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Category: Environment

The data center next door: On the frontline of tech’s latest David v Goliath battle

The data center next door: On the frontline of tech’s latest David v Goliath battle

The Guardian reports: Dale Johnston opens the gate to his neat suburban garden on the western fringes of Newport in South Wales. There’s a trampoline and a slide on the lawn for his grandchildren, and chairs for him and his wife. He should be enjoying the light draining from the perfect autumnal sky – but almost his entire view is blotted out by a vast expanse of prefabricated panels. The 23 metre-high grey hulk looming over him and his neighbours…

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‘Pure arrogance’: Anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for data center

‘Pure arrogance’: Anger in Finland as Google illegally fells 250,000 trees for data center

The Guardian reports: Behind a wire fence lies a vast gaping wound of earth. Before Google’s arrival a few months ago, an estimated quarter of a million trees occupied the 330 hectares (815 acres) of forest near the town of Muhos in rural northern Finland. Now they are all gone. After the tech company illegally stripped the entire area to build a datacentre – taking even the top soil with it – all that remains is a vast expanse of…

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Earth’s oldest evidence of life is written in stone – but it’s at risk of disappearing

Earth’s oldest evidence of life is written in stone – but it’s at risk of disappearing

Stromatolites at Hamelin Pool, Shark Bay, viewed from the boardwalk. Heidi Allen By Heidi Jane Allen, The University of Melbourne Today, our planet is teeming with life, but it has not always looked the same. Long before forests reached skyward, animals walked on land, and the rise and fall of dinosaurs, our planet was shaped by a much smaller, more unassuming form of life. And we can still find traces of it today. These ancient fossils, the earliest visible evidence…

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‘The toll is huge’: El Niño-driven wildfires overwhelm Indonesia’s orangutan population

‘The toll is huge’: El Niño-driven wildfires overwhelm Indonesia’s orangutan population

The Guardian reports: The mother’s hands were peeling from walking on the torched ground. Her eight-month-old baby, which clung to her side, was dehydrated and thin. The pair, named Mama Abu and Abu (“ash” in Indonesian), were found in an oil palm subsidiary estate, rescuers say. The orangutan pair were saved last month from wildfires that are devouring Indonesia’s forests and peatland, unleashing thick smog, and destroying the habitat of some of the planet’s most vulnerable species. Primate specialists from…

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Amazon’s $1 billion plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash

Amazon’s $1 billion plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash

Ars Technica reports: On Friday, Amazon committed to donating more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring data centers. In a press release, Amazon Web Services’ CEO Matt Garman said that communities would decide how to prioritize funds across “education, job training, energy affordability, water, and energy preservation, and local priorities.” Laying out other community commitments, Amazon also promised to ensure data centers wouldn’t increase power bills or wipe out local water supplies. Regarding the latter,…

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‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years

‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years

The Guardian reports: Switzerland has lost almost one-fifth of its ice in just five years, research has found, in a dramatic reshaping of the Alpine country whose big white glaciers have been reduced to moonlike rock deserts, scientists say. Swiss glaciers shrank by 5.5% in the first eight months of 2026, according to an annual monitoring report, after a summer of scorching heatwaves that followed a winter with little snow. The reduction in ice volume falls just shy of the…

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Concern mounts over slow-moving, planetary-scale ‘Kelvin’ wave heading for California

Concern mounts over slow-moving, planetary-scale ‘Kelvin’ wave heading for California

The Guardian reports: Concerns are mounting about an ocean phenomenon known as a Kelvin wave that could raise sea levels along the California coastline by up to a foot, as scientists say El Niño is supercharging the threat of storm surges and flooding in the coming months. As an incredibly strong El Niño continues to develop in the Pacific, the phenomenon brings with it a strange shift in the ocean. The Kelvin wave phenomenon is created when trade winds that…

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Wildfire converted me from a tree-hugger to a tree-worshipper

Wildfire converted me from a tree-hugger to a tree-worshipper

Robert Moor writes: Thirteen years ago, I traded a shoe-box apartment on the east side of Manhattan for a cabin in the woods on the west coast of Canada. Like so many would-be Thoreauvians before me, I moved here in part because I craved an escape from the city’s pollution and noise. In that time, however, I have begun to feel the city — which is to say, the whole tangled system of advanced technology, industrial agriculture and hypercapitalism —…

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Trump is considering more data centers on public lands than was previously known

Trump is considering more data centers on public lands than was previously known

The Washington Sun reports: The Trump administration is considering proposals for at least 12 data centers and data center-related infrastructure projects to be built on federal public lands — far more than previously known. The Bureau of Land Management is reviewing data center-related proposals covering at least 17,600 acres of public land across six states — Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming, according to public records of right-of-way proposals reviewed by The Washington Sun. Many of the projects under…

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Satellites show Earth lost more than 12 trillion tons of ice from Greenland, Antarctica in 47 years

Satellites show Earth lost more than 12 trillion tons of ice from Greenland, Antarctica in 47 years

The Associated Press reports: About 12.5 trillion tons (11.3 trillion metric tons) of ice from glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have melted since 1979, which is enough frozen water to stack ice five feet deep across the continental United States, according to a major scientific report. A warming Earth is accelerating the melting of the planet’s two major ice sheets, with five-sixths of the melt not coming from hotter air, but from warmer waters eating away at the ice sheets…

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‘Tidal wave’ of forever chemicals being launched to satisfy AI industry, campaigners warn

‘Tidal wave’ of forever chemicals being launched to satisfy AI industry, campaigners warn

The Guardian reports: Pfas [Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances] companies are launching a “tidal wave” of forever chemicals production to meet demand from the AI industry, a campaign organisation has warned. Despite alarm over the chemicals, which have been linked to cancer, a survey of the 10 biggest manufacturers found most had plans to increase production. Many frame their investments around the “AI revolution”, because of the role Pfas play in semiconductor production and next-generation datacentre cooling systems. But opponents warn…

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EPA expected to remove limits on climate pollution from power plants

EPA expected to remove limits on climate pollution from power plants

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration plans to announce Monday that the United States will no longer limit the planet-warming pollution that power plants pump into the air while burning coal and gas, according to two people familiar with the proposal. The shift by the Environmental Protection Agency would complete the administration’s erasure of the most consequential climate policies of Presidents Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama. If the move survives expected legal challenges, it could also…

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Nietzsche’s startling provocation: You’re edible and delicious

Nietzsche’s startling provocation: You’re edible and delicious

Nicholas E Low writes: It looked like a piece of driftwood floating in muddy floodwaters. But then it grew a pair of eyes that peered above the waterline. As the canoe came closer, the crocodile struck, attempting to topple it. Not knowing what else to do, the woman inside paddled toward a set of trees with branches hanging over the water. When she jumped to grab one, the crocodile leapt, too, pulling her underwater into a death roll. ‘That was…

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Nepal’s catastrophic flood heralds a new era of disasters

Nepal’s catastrophic flood heralds a new era of disasters

Bloomberg reports: The giant wave of rock, ice and debris that swept through 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Nepalese valleys last week is the deadliest illustration yet of how climate change is fueling mountain disasters of epic proportions. Scientists have long predicted quicker melting of snow and ice and accelerated thawing of permafrost in high mountain areas that are warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. For years they have documented the results: more frequent rockfalls, avalanches,…

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How a massive solar storm could take down the power grid

How a massive solar storm could take down the power grid

CNN reports: Forecasters knew something unusual was hurtling toward Earth. Three days before a solar storm arrived on May 10, 2024, they watched as a dark knot on the sun — tangled magnetic field lines spanning 124,000 miles — took aim at the planet. “That’s magnets twisting and turning and popping through each other,” said Shawn Dahl, service coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado. “Think about a rubber…

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‘Supersizing before our eyes’: UN warns of record El Niño approaching

‘Supersizing before our eyes’: UN warns of record El Niño approaching

The Guardian reports: The El Niño climate phenomenon is “supersizing before our eyes”, the UN has said. The event is near certain to shatter temperature records, according to the latest forecasts. The El Niño is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years and will pile extra heat into an atmosphere where temperatures are already rising rapidly due to global heating. The combination means 2027 is set to “blow apart” the record and be the hottest year ever…

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