In Process

The world’s ultimate petrostate is turning to solar power.

Saudi Arabia is building some of the world’s biggest solar farms, along with giant arrays of batteries to store their electricity till after dark. The rapid rollout is making the country into one of the fastest-growing markets for solar power from a near-standing start.

The kingdom is betting that sunshine can transform its economy and bolster its coffers. It needs electricity for new tourism resorts, factories and AI data centers. Green energy could also squeeze more value from the fossil fuels that made the kingdom rich. Saudi Arabia burns oil to generate electricity; embracing alternatives frees up barrels for export.

Climate change meant that there were about 41 more “extreme heat” days in 2024, according to the World Weather Attribution’s annual extreme weather report. Climate change contributed to at least 3,700 deaths, but “it’s likely the total number of people killed in extreme weather events intensified by climate change [in 2024] is in the tens, or hundreds of thousands,” the group said. While the El Niño weather pattern contributed to global trends, climate change played a bigger role in fueling extreme weather. “As the planet warms, the influence of climate change increasingly overrides other natural phenomena affecting the weather,” the report added.

The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a landmark victory for youth climate activists, affirming a decision by a lower court last year that the state’s energy policies violated their constitutional rights to a clean environment.

Many of the 16 young people who brought the case, Held v. Montana, testified during the trial about the extreme weather they had witnessed in their home state, which is a major player in oil, gas and coal. They argued that a state law barring consideration of climate in setting energy policy was unconstitutional.

Almost two decades ago, the atmosphere’s levels of methane — a dangerous greenhouse gas that is over 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term — started to climb. And climb. Then, in 2020, the growth rate nearly doubled.

Scientists were baffled — and concerned. … But now, a study sheds light on what’s driving record methane emissions. The culprits, scientists believe, are microbes — the tiny organisms that live in cows’ stomachs, agricultural fields and wetlands. And that could mean a dangerous feedback loop — in which these emissions cause warming that releases even more greenhouse gases — is already underway.

Note: This story is interesting mostly because it relied on a law passed last year that forced state-level judicial processes to move quickly.  The litigation was resolved in less than 6 months.

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“California needs more water storage, and we have no time to waste — projects like the Sites Reservoir will capture rain and snow runoff to supply millions of homes with clean drinking water,” the governor said in a June 4 news release. “We’re approaching this work with urgency, everything from water storage to clean energy and transportation projects.”

In a desolate stretch of desert spanning West Texas and New Mexico, drillers are pumping more crude than Kuwait. The oil production is so frenzied that huge swaths of land are sinking and heaving. The land…

“There are tens of millions of dyed-in-the-wool environmentalists out there who just aren’t voting,” says Nathaniel Stinnett, founder and executive director of the Environmental Voter Project. “The climate movement doesn’t have a persuasion problem as much as we have a turnout problem.” 

From Rice University research: “We converted waste plastics ⎯ including mixed waste plastics that don’t have to be sorted by type or washed ⎯ into high-yield hydrogen gas and high-value graphene. If the produced graphene is sold at only 5% of current market value ⎯ a 95% off sale! ⎯ clean hydrogen could be produced for free.” WOW!

Bloomberg has a nice summary about global EV numbers.  Great charts.

Increasingly often, there’s a robust and rich discussion on Community.CitizensClimate.org that needs to be bookmarked for future reference.  This discussion is one — it summarizes a report from an interagency working group (IWG) from the…

Scientists working in one of the world’s fastest-warming places found that rapidly retreating glaciers are triggering the release into the atmosphere of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that causes global temperatures to rise.

The releases are triggered as glaciers across the archipelago of Svalbard, Norway, rapidly retreat and leave behind newly exposed land […]