Climate News

Communities across the U.S., including Placerville, California, are facing significant delays in disaster funding from FEMA, with nearly $10 billion owed to local governments. The Trump administration's policies have contributed to a backlog that has stalled crucial wildfire preparation projects, such as the Weber Creek Project in El Dorado County, which aims to retrofit homes with fire-resistant materials.

Research indicates that up to 36% of the Amazon Rainforest, specifically low water table wetland forests, have demonstrated resilience to severe droughts, thriving even during extreme conditions. Flávia Costa, a forest ecologist, found that these areas not only survived droughts in 2010 and 2015-16 but also increased their aboveground biomass.

Emperor penguins and Antarctic fur seals have been classified as endangered by the IUCN due to dramatic population declines. Satellite data indicates a loss of approximately 20,000 adult emperor penguins from 2009 to 2018, with projections suggesting their population could halve by the 2080s.

Nevada's largest utility, NV Energy, predicts it will need three times the electricity required to power Las Vegas to accommodate proposed data centers, risking the state's clean energy target of 50% renewable power by 2030. In North Carolina, the largest utility is revising plans to delay coal plant retirements due to similar demands.

March 2023 marked the hottest March on record in the continental United States, with an average temperature of 50.85°F, 9.35°F above the 20th-century norm. This surpassed the previous record of 8.9°F set in March 2012.

An injured proboscis monkey, endemic to Borneo, was discovered near a railway track in Thailand's Samut Sakhon province in January 2024. The species, known for its long nose, is legally protected in Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia and is listed under Appendix I of CITES, prohibiting international trade.

Indonesia plans to rezone Way Kambas National Park, reducing its core protected area from approximately 60,000 hectares to 27,661 hectares. The government aims to transform the park into a 'profit center' through carbon trading and luxury tourism, which could increase human-wildlife conflict, particularly affecting Sumatran elephants.

Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, delivered a keynote speech at the Heartland Institute's climate conference on October 25, 2023, where he criticized established climate science and media portrayals of his views. He stated, "No longer are we going to rely on bad, flawed assumptions instead of accurate, present-day facts," while mocking figures like John Kerry and Al Gore.