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Category: Environment

The U.S. just approved a giant space mirror to test ‘sunlight on demand.’ Low Earth orbit is getting weird

The U.S. just approved a giant space mirror to test ‘sunlight on demand.’ Low Earth orbit is getting weird

Reflect Orbital’s plans to have more than 50,000 satellites reflecting sunlight back to earth could disrupt the circadian rhythms of plants, animals and humans. (Unsplash/Mariana Proença) By Samantha Lawler, University of Regina and Aaron Boley, University of British Columbia A giant mirror to create “sunlight on demand” was just approved by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), despite opposition from astronomers and the public, and real safety concerns. The FCC approved the company Reflect Orbital to test one satellite,…

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Trump cuts habitat protections for endangered species

Trump cuts habitat protections for endangered species

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration on Friday moved to open the habitats of imperiled animals to farming, drilling, mining, real estate development and other activities in what environmentalists characterized as the most severe erosion of protections for wildlife in half a century. It did so by recasting a single word, “harm.” For more than 50 years, the federal government has used a broader definition of harm to animals under the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock environmental law….

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The ecology of dispossession in the West Bank

The ecology of dispossession in the West Bank

Diana Kruzman writes: In late April of last year, Israeli officials left three notices informing Bassem Mansour, a farmer from the Palestinian community of Deir Istiya in the northern West Bank, that three of his citrus tree plots were violating the boundaries of Wadi Qana, a protected nature reserve. The notices ordered Mansour to remove the saplings immediately, or he would be subject to “arrest, prosecution, and penalties.” Mansour, like many other Palestinian farmers in the area, was forced to…

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‘We are screwed’: People near data centers dread heat wave pollution

‘We are screwed’: People near data centers dread heat wave pollution

Politico reports: Data Center Alley is facing a climate test. Searing temperatures this week could push energy demand to record levels on the mid-Atlantic’s electric grid, which fuels the country’s data center boom in Virginia. To relieve some of the pressure, the Department of Energy granted permission Tuesday to the region’s grid operator, PJM Interconnection, to potentially force data centers to use backup diesel generators. The move highlights the growing challenge of meeting rising electricity demand from data centers as…

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Proposed new satellite fleets may destroy the night sky

Proposed new satellite fleets may destroy the night sky

Science reports: Two new proposals for fleets of orbiting data centers and reflective satellites could pose an unprecedented threat to ground-based astronomy, astronomers warn in a new study. The spacecraft would not only leave destructive trails across telescope images, the analysis finds, but also brighten the night sky by as much as 300%, leaving observatories to peer through a haze of scattered light that would veil stars. “Essentially, we lose all the faint stuff for which we built the telescopes…

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Here’s why weather forecasts have seemed so inaccurate lately

Here’s why weather forecasts have seemed so inaccurate lately

Gizmodo reports: Is there anything more annoying than leaving the house in shorts and flip flops, only to get caught in an unexpected downpour? The weather report is rarely spot-on, but if forecasts have seemed particularly inaccurate recently, it’s because they have been. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was among several agencies gutted by the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency in 2025. That February, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management abruptly fired 880 NOAA employees. Two months…

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It doesn’t have to be humanity versus nature

It doesn’t have to be humanity versus nature

Yadvinder Malhi writes: For much of the modern era, the global narrative of economic development has been imagined as a human story unfolding against a backdrop of nature as an externality to be exploited. Forests, rivers, soils and species appear as resources to be managed, inputs to be optimised, or constraints to be overcome. Human wellbeing advances; nature reduces. In some ways, this narrative has delivered. The condition and welfare of billions of humans have been improved beyond recognition. Yet…

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Trump administration backs off plan to end critical ocean monitoring

Trump administration backs off plan to end critical ocean monitoring

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration is abandoning its plan to dismantle a $368 million ocean monitoring system critical to understanding climate change and marine ecosystems, bowing to a bipartisan backlash on Capitol Hill. The National Science Foundation had said in May that it would begin removing hundreds of underwater instruments this month that collect data on coastal flooding, marine heat waves and other climate and weather events. But the agency announced on Thursday that it will pause…

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Trump is taking aim at forest and wildfire research just as the West is poised to burn

Trump is taking aim at forest and wildfire research just as the West is poised to burn

NPR reports: Few public universities get more federal research funding than the University of Washington. So as President Trump has already cancelled or suspended about a quarter of all funding for the National Science Foundation and National Institutes for Health, the atmosphere on this leafy Seattle campus is tense. White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought appears before the House Budget Committee at the U.S. Capitol on April 15. The budget office recently proposed a rule change…

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The Gulf Stream suddenly moved north during an ancient cold snap – and it’s a warning for our future

The Gulf Stream suddenly moved north during an ancient cold snap – and it’s a warning for our future

The Gulf Stream shifts warm water across the Atlantic to Europe. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, CC BY-SA By Alice Carter-Champion, Royal Holloway, University of London; Fangjingcheng Zhu, University of Southampton, and Jack Wharton, UCL Around 13,000 years ago, as the world was emerging from the grip of the last ice age, much of the North Atlantic region plunged back into near-glacial conditions. Sea ice expanded across the North Atlantic, reaching as far south as the Shetland Islands….

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Arctic ocean passes ‘irreversible’ chemical tipping point

Arctic ocean passes ‘irreversible’ chemical tipping point

Oceanographic reports: A new study spanning two decades reveals that the loss of sea ice has triggered an irreversible chemical shift in the Arctic Ocean. By exposing shallow coastal waters to intense sunlight, the melting ice has accelerated a process that destroys nitrate, the foundational fertiliser required for marine life to survive. The study, published in Communications Earth & Environment, suggests the Arctic passed a critical ecological tipping point in 2009. The resulting nutrient famine is already affecting the whole…

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How ecotypes harbor the genetic memory of a species’ past

How ecotypes harbor the genetic memory of a species’ past

Marlowe Starling writes: When she was a graduate student in the 1970s, the evolutionary biologist Kerstin Johannesson regularly walked the shores of a Swedish archipelago, scanning the ground for pebbles that moved: marine snails. Her adviser, a taxonomist, had tasked her with describing the species present there by documenting their traits. She noticed that snails with thicker shells stayed on the shore, while those with thinner shells seemed to prefer wave-battered rocks, and in between the two habitats were snails…

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A utility mega-merger is all about data centers

A utility mega-merger is all about data centers

Inside Climate News reports: A proposed merger of the largest utility in the country by market value, NextEra Energy, with the sixth-largest, Dominion, would create a megacompany at a time when data centers and rapid increases in electricity demand are reshaping the industry. The proposal, announced Monday morning and contingent on state and federal regulatory approval, would result in a company that leads in nearly every aspect of the U.S. power and utility industry, including overall electricity generation, natural gas…

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A vast meshwork of soil-bound fungi governs life aboveground

A vast meshwork of soil-bound fungi governs life aboveground

Max G. Levy writes: One Tuesday in June 2025, a white Chevy Suburban set off down the northernmost highway in North America. The sun of Alaska’s polar summer hadn’t set in 40 days, and it wouldn’t set again for another 35. But for Michael Van Nuland, the biologist in the driver’s seat, time was already running out. The SUV, packed with four days of fieldwork essentials — rubber boots for mucking in marshes, GPS for centimeter-level precision, a steel tube…

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A super El Niño killed millions of people in 1877. Are we better prepared now?

A super El Niño killed millions of people in 1877. Are we better prepared now?

The Washington Post reports: As chances rise for one of the strongest El Niño events on record later this year, the potential for dangerous conditions has prompted comparisons to 1877, when such an event drove catastrophe around the globe. El Niño is a warming of ocean waters in the east-central tropical Pacific that develops every few years. This year, ocean temperatures there could surge 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above average and break records. The climatic shift devastated crops…

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Backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

Backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan

The Guardian reports: A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies. The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW…

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