Photosynthesis does not always result in wood growth, a key factor in carbon dioxide sequestration.

Trees may not be able to store as much planet-heating carbon as hoped, a study suggests, with researchers finding photosynthesis does not always lead to wood growth.

Scientists studied 137 sites across the US and found trees stopped growing months before the point in the year at which photosynthesis stopped.

Forests are a vital defence against climate breakdown but their power depends in part on how much carbon dioxide they can convert into wood, which keeps the planet-heating molecule out of the atmosphere for decades and centuries. Other uses of carbon are typically shorter lasting.

After you’ve worked on rockets that find their way to outer space, it can be hard to come up with a second act. For SpaceX alumni Andrew Redd, it meant looking deep in the ocean. Redd is betting the ocean has vast amounts of untapped geothermal energy.

Redd, who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, a region affected by uncharacteristic heat waves and catastrophic fires in recent years, knew he wanted to tackle something in renewable energy.

“But the experience at a very hardcore company like SpaceX made me realize that I can’t just come up with an incremental solution. It actually has to be brand new and it has to be approached from first principles,” according to Redd, who was an engineer on Dragon and Starship at SpaceX.

Redd left SpaceX and founded Endurance Energy, a startup that has raised a $54 million Series A to eventually harness terawatts of geothermal energy deep in the ocean, TechCrunch has learned.

Himalayan slopes are turning greener as vegetation climbs higher, raising concerns about water, snow, and ecosystems.

For years, the biggest climate warning from the Himalaya was easy to picture because glaciers were shrinking on the roof of Asia. Now, researchers are pointing to a quieter signal, one that can look almost harmless from a distance. The mountains are getting greener.

New research led by the University of Exeter shows alpine vegetation moving higher across six Himalayan regions from 1999 to 2022, pushed in part by warming and reduced snow depth. That might sound like nature recovering, but in this fragile landscape, more plant cover at extreme heights may change how snow is stored, how water runs downhill, and how rivers behave for communities far below.

Climate Commitment Act funding supports more than 750 new charging ports statewide OLYMPIA, Washington — The Washington State Department of Commerce today announced $37.3 million in grants to support 104 electric vehicle (EV) charging projects across the state.

Bats move through desert night skies with a purpose that is easy to overlook and difficult to replace. As they travel from plant to plant, feeding on nectar, they are also performing one of the most important ecological services in arid landscapes: pollination. For agave plants—long-lived, slow-growing succulents that define much of Mexico’s desert ecology—bats are not just occasional visitors. They are essential partners in reproduction.

This relationship is a classic example of mutualism, in which two species depend on each other for survival. 

Conservationists say cherished creatures such as whales, dolphins and seabirds are being killed in large numbers by fishing tackle.

Thousands of Britain’s most charismatic and protected marine wildlife, including whales, porpoises, dolphins, seals and seabirds are being killed as “collateral damage” by fishing vessels every year, according to the first-ever analysis of bycatch data.

The analysis, by the Wildlife and Countryside Link, a coalition of voluntary conservation groups, reveals the devastating toll bycatch, the accidental capture and killing of non-target species by fishing vessels, is having on marine species.

The “shocking” scale of annual deaths in the report, Hidden in the haul: The true scale of bycatch is likely to be “the tip of the iceberg”, it said, as only a fraction of the UK fishing fleet monitor bycatch

The Indian government is spending $9 billion to create a megaport, airport and city on this remote island. Critics fear the impact on pristine forests and the lives of indigenous inhabitants.

In the icy waters of the Southern Ocean, whales and other marine mammals rely on krill to survive. But as the market for human dietary supplements and animal feeds booms, and climate change reduces krill populations, scientists worry there may not be enough to go around.

Massachusetts is right now engaging in the most robust dialogue in state history around the concept of relocating people, homes, and communities away from places prone to flooding.

AROUND 50 PEOPLE in the seaside enclave of Hull ventured out on a freezing January night to hear from town officials and a consulting firm about a plan that’s in the works to deal with a problem that’s become increasingly impossible to ignore: flooding.

The community meeting centered on a proposal under development that could mitigate flooding in the Hampton Circle neighborhood, a section of the slim peninsula town that’s ground zero for flooding. Over sliders and other finger foods on the second floor of a restaurant across the street from the ocean, officials presented ideas for new infrastructure like a tidal gate and pedestrian bridge as skeptical residents peppered them with pressing questions and anecdotes.

Before consultants from Weston & Sampson got too far along with their design pitch, though, Chris Krahforst, director of climate adaptation and conservation in Hull, stood up and added something into the mix.

While Massachusetts ranks fourth in the country for charging ports per capita after a sharp increase in installments over the past few years, the state is still about 2,000 charging ports short of what it estimates it needs.

FOR ALL THE concern about lost federal funding courtesy of the Republican trifecta in Washington, Massachusetts still has not deployed a single electric vehicle charger through a Biden-era program that President Trump has left intact.

The Bay State is sitting on the roughly $64 million it was awarded through the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, a $5 billion federal initiative authorized through the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law meant to strategically dot the nation’s major highways with charging infrastructure that would make it easier for EV drivers to reliably travel greater distances.

Two years ago, Massachusetts selected three vendors to identify locations for NEVI charging stations and then build and maintain them. Only contracts with two of those companies, however — Applegreen and Global Partners — are signed, the state’s Department of Transportation confirmed to CommonWealth Beacon, leaving open questions about the viability of the third vendor, Weston & Sampson.

One of the wealthiest corporations in the world is seeking government permission to release 32 million mosquitoes throughout Florida and California. Called “Debug,” the Google-owned company is attempting to flood disease-carrying mosquito populations with “good bugs,” meaning male mosquitoes that have been infected with a bacteria called Wolbachia that causes cytoplasmic incompatibility — meaning their sperm can’t fertilize the eggs of uninfected females. Over time, the theory goes, this will disrupt the reproduction cycle, thereby increasing competition and decreasing the overall population.

“The idea is simple,” the Debug website declares: “raise sterile males and release them into wild insect populations. When a wild female mates with a sterile male, her eggs won’t hatch. The population gets smaller with each generation.”

PROVINCETOWN, MA - As the Center for Coastal Studies kicks off its 50th anniversary year, it reflects on how much our knowledge of whale dynamics and the Cape Cod cod coastal ecosystem has grown.

How did Center for Coastal Studies start its anniversary year?

Whipping winds and rain didn’t keep hearty Cape Codders away from the May 30 open house at Provincetown’s CCS. The event kicks off a year of celebration of the research organization’s 50th anniversary.

Who started the Center for Coastal Studies?

With an initial capacity of 24 megawatts, the innovative data center uses seawater as a natural cooling system.

China has become the first country in the world to operate an underwater data center, or UDC, powered by wind. Located off the coast of Shanghai, the complex represents a significant advance in the country's strategy to secure energy supplies in the face of the accelerated growth of artificial intelligence, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and reduce the environmental impact of its technology infrastructure.

• Arizona's San Carlos Lake is closed indefinitely after a major fish kill wiped out nearly all its fish population

• Officials attribute the fish kill to drought conditions and dam water releases that may lead to public health and safety concerns

• The closure impacts one of Arizona's largest lakes, a popular recreation spot with over 150 miles of shoreline

A massive number of fish deaths, or fish kills, in San Carlos Lake in Arizona have forced officials to close the popular recreation destination indefinitely amid growing public health and safety concerns tied to ongoing drought.

In a public notice shared on Facebook on Friday, June 5, the San Carlos Recreation and Wildlife Department announced that San Carlos Lake would remain closed "until further notice" after what officials described as a "significant fish kill event" affecting nearly the entire fish population within the lake.

“It is a death sentence for us if larger nations continue to open new fossil fuel projects,” Feleti Teo, the prime minister of Tuvalu, said in 2024. Located roughly halfway between Australia and Hawaii, Tuvalu is a nation of extremely low-lying reef islands and atolls. Sea level rise—driven primarily by burning fossil fuels, which boosts global temperatures and melts polar ice sheets—threatens to put those islands and atolls underwater within the lifetimes of Tuvalu’s current inhabitants.

No wonder Tuvalu, along with other Pacific island nations, will co-host a follow-up meeting to the landmark First Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels held six weeks ago in Santa Marta, Colombia.

So it comes as a shock to learn that Tuvalu’s government is heavily invested in fossil fuels, as revealed by an investigation published on May 28 by the global news agency Agence France-Presse. The Tuvalu Trust Fund, the nation’s largest financial asset, according to AFP, “has invested in coal mining, gas exploration and the world’s largest crude oil refinery,” reported correspondent Steven Trask, referring to the Jamnagar petrochemical complex in India.  

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in a June 2 ruling rejected a youth-led constitutional climate lawsuit seeking to overturn three of President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at supporting the fossil fuel industry, curbing renewable energy and suppressing climate science. 

A three-judge panel agreed with a Montana District Court judge who dismissed the lawsuit last fall, saying the plaintiffs did not create a plausible link between alleged injuries and the three Executive Orders. They also said the requested injunction was unlikely to address their concerns, and was overly broad and complicated.

Backed by Bill Gates and Amazon, clean aviation startup ZeroAvia promised a hydrogen-powered future. Now, a massive U.S. retreat and executive shakeup reveal why.

It turns out not even the people building Tesla’s self-driving tech trust Elon Musk’s extravagant claims about the company’s autonomous vehicles.

Ten former Tesla safety employees shared their concerns about the company's infamous full self-driving mode.

New reporting by Reuters interviewed nine former data labelers and a former self-driving engineer about their take on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving mode. The results were overwhelmingly negative, with seven of the data specialists admitting they wouldn’t ride in a Tesla in FSD.

For 6,000 years, humans have controlled water to serve their needs, but a warming planet is revealing the limits of that approach. By Jeremy Rifkin The defining signature of the past 6,000 years of human civilization is the domestication of the hydrosphere—capturing, damming, canalizing, reorienting, propertizing, privatizing, consuming, profiting from, depleting, and poisoning it. From ancient hydraulic civilizations to the hydro-powered superdams, reservoirs, canals, and ports of the 21st century, water has been repurposed for humanity, often at the expense of millions of other species that depend on it.

Harnessing the hydrosphere has shaped societies and the distinctiveness of cultures across history. The design of hydraulic infrastructure has partially fated societies to the entropic costs that led to their demise—and sometimes collapse. Unlike in the past, the entropic consequences of water use during the fossil-fuel-based Industrial Revolution—the water-energy nexus—have eclipsed localities, regions, and continents, propelling Earth into the sixth extinction of life.

The United Nations has officially confirmed the emergence of El Niño conditions within the next five months.

On Tuesday, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization issued a stark warning that there’s now an 80 percent chance that El Niño conditions emerge between June and August, and over a 90 percent change that they appear before November.

“This update matters because El Niño is a major driver of global weather and climate patterns,” Celeste Saulo, secretary-general of the WMO said in a statement. “The footprint of an El Niño travels far beyond its origins in the Pacific Ocean, impacting agriculture, energy supplies, trade, water resources, supply chains, and livelihoods across entire regions.”