CleanTechnica: “IEA Report Claims Fossil Fuel Imports Have Declined In More Than 100 Countries.” The executive summary of their valued annual report includes this projection: “Global renewable power capacity is expected to double between now and 2030, increasing by 4,600 gigawatts.

MIT News: “Printable aluminum alloy sets strength records, may enable lighter aircraft parts.” The new printable metal is made from an alloy of aluminum and other elements that the team identified using a combination of simulations and machine learning .

AAAS: “First approved drug for mitochondrial disease could pave way for more treatments.” A typical human cell [also in plants + fungi] has thousands of mitochondria.

MiamiHerald: “King tides in South Florida: Getting worse and a sign of sea level rise to come.” The Moon’s closest approach of the Earth in its elliptical orbit is called “perigee” + is associated with higher or “king” tides.

AAAS: “Well-exercised male mice appear to pass fitness to their male offspring.” Traditional genetics relies on the long-established role of DNA. Human DNA and its associated proteins [primarily histones] have carried information through billions of years of evolution.

CanaryMedia: “Trump’s push to keep coal plants running could cost consumers billions.” Emergency stay-open orders from Trump’s Department of Energy for aging fossil-fuel plants are forcing unanticipated + excessive costs onto utilities + their customers.

More exciting than a rocket taking off from Cape Canaveral, burning a hole in a cloud. Something I actually saw when I was 19—working in a summer camp on Lake Ocala in central Florida. We took busloads of our campers to see Apollo 11 take off, ferrying the first astronauts to walk on the Moon.

CanaryMedia: “Plug-in solar bills are in the works in New Hampshire and Vermont.” “Lawmakers and advocates in both states are preparing legislation that would make these plug-in solar systems accessible to residents who don’t have space, money, or inclination to install a larger, rooftop array.”

CanaryMedia: “US hydropower is at a make-or-break moment.” Relicensing for hydropower dams is a yearslong, often extremely expensive process. “Nearly 450 hydroelectric stations totaling more than 16 gigawatts of generating capacity are scheduled for relicensing across U.S. over the next decade.”

AAAS: “Does drinking beer make you more attractive to mosquitoes?” “Researchers asked attendees at [a] Lowlands music and arts festival in the Netherlands to place their arms against an acrylic box full of mosquitoes to see how many of the bugs [sic] attempted to land on them.”

AAAS: “Mysterious will-o’-the-wisps ignited by microlightning.” Electrical sparks from tiny bubbles offers a new explanation for the ‘fleeting flames of folklore.’ Myths attempted to explain the will-o’-the-wisp, the fleeting flames occasionally seen above swamps + graveyards in the dark of Moon.

The parable of the prodigal son somehow appealed to me for this personal—not political or scientific post—though I have more enjoyed reading authors like Richard Dawkins + Daniel Dennet than reading the Bible.

AAAS: “Scientists directly date dino eggshells for the first time.” In what is now Hubei province in China, in a site called Qinglongshan, from roughly 100 to 60 millions of yrs ago—the Upper Cretaceous period—dinosaurs of many species apparently found an ideal nesting site.

AAAS: “Thawing permafrost is turning Arctic rivers orange—spelling trouble for fish.” In 1977 author John McPhee wrote that the Salmon River, in remote northwestern Alaska, had “the clearest, purest water I have ever seen.”

This is no laughing matter. I’m way short of time this morning, so let me just say I’m almost done reading at great book entitled Waste Wars: The Wild Afterlife of your Trash, published this yr.

Guardian: "Climate crisis will increase frequency of lightning-sparked wildfires, study finds." > lightning-caused fires is 'probably making wildfires more deadly by producing more wildfire smoke + helping drive a surge in air quality issues from coast to coast, especially over past several yrs.'

CanaryMedia: “Trump admin blocks funds for farmers who want solar.” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins doesn’t often star in the mainstream media, but she is critical impediment to rational agricultural policy, including use of solar arrays to support farmers + their income.🧪

YaleClimateConnections: “U.S. mines are literally throwing away critical minerals.” America has dozens of active mines, some for copper, others for iron. The main targeted component is a small fraction of the rock extracted.

CanaryMedia: “Chart: Yes, US power prices are rising. Don’t blame clean energy.” Consumer costs have been going up since 2020 due to an aging grid, climate disasters, and volatile methane/natural gas prices.

AAAS: "Mosquito-borne viruses surge in a warming Europe." European Centre for Disease Prevention + Control (ECDC) Director Pamela Rendi-Wagner reported, "Europe is entering a new phase—where longer, more widespread and more intense transmission of mosquito-borne diseases is becoming the new normal."

AAAS: “Human ancestors braved England’s ice-covered northlands 440,000 years ago.” Ancient humans, ‘possibly a long-ago ancestor called Homo antecessor, moved into Northern Europe roughly a million years ago, leaving rare but striking evidence of their presence.

CanaryMedia: “Texas created a $7.2B fund for gas plants. Hardly any are being built.” In the winter of 2021, Winter Storm Uri plunged most of the state into blackouts during freezing weather for days, leaving hundreds of people dead.

CanaryMedia: “Chart: The retiring coal power plants Trump could revive.” The Energy Department keeps ordering expensive, polluting plants to keep operating under duress, disadvantaging both utilities + ratepayers.

AAAS: "Trust in elections rises after ‘inoculations’ meant to preempt false fraud claims." Torrents of false and misleading information can now spread faster than ever before, thanks in part to favorable incentives for those who create and distribute it online.

Atmosphere: "Study on non-exhaust emissions in road dust," Brake dust is radically different from tire wear. Greater penetration of EVs is changing urban air quality in a second beneficial way which has nothing to do with eliminating tailpipe emissions.

Curr. Biol. (2025) 10.1016/j.cub.2025.05.066, "Population genomics of a sailing siphonophore reveals genetic structure in the open ocean." Bluebottles or men-o'-war, cnidarians in the genus Physalia, use a gas-filled float and sail to catch the wind and sail the ocean.

Guardian: “Democrats seek ‘immediate answers’ after reported arrests of firefighters by US border agents.” Nearly 430 personnel are responding to the Bear Gulch fire on the state’s Olympic peninsula, much of which consists of boreal rainforest.

AAAS: “Bats may mistake wind turbines for open sky, causing deadly collisions.” Our president is obsessed with bird-kill associated with wind turbines, though cats + buildings + fracking ponds kill far more birds. Bats are a different story.

Launch event imminent, this Saturday, August 30th, 6pm at Village Books. You can get Eventbrite tickets through the link for this excellent bookstore in Bellingham, Washington, USA.

CBS: “Massive dust storm engulfs Phoenix, followed by monsoon, grounding hundreds of flights.” Heavy rain and wind followed Monday’s haboob, delaying flights at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and causing some damage to a terminal roof.

AAAS: “As salmon in Alaska plummet, scientists home in on a killer.” Perhaps there’s a reason the Alaska Pacific University master’s student in the photo is not smiling.

Resource Insights: “Dog days in D.C.” My friend Kurt Cobb provides ‘independent commentary on environmental and natural resource news.’

Yale Climate Connections: I could add commentary to these cartoons, but let me just say they characterize opposite scenarios of too little water vs. too much.

Treehugger: “15 stunning stingray facts.” Stingrays are carnivorous, preying on crustaceans, ray-finned fish + worms found on + under the sand. They are found predominantly in warm + shallow waters in tropical + subtropical regions, but in some ares in freshwater lakes + rivers.

CanaryMedia: "NYC just launched its first hybrid-electric ferry." Last month GOP legislation "rescinded millions of dollars in unobligated grant money from  2022 Inflation Reduction Act to help local governments + others slash diesel pollution from ports by modernizing and electrifying equipment."

Grist: “Installing heat pumps in factories could save $1.5 trillion and 77,000 lives.” Full of good news this morning. “A new report finds that replacing conventional boilers with heat pumps could also avoid 33 million asthma attacks by 2050, thanks to improved air quality.”

The lucky folks who visit my website may open + read the first chapter of each of my 3 books, FOSSIL DRAGON + CLIMATE DRAGON + CLOUD DRAGON. For historical reasons, the first book will not be published until next yr sometime, whereas the other two are already available for purchase.

"Since the year 2000, global warming has led to the disappearance of thousands of glaciers across the world." In 2024 a group at Rice University created a frozen memorial.

CanaryMedia: “Chart: Public EV chargers are growing steadily in the US.” Focus first on the fact these are public chargers we are talking about, though an estimated 80% of charging happens in homes + at businesses.

Fortune: "AI experts return from China stunned: The U.S. grid is so weak, the race may already be over." Ma is a renowned expert in Chinese technology + founder of the media company Tech Buzz China.Wind

The Interpreter: "A South China sea collision brings US-Philippines alliance to the fore." It was only wks ago that "Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. made a seemingly fruitless visit to Washington—only managed to slash a single percentage point in new US tariffs."

Slow Boring: "Avoiding a data center electricity price apocalypse." Matthew Yglesias has this insightful piece on rising electricity demand + costs. Bringing a new data center online entails not just generation of more electricity but also construction of infrastructure to deliver it reliably.

Politico: "Jellyfish invasion shuts down reactors at French nuclear power station." I love these little articles with significant adverse publicity for nuclear power. As far as nuclear plant shutdowns due to jellyfish, first of all they are not fish, without eyes, skeleton + other dissimilarities.

IScience: "Cross-continental hitchhiking of exotic ticks on human travelers and ensuing public health challenges in the USA." Specialized scientists in Connecticut recently identified nonnative ticks from Belize, Costa Rica, Germany, Guatemala, Poland, Scotland and Tanzania.

YaleClimateConnections: "Why you might get bumped from a flight during a heat wave." It comes down to this central tenet: The future is not going to look like the present. "As the climate warms, some airplanes may need to carry fewer passengers or less cargo."

ResourceInsights: "No safety net: Insurance starts to go away." Kurt Cobb started his post from 15June with this: Ever since the words "insurance premium" began appearing on contracts in the Republic of Venice in 1255, modern global trade and now our broader society depend on insurance.

WashingtonGeologicalSurvey: "Experience the story of geothermal energy in Washington." The work of the Survey is part of a collaborative process headed by the Washington Department of Ecology.

aCanaryMedia: "Chart: The clean-energy manufacturing boom is going bust." This is an abysmal outcome for this point in history, the attempt by the federal government to grind the energy transition to a halt. Good news is that this attempt will fail.ch

YaleClimatConnections: "4 billion people experienced a whole extra month of extreme heat in the past yr." With emphasis now: “Many, many, many people across the globe are feeling the effects of extreme heat that is fueled by climate change.”

CanaryMedia: "LA has a plan to stop copper thieves: Solar-powered streetlights." Miguel Sangalang is the executive director and general manager of LA’s Bureau of Street Lighting.