S. W. Lawrence, MD

TOPcon solar cell manufacturing. This is highly ironic, as the global solar industry is “quickly adopting new ‘tunnel oxide passivated contact’ (TOPCon) solar cells, which are more efficient than the current industry standard.” This new technology also reduces the carbon footprint of solar cell manufacturing, busting the anti-solar movement’s favorite “solar pollutes” talking point even wider open than it is already. “Citizens for Responsible Solar…or CRS, has loomed large in the US anti-solar disinformation machine since its launch in 2019 by political operative Susan Ralston, known for her tenure at the White House during the George W. Bush presidency.” CRS has a fine grasp of the obvious, “the Sun is free, but harnessing the Sun’s power into usable energy requires industrial processes to make cement, steel, glass and other components…these processes emit CO2.” UK organization Carbon Brief, citing lifecycle emissions data from the United Nations, notes that “a typical ground-mounted solar project produces 19 times fewer emissions than a coal plant and 8 times fewer than a gas plant, per unit of electricity generated. Furthermore, “the shift to TOPCon solar cells has the potential to [further] widen the emissions gap between solar power plants and fossil fuels.” They are even leapfrogging PERC, which stands for ‘passivated emitter rear cell,” which arrived on the scene a decade ago. A research team at the University of Warwick in the UK, “using life-cycle assessment modeling…found that producing the newer TOPCon panels has lower environmental impacts in fifteen out of sixteen categories as compared to the incumbent PERC technology,” Focusing in,“this includes a 6.5% reduction in climate-changing emissions per unit of electricity capacity, with increased silver consumption being the only downside as it depletes critical minerals.” Time to reframe CRS as CARS, or Citizens Against Rational Solar.

CleanTechnica: “TOPCon Solar Cells Are Killing A Key Anti-Solar Talking Point.” Anti-solar groups + government officials never cease to spew falsehoods.

Cattle grazing in mist. “The prevailing narrative is that global rangelands, from grasslands to deserts, are being degraded by overgrazing due to overstocking…a [mis-] perception arises from scientific literature, which contains an order of magnitude more studies on overstocking than on reductions in stocking rates.” Anadón and Sala found that stocking rates have already declined over the past 25 years in many regions, including Europe, North America, Australia, and northern Africa. In fact, “42% of grazing livestock species are experiencing reductions in stocking rate, while stocking rates increased in other regions.” The duality of increases and decreases of stocking rates challenges the prevailing focus on overgrazing in research. These researchers offer a more ‘nuanced understanding of extensive livestock systems and highlight the urgent need to reconsider the role of global grazing in shaping food security, biodiversity, and the carbon, water, and energy dimensions of global environmental change.’ Thus they evaluated socioeconomic, technological, and climatic direct drivers, as well as indirect drivers, of global stocking patterns. “Trade and climate had no detectable effects, whereas technological shifts and meat consumption had an impact on stocking rates…direct drivers were largely controlled by human population and gross domestic product.” Individuals, policymakers, politicians + governments should beware of overgeneralizing when it comes to livestock. That said, clearly my bias is still to limit the total number of livestock + individual meat + milk consumption.

AAAS: “Global destocking of extensive livestock: An overlooked trend with Earth system consequences.” A full one-quarter of the terrestrial land on our planet that is neither permafrost nor snow/ice-covered is used for ‘managed grazing.’

"They will deploy satellites, underwater drones, and a research icebreaker to study the fast-changing region.” They plan to probe everything from new shipping routes opened up because of seasonal sea ice loss to how changes in ocean circulation affect fish stocks, all over the next decade. Down south, “Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute and international partners are gearing up for Antarctica InSync, a series of field campaigns in Antarctica and the Southern Ocean to commence in 2027.” American participation is tricky, because scientists have to figure out how to reframe this for Trump, who is recalcitrant about anything dealing with climate, so they will style this as being about national security. “For example, insights into coastal erosion and permafrost subsidence that threaten Alaskan villages could also apply to coastal radar stations.” Additionally, “national security requires a good understanding of sea ice movements, which also happen to be a critical component of climate dynamics.” Arctic change can also affect space-based assets. “In early February 2022, SpaceX lost some 40 Starlink satellites just days after launch after a geomagnetic storm heated and expanded the upper atmosphere over the polar caps, increasing drag and pulling the spacecraft down before engineers could boost them to a safer orbit.” It is essential to study how a warming planet influences the upper atmosphere’s chemistry + density to make such events more likely. “An especially big blow has been the loss of access to Russian sites monitoring carbon emissions from thawing permafrost, which by 2100 could rival those of a large industrialized nation, accelerating global warming.” To compensate for the loss of Russian data, new stations are being set up in Alaska and Canada. If Trump cannot be persuaded, this American pogrom against science will be another in a long list of tragedies authored by this administration.

AAAS: “Politics and war complicate global effort to study changes to Earth’s poles.” As part of the fifth International Polar Year (IPY-5), a global push to study the planet’s most remote regions, “Norway will fan out across the Arctic Ocean from Svalbard to the North Pole.”

Icy Northeast recently. Particularly during winter cold spells, when demand for fossil gas exceeds supply.’ And, grid operators have been eagerly awaiting ‘offshore wind capacity to come online to help meet the rising electricity needs of data centers and electrified homes and vehicles.’ The justification has been borne out: “The data from January shows that “the nation’s two operating utility-scale offshore wind farms—South Fork Wind and Vineyard Wind—performed as well as gas-fired power plants and better than coal-fired facilities, including during last month’s Winter Storm Fern.” Happily for the developers, ‘the 132-megawatt [MW] South Fork Wind farm delivered power to Long Island, New York City, at a level the puts it on par with New York state’s most efficient gas plants.’ Mikkel Mæhlisen, vice president of the Americas Generation division for Ørsted, which jointly owns South Fork Wind with Skyborn Renewables, said, “the wind capacity in the Northeast is absolutely amazing, particularly over the winter.” Vineyard Wind, about 95% installed, can already produce as much as 600 MW of clean electricity off the coast of Massachusetts. This + 4 other offshore wind farms were forced to halt construction late last year in response to Trump’s stop-work orders, which cited putative ​“national security” concerns. Fortunately, “federal judges have allowed all five projects to proceed as the developers’ complaints move through the legal system.” However, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says the Trump administration plans to appeal those court rulings, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Once Vinyard Wind is fully operational, it will deliver power at a price of $84.23 per MWh to the New England grid—markedly less than spot wholesale prices during the storm, which spiked to over $870 per MWh on Jan. 25. [Over 10-fold higher]. One could rationally argue that the White House is irrational in it opposition to clean, secure, homegrown power.

CanaryMedia: “Offshore wind showed up big during the East Coast’s brutal cold.” Energy experts have forecast that ‘offshore wind could deliver substantial amounts of power to densely populated, land-constrained communities along America’s East Coast.’

Mounded guano on islands. “With very little rainfall rinsing these islands’ rocks, a sticky mixture of seabird excrement, feathers, eggshells, and bird bones has accumulated in mounds up to 50 meters tall.” Research published today in PLOS One suggests that on these islands, this tradition of harvesting guano extends further back in time than historians previously realized. “According to the new study, seafaring precursors to the Inca known as the Chincha rafted to the islands some 800 years ago to collect seabird poop for enriching their arid coastal fields.” The Chincha’s skill at harvesting this valuable fertilizer—inferred from the chemistry of maize [corn] recovered from Chincha graves—may have earned them an elevated status when they were later absorbed into the Inca empire in the mid-1400s. “Claudio Latorre Hidalgo, a paleoecologist at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, agrees, noting that the waters off Peru and Chile are notably nutrient-dense because of ocean upwelling—which makes the local seabird poop especially potent.” Chincha tombs contain pottery and cloth decorated with geometric seabird designs, with some of the birds snacking on fish. “There are birds everywhere, on everything,” co-author Jo Osborn, a zooarchaeologist at Texas A&M University says—possibly out of “an appreciation that guano is one of the most powerful natural fertilizers.” After the islands were depleted, in the 20th century the Haber-Bosch process was invented for production of ammonia. A story for another time perhaps.

AAAS: “Pre-Incans collected seabird poop from remote islands to use as fertilizer.” In the 19th century Spain + Peru went to war over guano from a small archipelago off the coast of Peru.

American Drought Note that D3 or Extreme Drought is affecting many of the contiguous 48 states as of several days ago, but if you look carefully there is also D4 or Exceptional Drought in 2 small areas in southern Texas + another 2 in NE Arkansas. “There was a strong east-to-west temperature gradient again this week, with below-normal temperatures across much of the East and above-normal temperatures across the West.” Another week of localized precipitation that missed large portions of the country led to expanding precipitation deficits. “Although some mountain snow fell, critically low snowpack with snow-water equivalent levels below the 15th percentile continues to dominate much of the [western U.S.] and support ongoing drought expansion.” Many areas have drying soil, thus vegetation, also lower streamflows, contributing to the problem. One of my brothers-in-law lives on the Big Island of Hawaii, where “strong trade winds brought heavy precipitation and wind to the windward slopes of Molokai, Maui and the Big Island, where 4 to 10 inches of rain fell at lower elevations and snow at higher elevations, supporting ‘one-class’ improvements in those areas.” Lot more granular detail on the site, + I invite you to check this out + perhaps refer to the website from time to time. Any guesses as to how this map will look come summer? Or would you prefer to keep your head stuck in—the sand? Which is getting hot + dry.

U.S. Drought Monitor: “Map released: February 12, 2026.” May seem odd to be concerned about drought almost smack dab in the middle of our northern hemispheric winter. The color key developed by the National Drought Mitigation Center lies near the bottom.

Fire in LA 2024. Fortunately, success followed after months of speculation that proposed White House cuts to NASA’s budget would mean the program would only fund a single mission. “Ross Salawitch, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Maryland, attributes the selection of both satellites to scientists’ lobbying efforts to maintain research funding.” Last month Congress passed a $7.25 B budget for NASA’s science programs for the current fiscal year—a 1.1% reduction from last year, rather than the 47% cut the White House requested. “One of the missions, the Earth Dynamics Geodetic Explorer (EDGE), will map the elevation of the planet’s ice and land to within 3 cm on flat ground…a laser instrument on the satellite will measure height across five 120-m strips, allowing it to cover almost all of the planet’s surface more quickly than current instruments in orbit.” This will allow researchers to map the growth and harvesting of crops, the thickness of sea ice and ice sheets, and the canopies of forests before and after wildfires. “The second mission, called the Stratosphere Troposphere Response using Infrared Vertically-resolved light Explorer (STRIVE), will target the upper atmosphere, between 5 and 50 kilometers above the surface.” STRIVE will look ‘sidelong,’ through the ‘limb’ of the atmosphere, to take a vertical profile of the temperature and chemistry of the upper troposphere + lower stratosphere with an infrared sensor, “It will collect more profiles of the atmosphere in 2 months than a comparable instrument now in orbit on NASA’s Aura satellite has collected in 2 decades.” Earth-directed missions critically needed. Way to go, NASA.

AAAS: “NASA greenlights two earth science missions, to researchers’ relief.” The photo shows the sort of phenomenon we desperately need to study.

Shrimp staring you down. But snapping shrimp have another weapon: “To stun prey and fight one another for mates and territory, the tiny crustaceans shoot out high-speed jets of water that trigger supersonic shock waves with the snap of a claw.” These crustaceans are of the class Malacostraca and order Decapoda—related to crabs, lobsters + crayfish—decapodal means they have 10 walking legs. But why do they not succumb to the intense blast they generate? “It turns out that like professional football players, snapping shrimp shield their brains and eyes from concussive forces with protective headgear, according to a study published today in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.” Scientists from the University of South Carolina and the University of Tulsa discovered snapping shrimp in the Alpheidaegenus have transparent hoods built into their exoskeletons that soften the impact to the crustaceans’ heads. The researchers “found that the hooded structure was half as stiff as the hard shell [exoskeletons], making it twice as effective at dissipating the stress from a blow as the hard shells.” Consistent with computer modeling, earlier behavioral experiments revealed that “shrimp with the shields were unharmed by shock waves, whereas shrimp without their hoods were disoriented and lost some of their mobility.” Some obvious implications for protecting athletes in contact sports. My bias? Tennis + swimming are lifetime sports without risk of blunt head trauma.

AAAS: “Snapping shrimp use headgear to protect their brains from shock waves.” The undersea world is ‘full of claws, sharp teeth and stingers.’

New Changan EV. “The world’s first mass-produced sodium-ion (Na-ion) battery for cars has entered mass production and will be sold in China in the upcoming Changan Nevo A06 EV.” This battery technology, developed by CATL [world’s largest manufacturer of EV batteries], has just finished winter testing in Inner Mongolia, where temperatures regularly drop well below what most EVs are designed to handle. “According to Gizmochina, the Nevo A06 was able to charge without issue at around -30°C (-22°F) and continued operating at temperatures as low as -50°C (-58°F).” The company states that at -40°C (-40°F), the battery retained more than 90% of its original capacity, a level of performance that is very hard to achieve with conventional lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries. Incidentally, LFP are the batteries that we had installed in case of grid outages in a rental home next door. “The CATL Naxtra sodium-ion battery pack is claimed to be the first that’s certified for use in passenger vehicles and the version selected by Changan has a capacity of 45 kWh, which means it only delivers around 250 miles of range on China’s CLTC test cycle.” You may scoff, but I have been driving a 2022 Hyundai Kona EV on trips up + down the West Coast with exactly this EPA-rated range. Let me hasten to add—driving range—not temperature tolerance. But then I don’t plan to drive around Inner Mongolia. Especially not in wintertime. Shudder at the very thought.

Techradar.com: “World’s first EV with a sodium-ion battery has landed—and it beats traditional lithium batteries in one key way.” Cheaper sodium-ion batteries are rapidly becoming a reality.

Falling prices of electricity storage. “But as the average battery cost per kilowatt-hour [kWH] plummeted from $365 then to just $108 as of last year, EV sales surged.” Last year, more than one-quarter of the new cars sold globally were electric, Granted, most of these were Chinese, but what do you think fossil fuel companies think about this? Handwriting on the wall? New vehicle sales going globally from less than 1% to greater than 25% in a decade? “Cheaper batteries mean cheaper electric vehicles, and that in turn puts more EVs and fewer gas cars on the road.” Cheaper batteries ‘mean you can squeeze more juice out of your solar panels, displacing more planet-warming coal and methane/propane gas.’ And, “cheaper batteries mean cheaper, clean energy—urgently needed in the U.S. as fast-rising utility bills collide with the push to decarbonize our energy system.” Similarly, grid storage was marginal a decade ago, as batteries remained prohibitively expensive to incorporate into the electricity mix. “Now, with less expensive batteries available, storage is taking off, and costs are falling especially fast for the segment.” [And there exist other varieties of storage besides electrochemical batteries, like pumped hydro]. Our clear and present challenge is that China makes a staggering three-quarters of all batteries sold worldwide, + the U.S. is imbecility exemplified for failing to compete in this marketplace. “Years of churning out head-spinning quantities of lithium-ion batteries have allowed Chinese firms to steadily chip away at costs—and a similar dynamic helps explain the inexorable, essential decline in the cost of solar and wind power, too.” Either we get on board the band wagon or just shuffle along in the dust.

CanaryMedia: “Chart: Surprise—batteries got cheaper again last year.” Back in 2016, when batteries were more than triple the cost they are today, electric vehicles accounted for less than 1% of new car sales worldwide.

Grouped. batteries. But these “forever chemicals,” per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), may have met their match. “Inspired by the volatile reaction in everyday batteries, researchers pitted lithium against perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), one of the most abundant forever chemicals in an experiment detailed in Nature Chemistry.” Just as the metal and culprit molecule wrestle it out in a Duracell™, lithium pinned its fluorine-based opponent, breaking down 95% of harmful chemical bonds in PFOA. “The takedown, which pacified carbon-fluorine bonds, [by] turning them into lithium-fluoride, a less toxic substance, represents a promising molecular engineering strategy to tackling PFAS, Chemical & Engineering Newsut reports this week.” But better curb your burst of enthusiasm. “Lithium’s wild card persona makes it hard to manage, and extracting forever chemicals from their environments for the showdown isn’t always possible.” My reassurance derives from an Amory Lovins koan: “What has been done is possible.”

AAAS: “Battery reactions give clues to fighting forever chemicals.” It is widely known + bemoaned that the cancer-causing industrial compounds used in Teflon™ cookware + other nonstick technology can persist almost indefinitely in the environment.

Graphic of pumped hydro. He + his appointees “underscore the need for the kind of ‘baseload,’ weather-agnostic, 24/7 power generation delivered by fossil fuels + nuclear energy—which, they incorrectly claim, wind and solar cannot provide.” Pumped hydro works by sending water to a higher elevation during intervals of lower electricity demand, then draining that reservoir to generate power at more valuable times. RheEnergise is scouting the US + Canada for potential locations for their system, named HD Hydro, stating that it has identified 6,278 potential sites in Texas alone. ReEnergise calculates that “even if only 5% of these sites are amenable to development, the amount of storage would total 23.5 gigawatts [GW] at an average size of 75 megawatts [MW].” With 8 hours of storage, “HD Hydro is half the cost of a lithium-ion battery system, (levelized cost of storage basis), without the fire risks and environmental concerns that batteries present.” The company explains, “RheEnergise’s HD Hydro energy storage system uses a specially formulated, low-viscosity, denser-than-water fluid which enables smaller, flexible + powerful hydro installations to be built on hills rather than in mountains,” Last wk the “National Hydropower Association announced one crucial step was achieved in January, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted unanimously to send the new “Build More Hydro” bill (aka HR 2072) to the full House for a vote.” The Senate has already greenlit the legislation. Sounds like a great story to follow.

CleanTechnica: “New Pumped Hydro Energy Storage System Needs No Mountains.” President loudly proclaims fossil fuel love, but also used excuse of bogus “energy emergency” fortunately embraces hydropower along with biofuels + geothermal , 3 domestic resources that can compete with fossil fuels.

Doctors Without Borders. The widespread viral disease is rarely deadly, but it can cause high fever and crippling joint pains,” + the achiness sometimes lasts for months. ‘In early April, local authorities began to give the new IXCHIQ vaccine for free to people over age 65.’ Eventually, tens of thousands were infected in Réunion, with over a 1,000 in France. “Then came reports that some older people experienced serious side effects after receiving the vaccine, and authorities paused vaccination in April 2025 after two vaccine recipients died.” Regulators in the EU, the UK, and the US halted IXCHIQ’s use in elderly people pending a review. “Only one of those deaths was eventually attributed to the vaccine, which is produced by French manufacturer Valneva and contains live, weakened [attenuated] virus.” Too late for that outbreak, “but the setbacks on Réunion have dimmed hopes for IXCHIQ and put the spotlight on a newer vaccine, Vimkunya, produced by Danish biotech Bavarian Nordic, that doesn’t contain a live virus and is expected to be safer for vulnerable groups.” But the initial cost of even the first vaccine was unaffordable for most people. “What we have right now are travelers’ vaccines,” primarily for people from rich countries visiting areas at risk, says George Warimwe, a vaccinologist at the University of Oxford. The virus had mutated to better reproduce in its vector, Aedes albopictus, the Asian tiger mosquito. “Today, there are an estimated 35 million infections annually, mainly in South Asia and the Americas, with an unknown number in Africa.” This is largely attributed to climate change, which has pushed Aedes mosquitoes—and with [them], the virus—into new parts of the world. I love the sound of the name chikungunya, but its effects are pernicious + sometimes sadly chronic.

AAAS: “Serious side effects dim hopes for the first chikungunya vaccine.” Last time I posted about this pesky virus was in May of 2025. It was last March that the chikungunya epidemic was accelerating across Réunion in the western Indian Ocean.

Revitalized desert plants. “Given the harsh desert conditions, it waits until the arrival of rains to burst from the earth—flowering, fruiting, and reproducing.” The milkvetch + other species are hardy but sensitive to disturbance, for example when solar farms literally break ground. Traditionally, energy companies ​“blade and grade” habitats, meaning they cut out vegetation and even out the soil, which disrupts the seed banks stored within the ground. The Gemini Solar Project outside of Las Vegas took a gentler approach, trying to preserve the ecosystem. “Before the development, scientists found 12 [milkvetch] on the site; afterward, in 2024, they found 93, signifying that the seeds survived construction, + grew wider + taller + produced more flowers + fruits.” The reason might be that the solar panels shade the soil, slowing evaporation, making more water available to the plants. “There’s seedlings of so many other species coming up as well.” The crew can also seed the soil with native grasses + flowers. ​“Some of those seed mixes do quite well at solar facilities, and they attract pollinators, birds, and other wildlife as a result,” said Lee Walston, an ecologist at Argonne National Laboratory. Taller panel height is a factor: more room for plants, + sometimes livestock like sheep and goats, used for ​“conservation grazing” to clear out invasive weeds, which in turn reduces the fire risk of dead plants. Agrivoltaics involves growing crops on more widely separated rows of panels. Both varieties of solar technology are growing by leaps + bounds, like a jackrabbit.

CanaryMedia: “A rare plant species thrives amid solar panels in the Nevada desert.” Ostensibly barren Mojave Desert is actually teeming with plants + animals, including a rare species known as threecorner milkvetch, in the pea family which splays across the ground instead of climbing up a trellis.

Frozen grid. One surprising result of climate disruption is freezing rain isn’t vanishing—but it’s shifting in location and timing. “We want to make an urgent warning that these kinds of winter hazards won’t be less frequent under a warmer climate,” reported postdoctoral researcher Chenxi Hu, who works with Yang. Instead, in the U.S., they are occurring later in winter, and moving toward the southeast. “Freezing rain requires finicky conditions…the air must be layered like a cold-warm-cold sandwich: Precipitation that begins as snow high in the atmosphere, melts to rain as it falls, then gets shocked with cold just before landing to freeze on contact as characteristically sticky ice.” Using top regional climate models, “Dominique Paquin, an atmospheric physicist and climate modeler, and her colleagues simulated more than 3500 years’ worth of the North American atmosphere.” The chilling finding was that temperature changes of less than 1°C can alter whether winter precipitation will arrive as sleet, hail, snow, or freezing rain. “When the researchers analyzed county-level records from 1996 to 2025, they saw an emerging trend: more events along a band from eastern Texas to western Pennsylvania, as well as along the Appalachian Mountains, where low, cold air can get trapped.” Further, the timing of freezing rain events also shifted from December to February. “Esther Mullens, a climatologist at the University of Florida, isn’t convinced that global warming is responsible for the shifts Yang and Hu found.” In 2025 Mullens studied North American freezing rain events over the past 80 years, using a mix of modeled and empirical weather data from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. “She found natural climate variations could explain an increased number of freezing rain events in the U.S. South.” A county in Louisiana received the highest reading ever seen from an airport sensor: 22 mm [= 0.87 inches] of freezing rain. Painful. And dangerous.

AAAS: “As the world warms, freezing rain shifts to the U.S. South.” Zong-Liang Yang, an earth systems scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, stated, “Compared to those big natural disasters, [freezing rain is] relatively understudied.”

Staging site for offshore wind construction. I’m delighted to be able to tell you this is the fifth + last of the in-process offshore wind farms off our eastern shore to resume construction. “In December, the Trump administration issued a sweeping stop-work order to every single offshore wind installation underway in America,” citing some bogus national security concerns. Yesterday a federal judge ruled that the 924-megawatt [MW] Sunrise Wind project, located off the coast of New York, can resume construction. [Note a typical nuclear or large coal plant is usually about 1,000 MW = 1 gigawatt or GW]. But Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia reviewed the heavily redacted report about security concerns, and found this justification insufficient after reviewing the classified report detailing those threats. “In mid-January, the 704-MW Revolution Wind project, which is being developed off the coast of Rhode Island by Ørsted, became the first to receive [a beneficial] injunction.” By the end of January, every project aside from Sunrise Wind had secured a similar ruling and restarted work. “Vineyard Wind, an installation so close to completion that it is already partially supplying power to the New England grid, was the latest to do so…its final turbine tower left the New Bedford, Massachusetts, port last Wednesday.” The larger—sobering—perspective is that the yearlong assault from the Trump administration against the emerging sector has still largely been successful. “Research firm BloombergNEF slashed its forecast for 2035 offshore wind capacity by a staggering 85% between November 2024and October 2025.” Going forward, perseverance must be our watchword.

CanaryMedia: “Sunrise Wind can proceed, ending Trump’s offshore wind ban—for now.” Ørsted A/S is the Danish multinational energy company building Sunrise Wind, and they said in a statement that it will ​“restart impacted activities immediately.”

King Cobra. The king cobra pictured can grow to 3 m [just shy of 10 ft] in length, is the only snake that builds a nest, + their prey is predominantly smaller snakes. However, "they will strike, and very quickly, if they feel threatened—and in a place like a train, that can happen easily." Flooding is increasing in India, + perhaps they are seeking dry shelter. They are agile climbers + on trains they may find rodents, lizards or other snakes such as the rat snake, their favorite prey. "More and more reports of snakes on trains have hit the headlines in India in recent years, although the uptick in media attention may be due to the rise of cellphone cameras." Now, "inadvertent hitchhiking appears to be transporting these deadly snakes into places they don’t normally occur, the team reports this week in Biotropica." They are normally found in forest + along rivers with dense vegetation, thus one way to prevent accidental movement of king cobras would be to restrict trains from stopping in prime forest habitat. Another would be to emphasize the importance of not leaving food on passenger trains, which can attract rodents. "The most effective intervention would be halting the degradation of forests, Parmar adds, so snakes are less motivated to roam railway tracks looking for food." As background from Wikipedia, most snakebites are caused by non-venomous snakes. Of the roughly 3,700 known species of snake found worldwide, only 15% are considered dangerous to humans. Estimates run from 1.2 to 5.5 million snakebites per yr, with 421,000 envenomings, resulting in perhaps 20,000 deaths or even considerably higher. When our children were young, we kept a Rosy Boa in a terrarium, feeding it of course on pinks. I like reptiles, I really do, but you have to draw the line somewhere.

AAAS: "Snakes on a train? Deadly reptiles may be hopping railcars in India." Dikansh Parmar, source of most of this article, is based at the University of Bonn + also at the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change.

Writing Award. I will skip the usual statement of pious humility and just drop in their review: Book Review of Cloud Dragon: Conspiracy, Contagion, and Catastrophe by S.W. Lawrence Abbey London and Jake Harper are not your typical heroes. They are new parents, professionals, and educators; people who have faith in systems since they help build and maintain them. Abbey, an infectious disease physician, is balancing new motherhood with consulting work related to emerging pathogens. Jake is an electrical engineer and professor who repairs and re-engineers the North American electric grids. To the untrained eye, the world still looks and operates the same. But if one knows where to look, small but concerning changes are taking place. Weather patterns are becoming less and less stable,and this is evidenced by heavier rainfall and tropical characteristics pushing farther north than expected. A certain level of discomfort has also begun to manifest in society, even though the big organizations one would expect to react, seem unfazed. Then, Jake comes across proof of deliberate attacks on the electrical substations: small, coordinated strikes that work astonishingly well. Meanwhile, Abbey spots the first signs of a new infection that is unlike anything she, or the rest of the world, has ever faced. Despite their different fields, both of them come to the same conclusion: there is no longer room for ignorance or error. Power grids can reroute electricity, but only so much. The public health sector can take action, but only if proper alerts are given in ample time. Misinformation, panic, and political radicalism only make a delicate situation possibly catastrophic. The big question is: how much can systems handle before they fail completely? Cloud Dragon: Conspiracy, Contagion, and Catastrophe is the second part of S. W. Lawrence, MD’s Trilogy of Dragons. The book blends the realities of medicine, engineering, and family life to depict climate change. [shortened to fit].

Couple of points this morning. First, I am currently working on two manuscripts, one with a deadline, so this daily blog is going to be more like 2-3 times a week for a stretch. Second, just yesterday I received notice of an award for my last published book, CLOUD DRAGON.

Seismometer lowering into ice. “Once that water finishes freezing, it will trap two exquisitely sensitive seismic sensors in the quietest place on Earth, making them capable of detecting any earthquake in the world above magnitude 5.” The focus of the U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS’s) $1 million Deep Ice Seismometer project, are already beginning to beam up signs of life. Since “there are just a few permanent seismic stations in Antarctica, the sensors will fill a critical gap in studies that examine the structure and composition of Earth’s mantle and core by looking for changes in how earthquakes travel through the planet.” Researchers also expect them to capture the creaks and groans of Antarctica’s ice sheet, which could improve knowledge about how fast it is slipping into the sea and contributing to sea level rise [SLR]—not to mention identify nuclear tests + meteorite impacts. “Earth is a noisy place…ocean waves, wind, weather—even animal stampedes and vehicular traffic—all produce noise that seismologists must filter out.” Earth’s rotation, which distorts the long-period waves of seismic events and Earth’s background “hum,” is another problem. “Seismologists know of only one place that solves both issues: the South Pole, [which] is cold and quiet, far from any ocean, and lacks human infrastructure—as one of Earth’s poles, it also eliminates the rotational effects. “Canadian seismology company Nanometrics engineered the seismometers and helped design a special vessel to enclose them, crucial for withstanding high pressures and frigid temperatures, explains Geoffrey Bainbridge, Nanometrics’s lead seismometer designer.” The seismometers will not come fully online until the entire water column freezes—but recall that water expands as it changes to solid phase. Will be ready in a month. Wonderful scientific collaboration.

AAAS: “Earthquake sensors buried in the quietest spot on Earth.” In early January, researchers finished drilling two 2.5-km-deep holes in the South Pole’s ice using jetted hot water.

This list “includes Ireland becoming the fifth EU country to phase out coal power and Latin America becoming a region with zero active proposals for new coal capacity.” Tellingly, “the results show the US is on track to retire more coal capacity in 2025 than it did under the Biden administration [in 2024], despite the efforts of the [fact-challenged] Trump White House.” And other countries have continued their efforts to phase down coal power, with “just energy transition partnerships” (JETPs) advancing in Vietnam, Indonesia and South Africa during 2025. “On the heels of the UK coal phaseout in 2024, Ireland stopped the use of coal power in June 2025, with nine EU countries expected to follow suit through 2029, including Spain, France and the Netherlands.” Fortunately, “in Latin America, the shelving of two coal-plant proposals in Honduras and Brazil in 2025 has left the region with no new coal plants actively proposed.” According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), coal power should be virtually phased out in advanced economies by 2030 and the rest of the world by 2040 to keep warming below 1.5ºC, as the Paris Agreement targets. [Count me as extremely dubious]. “China and India dominated coal development in…2025, as the two countries had more new proposals, construction starts and coal plants commissioned than the rest of the world combined.” But a silver lining is that “China has also been installing record amounts of clean energy, with more than 500 GW of solar and wind power expected to come online in 2025.” In parallel fashion, “India also added more than 28 GW of wind and solar power in 2025, a nearly 50% increase over the previous year.” So—a good news/bad news story.

CarbonBrief: “Guest post: China and India account for 87% of new coal-power capacity so far in [August] 2025.” There is a growing global divide between many countries phasing out coal power and a handful continuing to expand new capacity, are revealed in latest Global Coal Plant Tracker results.

Pumped hydro in WA. “In the country’s modern, largely deregulated, and rapidly changing power markets, nobody has pulled off the expensive and time-consuming feat” since 1995. Last wk Rye Development secured a license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission [FERC] to build and operate a planned pumped storage project just north of the Columbia River Gorge, near the town of Goldendale. “It’s a fully domestic source of energy storage: The major components are concrete, steel, and labor.” The company will excavate a pair of 60-acre reservoirs separated by 2,000 feet of vertical gain. “The company will pipe in water from the nearby Columbia River, then circulate the water up and down to store and discharge power,” with a nameplate capacity of 1.2 gigawatts [GW]. “The Pacific Northwest has built ample solar and wind generation but has struggled to expand its transmission network, which produces congestion on the wires.” The project will typically pump water for 12 to 16 hours a day and generate eight hours a day, but it could push that to a maximum of 12 hours, according to the license document. “Goldendale fell under FERC’s jurisdiction because it will connect with federal land and pump water from a navigable waterway.” The layout covers about 680 acres, largely private land that used to house a decommissioned aluminum smelter, but it connects to transmission infrastructure overseen by the federal Bonneville Power Administration [BPA]. Rye “filed for its license in June 2020…took five and a half years to get the green light, and it will take up to two years to finalize plans and then four or five more to actually finish [construction].” Whew. But the facility could function easily for a century or more.

CanaryMedia: “A rare step forward for a US pumped hydro project.”Long before lithium-ion batteries reshaped the power sector, utilities stored electricity by pumping water uphill when energy was abundant and later letting it descend, turning turbines to generate power when needed.

Aggregated blister beetle larvae. “Certain orchid flowers, for example, look and smell like female bees, prompting males to pollinate them when they try to mate.” The larvae of blister beetles emit a mix of volatile scents resembling a flower, then latch on to a bee lured into contact, hitch a ride to the beehive + consume the eggs. “For self-defense, this family of flightless beetles oozes the toxin cantharidin, which was used in antiquity as medicine and also as an aphrodisiac in medieval Europe.” Another North American species attracts pollinators by concocting and emitting imitation sex pheromones. Ryan Alam, an organic chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, became fascinated by these insects, collected them in Germany, + placed them in a greenhouse cage with sandy soil planted with wheatgrass and other tasty plants. “The beetles mated, burrowed into the soil, and laid thousands of eggs…after they hatched, the larvae climbed the grass stems.” Alam, working with gloves to avoid blisters from cantharidin, collected + ground up the larvae + placed the concoction in a gas chromatography-mass spectrometer, which revealed the chemicals in a complex mixture by plotting them on a graph called a chromatogram. “Several of the eight most abundant molecules found, such as linalool oxide and lilac aldehyde, are often found in flowers and are known to attract pollinators.” Both genders of bees were attracted in testing. Of course, both genders of human have been known to use floral attractants as well.

AAAS: “Bee-hunting beetles are the first animals known to fake the smell of flowers.” This investigation of parasitic blister beetles demonstrated a novel form of chemical trickery. “Deception is everywhere,” says May Berenbaum, an entomologist at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign.

Greenland losing ice. Its continental crust is rising up after centuries of compression by mammoth ice. Picture the Greenland Ice Sheet [GIS]—roughly three times the size of Texas and in some places more than 3 kilometers thick—"In the very places where glaciers are melting and shrinking, the land beneath will rebound as the burden eases, meaning [relative] seas may fall even as the meltwater causes them to rise elsewhere." The rapid melting of the GIS now constitutes about one-fifth of the global sea level rise, + when it melts it is free to travel far away, resulting in 'expanding coastlines, dried-up fjords, and future complications.' Another more subtle point: "the effect is intensified by gravity itself: The sheer mass of the GIS gravitationally attracts ocean water, but this attraction weakens as Greenland loses ice, sending seawater sloshing away." Published today in Nature Communications, "the research shows portions of Greenland’s coast will rebound far more sharply than expected, causing seas to fall by anywhere from 1 to nearly 4 meters by 2100." Andra Garner, a Rowan University climatologist, said “we think about sea level rising and the challenges that will create...but in places like Greenland, sea levels are falling—and that also creates challenges.” The parts of Greenland moving up the most are "western and southern Greenland, including the island’s economic and cultural hub, [which] will likely bear the brunt of the retreat, posing major problems for shipping and food security." Roger Creel, a geophysicist at Texas A&M University, commented, "It’s the difference between getting from your port to the ocean or having to build a new port."

AAAS: "As Greenland loses ice, global sea levels will rise—and its own will fall." My wife + I returned last nite from a week's vacation on our own coast, in northern Oregon + southern Washington. But it is Greenland that is experiencing "glacial isotactic adjustment."

Chinese EV. Canada has an affordable EV problem, as lower-priced new electric vehicles have become an extinct species [there], and that simply isn’t the case in other countries. “Accordingly, Clean Energy Canada analyzed the European car market to see what affordable electric options Europeans enjoy today compared to Canadians.” In short, Europe has 21 EV models selling for less than the equivalent of $40,000 Canadian, and only one of those cars, a small, relatively low-range Fiat, is available in Canada (it is the only sub-$40,000 EV available in Canada, period). ‘All but three of these EVs have driving ranges of over 300 km =186 miles, and only seven of them are from Chinese automakers, or exactly one-third of the list. Ten are European, three are Japanese, and one is South Korean. None are American.’ Research in Toronto and Vancouver metro regions shows that only 27% of respondents were willing to spend more than $40,000 on a new EV…whereas a car coming in under $40,000 drastically increases the pool of potential buyers to roughly half the population (49%).” Half the population—whew—would love to see that in the U.S. “Clean Energy Canada supports a broader, complementary suite of measures, including lowering the tariff on Chinese EVs to ensure an adequately competitive market and bringing back federal EV rebates for a limited period to help households address current upfront costs.” Clearly, these are the kinds of policies that would benefit Americans. Ranges will go up + costs will go down, as we dealing with technologies, not fuels.

CleanEnergyCanada: “Europe enjoys 21 EVs selling for less than $40,000 Canadian. Only one is available in Canada: report.” To start, loonies to dollars: €40,000 = $28,787.

Bar graph of average American temperature over yrs since 1895. “The nine warmest years for the U.S. have all occurred since 2012—part of the ongoing warming trend in the country and across the globe, driven by heat-trapping pollution from burning fossil fuels.” And get this: every single county [including our very own Whatcom County] was slotted into this record, like a thousand-piece puzzle [actually 3244 pieces in 2022]. “Analysis based on Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index found that average 2025 temperatures were made warmer by human-caused climate change in every U.S. county.” As a result, our weather has not been exactly placid. “The U.S. experienced 23 [inflation-adjusted] billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2025—including its most costly wildfire [Los Angeles] and a record number of billion-dollar severe storms.” It almost goes without saying, but I will say it here nonetheless: “The pollution-fueled climate impacts of 2025 will only intensify with continued fossil fuel use.” Or more colloquially, it’s certainly gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight—almost everywhere. And my wife + I even heard a few confused frogs croaking last nite—in the middle of winter. This cannot be good.

ClimateCentral: “2025 in Review: U.S. Temperatures.” Climate Matters analyses are based on open-access data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—which, not incidentally, just had its funding protected by Congress.

Coal ash pond. This is a full decade later than allowed under current federal rules. Unfortunately, this move “tosses a lifeline to the polluting power plants, because if the facilities were barred from dumping ash into unlined pits, they would be forced to close, since they can’t operate if they don’t have a place to dispose of the ash, and the companies say finding alternative locations for disposal would be impossible.” Really, do you believe this excuse? If the health of the air, the land, the adjacent waterways + the local population are not deemed important to an agency set up to protect the environment, then perhaps we should at least change its name to Polluters Are Us [PAU]. “These 11 plants have already circumvented the 2021 deadline to close such pits, through a 2020 extension offer from the first Trump administration.” Coal ash dumped in unlined pits can leach into groundwater, potentially contaminating drinking water wells with carcinogens and other dangerous elements. “Back in 2018, the federal D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 2015 federal regulation on Coal Combustion Residuals (CCR) must be strengthened to better deal with such sites.” The ruling led to an April 2021 deadline to start closing unlined coal ash ponds. The R.M. Schahfer plant in Indiana is known to have contaminated with “arsenic, molybdenum, cobalt, and radium… in groundwater near the pond, and the coal ash is held back by a dam with a high hazard rating, meaning its failure would be likely to cause death.” Ashley Williams, executive director of the advocacy organization Just Transition Northwest Indiana, put it succinctly, “We just see this proposed rule as a downright unlawful, reckless attempt by the Trump EPA to let polluters keep polluting.”

CanaryMedia: “EPA plans to give 11 coal plants a free pass on toxic ash disposal.” I’ve been a little hard on the EPA recently, but they deserve it. Here’s another reason: “The Environmental Protection Agency plans to let 11 coal plants dump toxic coal ash into unlined pits until 2031.”

Ice Dome at top. "Constraints on the extent of inland Greenland Ice Sheet [GIS] retreat during the Middle Holocene (~8–4 thousand years before present) are limited because geological records of a smaller-than-modern phase largely remain beneath the modern ice sheet." Scientists therefore "drilled  through 509 metres of firn and ice at Prudhoe Dome, NW Greenland, to obtain sub-ice material yielding direct evidence for the response of the GIS to Holocene warmth." They used a technique called "infrared stimulated luminescence" measurements from sub-ice sediments, which revealed that the ground below the summit was exposed to sunlight as recently as 7.1 ± 1.1 thousand yrs ago. "This proposed complete deglaciation of Prudhoe Dome, coeval to reduced extent at other ice caps across northern Greenland, is consistent with interglacial-only δ O-18 values from the Prudhoe Dome ice column and ice depth–age modelling." [δ O-18 values, pronounced "delta-oxygen 18," represent the ratio of 2 stable [nonradioactive] oxygen isotopes, namely O-16 and O-18—which serves as an excellent proxy of paleotemperatures]. These "results point to a substantial response of the northwest Greenland ice sheet to early Holocene warming, estimated to be +3–5 °C from palaeoclimate data." This is worrisome, as this range of summer temperatures is similar to projections of warming by 2100 CE. Not to mention the fact that complete melting of the GIS would lead to about 24 ft of sea level rise over centuries.

NatureGeoscience: "Deglaciation of the Prudhoe Dome in northwestern Greenland in response to Holocene warming." Gorgeous photo of Greenland’s Prudhoe Ice Dome [at top].

Jellies asleep. The work suggests that sleep arose early in animal evolution to ‘help the first neurons rest + repair.’ But sleep is risky with predators out + about. “Yet species across the animal kingdom spend multiple hours a day dozing off—even ancient groups including cnidarians, which include jellyfish, anemones, and corals—all among the earliest animals to develop neurons.” Researchers in Israel studied the starlet sea anemone (Nematostella vectensis) and an upside-down jellyfish (Cassiopea Andromeda). “In an aquarium, they exposed them to 12 hrs of light and 12 hrs of darkness over multiple days…[using] infrared cameras to monitor how often the critters pulsed their umbrellalike bells, a sign of wakefulness.” The jellyfish were less active at night, pulsing their bells roughly five fewer times per minute than during the day. Hit by a flashing light, ‘the cnidarians took roughly 20 seconds to respond at night—more than twice as long as alert jellies during the day.’ But “anemones followed the opposite schedule: They were more active at night and slowed their movements and response times during the day.” Next stage: “When the team churned the water in the aquarium over 6 hours during the night to disrupt the sleep cycle…the sleep-deprived animals slept 50% longer than their well-rested counterparts the following day.” And they found melatonin had…sleep-inducing effect on the cnidarians, causing the anemones and jellyfish to snooze at times of the day when…usually active. Damaging DNA with UV or certain chemotherapy drugs also led to more ‘sleep.’ Not clear if they omitted teenagers from the study participants.

AAAS: “Jellyfish sleep a lot like us—and for the same reasons.” Jellies are not fish, instead, technically, cnidarians. “Despite lacking a central nervous system, jellyfish + sea anemones have sleep patterns remarkably similar to those of humans, researchers report today in Nature Communications.”

Australian solar map. Hayhoe states, “Bill is one of the most well-known and longest-serving climate activists in the U.S., and he knows a thing or two about how hope keeps us going, even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.” Interestingly, unlike me, both are people of faith, hence believe in shepherding + caring the planet. I can certainly get on board with that. “Fun fact, biologists in 2014 named a new species of woodland gnat—Megophthalmidia mckibbeni—in his honour.” McKibben has authored more than 20 books since publishing “The End of Nature” in 1989…widely regarded as the first book about climate change for a general audience. “The Australian government has just announced that beginning next July, residents of three of the country’s six states will get three free hours of electricity every day, with the rest of the country to follow in 2027.” The free offer is a way to get Aussies “scheduling their lives a little differently to take advantage of the surplus—one imagines that many of them will be programming their washing machines to run midday, and charging their EVs then, too. It’s a good moment to be selling ever-cheaper household batteries too, since Australians can charge them on the cheap power and then run their homes all night.“ McKibben thinks this is “potentially an epochal moment—in some ways as remarkable as the invention of agriculture or the Industrial Revolution.” Back in the 1950s, the nuclear industry laughingly promised electricity “too cheap to meter.” I go back far enough to remember when Ralph Nader stated the Sun is the only safe nuclear reactor. And meant it.

LinkedIn: “A climate reality check from Bill McKibben.” This is from a guest post on Katharine Hayhoe’s LI site. Hayhoe is a certified climate scientist, and McKibben is a prolific writer on nature + climate.

Blowing coal dust. “The state’s plan includes retirement deadlines for coal plants that several utilities voluntarily proposed and asked the state to include in its plan.” Furthermore, under the Clean Air Act and federal Regional Haze Rule, “states must reduce air pollution and improve air quality in national parks and wilderness areas…[including] Rocky Mountain, Great Sand Dunes and Black Canyon National Parks.” Of course, the mendacious “EPA claims the voluntary coal plant retirements included in the state’s plan would harm grid reliability, but this is incorrect because the state and the utilities have long planned to retire the coal plants and to replace their generation with cheaper and cleaner resources.” The EPA initially proposed a partial disapproval of Colorado’s haze plan, but the final rule released today rejects the entire plan. “Today’s news follows a recent illegal 202(c) order from the Department of Energy to prevent the planned retirement of Unit 1 at Craig Station.” This order threatens to raise ratepayers’ utility bills and worsen air quality for surrounding communities. “According to an analysis by Grid Strategies, if the plant is dispatched at its average output over the last few years, costs could rise to $20 million over 90 days, equating to approximately $85 million per year, or even upwards of $150 million per year if the plant is required to operate in must-run fashion.” Which excludes healthcare costs. Dirty coal is going down kicking + screaming, but just like in Trump’s first term, it is going down. Note the blowing coal dust in the photo, + muse on the fact that mercury + other heavy metals are achieving windblown dispersal to air, land, water + people’s lungs. Makes you want to say ‘goldarnit,’ and do somethin’ about it.

CleanTechnica: “EPA Rejects Colorado’s Regional Haze Plan, Including Coal Plant Retirement Dates.” The Colorado’s Regional Haze State Implementation Plan was broadly supported by the state, utilities, industry, and environmental groups.