Orchards are getting crushed by climate change

Early blooming, then hard freezes, is the biggest problem.

Late-spring freezes predate orchards, but research shows that a warming planet is creating specific conditions that make this kind of destruction more common. And as emissions from greenhouse gases continue to rise, this year is less an anomaly than a harbinger of tough times ahead.

While farmers of a wide variety of crops are experiencing the impacts of climate change from droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events, the economic impact on orchards can be particularly high: It can take up to eight years of year-round care for a tree to bear fruit—with one chance a year for a harvest and no way to simply replant. - Civil Eats

Getting a righteous deal on a used EV

Useful tips.

The market for used EVs is surging; their average cost of $35,895 is now competitive with that of used gas cars (average $34,799)...

Figure out what range you actually need, based on how much you typically drive and how frequently you’ll charge, recommends Desiree Moore, program manager at Drive Clean Colorado, a state program that aims to reduce greenhouse gas pollution from vehicles…

InsideEVs, U.S. News & World Report, and Recurrent, a company that aggregates data on vehicle battery health, are a few of the sources that list their top used EV picks, which will give you a sense of the best range for your buck…

But the most important EV research might be what you do in person. ​“Drive as many as you possibly can, because there’s such a difference in driving style and acceleration and turning radius — all of the things that you would expect from any used car,” said Andrew Garberson, Recurrent’s head of growth and research. - Canary Media

Energy-efficiency programs are absolutely not the problem

This is foolish, ridiculous, and politically playing into the Trumpers’ hands.

A handful of Democratic-led states are targeting energy-efficiency programs in an attempt to provide relief on soaring utility bills.

It’s surprising, given the broad support energy-efficiency programs have among Democrats — and the fact that these incentives produce energy savings that benefit both the climate and all consumers. The short-term savings may be tempting, advocates say, but chasing them is misguided.

“The subject of affordability is a serious one across many states across the country. People are hurting, and energy costs are too high,” said Forest Bradley-Wright, state and utility director for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. ​“Energy efficiency did not cause the energy affordability crisis, and the problem can’t be solved by cutting energy efficiency.” - Canary Media

The Trump administration is set to royally mess up fighting wildfires

Ignoring science, again. That is, people with egos easily ten times the size of their intellects rejecting what they don’t understand and therefore fear.

As the U.S. wildfire season approaches, experts warn it could be one of the worst in recent memory. This will also be the first season managed by the Trump administration’s U.S. Wildland Fire Service, and the agency is pursuing a risky fire management strategy…

“We will enter this season with the presumption of a full suppression strategy applied to every wildfire under DOI management,” (Interior Secretary Doug) Burgum reportedly wrote in the April 8 memorandum, emphasizing a responsibility to protect communities, landscapes, habitat, and critical infrastructure…

The scientific consensus on full suppression fire management is that it is unsustainable and counterproductive in fire-adapted regions like the American West, the Great Plains, and the Southeast. Research has shown that immediately extinguishing smaller fires that don’t threaten life or property—rather than letting them burn under careful management—sets the stage for more severe, hazardous fires to ignite in that area. - Gizmodo

Some decent news on EV charging

Despite Trump’s efforts to kill anything that’s not disastrous for the climate.

Last year brought a torrent of bad news for the U.S. electric vehicle industry. The Trump administration pushed Republicans in Congress to cancel Biden-era EV tax credits and revoke states’ rights to set clean-car mandates. The White House moved to weaken vehicle fuel-economy standards. And it froze billions of dollars in federal EV-charging grants — although legal challenges have since unlocked $5 billion of that money.

Despite the upheaval, U.S. public charging networks had a growth spurt last year, according to a report released (Jan. 28) by data analytics firm Paren. And the new chargers are working more reliably and being used more heavily than ever — a sign the country is matching charging supply to demand.

The nation’s public fast-charging network expanded by 30% over the course of 2025, adding 18,041 ports, according to Paren. That’s up from the 13,970 fast-charging ports deployed in 2024, and way up from the 5,313 installed in 2021. - Canary Media

The billionaires are some serious carbon hogs

Although, you know, they do so much for the rest of us

Climate change is everyone’s problem, but not everyone equally shares the blame for rising global temperatures. A new analysis from Oxfam reveals the outsized contribution from the richest portion of the world’s population.

The stunning findings, published January 9, show that the super-rich exhausted their annual carbon budget—the amount of CO2 that can be emitted while staying within 1.5 degrees of global warming—within the first 10 days of 2026. For the richest 0.1%, it only took three days. - Gizmodo

COP30 didn't get much done

Though it wasn’t all failure, and it was probably a pipe dream to expect major breakthroughs to begin with.

The Brazilian president’s forceful remarks at the outset of negotiations in the Amazonian city of Belém were meant to set the stage for a new chapter in international climate diplomacy. On the 10th anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the time had come, according to Lula, to stop arguing about what the historic agreement requires and instead focus on implementation — actually taking the steps required to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect countries against the coming economic and public health consequences wrought by climate change…

But the Brazilian delegation, which was responsible for overseeing COP30 negotiations and ultimately brokering a new deal, was confronted by a different truth than the president envisioned. The viability of the planet may come down to a few degrees Celsius of warming, but in Belém’s fluorescently-lit negotiating rooms, everything ultimately came down to dollars and cents…

The most substantial new agreement negotiated at the conference reflected this realism. The delegations agreed that, by 2035, the world would triple international funding provided to help developing nations adapt to the consequences of a warmer world. - Grist

US pushes dirty LNG on Europe

This is an ongoing thing.

UPDATE 7/29/2025: On July 28, the U.S. and EU announced a framework trade deal. It involves the EU pledging to buy $750 billion in U.S. oil, LNG, and nuclear fuel by 2028. Energy analysts have called that goal unrealistic, with unclear implications for the EU’s methane pollution standards.

As Europe races toward a U.S. trade deal, lobbyists for America’s biggest natural gas exporters are pushing to carve a major loophole in the EU’s methane rules, using ongoing trade and tariff disputes in a campaign to weaken Europe’s climate standards.

“It’s very clear that the industry and the State Department are putting a lot of pressure on the EU to just give us a pass on this methane rule and commit to our dirty LNG,” said Lorne Stockman, research co-director for Oil Change International and co-author of a new report detailing climate impacts from five U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects.

“And we certainly hope the EU does not buckle to that pressure. But it’s extremely concerning because there’s a lot at stake.” - DeSmog

The EPA is headed beyond the pale

As far as where they got those numbers, I suspect that they just made them up.

On Tuesday, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a proposal to rescind the agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” a critical Obama-era scientific decision about the human health costs of greenhouse gases that allows the EPA to regulate emissions…

In its press release on Tuesday, the EPA said that rolling back the endangerment finding would “undo the underpinning of $1 trillion in costly regulations” and “save more than $54 billion annually” by repealing rules like the Biden administration’s tailpipe emission limits. “With this proposal,” Zeldin said in a statement, “the Trump EPA is proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers.”

It’s not clear where the agency got these numbers. In 2023, as CNN reported, researchers estimated that climate-driven extreme weather events—which are only expected to get worse—cost the US $150 billion per year. - Mother Jones

Atmospheric CO2 just keeps on climbing

Another “milestone,” of a very problematic sort.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere peaked above 430 parts per million in 2025—the highest it has been in millions of years—according to data released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego on Thursday…

The last time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations topped 430 ppm was most likely more than 30 million years ago, Ralph Keeling, who directs the Scripps CO2 Program, told NBC News.

"It's changing so fast," he said. "If humans had evolved in such a high-CO2 world, there would probably be places where we wouldn't be living now. We probably could have adapted to such a world, but we built our society and a civilization around yesterday's climate." - Common Dreams

Stopping IRA subsidies is incredibly foolish in many ways

This is a really good presentation of those ways.

How can you be a world leader when you are a laggard in the hottest, most important industries of the future? How can you attract the best people and businesses to the US when you have flip-flopping policies that kill incentives for these critical industries just a few years after enacting them?

If a company can cost effectively make battery-grade lithium, batteries, EVs, and solar panels in the US and make a profit selling them, they are going to do that. If their business plan is sabotaged by an anti-progress administration full of goons and corrupt cronies, are they even going to consider coming back here after shutting down shop, construction jobs, or even early-stage plans? - CleanTechnica

People underestimate the level of support for real climate action

I think this is true for a lot of issues, though generally not quite to this extreme.

A staggering 89 percent of people worldwide believe their governments should be doing more to combat climate change. Yet current policies across nations are putting the planet on track for a catastrophic 3.1°C of warming. That disconnect—between near-universal public demand and government inaction—is what Covering Climate Now (CCNow) calls a “deficit in democracy.” It’s also the focus of its new yearlong initiative: the 89% Project.

Launched to coincide with Earth Day, the 89 Percent Project aims to break what experts describe as a dangerous spiral of silence around climate action, one perpetuated by misperceptions, media neglect, and political indifference. Despite overwhelming evidence that climate concern is both widespread and intensifying, many people continue to feel isolated in their worry—an illusion that disempowers individuals and lets leaders off the hook…

“Almost everybody dramatically underestimates the level of concern and support for action on climate change,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “It basically refers to the fact that most of us don’t know what’s in other people’s heads.”

This phenomenon—what researchers call “pluralistic ignorance”—is fueling what sociologist Cynthia Frantz describes as a “self-fulfilling spiral of silence.” As she put it, “Currently, worrying about climate change is something people are largely doing in the privacy of their own minds.” - Nation of Change

Nasty, naughty words being banned by Trumpers

This is going on all across government thanks to that miserable witling at the top and the ridiculous boobs he has around him. I’m highlighting this example due to my interest in rural issues. ARS stands for Agricultural Research Service.

ARS is the division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) tasked with providing the agricultural research, education and economic analysis that protects the health of the nation’s farmland, ensures the safety of the food we eat and develops solutions for diseases, disasters and other threats to the food supply. Most recently, it was operating over 600 research projects in 95 locations and had a $1.7 billion budget, which like the words it uses could now be on the chopping block and could significantly hamper the division’s ability to do its job…

The climate-related key terms being banned by the ARS include:

climate, climate change, climate-change, changing climate, climate consulting, climate models, climate model, climate accountability, climate risk, climate resilience, climate smart agriculture, climate smart forestry, climatesmart, climate science, climate variability, global warming, carbon sequestration, GHG emission, GHG monitoring, GHG modeling, carbon emissions mitigation, greenhouse gas emission, methane emissions, green infrastructure, sustainable construction, carbon pricing, carbon markets - Barn Raiser

Repealing the IRA will cost Americans plenty

I'm not even going to try to predict how much "repeal" is or isn't likely, at this time. But even the fact that so much spending is being hindered is a big problem.

The Trump administration insists that renewables are making energy more expensive and that more fossil-fueled power will reduce utility bills. But those claims are false — and if congressional Republicans succeed in repealing key tax credits supporting the growth of clean energy, Americans will suffer the consequences in higher electric bills.

So finds a report released Thursday by think tank Energy Innovation warning lawmakers of the costs of repealing the clean-energy tax credits created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration’s signature climate law.

The fate of those tax credits remains highly uncertain. Some Republican lawmakers have voiced support for keeping them in place, but others have criticized the incentives, which could channel hundreds of billions of dollars to solar and wind power, batteries, electric vehicles, and other carbon-free technologies over the next decade. President Donald Trump has also vowed to repeal the IRA. - Canary Media

Trump climate change denial reaches frantic extremes

Because if you just live in total denial it ultimately works out, right?

The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has placed new restrictions on scientists that those inside the agency have said could hamper the availability and quality of global weather forecasts.

Current and former high-level scientists with the federal agency said the new rules have created unease and caused alarm with partners at European agencies, reported The Guardian.

“My expectation is that it’s going to be a crackdown on climate,” said a senior NOAA scientist who wished to remain anonymous. “People are just somewhere between disturbed and terrified.” - EcoWatch

Trump blocks on farm funding still in limbo

Some of the funding will probably be allowed to happen before much longer. But other farmers could well end up permanently screwed.

On inauguration day, President Trump signed a series of executive orders that included directives to roll back Biden-era climate policies and projects. A subsequent broad pause in funding was stopped by a judge and later rescinded, and a judge ruled yesterday that the administration had failed to comply with the court order.

It’s unclear exactly how that process is linked to what’s happening at USDA, but farm groups across the country report that the agency has stopped their disbursements and has been silent about when the pause might end. Policy pros in D.C. say the assessment of grants and programs for links to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives is likely part of the reason for the delay, while other farm grants are tied to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Trump is specifically targeting.

For example, farmers who received Renewable Energy Assistance Program (REAP) grants to install solar arrays on their land are left in limbo; so are those with conservation grants through popular programs including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, which got an infusion of cash through the IRA.

But the pause in Climate-Smart Commodities grants is having particularly wide-reaching impacts, since the investment was so large, the program was just getting off the ground, and thousands of farms—from small dairies in the Northeast to large commodity grain operations in the Midwest—are involved. - Civil Eats

The ultra-privileged have already blown through their carbon budget

Not that the rest of us can do much about it, at this time.

An Oxfam analysis published Friday shows that the richest 1% of the global population has already blown through its global carbon budget for 2025 — just 10 days into the New Year. The figures, which arrive amid catastrophic fires in Los Angeles that may turn out to be the costliest in U.S. history, highlight the disproportionate role of the ultra-wealthy in fueling a climate emergency that is causing devastation around the world.

Oxfam calculates that in order to keep critical climate goals in reach, each person on Earth must have a CO2 footprint of roughly 2.1 tons per year or less. On average, each person in the global 1% is burning through 76 tons of planet-warning carbon dioxide annually — or 0.209 per day — meaning it took them just over a week to reach their CO2 limit for the year

By contrast, the average person in the poorest 50% of humanity has an annual carbon footprint of 0.7 tons per year — well within the 2.1-ton budget compatible with a livable future. - Truthout

The electric vehicle tax credit may be doomed

If so, I'll be a little surprised that the Big Three automakers didn't do more to save at least part of it.

And, with the doom-and-gloom Trump team of Merry Pranksters ready to swoop down on all things electric, there’s never been a better time to take advantage of federal tax incentives. Reports are widespread that the Trump transition team is planning to terminate the $7,500 consumer EV credit, an action publicly supported by Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

If you find yourself imagining what it would be like to drive sustainably, now is the time to buy an EV. Go for it, bro.

There are many reasons for consumers like my brother to buy an EV right now. Buyers will save a bundle on fuel — home charging makes owning an EV reliable and affordable, and road trips in an EV are becoming easier. Electric vehicles have no tailpipe emissions — nearly three quarters of the GHG emissions from a gasoline vehicle come from the tailpipe during vehicle operation, and the planet really can’t take many more internal combustion engines if it is to thrive. Then again, if financial considerations are your main focus, the EV tax credit that is fleetingly available will have real meaning for you. - CleanTechnica

The Arctic tundra is now a carbon source

Just what the climate needs.

According to the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s 2024 Arctic Report Card, tundra in the Arctic is becoming a net source of carbon dioxide, rather than the climate-beneficial carbon sink it has been for millennia.

This year was the second warmest in the Arctic, based on data dating back to 1900, the report said. Across the region, temperatures from October 2023 to September 2025 were 1.20 degrees Celsius above the average for 1991 to 2020, a press release from NOAA said. - EcoWatch

The first big US carbon sequestration plant is spouting leaks

People have been warning for years that this was pretty much inevitable.

ADM’s facility in central Illinois was the first permitted commercial carbon sequestration operation in the country, and it’s on the forefront of a booming, multibillion-dollar carbon capture and storage, or CCS, industry that promises to permanently sequester planet-warming carbon dioxide deep underground.

The emerging technology has become a cornerstone of government strategies to slash fossil fuel emissions and meet climate goals. Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, has supercharged industry subsidies and tax credits and set off a CCS gold rush…

In September, the public learned of a leak at ADM’s Decatur site after it was reported by E&E News, which covers energy and environmental issues. Additional testing mandated by the EPA turned up a second leak later that month. - Grist