points annually within a decade or so, even higher in already hot places like the Middle East, according to a study in Thursday's journal Communications, Earth and the Environment. And that translates to an increase in overall inflation of 0.8 to 0.9 percentage points by 2035, just caused by climate change extreme weather, the study said. Those numbers may look small, but to banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve that fight inflation, they are significant, said study lead author Max Kotz, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. "The physical impacts of climate change are going to have a persistent effect on inflation," Kotz said. "This is really from my perspective another example of one of the ways in which climate change can undermine human welfare, economic welfare."

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The guardians of the world's official geological timescale have firmly rejected a proposal to declare an Anthropocene epoch, after an epic academic row. From a report: The proposal would have designated the period from 1952 as the Anthropocene to reflect the planet-changing impact of humanity. It would have ended the Holocene epoch, the 11,700 years of stable climate since the last ice age and during which human civilisation arose. The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) has announced, however, that geologists have rejected the idea in a series of votes. Those objecting noted a much longer history of human impacts on Earth, including the dawn of agriculture and the industrial revolution, and unease about including a new unit in the geological timescale with a span of less than less than a single human lifetime, it said. Most units span thousands or millions of years. It also acknowledged: "The Anthropocene as a concept will continue to be widely used not only by Earth and environmental scientists, but also by social scientists, politicians and economists, as well as by the public at large. As such, it will remain an invaluable descriptor in human-environment interactions." The Anthropocene working group (AWG), which was formed by the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), in turn part of the IUGS, took 15 years to develop the proposal. It concluded that the radioactive isotopes spread worldwide by hydrogen bomb tests were the best marker of humanity's transformation of the planet. Geological time units also need a specific location to typify the unit and the Crawford sinkhole lake in Canada was chosen.

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In the shadow of a massive monument glorifying nuclear power, over 30 nations from around the world pledged to use the controversial energy source to help achieve a climate-neutral globe while providing countries with an added sense of strategic security. Associated Press: The idea of a Nuclear Energy Summit would have been unthinkable a dozen years ago after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, but the tide has turned in recent years. A warming planet has made it necessary to phase out fossil fuels, while the war in Ukraine has laid bare Europe's dependence on Russian energy. "We have to do everything possible to facilitate the contribution of nuclear energy," said Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. "It is clear: Nuclear is there. It has an important role to play," he said. In a solemn pledge, 34 nations, including the United States, China, France, Britain and Saudi Arabia, committed "to work to fully unlock the potential of nuclear energy by taking measures such as enabling conditions to support and competitively finance the lifetime extension of existing nuclear reactors, the construction of new nuclear power plants and the early deployment of advanced reactors." The statement adds: "We commit to support all countries, especially emerging nuclear ones, in their capacities and efforts to add nuclear energy to their energy mixes."

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Slashdot reader christoban writes: In what may be an issue for Sun-obscuring strategies to combat global warming, it turns out that during solar eclipses, low level cumulus clouds rapidly disappear, reducing by a factor of 4, researchers have found. The news comes from the science magazine Eos (published by the nonprofit organization of atmosphere/ocean/space scientists, the American Geophysical Union). Victor J. H. Trees, a geoscientist at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and his colleagues recently analyzed cloud cover data obtained during an annular eclipse in 2005, visible in parts of Europe and Africa. They mined visible and infrared imagery collected by two geostationary satellites operated by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites. Going to space was key, Trees said. "If you really want to quantify how clouds behave and how they react to a solar eclipse, it helps to study a large area. That's why we want to look from space...." [T]hey tracked cloud evolution for several hours leading up to the eclipse, during the eclipse, and for several hours afterward. Low-level cumulus clouds — which tend to top out at altitudes around 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) — were strongly affected by the degree of solar obscuration. Cloud cover started to decrease when about 15% of the Sun's face was covered, about 30 minutes after the start of the eclipse. The clouds started to return only about 50 minutes after maximum obscuration. And whereas typical cloud cover hovered around 40% in noneclipse conditions, less than 10% of the sky was covered with clouds during maximum obscuration, the team noted. "On a large scale, the cumulus clouds started to disappear," Trees said... The temperature of the ground matters when it comes to cumulus clouds, Trees said, because they are low enough to be significantly affected by whatever is happening on Earth's surface... Beyond shedding light on the physics of cloud dissipation during solar eclipses, these new findings also have implications for future geoengineering efforts, Trees and his collaborators suggested. Discussions are underway to mitigate the effects of climate change by, for instance, seeding the atmosphere with aerosols or launching solar reflectors into space to prevent some of the Sun's light from reaching Earth. Such geoengineering holds promise for cooling our planet, researchers agree, but its repercussions are largely unexplored and could be widespread and irreversible. These new results suggest that cloud cover could decrease with geoengineering efforts involving solar obscuration. And because clouds reflect sunlight, the efficacy of any effort might correspondingly decrease, Trees said. That's an effect that needs to be taken into account when considering different options, the researchers concluded. Another article on the site warns that "Planting Trees May Not Be as Good for the Climate as Previously Believed." "The climate benefits of trees storing carbon dioxide is partially offset by dark forests' absorption of more heat from the Sun, and compounds they release that slow the destruction of methane in the atmosphere."

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Long-time Slashdot reader HanzoSpam shared an announcement from the University of California San Diego. The school's researchers teamed with materials-science company Algenesis to show "that their plant-based polymers biodegrade — even at the microplastic level — in under seven months." "We're trying to find replacements for materials that already exist, and make sure these replacements will biodegrade at the end of their useful life instead of collecting in the environment," stated Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Michael Burkart, one of the paper's authors and an Algenesis co-founder. "That's not easy." "When we first created these algae-based polymers about six years ago, our intention was always that it be completely biodegradable," said another of the paper's authors, Robert Pomeroy, who is also a professor of chemistry and biochemistry and an Algenesis co-founder. "We had plenty of data to suggest that our material was disappearing in the compost, but this is the first time we've measured it at the microparticle level...." "This material is the first plastic demonstrated to not create microplastics as we use it," said Stephen Mayfield, a paper coauthor, School of Biological Sciences professor and co-founder of Algenesis. "This is more than just a sustainable solution for the end-of-product life cycle and our crowded landfills. This is actually plastic that is not going to make us sick." Creating an eco-friendly alternative to petroleum-based plastics is only one part of the long road to viability. The ongoing challenge is to be able to use the new material on pre-existing manufacturing equipment that was originally built for traditional plastic, and here Algenesis is making progress. They have partnered with several companies to make products that use the plant-based polymers developed at UC San Diego, including Trelleborg for use in coated fabrics and RhinoShield for use in the production of cell phone cases. "When we started this work, we were told it was impossible," stated Burkart. "Now we see a different reality. There's a lot of work to be done, but we want to give people hope. It is possible."

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According to a new study published in the journal Nature, timekeepers may have to consider subtracting a second from our clocks around 2029 because the planet is rotating faster than it used to. The Associated Press reports: "This is an unprecedented situation and a big deal," said study lead author Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. "It's not a huge change in the Earth's rotation that's going to lead to some catastrophe or anything, but it is something notable. It's yet another indication that we're in a very unusual time." Ice melting at both of Earth's poles has been counteracting the planet's burst of speed and is likely to have delayed this global second of reckoning by about three years, Agnew said. "We are headed toward a negative leap second," said Dennis McCarthy, retired director of time for the U.S. Naval Observatory who wasn't part of the study. "It's a matter of when." It's a complicated situation that involves, physics, global power politics, climate change, technology and two types of time. [...] McCarthy said the trend toward needing a negative leap second is clear, but he thinks it's more to do with the Earth becoming more round from geologic shifts from the end of the last ice age. Three other outside scientists said Agnew's study makes sense, calling his evidence compelling. But Levine doesn't think a negative leap second will really be needed. He said the overall slowing trend from tides has been around for centuries and continues, but the shorter trends in Earth's core come and go. "This is not a process where the past is a good prediction of the future," Levine said. "Anyone who makes a long-term prediction on the future is on very, very shaky ground."

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: They're vast expanses that can be as big as towns: open landfills where household waste ends up, whether it's vegetable scraps or old appliances. These landfills also belch methane, a powerful, planet-warming gas, on average at almost three times the rate reported to federal regulators, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. For the new study, scientists gathered data from airplane flyovers using a technology called imaging spectrometers designed to measure concentrations of methane in the air. Between 2018 and 2022, they flew planes over 250 sites across 18 states, about 20 percent of the nation's open landfills. At more than half the landfills they surveyed, researchers detected emissions hot spots, or sizable methane plumes that sometimes lasted months or years. That suggested something had gone awry at the site, like a big leak of trapped methane from layers of long-buried, decomposing trash, the researchers said. "You can sometimes get decades of trash that's sitting under the landfill," said Daniel H. Cusworth, a climate scientist at Carbon Mapper and the University of Arizona, who led the study. "We call it a garbage lasagna." Many landfills are fitted with specialized wells and pipes that collect the methane gas that seeps out of rotting garbage in order to either burn it off or sometimes to use it to generate electricity or heat. But those wells and pipes can leak. The researchers said pinpointing leaks doesn't just help scientists get a better picture of emissions, it also helps landfill operators fix leaks. Keeping more waste out of the landfill, for example by composting food scraps, is another fix. "The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that landfills are the third largest source of human-caused methane emissions in the United States, emitting as much greenhouse gas as 23 million gasoline cars driven for a year," notes the NYT. "Overseas, the picture can be less clear, particularly in countries where landfills aren't strictly regulated. Previous surveys using satellite technology have estimated that globally, landfill methane makes up nearly 20 percent of human-linked methane emissions."

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Decades of buried trash is releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, at higher rates than previously estimated, the researchers said. From a report: These landfills also belch methane, a powerful, planet-warming gas, on average at almost three times the rate reported to federal regulators, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. The study measured methane emissions at about 20 percent of about 1,200 large, operating landfills in the United States. It adds to a growing body of evidence that landfills are a significant driver of climate change, said Riley Duren, founder of the public-private partnership Carbon Mapper, who took part in the study. "We've largely been in the dark, as a society, about actual emissions from landfills," said Mr. Duren, a former NASA engineer and scientist. "This study pinpoints the gaps." Methane emissions from oil and gas production, as well as from livestock, have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Like carbon dioxide the main greenhouse gas that's warming the world, methane acts like a blanket in the sky, trapping the sun's heat. And though methane lasts for a shorter time in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, it is more potent. Its warming effect is more than 80 times as powerful as the same amount of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that landfills are the third largest source of human-caused methane emissions in the United States, emitting as much greenhouse gas as 23 million gasoline cars driven for a year. Organic waste like food scraps can emit copious amounts of methane when they decompose.

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"Sail to a continent as mysterious as outer-space itself," the new web site urges. "William Shatner saw Earth from the highest view," writes Scripps News Service. "Now he's heading to the bottom of it — and inviting you to join him." The 93-year-old is setting sail for Antarctica on Dec. 19, which will mark just over three years since the "Star Trek" actor returned from a trip to space in real life, not just as Captain James T. Kirk. Fellow space traveler NASA astronaut Scott Kelly will join Shatner on the 10-day Space2Sea expedition, and 260 others can too — if they pay for their $37,500 ticket. The cheapest suite — priced at $35,500 — along with the top three most expensive ones — reaching $91,500 — are already sold out. Presented by Future of Space, the trip aboard the new "ultra-luxury" vessel is said to be full of "awe-inspiring experiences," including "intimate encounters" with penguins, visits to remote historical locations and evenings full of stories from "esteemed guests," like Shatner. Travelers can also kayak the waters or go down deep under the ice in submersibles, both for additional charges... Shatner said he experienced something called the "overview effect" while viewing the Earth from space. The overview effect, coined by space philosopher and author Frank White, refers to a shift in how astronauts think about our life on the planet, described by White as "the feeling that the Earth itself is a whole system, and we're just a part of it." It's also realizing through experience that there are no borders or boundaries on Earth. It's often marked by feelings of increased appreciation of the planet's beauty. Shatner's invitation to "fellow explorers" for the Space2Sea expedition seem to echo this phenomenon, with the actor saying he didn't expect to be "captivated by the fragile, blue curve of our planet" when flying on Blue Origin's rocket.

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Earth has a long-running fever that shows little signs of easing. The planet has set high temperature records in each of the last nine months, and March is poised to become the 10th. From a report: Multiple locations around the world observed unprecedented heat on the month's final weekend, as if to put an exclamation mark on this exceptional run of warmth. The weekend heat was most widespread in Europe, where many countries set national high temperature records for March. But it was also unusually warm in Asia, parts of Central America and West Africa. Human-caused climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is fueling this warmth, with an assist from the El Niño climate pattern. It felt more like summer than early spring in Eastern Europe over the weekend, with temperatures soaring into the 70s and 80s, about 20 to 35 degrees above normal. Eight countries set national records for March warmth. Further reading: India Predicts Searing Heat in Threat to Lives, Power Supply.

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Last year was the hottest on record and the Earth is headed towards a global warming of 2.7 degrees, yet top fossil fuel and cement producers show a disregard for climate change and actively make things worse. From a report: A new Carbon Majors Database report found that just 57 companies were responsible for 80 percent of the global carbon dioxide emissions between 2016 and 2022. Thirty-eight percent of total emissions during this period came from nation-states, 37 percent from state-owned entities and 25 percent from investor-owned companies. Nearly 200 parties adopted the 2015 Paris Agreement, committing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, 58 of the 100 state- and investor-owned companies in the Carbon Majors Database have increased their production in the years since (The Climate Accountability Institute launched Carbon Majors in 2013 to hold fossil fuel producers accountable and is hosted by InfluenceMap). This number represents producers worldwide, including 87 percent of those assessed in Asia, 57 percent in Europe and 43 percent in North America. It's not a clear case of things slowly turning around, either. The International Energy Agency found coal consumption increased by eight percent over the seven years to 8.3 billion tons -- a record high. The report names state-owned Coal India as one of the top three carbon dioxide producers. Russia's state-owned energy company Gazprom and state-owned oil firm Saudi Aramco rounded out the trio of worst offenders.

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Despite making pledges to cut down on plastic packaging, a new report from the nonprofit conservation organization Oceana estimates that Amazon's plastic waste has continued to grow in the US. From a report: The company created 208 million pounds of plastic waste from its packaging in the US in 2022 alone, which Oceana says is enough trash to circle Earth more than 200 times in the form of plastic air pillows. That's a nearly 10 percent jump from the amount of plastic waste it generated the year before, according to the report. The US is a worrying outlier for Amazon, Oceana says. Globally, the e-commerce giant says that it reduced its use of plastic packaging 11.6 percent in 2022 compared to the prior year. But the US is the company's biggest market, and Oceana argues it's where Amazon needs to make a lot more progress.

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According to the latest data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, carbon dioxide and methane levels in the atmosphere reached historic highs last year, growing at near-record fast paces. The Associated Press reports: Carbon dioxide, the most important and abundant of the greenhouse gases caused by humans, rose in 2023 by the third highest amount in 65 years of record keeping, NOAA announced Friday. Scientists are also worried about the rapid rise in atmospheric levels of methane, a shorter-lived but more potent heat-trapping gas. Both jumped 5.5% over the past decade. The 2.8 parts per million increase in carbon dioxide airborne levels from January 2023 to December, wasn't as high as the jumps were in 2014 and 2015, but they were larger than every other year since 1959, when precise records started. Carbon dioxide's average level for 2023 was 419.3 parts per million, up 50% from pre-industrial times. Last year's methane's jump of 11.1 parts per billion was lower than record annual rises from 2020 to 2022. It averaged 1922.6 parts per billion last year. It has risen 3% in just the past five years and jumped 160% from pre-industrial levels showing faster rates of increase than carbon dioxide, said Xin "Lindsay" Lan, the University of Colorado and NOAA atmospheric scientist who did the calculations. [...] The third biggest human-caused greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide, jumped 1 part per billion last year to record levels, but the increases were not as high as those in 2020 and 2021. Nitrous oxide, which lasts about a century in the atmosphere, comes from agriculture, burning of fuels, manure and industrial processes, according to the EPA. "Studies of the specific isotopes of methane in the air show much of the increased methane is from microbes, pointing to spiking emissions from wetlands and perhaps agriculture and landfills, but not as much the energy industry, Lan said."

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"America's honeybee population has rocketed to an all-time high," reports the Washington Post: We've added almost 1 million bee colonies in the past five years. We now have 3.8 million, the census shows. Since 2007, the first census after alarming bee die-offs began in 2006, the honeybee has been the fastest-growing livestock segment in the country! And that doesn't count feral honeybees, which may outnumber their captive cousins several times over... Much of the explosion of small producers came in just one state: Texas. The Lone Star State has gone from having the sixth-most bee operations in the country to being so far ahead of anyone else that it out-bees the bottom 21 states combined... [A]ll 254 Texas counties adopted bee rules requiring, for example, six hives on five acres plus another hive for every 2.5 acres beyond that to qualify for the tax break... When the census was taken in December 2022, California had more than four times as many bees as any other state. We emailed pollination expert Brittney Goodrich at the University of California at Davis, who explained that pollinating the California almond crop "demands most of the honeybee colonies in the U.S. each year... Sadly, however, this does not mean we've defeated colony collapse. One major citizen-science project found that beekeepers lost almost half of their colonies in the year ending in April , the second-highest loss rate on record. For now, we're making up for it with aggressive management. The Texans told us that they were splitting their hives more often, replacing queens as often as every year and churning out bee colonies faster than the mites, fungi and diseases can take them down. But this may not be good news for bees in general. "It is absolutely not a good thing for native pollinators," said Eliza Grames, an entomologist at Binghamton University, who noted that domesticated honeybees are a threat to North America's 4,000 native bees, about 40% of which are vulnerable to extinction... Many of the same forces collapsing managed beehives also decimate their native cousins, only the natives don't usually have entire industries and governments pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into supporting them. So while Texas bee exemptions "have become big business," the article ends with this quote from Mace Vaughan, who leads pollinator and agricultural biodiversity at Xerces, an expanding insect-conservation outfit. "The way you support both honeybees and beekeepers — and the way you save native pollinators — is to go out there and create beautiful flower-rich habitat on your farm or your garden."

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When Disneyland opened in 1955, its car-themed attraction Autopia "represented the future of what would become America's multilane limited-access highways," according to Wikipedia, " which were still being developed. President Eisenhower had yet to sign the Interstate Highway legislation..." Wikipedia adds that the cars "generate a moderate level of exhaust from the Honda GX gasoline engines that propel the cars." But that may change, according to a climate-oriented newsletter from the Los Angeles Times: If anyone could get away with defending the toxic odor, it might be Bob Gurr. He designed the original Autopia cars in the mid-1950s, working closely with Walt himself. He's proud of what they built together. But today the 92-year-old Disney legend says the polluting motors need to go. "Get rid of those God-awful gasoline fumes," he told me. Disney is finally preparing to do just that. In news shared exclusively with The Times ahead of this column's publication — after several weeks of my prodding the company for answers on the future of Autopia — Disney officials revealed that pure gasoline engines are on their way out... "As the industry moves toward alternative fuel sources, we have developed a roadmap to electrify this attraction and are evaluating technology that will enable us to convert from gas engines in the next few years," spokesperson Jessica Good said in an email. Good wouldn't confirm whether that means electric vehicles, or if hybrids are a possibility... [Gurr] also expressed a grander vision for Tomorrowland as a hub for stories about renewable energy, public transit and other sustainable technologies that will help us create a better tomorrow... [H]ow about using the former Innoventions building, which once displayed futuristic technologies but is now closed to most guests, to showcase solar panels, lithium-ion batteries and other clean energy devices that guests might want in their homes...? Why not switch to electric cooking at the Alien Pizza Planet restaurant, and offer induction stove demos for diners? Maybe start screening some National Geographic films (Disney owns NatGeo) at the largely unused Magic Eye Theater...? Add some infotainment-style signs and voice-overs about the wonders of clean energy and public transit, and boom, you've got a Tomorrowland that should leave kids and their parents excited to help build a safer, happier, more sustainable world... [Gurr] told me that if he could, he'd tear out everything in Tomorrowland except the Monorail and rebuild it as a version of the public transit-oriented futuristic city that Walt once planned for Florida — only with clean energy at the core of its storytelling... At the very least, he said it's time for an Autopia where guests "don't smell the fumes, don't hear that racket of the little motor going putt-putt-putt." The newsletter agrees electric vehicles for Autopia are "the obvious starting point" for remodeling Tomorrowland with "a buzz of optimism and futuristic energy." ("Solar-panel shade structures over the line would be great too.") They even add that "it's not that it's my job to make money for Disney, but I'm sure the company could find sponsors for this vision of Tomorrowland. There are plenty of renewable energy companies, electric utilities and environmental groups eager to tout their causes and their credentials." And it shares this observation from climate scientist and communicator Katharine Hayhoe (paraphrasing another scientist who studies climate communications): "Showing people what climate solutions look like is one of the most effective ways to get them to support action." The newsletter's conclusion? "This is where Tomorrowland could prove especially valuable in the fight to save the planet." Some additional context... Disney's current CEO once said he was "particuarly proud" of the 270-acre, 50+-megawatt solar facility the company brought online in Orlando." And the Washington Post reports that Disney's plans to electrify Autopia "comes as the park is taking steps to decarbonize as part of an effort to reach a goal of net-zero emissions by 2030."

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