Financial News on Water

The world needs more clean water. Each year we have less clean water. Too much water in the oceans is threatening coastal real estate. Too much overfishing in the oceans is a threat to global food supplies. And decreasing water is causing more regional conflicts. Wikipedia: Water, Water Industry,

• In first half of 2025, the financial cost of weather catastrophes escalated at record pace, [as global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels worsens weather catastrophes]. The environment-hating Trump's administration stopped updating a database tracking the costs of the s worst disasters. A group of scientists has revived it.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 October 2025

• Coffee production may be imperiled as forests are destroyed for more crops. A new report by an industry watchdog adds to growing scientific consensus that as forests are felled to make way for coffee farms, rainfall decreases and crops are more likely to fail. The new research comes as Brazil and other coffee-producing countries are fighting with the European Union about a law that would force them to provide information about whether coffee sold in the bloc had been grown on recently deforested land.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 October 2025

• Tsunamis from an increasing number of ice breakoffs from glaciers in Alaska pose an increasing threat to cruise ships
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 22 October 2025

• Around the world, fury and anger mounts over the AI bubble. As very rich tech companies build data centers worldwide for their AI businesses, vulnerable communities of non-rich people have been hurt by power blackouts and water shortages. [KM: the poor should be glad to sacrifice for the rich]
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 October 2025

• How Zhōngguó is pushing back the invading sand dunes and winning in arid Ningxia
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 19 October 2025

• Oceans lose their luster as concentrations of phytoplankton decline in many ocean regions. Phytoplankton are a crucial food source in ocean food chains, and are a vital source of oxygen generation and CO2 removal. The cause is global heating of the oceans due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Inside Climate News, 17 October 2025

• The negotiators for Trump succeed in preventing the passage of treaty that would tax the emissions of cargo ships. Experts say the collapse of the talks marks not only a significant blow for attempts to clean up a heavily climate-polluting industry, undermining decades of negotiations, but also represents yet another failure of climate diplomacy. The USA and Saudi Arabia (two huge suppliers of fuel to ships) opposed the tax, and the authoritarian USA threatened any country voting for the tax with the threats of blocking their vessels from ports in the USA, visa restrictions, and sanctions on "officials sponsoring activist-driven climate policies that would burden American consumers" [- which ignores anti-climate policies that burden American consumers].
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 17 October 2025

• The negotiators for Trump succeed in preventing the passage of treaty that would tax the emissions of cargo ships. Experts say the collapse of the talks marks not only a significant blow for attempts to clean up a heavily climate-polluting industry, undermining decades of negotiations, but also represents yet another failure of climate diplomacy. The USA and Saudi Arabia (two huge suppliers of fuel to ships) opposed the tax, and the authoritarian USA threatened any country voting for the tax with the threats of blocking their vessels from ports in the USA, visa restrictions, and sanctions on "officials sponsoring activist-driven climate policies that would burden American consumers" [- which ignores anti-climate policies that burden American consumers].
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 October 2025

• The Trump has his administration threaten countries that back a proposed treaty that would impose a fee on the shipping industry to clean up pollution of the oceans and air by cargo ships. The International Maritime Organization wants to require cargo ships to lower their greenhouse gas emissions below a certain threshold or pay a fee. That proposal has the backing of the leading shipping lobby, and most of the USA's most steadfast allies, including Britain, Canada, the European Union and Japan. China too supports the measure.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 October 2025

• The land underlying the city of Shanghai sinks as sea levels near the city rise the fastest in 4,000 years
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 17 October 2025

• [Betrayed by the Trump administration], state governments in the USA are taking action to protect agriculture and waterways from harmful 'forever chemicals' as they await federal regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency. Most state activity focuses on drinking water. Some states also test wastewater treatment plant influent and effluent and compare those data sets with EPA guidelines. "At this time, the U.S. has no federally enforceable PFAS standards for other PFAS or for these PFAS in other environmental media, leaving individual states to navigate various avenues for addressing contamination."
  - Zero Hedge, 15 October 2025

• Almost 75% of drought-prone regions around the world will be at risk of extreme water shortages known as "day zero droughts" by 2100 if CO2 emissions are not reduced (which causes global heating and droughts from the burning of fossil fuels). A third of these regions could have "zero day droughts" (zero water available throughout a city or region) before 2030.
  - Live Science, 13 October 2025

• Earth is grappling with a "new reality" as it reaches the first in a series of catastrophic and potentially irreversible climate tipping points: the widespread death of coral reefs, according to a landmark report produced by 160 scientists across the world. The deaths of coral reefs are due to warmer ocean temperatures, caused by global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 13 October 2025

• Earth is grappling with a "new reality" as it reaches the first in a series of catastrophic and potentially irreversible climate tipping points: the widespread death of coral reefs, according to a landmark report produced by 160 scientists across the world. The deaths of coral reefs are due to warmer ocean temperatures, caused by global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels [KM: the lastest burning to fuel mostly useless AI data centers to make the rich richer].
  - Marc Benioff's Time, 13 October 2025

• Water shortages in Corpus Christi, in south Texas, are posing major risks to a fast-growing industrial hub that is crucial to Trump' twin goals of dominating global energy markets and slashing trade deficits. Poorer citizens are being pitted against huge rich corporations such as Exxon Mobil, Kocj Industries, Celanese and Occidental Petroleum - over access to water and who will pay for it. "The abatements that they [big rich corporations] get, the low water rates that they enjoy, the amount of water that they consume, it is just made the quality of our life go down."
  - Bloomberg, 12 October 2025

• Planet-heating methane is escaping from cracks in the Antarctic seabed as the region warms, with new seeps being discovered at an "astonishing rate", scientists have found, raising fears that future global warming predictions may have been underestimated.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 10 October 2025

• Melting sea ice and deforestation are continuing to drive many species toward extinction, with the latest Red List of Threatened Species showing that more than a quarter of all animals, plants and fungi assessed are at risk. Three species of Arctic seals now face extinction due to global heating (due to the burning of fossil fuels), while half the s birds are in decline due to habitat loss. But the return of the green sea turtle shows how, with coordinated conservation efforts, these losses can be turned around.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 10 October 2025

• Could the growing thirst for water (for cooling) by extremely rich AI companies create localized resource wars with communities that are not very rich? This growing demand for water has already strained local water tables across various communities nationwide, like in Texas, Arizona, and Colorado. [KM: let them not eat/drink water, so the rich AI companies can get richer]
  - Zero Hedge, 08 October 2025

• About 170 hospitals in the USA, totaling nearly 30,000 patient beds from coast to coast, are threatened by a great risk of significant or dangerous flooding. Trump has made this worse by dismantling FEMA programs designed to protect hospitals and other important buildings from floods, and slashing the budgets of federal agencies that forecast and respond to extreme weather.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 October 2025

• Two mining firms from Zhōngguó (Sino-Metals Leach Zambia and NFC Africa Mining) are sued over toxic acid spills in Zambia, posing a dilemma for the government of Zambia. A damages compensation lawsuit seeking $80 billion leaves the government of Nambia trying to balance good relations with Zhōngguó, with the needs of local communities. The lawsuit alleges that a tailings dam wall collapse in February released acidic waste into streams, rivers and farms near the town of Kitwe, about 285km (180 miles) north of the capital Lusaka.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 06 October 2025

• How the state of Delaware is using coconut husks and oyster shells, and other natural materials, to protect vulnerable coastal areas.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 October 2025

• Egypt on Friday blamed Ethiopia for the rising waters in the Nile River and flooding this week in two of its northernmost provinces, claiming the unusually high water levels are due to Ethiopia's mismanagement of its new controversial dam on the Nile.
  - Associated Press, 03 October 2025

• Iran considers moving its capital southward from Iran, to somewhere on the Persian Gulf, because of Tehran's over-expansion and water scarity. Rainfall in Iran has decreased 50% in recent years, and with increased evaporation in reservoirs, there is less water available.
  - Jerusalem Post, 03 October 2025

• Sea level rise could put more than 100 million buildings across the Global South at risk of regular flooding if fossil fuel emissions are not curbed quickly, decreasing their value and making them harder to insure
  - Phys.org, 03 October 2025

• Costly and deadly wildfires really are on the rise, new research finds. The past decade in particular has seen an uptick in devastating blazes linked to climate change due to global warming due to the burning of fossil fuels, according to the study.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 October 2025

• The Northern Sea Route, through Arctic waters, has been dismissed as too treacherous. Not for Zhōngguó, which wants to build a "Polar Silk Road". This route allows 18-days journeys between Ningbo port in Zhōngguó and Felixstowe port in England, as opposed to more than 50 days through the Suez Canal and 50 days around the southern end of Africa.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 03 October 2025

• For the first time in human history, the glaciers of California will soon disappear due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels
  - SF Gate, 02 October 2025

• Facebook/Instagram is building an AI center the size of 70 football fields in rural Louisiana. Non-rich residents near a similar facility in George [KM: that is making Mark Zuckerberg richer] say that they are "scared to drink our own water", as these non-rich people in Georgia suffer a dwindling and discolored water supply following the construction of a similar facility [KM: to make Mark Zuckerberg richer] that began in 2018. Another example of everyday [KM: non-rich] residents are caught in the path of tech companies seeking to build infrastructure in new areas with few regulations. "Facebook/Instagram is building the furure of human [dis]connection."
  - People, 02 October 2025

• Solar-powered groundwater pumping for farming is worsening the water crisis in Pakistan
  - Thomson's Reuters, 01 October 2025

• Making [Christian-controlled, climate change denying] Florida more flood resistant is forcing hard choices for homeowners. A rule requiring many storm-damaged homes to be demolished or rebuilt to the latest flood-resistant standards has exacted personal and cultural costs.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 September 2025

• The undeniable [except to Christian politicians who prostitute their votes] science of extreme weather. How global heating is supercharging droughts, floods and storms - all due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - The Climate Brink (substack), 25 September 2025

• The world's oceans fail key health check as acidity crosses critical threshold for marine life. Scientists call for renewed global effort to curb fossil fuels as seven of nine planetary boundaries now transgressed.
  - The Guardian, 24 September 2025

• The Ganges, a lifeline for hundreds of millions across South Asia, is drying at a rate scientists say is unprecedented in recorded history. Climate change, global heating and shifting monsoons - due to global heating caused by the burning of fossial fuels, relentless extraction and damming are pushing the mighty river towards collapse, with consequences for food, water and livelihoods across the region.
  - The Conversation, 24 September 2025

• A new interactive map and groundbreaking database allows people in the world's largest metropolitan areas to track their air pollution exposure, along with their region's biggest sources of planet-warming pollution. The tool, which depicts air pollution plumes and their sources, is the work of a nonprofit coalition of scientists, universities and nongovernmental groups called Climate TRACE. The group says the tool is a breakthrough in showing the biggest sources of air pollution down to the facility level for about 2,500 urban areas worldwide.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 24 September 2025

• Can hybrid grapes solve the problem of global heating [due to the burning of fossil fuels] that is hurting the wine industry?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 24 September 2025

• Many parts of the world are predicted to endure "day-zero droughts", periods of extreme and unprecedented water scarcity, which could happen as soon as this decade in certain hotspots including parts of North America, the Mediterranean and southern Africa, according to a new study. This water scarcity is due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 23 September 2025

• Zhōngguó record-breaking Dashixia dam starts storing water (in the Xinjiang region). It is the world's tallest concrete-faced rockfill dam (247 meters high) and was completed using full-scale intelligent technology and construction. When it is completed next year, the dam will have a reservoir capacity of 1.17 billion cubic metres, which will provide water to over 533,000 hectares of farmland in the Aksu River Basin and Tarim River Basin.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 23 September 2025

• People in Chicago avoided their 'filthy' river for years. On Sunday, they swam in the river, for the first time in 100 years.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 September 2025

• The global High Seas Treaty, decades in the making after many hard political fights, will become international law, now that Morocco has become the 60th country to sign the Treaty. It aims to create vast maritime conservation areas. The USA has signed the treaty, but not ratified it.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 September 2025

• Farmers in England have lost over 50% of their grass/hay harvest this year, due to dry and hot weather conditions due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels
  - The Cool Down, 21 September 2025

• A large portion of water resources in Catholic Christian Honduras are on indigenous territory, and (the mostly white) Christian politicians in the government often grants access to those resources to business groups without adequately consulting local indigenous communities (who are mostly non-white). One woman activist, Berta Cáceres, was murdered for her efforts to organize the indigenous communities. Now her daughter, Bertha Zúñiga, is facing the same threats.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 21 September 2025

• Top scientists at the National Academy of Sciences find growing evidence that greenhouse gases (caused by the burning of fossil fuels) are, in fact, a danger. The assessment contradicts the [environment-hating] Trump administration's legal arguments for relaxing pollution rules. The report notes that multiple lines of evidence now show that human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation are producing greenhouse gases that are heating the planet, and that climate change is exacerbating a wide variety of health risks like intense heat waves and increased wildfire smoke. Climate-driven changes in temperature and rainfall patterns have also led to negative effects on crops and less water availability in some places, among other disruptions.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 September 2025

• A record-breaking and astonishingly expansive marine heat wave is underway in the Pacific Ocean, stretching about 5,000 miles from the water around Japan to the West Coast of the United States. The abnormally warm "blob" of ocean water, which is getting a significant boost from global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, is affecting the weather on land and could have ripple effects on marine life.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 19 September 2025

• The global water cycle has become "increasingly erratic and extreme" with wild swings between droughts and floods, spelling big trouble for economies and societies, according to a report published Thursday by the World Meteorological Organization. Climate change and global heating, driven by humans burning fossil fuels, is upending this process.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 September 2025

• The high cost of repairing the coastal beaches of California (typically with beach sand replacement), as global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels makes ocean waves stronger and more destructive
  - SF Gate, 17 September 2025

• Heat waves and flooding caused by global heating, due to the burning of fossil fuels, could cost the European Union $50 billion in damage to buildings and agricultural crops as well as a loss of productivity, a new study found.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 September 2025

• As Afghanistan pushes forward with a project to divert significant volumes from the Amu Darya River, neighboring Central Asian states are sounding alarm bells. Thus far, however, international attention has been curiously muted. The Canal is a 285-kilometer project capable of irrigating vast tracts of northern Afghanistan. For a nation battered by war and sanctions, it promises food security. Yet what looks like a lifeline for Afghanistan could spell disruption for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, who rely on the water flows of the Amu Darya river. There are no treaties government the use of the river's waters.
  - Center for Research on Globalization, 16 September 2025

• An explanation of the Panama Canal's mega-project plan to engineer a solution to the severe droughts of the future that will hurt the water supplies used by the Canal. Solutions include building a dam to feed Lake Gatun, the fresh water source for canal operations, and a land bridge where a pipeline would be built to move natural gas liquids so more LNG vessels can transit (the vessels can transit the Canal weighing less, and thus travel through lower water levels)
  - Comcast's CNBC, 14 September 2025

• As the Mediterranean Sea gets hotter due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, invasive waterlife from the Red Sea migrate to the Mediterranean Sea, including predatory species such as the lionfish destructive to native species
  - The CoolDown, 14 September 2025

• A billionaire considered to be one of the most powerful people on Wall Street has infuriated neighbors by transporting 30 tankers of water a day to his $80 million estate in the United Kingdom. This un-Tikunish behavior while parts of England are suffering drought. Public authorities terminated his access to public waters.
  - Daily Beast, 12 September 2025

• Corcoran, a small town in the Central Valley of Calfornia, could sink another 10 feet because of a giant corporate farm's (J.G. Boswell Farming Company) pumping as much groundwater as possible
  - Merced Sun-Star, 12 September 2025

• An annual blast of cold water in the Pacific did not occur, alarming scientists. The cold water upswell, which is vital to marine life, did not materialize for the first time on record. Researchers are trying to figure out why.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 September 2025

• Indonesia is seeking the help of Zhōngguó to build a US$80 billion giant sea wall along the northern coast of Java in a project that officials see as essential to protecting millions of residents and key industries from rising seas and sinking land, despite criticisms over its financial and environmental costs.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 12 September 2025

• As global temperatures rise due to the burning of fossil fuels, scientists believe we may see fewer low, cooling clouds but not fewer of the high, warming clouds. It would be a classic feedback loop that accelerates the very global heating that triggered it.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 September 2025

• In Charlestown, South Carolina, a climate-change denying state controlled by racist Republicans, there is a plan to build a $1.3 billion seal wall to protect the city's historic downtown peninsula from rising sea levels, while leaving lower-income neighborhoods like Rosemont exposed to rising waters. The eight-mile barrier, with Charleston contributing $455 million, excludes historically Black communities already experiencing regular flooding.
  - The Guardian, 09 September 2025

• Banana exports from Costa Rica decline 20% due to heavy rains and disease
  - TicoTimes, 09 September 2025

• Warming seas [due to global heating from the burning of fossil fuels] threaten key phytoplankton species that fuels the food web, study finds
  - Associated Press, 08 September 2025

• $2,000,000,000+ - In Catholic-Christian Philippines, there is much public anger over the misuse of funds set aside for flood control projects has found its target: the properties of contractors accused of siphoning off billions and the offices of government agencies.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 08 September 2025

• How scientists are hunting down invasive Asian swamp eels in Florida
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 08 September 2025

• The government of México is coordinating $22 billion in public and private investment to expand and modernize shipping ports in México over the next six years
  - Freight Waves, 07 September 2025

• The jungle town of Leticia provides Colombia's only access to the Amazon River. But as the river changes course the town could soon be left high and dry and that's fueling a border dispute with neighboring Peru
  - NPR, 07 September 2025

• The climate crisis and global heating (due to the burning of fossil gfuels) will increase frequency of lightning-sparked wildfires, study finds. These wildfires tend to burn in more remote areas and grow larger faster, posing a higher risk to public safety and health, especially in increasingly drier environments due to global heating.
  - The Guardian, 06 September 2025

• These technological devices (for example, using hydrogels) harvest drinking water from the air in the driest regions on Earth. Critics say they are an expensive distraction they, a niche solution because only small amounts of water are produced at a high cost.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 September 2025

• After outfoxing Egypt on the diplomatic stage for more than a decade, Ethiopia is set to officially inaugurate one of the world's biggest dams (the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam) on a tributary of the River Nile, burying a colonial-era treaty that saw the Christian UK guarantee Egypt 80% of the waters of the Nile. The vast majority of the $5 billion dam was funded by Ethiopia and its people.
  - BBC, 06 September 2025

• Rising river temperatures threaten Paris' water-based building cooling network. Networks of pipes and heat exchangers can transfer excess heat from buildings into nearby bodies of water -- but as the world warms, the cooling potential of some water courses is now diminishing.
  - WIRED, 05 September 2025

• Has Bharat 'weaponized' water to deliberately flood Pakistan? Pakistan blames Bharat for floods that have killed hundreds, but experts urge focus on climate change. Bharat, they say, would need to flood itself to flood Pakistan.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 September 2025

• The worst rains in decades batter northern Bharat, submerging crops. The floods, which have killed hundreds, are bad news for farmers weighed down by heavy debt. Heavy rains, flash-floods and cloudbursts have battered much of north Bharat in recent weeks, killings hundreds of people and displacing over a million more.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 September 2025

• Exxon and California spar in dueling lawsuits over oil-derived plastics. Exxon accused the attorney general of California and four nonprofit groups of defamation after they sued over recycling claims.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 September 2025

• Global map shows where ocean plastics pose greatest threats
  - EurkeAlert, 03 September 2025

• The 'Arctic Express' shipping route that Zhōngguó is using accelerates Zhōngguó's trade reach and influence, challenges Western influence and navigates uncharted waters. Haijie Shipping, based in Zhōngguó, will launch the first regular container service linking Asia and Northern Europe via the Northern Sea Route on September 20. The route connects three Chinese ports - Qingdao, Shanghai and Ningbo - to Britain's Felixstowe, Rotterdam, Hamburg and Poland's Gdansk ports. Shipments from Ningobo to Felixstowe will take 18 days, versus 40 days through the Suez Canal, 50+ days around Africa, and 25 days via railroads from Zhōngguó to Europe.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 03 September 2025

• 75% of the decrease in rainfall in the Amazon is due to deforestation, so farmers can produce more beef that people should be eating less of
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 September 2025

• For the first time in 40 Years, deep and cold ocean waters fail to emerge (upwelling) off the coast of Panama. Upwelling is a process that allows cold, nutrient-rich waters from the depths of the ocean to rise to the surface.
  - Phys.org, 01 September 2025

• Two million people are impacted as the Punjab region of Pakistan experiences its worst floods in its history. While South Asia's seasonal monsoon brings rainfall that farmers depend on, climate change and global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels is making it deadly.
  - Al Jazeera, 31 August 2025

• Two million people are impacted as the Punjab region of Pakistan experiences its worst floods in its history. While South Asia's seasonal monsoon brings rainfall that farmers depend on, climate change and global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels is making it deadly.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 August 2025

• A 'plague' of octupus has financially hurt the shellfish industry in the United Kingdom. Warming seas have increased the number of octopuses off the waters of the UK, decimating shellfish numbers and leaving fishermen floundering.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 31 August 2025

• The destructive power of tourism. Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve in Hawai'i, a popular snorkeling destination that attracts nearly a million annual visitors, underwent a remarkable and rapid recovery when tourism ceased during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. During this time period of human absence, the water was cleaner, there were increased sightings of endangered Hawaiian monk seals, and more active fish populations.
  - Phys.org, 29 August 2025

• Construction of AI data centers in hot México is worsening the effects of droughts on the non-rich people of Mexico. [KM: Filthy rich AI companies are building AI data centers anywhere they can find cheap electricity and water, cheap for them, costly for the nearby poor residents].
  - BBC, 28 August 2025

• Premium bottled water is emerging as restaurants' answer to declining alcohol consumption as establishments offer curated water menus featuring bottles priced up to $25.70 to idiotic customers
  - The Guardian, 28 August 2025

• Beavers were welcomed back to the Netherlands. Until they started digging 17-meter-long tunnels that threaten the country's dykes, roads and railways. Reintroduced for environmental reasons, beavers are now in danger of causing serious flooding. Should there be more culls?
  - The Guardian, 28 August 2025

• A new study from UC San Diego researchers published Thursday in Science magazine revealed that the toxic wastewater from untreated sewage flowing across the border between México and the USA isn't just polluting the Pacific Ocean - it is also significantly affecting air quality in nearby San Diego due to the toxic gases released by the wastewater
  - SFGate, 28 August 2025

• Punishing droughts, caused by global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, put fresh pressure on meat and dairy production. Investors are calling for farm-based businesses to address increasing concerns about their water use. Demand for freshwater is set to exceed supply by 40% by 2030. Water use concerns have also risen as rich AI companies suck tons of water to cool data centers that power their AI systems.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 August 2025

• The ocean is getting more acidic (from absorbing CO2 emitted during the burning of fossil fuels), and it could affect the teeth of sharks
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 27 August 2025

• The ocean is getting more acidic (from absorbing CO2 emitted during the burning of fossil fuels), and it could affect the teeth of sharks
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 27 August 2025

• A severe dust storm, a haboob, slams Phoenix with a towering wall of dust, causing damage, airport delays, and power outages. Severe thunderstorms quickly followed, causing further damage.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 26 August 2025

• Glaciers around the world are vanishing faster than ever before. Last year, all 58 global reference glaciers across five continents tracked by the American Meteorological Society lost mass for the second year in a row - the greatest average ice loss recorded in the reprot's 55-year history. The cause? Global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - SF Gate, 25 August 2025

• The governor of Donetsk region of Ukraine now controlled by Rossiya, says Rossiya must seize control of the region to be able to control a vital canal to address a water crisis in the region
  - Thomson's Reuters, 25 August 2025

• Vietnam announced plans to evacuate more than half a million people and ordered boats to stay ashore, while the southern Chinese city of Sanya closed businesses and public transport on Sunday as both braced for an intensifying Typhoon Kajiki. Wind speeds are expected to rise as high as 180 kilometers per hour. A similiar storm in 2024, Typhon Yagi, caused over $3 billion in damage.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 24 August 2025

• More advertisements making human lives miserable. Boat advertisements are becoming increasingly common along our beaches, particularly in Florida. Many people's beach vacations are ruined by over-the-top advertisements that disrupt the serenity of the natural environment.
  - The Cool Down, 23 August 2025

• Global sea-level change has now been measured by satellites for more than 30 years, and a comparison with climate projections from the mid-1990s shows that they were remarkably accurate
  - Tulane University, 22 August 2025

• Rapid falls in the level of the Caspian Sea are affecting ports and oil shipments and threatening to inflict catastrophic damage on sturgeon and seal populations, according to officials in Azerbaijan. The Caspian Sea had been getting shallower for decades, but figures showed that the trend was accelerating.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 21 August 2025

• Planting trees in some parts of the world could cause droughts, according to a study in Zhōngguó that suggested greening efforts should take regional conditions into account to be effective. Through a complex multi-decade study of vegetation and soil moisture patterns combining several databases and models, the researchers found that nearly half of the world had experienced a pattern of 'greening-drying'.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 21 August 2025

• An ongoing drought in southern Rossiya's Krasnodar region has caused around 46 billion rubles ($572 million) in agricultural losses so far this summer, the head of a local agribusiness lobby said Wednesday. The frequency and intensity of droughts across the globe are increasing due to the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities that release greenhouse gases, according to climate scientists.
  - The Moscow Times, 20 August 2025

• Once a source of life and renewal, monsoon brings death to Pakistan. With villages swept away and s largest city assailed by monsoon floods, climate change has brought a catastrophic new normal to the country.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 August 2025

• The Outer Banks of climate-change/global-heating denying North Carolina (the policy of the Christians running the state) are preparing for "sadness and devastation" as Hurricane Erin roars past the coastal region 300 miles offshore. The sandy, vulnerable barrier islands on North Carolina's coast may see houses swept away and a vital roadway flooded - yet again. [Hopefully, not a single taxpayer dollar is being used to insure/repair these homes.]
  - USA Today, 20 August 2025

• Iraq is experiencing its driest year on record since 1933, as the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which flow into the Persian Gulf from West Asia, have seen their levels drop by up to 27 percent due to poor rainfall and upstream water restrictions
  - Al Jazeera, 19 August 2025

• Northern destinations for vacations (Norway, Sweden, Scotland, etc.) , known for being cool during the summar, now experience extreme heat due to global heating doe to the burning of fossil fuels
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 19 August 2025

• The other humanitarian crisis in Islamic Gaza caused by Jewish Israel - not enough of clean drinking water. Most of Islamic Gaza's water facilities have been damaged or destroyed in the war by Jewish Israel with the support of the CHristian USA, and residents now trek long distances and wait for hours to fill the basic need
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 18 August 2025

• Hurricane Erin is one of the fastest rapidly intensifying storms in the history of the Atlantic Ocean, from a Category 1 hurricane with 75 mph winds at 11 a.m. Friday to a Category 5 with near 160 mph winds just over 24 hours later. Even more hurricanes are rapidly intensifying in the Atlantic as the oceans and atmosphere warm in response to fossil fuel pollution and the global heating it causes. This likely makes Erin another example of the increasing extremes due to global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 17 August 2025

• The boom in AI-data centers in Asia could drain the rivers of Asia, a vital source of water for people, if not careful in managing the rising demand for electricity to power these data centers [KM: that do little more than make the rich richer]
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 16 August 2025

• Trifluoroacetic acid is causing a new type of acid rain that is everywhere, is almost impossible to clean up, and could be a threat to every living thing on planet Earth. Trifluoroacetic acid is a type of persistent oil-derived 'forever chemical'.
  - Science Focus, 15 August 2025

• Arizona, Nevada and México will again get less Colorado River water in 2026
  - Associated Press, 15 August 2025

• Glaciers in the Arctic, already melting due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, are further melting as microbes accelerate ice melt
  - The Guardian, 15 August 2025

• $200,000,000+ - The DoJ and SEC criminally charge two men for the alleged $200 million Ponzi scheme for water vending machines
  - Comcast's CNBC, 14 August 2025

• The six million people in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, could have no water by 2030. The Islamic government is desperately seeking for solutions, but financial reserves to pay for water infrastructure are as 'dry' as the water basins of Kabul.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 August 2025

• A glacier outburst is underway in Alaska. It could send a wave of water downstream toward Juneau. The glacial lake outbursts have become a regular occurrence since 2011 and have worsened considerably each year since 2023. They are yet another consequence of global heating due to fossil fuel pollution.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 12 August 2025

• Evacuation warnings intensify as a glacier outburst is underway in Alaska. It could send a wave of water downstream toward Juneau. The glacial lake outbursts have become a regular occurrence since 2011 and have worsened considerably each year since 2023. They are yet another consequence of global heating due to fossil fuel pollution.
  - CBS News, 12 August 2025

• The Central Valley of California - a huge farming region - is sinking, as much as 1 inch per year, due to excessive extraction of groundwater. This has caused property values in the region to decline as much as 5.8%, though this is masked by overall increases in home prices.
  - SF Gate, 11 August 2025

• A famously stable glacier in Argentina suddenly looks anything but stable. After holding steady for decades, the beloved Perito Moreno has thinned considerably since 2019, scientists said. Blame global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 August 2025

• Why have blue whales stopped singing? The mystery worrying scientists.
  - Al Jazeera, 08 August 2025

• As the world runs out of spring/mineral water, are spring/mineral water companies relying on filtration systems to use 'non-pure' water, water contaminated due to global heating? The water is still healthy, but it is false advertising to say that it is 'natural', and you can obtain treated water ... for free from the tap. This won't make the rich richer, but at least their tears will be 'natural' water.
  - BBC, 08 August 2025

• While cities in Zhōngguó are increasingly being hit by extreme rainfall, the volume of water in the rivers of Zhōngguó has fallen over 60 years, particularly in the of Zhōngguó. The researchers found that flow rates in the five major river basins of northern Zhōngguó - the Songhua, Liao, Hai, Yellow and Huai rivers - had generally declined, including a 95% decline in the Hai River basin.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 08 August 2025

• Some insurance professionals fear the world is fast approaching temperature levels - global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels sold by the socialist energy industry - where professional risk managers will no longer be able to offer cover for financial services. Top insurers fear the climate crisis and global heating could soon outpace industry solutions, effectively threatening to make entire regions around the world uninsurable.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 08 August 2025

• The fire season in California is starting earlier, study finds, due to global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Summertime fire activity is creeping into spring, and the hotter climate is a major driver, scientists said.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 August 2025

• Deadly monsoon floods this year in Pakistan were worsened by global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 07 August 2025

• Record high temperatures in Nihon, caused by global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, is prompting worries over rice crops in Nihon. The worries are about drought, and a proliferation of stink bugs in some rice-growing areas.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 07 August 2025

• Torrential rain batters Hong Kong, flooding the waterlogged city. Record-setting rain has brought chaos to parts of Hong Kong, with submerged streets, stranded buses and landslides. Residents were advised to avoid going out.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 August 2025

• The Great Barrier Reef offshore of Australia has been devastated by the worst coral bleeching in history, due to a marine heatwave caused by global heating due to burning fossil fuels
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 August 2025

• Coastal flooding in the USA is much worse than official records show - and no one is measuring it
  - ZME Science, 05 August 2025

• Crescent City, in northern California, is the only city in the USA to have its waterfront suffer damage, $1 million, due to tsunami waves from the 8.8-magnitude quake off the coast of Rossiya
  - SF Gate, 31 July 2025

• Want to pollute the environment with mercury and other pollutants? The environment-hating Trump is allowing you to send just one email to the EPA to obtain exemption from the Clean Air Act. Just say that your business is important to "national security", and viola, exemption.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 July 2025

• More ills of the socialized oil and natural gas industry. The Permian Basin produces over 5 million barrels of oil daily. With that, the Permian also produces a lot of wastewater, which has started to turn into a problem. Some drillers are even suing others for ruining their reserves. Texas regulators are restricting new injection wells due to rising reservoir pressure, seismic activity, and potential damage to oil reserves and freshwater resources. Legal disputes are emerging among drillers, with Stateline Operating suing Devon Energy and Aris Water Solutions for $180 million.
  - OilPrice.com, 29 July 2025

• Freshwater is disappearing from the Earth at alarming rates, due to global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels, overconsumption (including grow food in deserts) and drough (also caused by global heating)
  - The Hill, 28 July 2025

• Ethiopia argues that distribution of water from the Nile cannot be governed by colonial-era treaties forced on some countries in Africa (such as Ethiopia) by their former Christian colonial masters. All countries through which the Nile passes should be able to use the waters, not just Egypt and Sudan.
  - Al Jazeera, 28 July 2025

• Dozens of wildfires burn in Greece and Turkey as temperatures soar due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 July 2025

• Zhōngguó has officially begun construction on a massive $167 billion hydroelectric dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet - to produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours, despite strong warnings from scientists about the region's fragile ecosystem and complex geological condition
  - Zero Hedge, 27 July 2025

• After a five-year drought caused by global heating due to fossil fuels (which Iran profits greatly from) and decades of mismanagement by the Islamic government of Iran, the huge city of Tehran (population about 10 million) is at risk of running out of water in several weeks, the government warned. Iran is also suffering from daily reductions in supplies of electricity, skyrocketing inflation and other problems. The government also wastes a lot of water on water-intensive industries such as steelmaking.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 July 2025

• After a five-year drought caused by global heating due to fossil fuels (which Iran profits greatly from) and decades of mismanagement by the Islamic government of Iran, the huge city of Tehran (population about 10 million) is at risk of running out of water in several weeks, the government warned. Iran is also suffering from daily reductions in supplies of electricity, skyrocketing inflation and other problems. The government also wastes a lot of water on water-intensive industries such as steelmaking.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 27 July 2025

• The USA and México sign a deal to stop sewage release into the Tijuana River. The agreement addresses a longstanding problem that has sickened people in both countries.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 July 2025

• After 20 years of spending trillions in Middle East wars (which mostly profited USA defense contractors while doing nothing for peace) to gain more economic clout, the USA is rewarded NOT, as PowerChina wins a $4 billion contract to build a large seawater desalination facility in Basra, Iraq. Zhōngguó is signing multiple infrastructure deals across the Middle East.
  - Zero Hedge, 25 July 2025

• Toxic algae are turning the coral reefs off of the coast of South Australia into underwater 'graveyards'. A harmful algal bloom, caused by a marine heat wave due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, has poisoned more than 4,500 square kilometers (about the size of Rhode Island), killing over 15,000 animals.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 25 July 2025

• After Trump pledged to open international waters to mining in an executive order, The Metals Company sought U.S. permits. But other countries are raising legal concerns. The authoritarian Trump's executive order conflicts with a longstanding treaty known as the Law of the Sea, potentially exposing international partners of The Metals Company to legal risks.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 July 2025

• Singapore wants to spend billions of dollars to build a 8-mile-long 'Long Island' barrier of islands to defend Singapore against rising seas. Singapore is already suffering 'nuisance flooding' due to rising sea levels, and expects things to get worse.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 23 July 2025

• The International Court of Justice declares that a "clean environment" is a human right, in a 500-page non-binding opinion, and that inaction to protect the environment may violate international law
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post (locked), 23 July 2025

• The International Court of Justice declares that a "clean environment" is a human right, in a 500-page non-binding opinion, and that inaction to protect the environment may violate international law
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 July 2025

• The International Court of Justice declares that major polluters may need to pay reparations for causing global warming and other environmental harms
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 23 July 2025

• Fire weather is becoming worse for the world's forests, due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 July 2025

• Global food prices are spiking up, due to extreme weather caused by global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels. Staple foods - including potatoes, rice, onions, lettuce and fruit - are rising in price due to the effects of extreme weather.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 July 2025

• Businesses in Zhōngguó want to convert cargo ships into floating fish farms
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 22 July 2025

• Zhōngguó is building a $167 billion mega-dam in the Himalayas. It could eliminate the need to burn coal to the extent that the dam could be a 'coal killer'
  - Bloomberg, 21 July 2025

• You can protect beaches, or beach houses, not both - a worsening problem as sea levels around the world rise. But if you protect the beaches (by prohibiting barriers to protect homes), the homeowners want the government to give them socialist subsidies for their mistake of their earlier decisions to build close the ocean and not worry about the future of the environment (including Republican homeowners who for too long have denied global heating and sea level rise).
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 July 2025

• More miserable summer weather? Thank fossil fuel pollution - along with other factors - that has turned summers into months of mounting peril, punctuated by relentless heat waves, rampant wildfires and catastrophic flooding. Flash floods? Too much water in the air due to global heating. As Trump undermines environmental protection, if you voted for him, enjoy paying more for insurance.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 July 2025

• For the first time in modern history a capital city, Kabul in Islamic Afghanistan, is close to having no water for human use. Too many people, evaporation due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, and groundwater depletion (the remaining groundwater contaminated) has left Kabul pretty much without water. Worse, women have to spend a lot of their time seeking water in public, only to be harassed by the authoritarian misognistic Islamic government of Afhganistan.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 July 2025

• For the first time in modern history a capital city, Kabul in Islamic Afghanistan, is close to having no water for human use. Too many people, evaporation due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, and groundwater depletion (the remaining groundwater contaminated) has left Kabul pretty much without water. Worse, women have to spend a lot of their time seeking water in public, only to be harassed by the authoritarian misognistic Islamic government of Afhganistan.
  - Zero Hedge, 20 July 2025

• Climate catastrophes (wildfires, floods, storm damage), due to global heating from the burning of fossil fuels, is creating a "new market reality" for insurance companies, with insurance losses in 2025 expected to rise about $100 billion
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 July 2025

• Climate catastrophes (wildfires, floods, storm damage), due to global heating from the burning of fossil fuels, is creating a "new market reality" for insurance companies, with insurance losses in 2025 expected to rise about $100 billion
  - Comcast's CNBC, 18 July 2025

• Inside Elon Musk's authoritarian plan to rain rocket debris (when he detonates parts of his launched rockets) from his SpaceX operations over the pristine waters of Hawaii, including the waters of a Marine National Monument. [KX note: for the rights-for-sale Federal Aviation Administration, making Elon Musk richer is more important than anything else.]
  - The Guardian, 18 July 2025

• The megadrought in the western region of the USA might last for decades, bad news for the idiots continuing to build homes and farms in the desert
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 July 2025

• People in Quito, the capital of Ecuador, are suffering from a shortage of water, after a landslide damaged a pipeline that supplied water to much of southern Quito
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 16 July 2025

• Unregulated activity by mining companies based in Zhōngguó, with their mining operations in Myanmar, is creating an environmental disaster for Thailand
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 July 2025

• To make rich AI companies richer, their AI data centers need millions of gallons water needed by people, and rely on toxic chemicals leaching into the soil that is bad for the environment
  - Zero Hedge, 15 July 2025

• The environment-of-his-Jesus-hating Trump is destroying weather science in the USA and reducing the government's ability to help the non-rich deal with environmental disasters, made worse by global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels whose very rich industries are being given more socialist subsidies by Trump
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 July 2025

• A mine for uranium in Inner Mongolia yields its first barrel of uranium that is mined with in-site leeching using a method that is "green, safe and intelligent"
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 13 July 2025

• Researchers in Zhōngguó have invented a process that uses candle wax to make water-based gel particles that can efficiently separate uranium from seawater
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 13 July 2025

• A woman says that Mark Zuckerberg's AI data center filled her tap water with sediment. [KM: She doesn't want him to become richer at the expense of her health?]
  - Futurism, 11 July 2025

• "I cannot drink the water": life next to an AI data center in the USA that makes the rich richer while local residents suffer. What is more important: water for non-rich humans, or water for mostly useless AI systems [KM: that only profit the rich?]
  - BBC, 10 July 2025

• A study published in the journal Nature estimates the volume of oil-derived nanoplastics, which are even smaller than microplastics and invisible to the naked eye, to be at least 27 million metric tons in the seas of the North Atlantic -- more than the weight of all wild land mammals. Some of this plastic ends up in the bodies of fish that humans eat.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 July 2025

• $27,000,000 - DuPont agrees to pay $27 million for its role in the contamination of Hoosick Falls in New York state
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 July 2025

• The 'great green wall', a 1,856 kilometer 'green belt', that Zhōngguó is building in Inner Mongolia confines three more deserts
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 09 July 2025

• Increasingly acidic ocean waters are threatening oyster farming in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. The increased acidity is due to the burning of fossil fuels, which produced CO2 that when absorbed by the oceans can be converted in to acid.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 July 2025

• An underwater power turbine has been generating electricity for 6 years off of the coast of Scotland, a big success for tidal energy
  - Associated Press, 07 July 2025

• Paris, France, is now allowing people to swim in the river Seine, opening three parts of the river now clean enough to swim in. Congratulations!
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 July 2025

• Zhōngguó dominates the world's rare earth metals industry. The success has been costly: soil and groundwater around processing plants are contaminated with heavy metals and radioactive materials (such as thorium). Both pose a health threat for nearby people, especially due to lead and cadmium.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 July 2025

• Christian politicians in Texas could have completely prevented the 70+ deaths that just occurred due to flash flooding
  - Roger Pielke - The Honest Broker, 06 July 2025

• Extreme rain is becoming even more extreme, as the world heats up due to the burning of fossil fuels, now made worse as Trump gives new tax credits to the fossial fuel industry by taking them away from the renewable energy industry
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 July 2025

• In the race to power the future safely, Zhōngguó is racing ahead. While Zhōngguó dominates/sells clean energy to the world, Christian Republicans in the USA end government support for renewable energy to be able to give more socialist subsidies to the oil and natural gas industry
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 July 2025

• Government relief and insurance programs require significant reform to be equipped to handle a future of increasingly intense and costly climate events due to global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 July 2025

• While Trump destroys the solar energy industry in the USA by giving its tax credits to oil and natural gas companies, Zhōngguó has launched a fully seawater-based solar energy system - the first of its kind suitable for industrial use and large-scale power production.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 05 July 2025

• A real estate megadevelopment in the deserts of California, Diable Grande ... runs out of water
  - SF Gate, 04 July 2025

• Protests by farmers, the non-rich, environmentalists and others increase in number and volume over the efforts to increase water supplies for the Panama Canal by building a 4,600-hectare reservoir west of the Canal. About 2,500 people will have to be relocated to build the reservoir.
  - TicoTimes, 02 July 2025

• A report from the United Nations argues that recent droughts are a "slow moving catastrophe" for the world. Droughts are a "silent killer" that "creeps in, drains resources, and devastates lives in slow motion". Global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels worsens the droughts.
  - BBC, 02 July 2025

• California has passed a new law that will exclude certain construction projects from being subject to the California Environmental Quality Act, uch as water system upgrades, advanced manufacturing facilities, and wildfire fuel breaks. The Reagan-era law requires developers to consider environmental issues, traffic, air pollution and noise when proposing a new building project. Individuals and groups can challenge a project if they believe it violates the law.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 02 July 2025

• California has passed a new law, with bi-partisan support, that will exclude certain construction projects from being subject to the California Environmental Quality Act, uch as water system upgrades, advanced manufacturing facilities, and wildfire fuel breaks. The Reagan-era law requires developers to consider environmental issues, traffic, air pollution and noise when proposing a new building project. Individuals and groups can challenge a project if they believe it violates the law.
  - Pacific Legal Foundation, 02 July 2025

• California loosens restrictions on its environmental laws by passing, with bi-partisan support, that will exclude certain construction projects from being subject to the California Environmental Quality Act, uch as water system upgrades, advanced manufacturing facilities, and wildfire fuel breaks. The Reagan-era law requires developers to consider environmental issues, traffic, air pollution and noise when proposing a new building project. Individuals and groups can challenge a project if they believe it violates the law.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 July 2025

• While Christian Republicans in Florida remove flouride from water supplies, the city of Calgary in Canada is restoring flouride in its water supplies (removed in 2011) because the removal worsened dental health in children (as it willin Florida).
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 July 2025

• Republicans in Oklahona end recommendations to add flouride to state water supplies, for some reason, want to worsen the dental health of children
  - Zero Hedge, 01 July 2025

• $4,800,000 - A federal judge has ordered Trump Tower in Chicago to pay $4.8 million for killing thousands of fish due to taking large amounts, 20 million gallons a day, of water from the Chicago River to cool the building.
  - The Independent, 01 July 2025

• Researchers at MIT invent a hydrogel "bubble wrap" that pulls fresh water from the air, even in the driest places in the world
  - Zero Hedge, 30 June 2025

• Delta Airlines, based in Atlanta, said in a statement on Saturday morning that 90 flights were diverted to other airports in the Southeast on Friday evening as the storm swept through just before 8 p.m., dropping quarter-inch hail and microburst winds
  - Yahoo News, 28 June 2025

• Severe storms force the evacuation of the airport control tower at the Atlanta International Airport, causing significant flight delays and cancellations during a busy travel weekend
  - Yahoo News, 28 June 2025

• The environment-hating Trump orders that critical hurricane monitoring data be no longer available online. The loss of access to the data could frustrate the ability of weather forecasters to track hurricanes and warn non-rich residents of their risk.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 June 2025

• Threatened by supercharged storms and rising oceans, fishing communities in the Phillipines are fighting for their lives
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 28 June 2025

• Extreme heat is breaking the USA, due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels. People across the USA who are living through these extreme heat episodes and stressing over escalating electric bills, dying livestock and dangerous working conditions. Exposure to heat in the workplace drags down labor productivity, suppresses local gross domestic product and hits rural economies hardest - especially those heavily dependent on manufacturing or agriculture. Supply chain disruptions and power outages that destroy inventories also drive up costs for producers and consumers, from food spoilage in grocery stores and warehouses to heat-damaged electronics and pharmaceuticals rendered unusable. [KXnote: but the rich get richer through their investments in fossil fuels.]
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 June 2025

• For the future of water conservation, look to Los Angeles for solutions? Years of drought forced Los Angeles to rethink its water usage and, almost unnoticed, to remake its identity.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 June 2025

• The Earth is heating up, and the increased heating is happening faster. Human-caused global warming has been increasing faster and faster since the 1970s, due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 June 2025

• Overfishing has caused cod to halve in body size since 1990s, study finds. Evolutionary change driven by intensive fishing led cod to 'shrink' from average 40cm length in 1996 to 20cm in 2019.
  - The Guardian, 25 June 2025

• War, inflation and now drought are hitting global food supplies. Staples including wheat, beef and coffee are all being affected by the lack of rainfall. In some cases, prices are climbing to record highs.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 June 2025

• Bharat will never restore the Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan, and the water flowing to Pakistan will be diverted for internal use. The treaty had guaranteed water access for 80% of Pakistan's farms through three rivers originating in Bharat. Pakistan argues hat the treaty has no provision for one side to unilaterally pull back and that any blocking of river water flowing to Pakistan will be considered an "act of war".
  - Thomson's Reuters, 21 June 2025

• Scientists at Oregon State University discovered that, in the last glacial period, Earth experienced its highest CO2 increase: 14 parts per million in just 55 years. Now, the Earth experiences that increase every five years due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Popular Mechanics, 21 June 2025

• A decrease in funding for the agricultural sector in the USA continues, though the daily and solar sectors offer opportunities. Macroeconomic headwinds, weak commodity prices and a sluggish agricultural cycle have weighed on funding and valuations in the agricultural technology sector that encompasses precision farming, biotech and data analytics, which help farmers grow food more efficiently. Another growth avenue for agtech firms is solar land management, which involves robotic tractors that maintain and service panels on solar farms without human intervention, demand for which is driven by U.S. utilities powering the AI data center boom.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 20 June 2025

• Central and southern Zhōngguó were on high alert for more flash floods on Friday as the annual East Asia monsoon gathered pace and extreme rainfall threatened disruption in the world's second-largest economy. Extreme rainfall and severe flooding, which meteorologists link to climate change and global heating due to burning of fossil fuels, increasingly pose major challenges for policymakers as they threaten to overwhelm ageing flood defences, displace millions, and wreak havoc on Zhōngguó's $2.8 trillion agricultural sector.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 19 June 2025

• Trump is considering allowing the use of groundwater from the Mojave Desery in California to be sent to Arizona, as the water resources of the Colorado River Basin continue to decline
  - Politico, 18 June 2025

• How global heating and climate change will worsen hunger. Even the richest farmlands in the USA cannot outrun climate collapse. More than one-third of the worl'd wheat and barley exports come from Ukraine and Russia, for example. Some of these highly productive farmlands, including major crop-growing regions in the United States, are on track to see the sharpest drops in harvests due to climate change and global heating.
  - Vox, 18 June 2025

• Fish suffer up to 22 minutes of intense pain when taken out of the water by fishing companies, when they are killed by asphyxiation, either in open air or ice water.
  - Science Alert, 18 June 2025

• Sea surface temperatures in 2024 broke records and about 25% of the world's oceans are experiencing temperatures that qualify as a marine heat wave, due to global heating caused by burning of fossil fuels.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 June 2025

• Across the U.S., major urban centers are experiencing significant land subsidence, that is, the sinking of land. Houston, Forth Worth and Dallas have sunk the most (-5.2 mm/yr, -4.7 mm/yr, -3.8 mm/yr). This gradual sinking can worsen the impacts of sea-level rise, increase flood risk, and place additional stress on urban infrastructure, particularly in densely developed areas. The primary cause of this subsidence is groundwater extraction.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 June 2025

• Oil-derived 'forever chemicals' detected in 65% of the private wells that were sampled in Pennsylvania
  - Phys.org, 16 June 2025

• Why the water-quality expert for the New York Times doesn't filter his home's water: most tap water is very clean, most public water supplies do a good job of filtering water, and most water filters have the occasional problem
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 June 2025

• The Yellow River in Zhōngguó will be choked by ice jams due to global heating. Collapses of the ice jams can release a torrent of ice and water causing devastating flooding damaging communities, wildlife and infrastructure.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 16 June 2025

• Stark images, captured from a drone by environmental campaigners and shared with the BBC, appear to show how nickel mining has stripped forests and polluted waters in one of the most biodiverse marine habitats on Earth. The Raja Ampat archipelago - a group of small islands in Indonesia's Southwest Papua Province - has been dubbed the "Amazon of the Seas". In a move that was welcomed by campaigners, the Indonesian government this week revoked permits for four out of five mining companies operating in the region. Aerial images show forest loss and sediment run-off into waters that are home to biodiverse coral reefs.
  - BBC, 14 June 2025

• A study shows that mercury levels in Arctic wildlife could rise for centuries
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 June 2025

• Severe hailstorms pelted the high plains of Murcia, Españna, in early May, resulting in extensive damage to crops in the region, including damaged grape vines in local vineyards and trees in fruit and nut groves. Murcia contributes 17% of Españna's overall fruit and pulse exports, and the damage caused by these recent hailstorms has disrupted supply chains.
  - The Cool Down, 14 June 2025

• In a move that reeks of bureaucratic overreach and questionable priorities, the Food and Drug Administration has rubber-stamped Wildtype's lab-grown salmon, the first of its kind approved for human consumption in the USA. Wildtype's salmon was approved with no independent testing. Get sick eating the salmon? Good luck navigating the FDA's Safety Reporting Portal.
  - Zero Hedge, 13 June 2025

• The Colorado River basin has lost a Lake Mead's worth of water in the last 20 years -- and scientists say we are passing a "critical point" where pumping groundwater will become too expensive as the water table falls too deep for water to be pumped to the surface. About three-quarters of the groundwater depletion is happening in the river's lower basin, largely in Arizona, where water is pumped from desert aquifers to idiotically irrigate farmland ... in the desert.
  - Live Science, 13 June 2025

• The white Trump withdraws the USA from the Pacific Northwest agreement for salmon restoration, an agreement with several non-white Native American tribes.
  - The Hill, 13 June 2025

• How Zhōngguó is driving a surge in shipping along Arctic sea routes. The route's operator in Rossiya is building more nuclear-powered icebreakers, as it anticipates a significant rise in voyages by companies in Zhōngguó.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 13 June 2025

• Are bland-tasting tilapia fish a human-made freak that we should avoid eating, or an evolutionary champion (the family of chichlid fishes)? well adapted to aquaculture? Good ahead - eat them!
  - Genetic Literacy Project, 12 June 2025

• As part of Trump's hatred of the environment and destruciton of NOAA, a very important USA climate website is likely to be shut down after almost all staff fired Climate.gov, which supports public education on climate science, will soon no longer publish new content.
  - The Guardian, 11 June 2025

• Scientists mapped what happens if a crucial system of Atlantic Ocean currents collapses. The weather impact would be extreme. Parts of the world would suffer a deep freeze, with winter temperatures plunging to around minus 55 degrees Fahrenheit in some cities. This huge cooling, despite global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels. Crops would die, threatening food security, and infrastructure could buckle in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere, meanwhile, is projected to experience increased warming.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 11 June 2025

• The north of Bharat is on the boil with heat waves disrupting normal lives and raising health concerns. The temperature rose as high as 47.3 C (117 F) in Sri Ganganagar, a desert city in the northwestern state of Rajasthan on Monday. The capital of Bharat, New Delhi, saw its first heatwave of the season with temperatures soaring past 45 C (113 F) in one of its neighborhoods on Monday.
  - Associated Press, 10 June 2025

• Six decades of data show that most phytoplankton populations have been shrinking by up to 2% per year in the North Atlantic Ocean. This is bad for the oceanic food web, as will as photoplankton's role in absorbing CO2 from the air.
  - Phys.org, 10 June 2025

• By 2030, rising seas will threaten the beaches and communities of Costa Rica - looding coastal areas, damaging infrastructure, and displacing communities.
  - Tico Times, 09 June 2025

• Ocean acidification (due to CO2 absorbed by oceans reacting with water moleclues to reduce the pH level of seawater) has already crossed a crucial threshold for planetary health, scientists say in unexpected finding, threatening entire ecosystems. Acidic oceans damage coral reefs and other ocean habitats and, in extreme cases, can dissolve the shells of marine creatures.
  - The Guardian, 09 June 2025

• Zhōngguó supports an investigation into pollution in the Mekong River, after a report accuses mining companies of polluting the river. Media reports and activists have said mining companies based in Zhōngguó that are operating in Myanmar are responsible for pollution downriver in Thailand.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 09 June 2025

• How a water conservation idea was accepted by farmers in Oklahoma. A big part of the solution was simple: give cows clean drinking water and keep them out of the streams. The environment gets restored, and the cows are healthier.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 June 2025

• The world is running out of clean water. Deep-sea desalination is on the cusp of providing a source of clean water from the Caribbean to the Emirates.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 June 2025

• Why is hail becoming so large? Hailstorms cause billions in damages. Scientists are studying why it happens.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 June 2025

• Commerce Secretary Lutnick lies before Congress when he says that the National Hurricane Center is fully staffed - it isn't.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 June 2025

• Fishermen in Costa Rica sound the alarm about the overfishing crisis in the Gulf of Nicoya. Illegal fishing, overexploitation, and institutional neglect are pushing fish stocks to the brink, leaving coastal communities like Isla Chira facing economic hardship and potential hunger. Local voices, aired at a recent Legislative Assembly forum, paint a stark picture of a region in distress, with authorities failing to enforce critical protections.
  - TicoTimes, 06 June 2025

• Lake Tahoe goes on high alert as an invasive species, golden mussels creeps closer on tourists boats. To stop the mussels from getting into the lake, this spring, Tahoe implemented much stricter measures that go beyond the norm, requiring that every single motorized boat not just be inspected but also be decontaminated before hitting the water. f the mussels were to reach Lake Tahoe, they would wreak havoc on the ecosystem and degrade water quality, and there is no getting them out, experts say.
  - SF Gate, 05 June 2025

• Coal-fired electricity generation in Bharat in May fell at the fastest pace in five years, as overall power demand declined for the first time since August and renewable energy generation rose to a record high. Increased generation from less polluting power sources including hydro and nuclear also led to a decline in natural gas-fired power output, which fell at the steepest rate in nearly three years.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 05 June 2025

• Blooms of of smelly, toxic seaweed shattered records in May, growing to over 37 million tons and inundating beaches around the Caribbean. If it is not bad enough already, the amount of seaweed is expected to grow even more in June.
  - The Hill, 04 June 2025

• The atmosphere's growing thirst is making droughts worse, even where it rains. This 'thirst' (the water capacity of air) has made droughts 40% more severe across the globe over the course of the past 40 years due to global heating from the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Phys.org, 04 June 2025

• John Morales, a meteorologist with over 30 years of experience in Florida, warns that DOGE destruction of NOAA will lead to less accurate hurricane forecasts, which could make the impact of hurricances more destructive and costly, probably more costly than the money saved firing large numbers of NOAA employees.
  - Comcast's MSNBC, 04 June 2025

• Native American tribes of the Gila River (GRIC) intend to float solar panel systems on a reservoir. Could the technology help the Colorado River? Currently they are installing solar panels above a canal to generate power while testing their ideas. The tactic is mostly new in the USA. As recently as 2022, according to a Bloomberg analysis, most of the world's 13 gigawatts of floating solar capacity had been built in Asia.
  - Inside Climate News, 03 June 2025

• Iron released from coal combustion and steel production is altering the ecosystem in a critical part of the North Pacific, a new study has found. Iron is essential for the growth of microscopic phytoplankton in the ocean, but industrial emissions contain aerosolized iron, which quickly dissolves in the ocean and disrupts nutrient balances, the authors noted.
  - The Hill, 02 June 2025

• A colossal cloud of dust from the Sahara desert is smothering the islands of the Cariffean en route to the USA. The hazy skies unleashed sneezes, coughs and watery eyes across the Caribbean, with local forecasters warning that those with allergies, asthma and other conditions should remain indoors or wear face masks if outdoors.
  - Associated Press, 02 June 2025

• A colossal cloud of dust from the Sahara desert is smothering the islands of the Cariffean en route to the USA. The hazy skies unleashed sneezes, coughs and watery eyes across the Caribbean, with local forecasters warning that those with allergies, asthma and other conditions should remain indoors or wear face masks if outdoors.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 June 2025

• Smoke from wildfires in Canada are creating unhealthy air for several states in the USA
  - Disney's ABC News, 02 June 2025

• Wildfires are raging in the prairies of Canada. Here is what to know. Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are already seeing air quality deteriorate because of smoke from the fires in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 June 2025

• Wildfires in Alberta force the shutdown of about 7% of the oil production in Canada. The loss of supplies from the world's fourth-largest oil producer comes at a time when heavy crude supplies already are strained.
  - Bloomberg, 02 June 2025

• Wildfires in Alberta force the shutdown of about 7% of the oil production in Canada. The loss of supplies from the world's fourth-largest oil producer comes at a time when heavy crude supplies already are strained.
  - Zero Hedge, 02 June 2025

• Why does the environment-hating Trump want to destroy the National Weather Service? The Services costs the average American $4 per year - and offers an 8,000 percent annual return on investment, according to 2024 estimates, for an agency that protects people in the USA from destructive weather such as hurricanes.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 June 2025

• Nearly 40% of the world's glaciers are already doomed, according to scientists, even if global temperatures stopped rising immediately, unlikely as the world continues to worsen global heating with the burning of oil, coal and natural gas
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 02 June 2025

• Rising snow and glacier melt, due to global heating from use of fossil fuels, puts almost 2 billion in South Asia at risk. The risks are aggravated by black carbon pollution, which could curb water supply from many rivers flowing through the Himalayan plains.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 02 June 2025

• The state of Maryland has reached a level of protecting 33 percent of its land, and wants to protect more. Nine states have set goals to conserve 30 percent of their land by 2030. Maryland got there first.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 June 2025

• Wildfires in Alberta, Canada, threaten the ouput oil from oil sands well sites that produce 459,000 barrels of oil daily. Canada is the largest foreign oil supplier to the U.S., accounting for approximately 60% of total crude imports, with the vast majority of that coming from Alberta's oil sands.
  - Zero Hedge, 31 May 2025

• The Colorado River Basin has lost as much groundwater as the entire volume of Lake Mead. Most of that groundwater was used to irrigate fields of alfalfa (an idiotic thing to do in a desert for a plant that needs tons of water) and vegetables grown in the desert Southwest.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 31 May 2025

• Sarah Kapnick started her career in 2004 as an investment banking analyst, but was struck by how little climate change was being factored into financial decision making. She later became the chief science officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Last year, JPMorgan hired Kapnick back into banking, where she is advising clients on how to invest in climate change.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 31 May 2025

• Who should consider getting flood insurance? These days, almost everyone. Inland areas have suffered severe flooding in recent years, experts note. And standard homeowner policies do not cover flood damage.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 May 2025

• How far can we allow Trump to degrade hurricane forecasting in the USA before people end up dying?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 May 2025

• The aircraft battles between Bharat and Pakistan are over. Their water battles have begun, with a crucial water sharing treaty at risk.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 May 2025

• Nihon says that Zhōngguó will resume imports of seafood from Nihon that Zhōngguó halted in 2023 over worries about Nihon's discharge of treated but slightly radioactive wastewater from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant into the sea.
  - Associated Press, 30 May 2025

• The Mekong River development projects funded by Zhōngguó pose strategic and environmental challenges for Vietnam, threatening regional influence and vital agricultural resources.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 30 May 2025

• Extreme weather and human activity (agriculture, drug trafficking, illegal gold mining) are "accelerating the degradation of the Amazon" river in Colombia
  - Colombia Reports, 29 May 2025

• Massive wildfires burning out of control in western and central Canada are forcing thousands to flee as dire forecasts for the fire season in Canada come to fruition. The intensifying blazes are also beginning to send hazardous smoke toward major cities in the United States.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 29 May 2025

• Global temperatures are forecast to reach record or near-record levels during the next five years - due to global heating from the burning of fossil fuels, setting the stage for more deadly extreme weather, according to an annual report from two of the top meteorological agencies in the world. More than 1.5 degrees of global warming increases the risks of more severe impacts, including triggering tipping points in the climate system. Melting sea ice and glaciers could soon reach a point of no return, with dramatic implications for sea level rise, scientists have warned.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 28 May 2025

• 50 million gallons of untreated sewage and industrial chemicals flow daily from Tijuana, México into Imperial Beach, California, and as far north as wealthy Coronado. That has closed beaches and sickened residents.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 May 2025

• Darkening oceans around the world pose a threat to marine life. Band of water where marine life can survive has reduced in more than a fifth of global ocean between 2003 and 2022.
  - The Register, 27 May 2025

• Trump is playing a dangerous game with water waste, water shortages, and oil-derived plastics pollution, which are serious national problems.
  - The Hill, 27 May 2025

• Groundwater supplies are plunging across the Colorado River Basin. The critical Western system has lost about 42 million acre-feet of water storage since 2003 -- with 65 percent of those declines, or 28 million acre-feet, attributable to groundwater depletion. About 80 percent of the basin's water is devoted to irrigation - idiotically growing crops in deserts.
  - The Hill, 27 May 2025

• Mumbai, the financial capital of Bharat, is sffering from monsoon-generated floods that are wreaking havoc on the city. The deluge caused chaos and delays across transport networks.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 27 May 2025

• The government of Zhōngguó approves a mega-project 767-kilometer canal that links the resource-rich Jiangzi (an inland rare earth hub) to weathly Zhejian on the coast
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 26 May 2025

• The era is over of relying on increased withdrawals of inexpensive groundwater in Florida. In much of the state, fresh groundwater withdrawals are already at or approaching regulatory limits based on environmental considerations, particularly lake water levels, spring flows and the hydration of wetlands. Rainfall will likely tend to occur in heavier events and droughts may be more frequent and of longer duration. Overall drier conditions may decrease recharge of the aquifers. Sea level rise will progressively result in the intrusion of saline water into coastal aquifers, necessitating the continuation of the historical trend of moving wellfields farther inland.
  - Fort Myers News Press, 25 May 2025

• How the obsession of people in the USA with staying hydrated became a $1.5 billion a year business. Useful for athletes to restore their electrolytes, less useful to most people. One nutritionist is skeptical that dehydration is a common problem for people with unrestricted water access and that people being "chronically dehydrated is probably an overstatement".
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 24 May 2025

• Solar power in the USA continues to surge, generating more electric power than hydropower in 2025. Solar power is up a staggering 44 percent compared to 2024.
  - Condé Nast's Ars Technica, 23 May 2025

• Trump's destructive reductions of the National Weather Service is forcing the agency to do more with less as the country heads into a storm season that is expected to see above-normal numbers of hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 May 2025

• Honk Kong will spend about $40 million on flood control projects to protect the city from megastorms
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 23 May 2025

• The numerous aging dams in Zhōngguó pose a serious threat to public safety
  - Zero Hedge, 21 May 2025

• Due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels, the ice sheets of the world are on course for runaway melting, leading to multiple feet of sea level rise and "catastrophic" migration away from coastlines, even if the world pulls off the miraculous and keeps global warming to within 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to new research. Since the 1990s, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have quadrupled the amount of ice that has melted, now about 370 billion tons a year. Around 230 million people live less than 1 meter (3.2 feet) above sea level.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 May 2025

• In the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica, the Madre de Dios and Santa Marta lagoons are reeling from a mass fish kill has left local communities and businesses in Matina and Siquirres sounding the alarm. Dead fish, including snook, sea bass, rainbow bass, mojarra, and tilapia, have been washing up for days, with locals pointing to chemical runoff from nearby banana plantations as the cause. "When it rains, all the pesticides they spray wash into the rivers and lagoons." This is the third fish kill in eight months, but the scale this time is staggering. The gvoernment of Costa Rica has not done much to help. Despite being an eco-tourism destination, agriculture in Costa Rica uses a huge amount of pesticides.
  - Tico Times, 18 May 2025

• Scientists are sounding the alarm on irrigation canals, 'silent killing machines', which are devastating to wildlife. The canals are designed in a way that makes it easy for animals to fall in, but difficult to climb out. They also divide animal habitats, fragmenting the populations of species and making it harder for them to reproduce successfully.
  - The Cool Down, 18 May 2025

• Family Torres, a top winemaker, "may have to leave its vineyards in Catalonia, Españna, due to the climate crisis", saying that it may have to move to higher altitudes in 30 years' time due to global heating.
  - The Guardian, 17 May 2025

• A newly proposed law to ban octopus farming in New York state could put an end to the controversial practice before it can get off the ground - or out of the water, as the case may be. One huge problem is that octopuses "require a high volume of food, about three times their own body weight", a waste of fish that could be used for food (a similar waste to 10 pounds of grain needed to create one pound of meet in cattle). Octupuses are intelligent, so containing them in the sort of system typical of a commercial farm would likely border on cruelty.
  - The Cool Down, 16 May 2025

• Hundreds of farmers in Panama protested on Friday on the Indio river, aboard boats, to oppose the construction of a reservoir for the Panama Canal that would force many families to relocate. In about thirty motorized canoes, some 400 farmers traveled along the Indio River, whose waters would be dammed into an artificial lake to guarantee freshwater for the inter-oceanic canal.
  - Tico Times, 16 May 2025

• A crucial system of ocean currents is slowing.weakening, and it already supercharging sea level rise in the USA. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, known as the AMOC, works like a vast conveyor belt, transporting heat, salt and freshwater through the ocean and influencing climate, weather and sea levels around the planet.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 16 May 2025

• Bharat plans to greatly reduce the water supply for Pakistan by water engineering projects on the Chenab, Jhelum and Indus rivers in Bharat.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 16 May 2025

• 31 million tons of supercharged Sargassum seaweed, is creeping towards beaches in Florida and the Caribbean. As it rots on beaches, it emits harmful gases. Rising ocean temperatures due to the burning of fossil fuels is fueling even more growth of Sargassum then in decades past.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 15 May 2025

• As the Rio Grande runs dry, politicians and business leaders in South Texas look to new water supplies to sustain growth, such as water for capturing more rain and from treating groundwater. Water levels at the two international reservoirs that store the river water supply for South Texas reached record lows last year, and water levels continue to hover around 20%. And demand for municipal water is only expected to increase over the next several decades, with no increase in supply on the horizon. Global heating caused by burning the fossil fuels that profit Texas so greatly -- are more quickly evaporating more water from the surfaces of rivers, lakes and reservoirs.
  - Texas Tribune, 15 May 2025

• Trump's tax/tariff war and attacks on Canada haved stalled negotiations over a 60-year-old treaty between Canada and United States regarding water rights in the Columbia River basin, which could have large implications on flood control and hydroelectricity throughout the Pacific Northwest.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 May 2025

• Cattle producers in the USA have started rebuilding the nation's herd or are close to doing so, Tyson Foods CEO Donnie King said on Wednesday, after supplies dwindled to a 74-year low. Farmers slashed their herds by sending more animals to slaughter instead of keeping them to reproduce following a years-long drought that reduced grazing lands and raised prices for livestock feed. Ongoing dryness over the past year had discouraged producers from starting the rebuilding process, which can take roughly two years.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 14 May 2025

• Protecting seagrasses could prevent billions of dollars in damages, by capturing and storing vast amounts of carbon. The study predicts that protecting at-risk seagrass meadows could avert climate damages valued in excess of $200 billion by preventing the release of 1.2 billion tons of carbon pollution. This is equivalent to removing the annual carbon footprint of 100 million homes in the USA.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 14 May 2025

• The dumbest way to accelerate the water crisis: AI is not only turning our brains to mush, it is sucking out country dry in the process. Now, the proliferating data centers that power AI are accelerating the crisis by sucking up exorbitant amounts of water, according to a new report at Bloomberg, with 58% of all of these facilities in the U.S. located in places of high or extremely high water stress.
  - Inside Hook, 13 May 2025

• Many mango farmers in Bharat are suffering significant financial losses after unpredictable rainfall patterns destroyed the majority of their crops. Rainfall, particularly when excessive, can pose significant challenges for farmers because flooded fields prevent crops from getting the light and oxygen they need to thrive. Instances of extreme weather can lead to total crop failure, causing farmers to lose income and resources needed to cultivate their products.
  - The Cool Down, 12 May 2025

• Costa Rica is banning fishing in its Gulf of Nicoya from May to July -- to protect populations of shrimp, corvina, snapper, and white mullet during their breeding season
  - Tico Times, 11 May 2025

• Zhōngguó is building the tallest dam in the world, which is starting to store water. First unit of the Shuangjiangkou power station in Sichuan province is expected to be generating electricity by the end of this year.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 09 May 2025

• The rate of annual sea level rise has more than doubled over the past 30 years. The cause? Human-caused global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 09 May 2025

• Homeowners across climate-change-denying Texas are feeling the financial squeeze as insurance premiums skyrocket, and extreme weather is a major driver. Homeowners reeling as staggering new cost sweeps across thousands of zip codes in Texas. More destructive storms, rising construction costs, and loose state oversight are all causing insurance premiums to rise.
  - The Cool Down, 08 May 2025

• This ancient Australian reef, the Ningaloo Reef, is sending a silent distress call - mass bleaching, due to global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 08 May 2025

• Scientists find the best food plants to grow during the apocalypse. Sugar beets and spinach are the best vegetables to grow if you live in a temperate, midsize city during a nuclear winter, a new study suggests, while wheat and carrots are recommended for industrial production on the outskirts of town.
  - LiveScience, 07 May 2025

• The Great Salt Lake is drying? Can Mormon Christian-controlled Utah save it? The loss of the Great Salt Lake would be an environmental disaster with health and economic effects far beyond the borders of Utah. The Mormon Christian-controlled state is taking action, but critics say it is not doing enough.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 May 2025

• Millions of people depend on water supplied by the Great Lakes. The environment-hating Trump is destroying the laboratory protecting the lake, the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The lab has lost about 35% of its 52-member workforce since February. The people protected are mostly not-rich or not-white.
  - ProPublica, 06 May 2025

• A climate scientist working as an adviser on Saudi Arabia's Neom project has warned that the new mega-city could change local environments and weather systems, including the path of wind and sand storms.
  - Zero Hedge, 06 May 2025

• Loss of forests due to farms and cities expanding, is linked to declining quality of drinking water
  - Phys.org, 06 May 2025

• A pandemic of lianas (woody vines) is sweeping through tropical forests, reducing their ability to store carbon and limiting their role in mitigating climate change. "Lianas can smother and kill trees. When they dominate, the forest becomes choked, and mainly lianas continue growing over fallen trees."
  - Phys.org, 06 May 2025

• Deep in an abandoned gold mine in Canada, a toxic legacy lurks. Warming permafrost is fanning fears in a town in Canada that tons of lethal arsenic could seep into a nearby river system and spread all the way to the Arctic.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 May 2025

• Fighting floodwaters in Louisiana with patches of 'green'. Simple, affordable initiatives like rain gardens are helping to soak up water in New Orleans.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 May 2025

• The devastating risks of Trump's budget reductions at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA's budget for its very important weather satellites is allegedly proposed to be cut by 44 percent. As a double whammy, NOAA separately announced on April 16 that public datasets for roughly 13 different weather and climate variables will be taken offline within the month.
  - Real Clear Science, 01 May 2025

• After wildfires break out around Jerusalem, the government is accused of failing to take fire threat seriously despite years of warnings. Leaders cut budget for already undermanned fire service and National Security Council ignored calls for session on wildfire preparation until after blaze broke out Wednesday.
  - Times of Israel, 01 May 2025

• Wildfires in Israel force towns near Jerusalem to evacuate
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 May 2025

• Drought, population growth, and decades of lax treaty enforcement have come to a head as the United States and México argue over water deliveries between the two countries
  - Zero Hedge, 30 April 2025

• Scientists issue dire warning as an iconic American city, New Orleans, sinks into the ocean. "Human intervention has made it worse." New Orleans is sinking at the rate of one to two inches per year.
  - The Cool Down, 29 April 2025

• The modernization of the Port of Callao (next to Lima) strengthens the ambition of Peru for dominance in regional trade
  - Rio Times Online, 28 April 2025

• For Trump, chemicals in straws are a crisis. In water, lesser so. An administration document aimed at eradicating paper straws highlights the dangers of PFAS chemicals. Their presence in tap water nationwide has not gotten the same attention.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 April 2025

• Trump has ordered the government of the USA to take a major step toward mining vast tracts of the ocean floor, a move that is opposed by nearly all other nations, which consider international waters off limits to this kind of industrial activity
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 April 2025

• For years, a textile mill in South Carolina gave farmers its sewage sludge as free fertilizer. Today 10,000 acres of farmlands are contaminated with oil-derived 'forever chemical' - and are still being used to grow food. The use of industrial sewage as fertilizer broadens a crisis already affecting farmers nationwide. What should be done?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 April 2025

• The world's first-ever ETF based on catastrophe bonds has failed to get the seed capital it expected after launching on the eve of the Trump's tax/tariff trade war. The Brookmont Catastrophic Bond ETF is suffering from market turmoil.
  - Bloomberg, 25 April 2025

• How the threat of Bharat to block rivers could devastate Pakistan. After a militant attack in Kashmir, the government of Bharat said it was suspending its participation in a treaty that governs most of the water used in agriculture in Pakistan.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 April 2025

• The crisis deepens for Bharat and Pakistan over attacks in Kashmir. The government of Pakistan said that if Bharat followed through on a threat to block rivers it would take it as "an act of war".
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 April 2025

• Even the government of the USA says that hugely profitable AI companies requires massive amounts of water for their (mostly useless) generative AI
  - 404 Media, 24 April 2025

• $28,000,000,000,000 - Scientists calculate that 111 fossil fuel companies caused the world $28 trillion in damage from 1991 to 2020 from extreme heat and climate change. Other scientists are mixed on their support for the assumptions used in the model. Still, the damage is in the trillions.
  - Nature, 23 April 2025

• Bharat suspends the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty, and shuts the Attari border, in a strong response to attacks by terrorists based in Pakistan. This suspension affects the water supplies of tens of millions of people in Pakistan. During three previous wars between Bharat and Pakistan, the treaty was not suspended.
  - NDTV World, 23 April 2025

• Harmful bleaching of the world's coral has grown to include 84% of the ocean's reefs in the most intense event of its kind in recorded history. Last year was the hottest year on record for the Earth, and much of that heat is heating the oceans. This global heating is deadly to corals, which are key to seafood production, tourism and protecting coastlines from erosion and storms.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 23 April 2025

• Oil companies struggling to process huge amounts of wastewater have bold plans to turn the wastewater into a valuable product
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 22 April 2025

• Amid rising global temperatures due to global heating, extreme weather is threatening the agriculture industry. Farmers in Kenya are struggling to yield successful harvests due to unpredictable rainfall and intense heat.
  - Zero Hedge, 19 April 2025

• Northern snakehead fish, large, snake-like fish, that can 'walk' on land, breathe air and survive out of water for several days, are invading the waterways of the USA, and authorities want you to kill them
  - Smithsonian Magazine, 18 April 2025

• An exceptionally powerful atmospheric river fueled the deadly early April flooding disaster in the central and southern USA -- a historic flood event and a poignant example of how the phenomenon acts differently in the East than it does in the West. Another flooding disaster is coming.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 18 April 2025

• A tiny invasive species no bigger than a paper clip is causing concerns across Northern California's waterways. Golden mussels, never before seen in North America until October, have been discovered clinging to equipment in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. These mussells, if they were to spread to the Bay Area, they could clog pipes, impede water flow and damage watercraft motors. "These impacts necessitate ongoing, costly removal to maintain operational function ... which can lead to economic impacts to water conveyances, energy production, recreation, agriculture and ultimately, the public".
  - SF Gate, 17 April 2025

• Trump issues an executive order that allows for commercial fishing within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, a nearly 500,000 square mile area. In a separate executive order, President Trump indicated more monuments could similarly be opened to commercial fishing in the At a time when the climate crisis is threatening our fragile ocean ecosystem and costing us lives and livelihoods every year, Trump' response is to gut protections for some of our nation's most important natural resources.", according a Democratic Senator from Hawaii, Brian Schatz.
  - The Hill, 18 April 2025

• Trump issues an executive order that allows for commercial fishing within the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, a nearly 500,000 square mile area. In a separate executive order, President Trump indicated more monuments could similarly be opened to commercial fishing in the At a time when the climate crisis is threatening our fragile ocean ecosystem and costing us lives and livelihoods every year, Trump' response is to gut protections for some of our nation's most important natural resources.", according a Democratic Senator from Hawaii, Brian Schatz.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 April 2025

• Salmon migration affected by drug pollution in water from a popular antianxiety medication, clobazam
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 16 April 2025

• The most endangered rivers in the USA: the Mississippi River is the most endangered, followed by the Tijuana River, the Appalachian rivers, Passaic River and the Lower Rio Grande
  - CBS News, 15 April 2025

• Local residents and environmental advocates have banded together to oppose California Governor Gavin Newsom's proposed $20 billion water tunnel in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which they argue will cost more and cause more environmental damage. The current proposal will store rainwater to prepare for potential droughts caused by climate change, and is expected to provide $38 billion in benefits: an increased water supply that would be better protected from natural disasters.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 April 2025

• Estuaries around the world expected to become saltier in coming decades
  - Phys.org, 15 April 2025

• The length of deadly ocean heat waves has tripled, thanks to global heating caused by the burning of carbon-based fuels
  - The Guardian, 14 April 2025

• Trump confronts México over water shortage threatening farms in Texas. Drought and other conditions have interrupted the flow of water owed to the USA under a treaty with Mexico.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 April 2025

• Trump wants to eliminate NOAAA environmental research programs, essentially eliminating one of the world's foremost Earth science research operations.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 April 2025

• In 15 years, 80,000 homes in the New York area may be lost to flooding
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 April 2025

• It is only the spring of 2025, and the drought problem in California is worsening. 44% of California and Nevada combined are in some stage of dryness or drought.
  - SF Gate, 12 April 2025

• Trump urges México to honor water treaty or face possible sanctions and more taxes/tariffs
  - Zero Hedge, 11 April 2025

• Shrimpers from Florida to Louisiana are optimistic that Trump's new taxes/tariffs on imports from Asia will help them compete with cheaper, farm-raised imported shrimp
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 April 2025

• $744,600,000 - Oil company Chevron must pay $744.6 million to restore damage it caused to southeast Louisiana's coastal wetlands, a jury ruled on Friday following a landmark trial more than a decade in the making.
  - Associated Press, 04 April 2025

• Is Indonesia's planned rice megaproject doomed to fail? Poor soils and dry climate could undermine effort to expand rice growing by 1 million hectares, experts warn.
  - Science, 04 April 2025

• In Southern California, a sea-mammal crisis washes ashore. In recent weeks, hundreds of sea lions, dolphins and other animals have turned up in the sand dead or seriously ill, alarming rescuers and beachgoers alike. The cause is a neurotoxin produced by an algae bloom. Algal blooms are not rare in California, but the amount of toxic acid the blooms have been releasing and the scale of harm they have been causing to sea life have puzzled scientists.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 April 2025

• A policy change by Trump with regards to seabed mining draws a global rebuke. Diplomats from more than 30 nations have criticized a proposal that could allow the start of seabed mining by 2027.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 April 2025

• Rusting pipes in a barren field and unpaid workers are what remain after African Agriculture, a company based in the USA, promised to turn a huge piece of land in Senegal - about twice the size of Paris - into an agricultural project and create thousands of jobs. The proposal divided the community of subsistence farmers. The investors wanted to use precious water resources in Senegal to grow water-intensive alfalfa, to be exported to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Both traditionally buy alfalfa from the USA, but the amount of land in alfalfa production there has dropped by 38% in the last 20 years, largely due to drought caused by climate change.
  - Associated Press, 31 March 2025

• Levels of oxygen in the lakes of the earth are plummeting. Similar trends have also been observed across rivers and seas. But some lakes are losing oxygen up to nine times faster than oceans.
  - Science Alert, 30 March 2025

• Large-scale shortages of water on the Caribbean isle of Martinique cause great anger with rule by France. Like many contentious issues in Martinique, water is intertwined with questions of class and race, including the prominence of a handful of families descended from white owners of enslaved non-white people - slave owners who were compensated for the abolition of the crime of slavery. The white creole families comprise about 1% of the population, but control swaths of the economy on the island of 350,000 people, the vast majority whom are not-white. More than a quarter of people are poor, a higher rate than in many Caribbean islands and twice that of mainland France.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 30 March 2025

• Global sea ice declines to a new low. The data comes after researchers reported that the past 10 years have been the 10 hottest on record due to global heating.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 March 2025

• Black carbon (from the burning of fuels in many industries): the super pollutant melting the glaciers of Asia. While CO2 gets the spotlight, black carbon's potent, short-lived warming effect is destroying the glaciers of Asia.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 29 March 2025

• Nearly half of the people in the USA have toxic PFAs ('forever chemicals') in their drinking water. The EPA is requiring U.S. water utilities to test for 29 PFAS compounds (out of 9000+ compunds).
  - Scientific American, 28 March 2025

• Vast areas of Queensland province in Australia are under water after "unprecedented" flooding. Several areas in western Queensland have recorded their worst flooding in 50 years after days of heavy rainfall engorged rivers and forced residents to evacuate. Queensland has been battered by several severe storms this year that have wrought havoc. Intense rain events are getting heavier and more frequent due to global heating caused by fossil fuel pollution and the consequences of the climate crisis worsens extreme weather.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 28 March 2025

• Global heating and heat waves are accelerating the deoxygenation of lakes around the world. These freshwater ecosystems require adequate oxygen levels to sustain aerobic life and maintain healthy biological communities, harder to do with less oxygen in the waters.
  - Phys.org, 24 March 2025

• Trump's regulatory freeze has injected chaos and uncertainty into a number of lucrative American fisheries, raising the risk of a delayed start to the fishing season for some East Coast cod and haddock fleets and leading to overfishing of Atlantic bluefin tuna
  - Thomson's Reuters, 23 March 2025

• How global heating and climate change are threatening the peatlands of Costa Rica
  - Tico Times, 22 March 2025

• How popular is bottled water around the world? Very popular, despite being 100 times more expensive than tap water (which is mostly just as healthy), while causing huge environmental damage.
  - Zero Hedge, 21 March 2025

• In 2024, the hottest year in recorded history, sea levels rose at a rate 35% more than expected. While global average sea levels rose by just 0.23 inches in 2024, that was above the expected rate of 0.17 inches and comes at a time when coastal communities in many parts of the U.S. have been dealing with accelerating rates of rise far higher than the global average. The U.S. community with the dubious distinction as the place where seas are rising the fastest, Galveston has seen 8 inches of sea level rise over just the last 14 years. Over just the last 14 years, the sea level in Jacksonville rose by 6 inches, tide gauge data shows. Other cities with big rises include Miami, and Savannah in Georgia
  - Yahoo News, 20 March 2025

• Retaliatory taxes/tariffs imposed by Zhōngguó on imports of seafood from Canada, particularly lobsters, have led to a dramatic drop in price, as much as 25%, as exporters in Canada work to keep supply chains moving. Taxes/tariffs imposed by Zhōngguó were in retaliation to taxes/tariffs imposed by Canada in October 2024 on electric vehicles, steel and aluminum imported from Zhōngguó.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 19 March 2025

• Salmon prices rise in Nihon due to dwindling populations in the coastal waters of Nihon, and global heating and climate change is the culprit
  - The Cool Down, 18 March 2025

• People in Texas suffer health problems due to increased amounts of toxic pollution, as oil and natural gas production increases by energy companies. Millions of Texans now live within striking distance of oil infrastructure -- exposed to airborne chemicals, groundwater contamination and, in extreme cases, sudden, violent failures of aging wells, all of which creates public concern. Fracking is contaminating groundwater that people drink. In the Permian Basin, there are numerous pumpjacks and storage tanks dripping 'produced water', or wastewater resulting from the fracking process, on the soil, sometimes in close proximity to farms. This water can resurface tainted with salt, heavy metals, benzene, toxic 'forever; chemicals, and even radioactive isotopes. Deep injection wells also lubricate faults in the Earth, sometimes causing earthquakes bad enough to crack home walls and foundations. And air pollution can be even worse.
  - Nextstar Media's The Hill, 17 March 2025

• Hawaii is sinking 40 times faster than previously predicted -- homes and businesses could soon be wiped out
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 17 March 2025

• Cocoa farmers in Indonesia work with businesses to fight the bitter impact of climate change
  - Associated Press, 15 March 2025

• Wildfires quickly spread across Texas and Oklahoma. The wildfires are fueled by dry conditions due to global heating caused by the burning of the oil and natural gas produced ... in Texas and Oklahoma.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 March 2025

• Global sea level rose faster than expected in 2024, due to global heating caused by the burning of oil, gasoline, coal and natural gas.
  - Disney's ABC News, 14 March 2025

• Tuna fish product company, Bumble Bee Foods, for many years, has knowingly profited from forced labor on fishing vessels of its suppliers, alleges a lawsuit filed in San Diego County federal court on Wednesday. Four Indonesian fishermen say that they were beaten by their captains, trapped on vessels and denied medical attention. The lawsuit is believed to be the first forced-labor-at-sea case brought against an American seafood company.
  - SF Gate, 14 March 2025

• After wildfires, clear skies in Los Angeles conceal a "toxic soup". Scientists collecting water, air and soil samples in neighborhoods ravaged by fires say they are concerned about long-term health risks for residents.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 March 2025

• Zhōngguó knows that the USA is not fulfilling its own Merchant Marine Act to maintain sufficient maritime capacity for national defense and commerce. Meanwhile, Zhōngguó dominates the global shipbuilding industry, its state-controlled LOGINK platform manages data for half of global container volume. Companies from Zhōngguó operate terminals at 96 overseas ports, including 36 of the top 100 in the world. But the USA does have the prettiest and most weapon systems.
  - Nextstar Media's The Hill, 13 March 2025

• Zhōngguó is mapping the seabed to unlock new edge in warfare. The rapid expansion of ocean exploration by Zhōngguó offers Beijing valuable military intelligence as it expands its naval reach and menaces allies of the USA.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 March 2025

• In the USA in 2024, a record first - wind and solar accounted for 17% of total electricity generation, surpassing coal, which fell to a record low of 15%. Also in 2024, solar power generation surpassed hydropower generation for the time. It made up 81% of all new annual power capacity additions in the USA. Natural gas added no net capacity, as new plants were offset with closures.
  - Electrek, 11 March 2025

• What the war on the water supplies of California is really about, water supplies from a fragile ecosystem. The water needs of the communities where the water originates are often seen as expendable or unimportant compared to the needs of larger distant cities and corporate farmers.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 March 2025

• Trump orders NOAA to fire 20 percent of its employees. Together with recent firings and resignations, the new cuts could hamper the National Weather Service's ability to produce lifesaving forecasts, scientists say.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 March 2025

• Utah, in a fit of scientific nonsense and public betrayal, becomes the first state to ban flouride in public water supplies. Most public-health experts say the mineral additive is crucial protector against tooth decay.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 10 March 2025

• Thanks to Trump, the Lake Tahoe Basin - 78% managed by the USA Forest Service - is in serious trouble. A hiring freeze on seasonal workers and recent firings of key staff have gutted an already-stretched-thin agency, putting on hold critical work in water quality, environmental restoration and forest fuels reduction projects while also diminishing the forest service's capacity to manage the millions of visitors who come to Lake Tahoe every year.
  - SF Gate, 08 March 2025

• The Great Lakes Science Advisory Board recently released an analysis discussing how microplastics are an environmental, health, and socioeconomic concern. The reporting suggests that anyone swimming in the lakes could be exposed to high levels of microplastics, though the situation is worst in Lakes Ontario and Michigan, which have a lot of visitors.
  - The Cool Down, 08 March 2025

• After the Army Corp of Engineers followed Trump's order, and dumped 2.2 billion gallons of water for reservoirs in California to fight fires in Los Angeles, knowing that the water would not reach firefighers due to Trump's publicity stunt, there is less stored water as California enters its drier, hotter growing season.
  - SF Gate, 07 March 2025

• Water wars in California: a century of wrangling over water supplies for Los Angeles. The battle for water in California pitted (and pits) ranchers against water barons and still echoes today.
  - Al Jazeera, 07 March 2025

• Dead rivers signal a growing environmental crisis in El Salvador, as the authoritarian government opens up to more mining. Environmental defenders fear that mining will contaminate, for example, the Lempa River, which flows through areas of mining potential and supplies water to 70% of the San Salvador, the country's capital. "The concentration of of gold in Salvadoran soil is one gram per ton of rock: little gold and much damage."
  - Tico Times, 05 March 2025

• Thanks to global heating, the world's most famous dog sled race is short on snow. When unseasonably warm temperatures left the Iditarod course unusable, organizers were forced to reconfigure a 1,128-mile course through the Alaskan wilderness. The result is a race like nothing before in the 53-year history of the event.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 05 March 2025

• Global heating and rising temperatures are scrambling the base of the ocean food web. Scientists are gaining new insights into how plankton supports life on Earth -- just as global heating caused by fossil fuels is changing everything.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 March 2025

• Trump wants to increase tree-cutting in national forests, in part by bypassing endangered species protections and other environmental regulations. "Clearcutting these beautiful places will increase fire risk, drive species to extinction, pollute our rivers and streams, and destroy world-class recreation sites."
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 March 2025

• Off-shore of Florida, its iconic coral reefs are not having babies anymore. Most species of hard corals that form the reef's complex structure and help safeguard coastal communities from storm surge are not having babies in the wild anymore.
  - Atlas Obscura, 03 March 2025

• The world's strongest ocean current, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, should be moving faster. Instead, it is at the risking of stopping. Fresh cool water from melting Antarctic ice is diluting the salty water of the ocean, potentially disrupting the vital ocean current. The Current has a profound influence on the climate, food systems and Antarctic ecosystems.
  - BBC, 03 March 2025

• Meteorologists mark March 1st as the official start of meteorological spring across the Lower 48, signaling a seasonal shift toward warmer temperatures and stronger winds. With the change of season, forecasters are warning of elevated wildfire risks across the Southern states.
  - Zero Hedge, 03 March 2025

• Trump's and Musk's DOGE plans to cancel NOAA leases on important weather buildings. One of the buildings is the nerve center for generating national weather forecasts. The NOAA employee told Axios the cancellations -- along with recent layoffs, early retirements, and travel and hiring limitations -- point to an effort to dismantle the agency. Trump and Musk and all of the technologists want to privatize the National Weather Service, so they can profit more at the expense of the public.
  - Axios, 03 March 2025

• Excelsa, a rarely cultivated coffee bean better able to be grown in hot and dry conditions. It is native to South Sudan and a few other countries in Africa. It is also resistant to many common coffee pests and diseases. Yet it comprises less than 1% of the global market, well behind the arabica and robusta species that are the most consumed coffees in the world. Experts say excelsa will have to be shown to be practical at a much larger scale to bridge the gap in the market caused by climate change.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 03 March 2025

• "Cool years" are now hotter than the "warm" years of the past: tracking global temperatures through El Niño and La Niña, despite short-term declines, small fluctations as part of a large increase
  - Our World in Data, 02 March 2025

• Alexandria, the birthplace of Cleopatra, is experiencing a "dramatic surge" in the collapses of buildings, as sea levels rise. About 7,000 old buildings in Alexandria are at risk of collapse.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 27 February 2025

• A new report reveals that tap water in the USA is delivering harmful chemicals like PFAs ("forever chemicals"), heavy metals, and radioactive substances to millions of Americans -- often at levels far beyond what scientists consider safe. The latest update to the Tap Water Database, from the non-profit Environmental Working Group (EWG), reveals that 324 contaminants were found in drinking water systems across the country, with almost all systems having some amount of detectable contaminants in its water.
  - Jiaravanon's Fortune, 26 February 2025

• On tuna boats owned by companies in Zhōngguó, people from North Korea work though much of their pay goes to the leader of North Korea - near slave-labor like conditions
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 26 February 2025

• Coffee prices are at a 50-year high. Producers are not celebrating. Climate change and global heating are causing the higher prices, and coffee growers are worried about whether they can adapt.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 February 2025

• A 2016 expansion of the Panama Canal helped bigger ships move through the waterway. But it created an unintended side effect: saltwater fish from both oceans are now swimming into the canal's main freshwater lake, pushing out local species and threatening nearby communities
  - The Cool Down, 22 February 2025

• $53,000,000 - Veolia North America, an engineering company linked to the Flint, Michigan, lead water contamination crisis nearly a decade ago has agreed to pay $53 million in damages
  - The Daily Beast, 22 February 2025

• Glaciers melting due to global heating caused almost 2 centimeters of sea level rise from 2000 and 2023, a loss of 6.5 trillon tons of ice
  - The Guardian, 21 February 2025

• Trump wants to seize the Panama Canal from Panama. This would force the USA to assume responsibility for a crisis confronting the Canal: more frequent, intense droughts have put the vital shipping route into crisis mode and pushed authorities to pursue a controversial plan to dam a river in an effort to secure its survival -- an act that would flood the homes of thousands of people.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 21 February 2025

• These California olives are unique and delicious. They may already be gone. Dramatic climate events and crop shortages have Graber, a century-old family company, facing permanent closure.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 February 2025

• Residents in Kentucky, face more destruction and anxiety from storms. The flood damage of recent days was not as catastrophic as some previous climate disasters in the state. But the rains still brought widespread havoc, and painful reminders of trauma.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 February 2025

• Strong rains across Ivory Coast's central regions are expected to strengthen cocoa trees and improve growing conditions for the April-to-September mid-crop, farmers said on Monday. Farmers had been worried that the hot weather would delay the start of the mid-crop season and tighten bean supply before the country's central regions received above-average rains last week.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 17 February 2025

• A report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature claims one-third of sharks, chimaeras, and rays are threatened by vulnerability or extinction. The most significant threats include overfishing, parts trading, and habitat degradation.
  - The Cool Down, 17 February 2025

• Scientists determine a 'tipping point" for Greenland's melting ice sheet. The vast landmass is melting quickly due to climate change, and may rapidly cause the complete loss of the island's ice. Soon is a relative term, but the team posits that just a few degrees of temperature change could put the second-largest ice sheet on Earth into a death spiral, catalyzing over 20 feet (6.1 meters) of global sea level rise and drastic changes to the immediate marine environment.
  - GizModo, 16 February 2025

• At least three people, including a child, have been killed after a catastrophic and historic flooding event unfolded across portions of Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virgnia over the weekend as a powerful storm system produced several threats across the eastern half of the USA.
  - Murdoch's Fox News, 15 February 2025

• Due to global heating, the levels of polar sea ice fall to a record low in February, more of a threat to coastal properties.
  - BBC, 14 February 2025

• Jordan would seal its borders with Israel, and declare war on Israel, if the USA and Israel forced out millions of people in Gaza. Part of the problem is water: Jordan is the third-poorest in the world in terms of water supplies.
  - Zero Hedge, 11 February 2025

• Thanks to the burning of oil/coal/natural gas worsening global heating, records were shattered for global temperatures in January. The Earth's prolonged streak of abnormal heat continued into 2025 despite the arrival of La Niña ocean conditions, which typically bring cooler temperatures.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 February 2025

• Trump and Musk move to fire 20% of the EPA staff in the Great Lakes region, including dozens responsible for protecting drinking water for 30 million in USA and Canada. This firing includes officials who enforce clean air and water laws and others dedicated to helping poor communities disproportionately harmed by pollution in the Midwest.
  - Chicago Tribune, 07 February 2025

• Trump dumped 2 billion gallons of water needed by farmers in California. The farmers that voted for Trump would rather not talk about being betrayed. The debacle is especially ironic because dumping California farmers' water is the very thing Trump has been attacking , Governor Newsom over for years, exploiting a deep partisan vein that separates the Central Valley from the Democrat-dominated coast. Trump wanted to dump 6 billion gallons of water.
  - Axel Springer's Politico, 6 February 2025

• The way that hurricanes kill is changing. Hurricane Helene shows how. A close analysis of Helene's fatalities shows how major storms are taking lives in unexpected ways, and how the deadly effects can last long after the skies clear.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 February 2025

• Temperatures at North Pole 20C above average and beyond ice melting point. Scientists say unusually mild temperatures linked to low-pressure system over Iceland directing strong flow of warm air towards North Pole.
  - The Guardian, 04 February 2025

• Trump lies when he states that the Panama Canal authority is overcharging for tolls through the Canal. Recent increases are attributed in part to drought, maintenance investments and demand.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 February 2025

• Deadly floodwaters triggered by record rainfall in North Queensland, in the northeast of Australia, rose for a third day Monday as authorities warned flood-stricken communities to brace themselves for further destruction. Intense rain events are also getting heavier and more frequent due to global heating caused by fossil fuel pollution and the consequences of the climate crisis worsens extreme weather.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 03 February 2025

• Trump's reckless order to the Army Corp of Engineers, allowed the release of 2.2 billion gallons of water from reservoirs in California, an attempt to help fight fires in Los Angeles, idiotic because the newly released water will not flow to Los Angeles, and it is being wasted by being released during the wet winter season.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 03 February 2025

• "It will not come back" - farmers in Argentina battle drought and a shrinking harvest
  - Thomson's Reuters, 03 February 2025

• A decreasing amount of water flowing into the Mediterranean poses a risk to regional economies, and to marine life in the sea
  - Phys.org, 03 February 2025

• Arsons, shootings and sabotage: inside Canada's civil war over lobster. As Canada wrangles an epic, decades-long saga of who can fish for lobster, and when, emerging threats are heating up the conflict in Nova Scotia.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 February 2025

• Trump's Arctic goals demand icebreakers, but the USA struggles to build them. Trump plans to order 40 large icebreakers, but shipbuilding industry has been declining for decades. The first one the USA has built in decades t expected to be finished until after 2030.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 February 2025

• See how Rossiya is winning the race to dominate the Arctic. Rossiya is expanding its footprint in the Arctic, working with Zhōngguó - and leaving the USA far behind
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 03 February 2025

• See how Rossiya is winning the race to dominate the Arctic. Rossiya is expanding its footprint in the Arctic, working with Zhōngguó - and leaving the USA far behind
  - Zero Hedge, 03 February 2025

• How climate change and global heating is changing the taste of beer, by threatening the production of two ingredients: barley and hops. Production of noble hops has decreased 20% since the 1970s, and evels of alpha acids will decrease by 31% by 2050.
  - BCB, 02 February 2025

• Invasive crabs have taken over the ocean waters of New England. One solution? Eat them. The Northeastern coastal waters of the USA has been overrun by crabs from Europe and Asia. Luckily, they are delicious.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 February 2025

• Zhōngguó large and mysterious dam project is alarming neighbors and experts. The hydropower dam, in quake-prone Tibet, is set to be the biggest in the world. But Zhōngguó has said little about the project, which could affect nearby countries.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 January 2025

• Trump orders federal agencies to determine methods to seize control of state water control programs in California, if necessary, seizing control while not cooperating with state officials - a clear violation of bedrock federalist principles
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 January 2025

• Wildfires are revealing the limits of the hydrant systems of the USA. While hydrants can play a role in fighting a wildfire in its early stages, the systems were not designed to combat the large blazes ravaging the Los Angeles area.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 January 2025

• Trump continues urging California to turn on it giant "faucet" of water. Trump's repeated talk of a spigot, which he calls a faucet or valve, has been puzzling people in California and Canada for some time "I do not really understand what he is saying."
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 January 2025

• Zhōngguó tells Bharat that Zhōngguó's Yarlung Tsangpo mega dam in Tibet will not be at the "expense of neighbors". The Yarlung Tsangpo hydropower project has raised concerns it will cause water shortages downstream in Bharat, where it is a vital resource.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 24 January 2025

• "Dam for a dam": Bharat and Zhōngguó edge towards a water war in the Himalayas. Despite local protests, Bharat is building a giant hydro dam on the Siang River to counter a dam being built by Zhōngguó - the world's largest - upstream in Tibet. Millions of people in Bharat and Bangladesh could be hurt.
  - Al Jazeera, 24 January 2025

• Catastrophic tipping point in Greenland reached as crystal blue lakes turn brown, belch out carbon dioxide. Record heat and rain turned thousands of Greenland lakes brown in 2022 as they hit a tipping point and began emitting carbon dioxide.
  - Live Science, 24 January 2025

• The floods this time: in the Mediterranean, climate change due to global heating is already here. Scientists say climate change is increasing not just the strength of the Mediterranean's devastating storms but also the frequency - and they predict that it will get only worse. That is partly because the Mediterranean region is already warming 20 percent faster than the global average. And as the temperature of the air rises, so does its capacity to hold water. Climate models suggest that even as heavy rainfall events in the Mediterranean region intensify, average rainfall will decrease. In other words, dry areas will be drier, but when extreme rains come, they will be more intense.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 24 January 2025

• Coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia reaches "catastrophic" levels. More than 50% of affected corals monitored near an island in the reef's south were killed last year during the "most severe and widespread belaching" to ever hit the area.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 23 January 2025

• Scientists just found 21 trillion gallons of water under the volcanic landscape of the Cascade Range north of the California border. They estimate its volume of water to be nearly three times the maximum capacity of Lake Mead.
  - SF Gate, 22 January 2025

• A $137 billion dollar hydropower dam being built by Zhōngguó in the Himalaya mountains (on the Yarlung Tsangpo River) increases the water worries of Bharat
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 17 January 2025

• Scientists at NASA have found new human-caused shifts in the global water cycle. The majority of those shifts are driven by activities such as agriculture and could have impacts on ecosystems and water management, especially in certain regions.
  - NASA, 16 January 2025

• A worrying study published last month in Environmental Challenges claims that nearly two-thirds of the Great Salt Lake's shrinkage is attributable to human use of river water that otherwise would have replenished the lake. One waste is using the water to grow water-intensive alfalfa in a desert.
  - GizModo, 11 January 2025

• As a climate scientist, I knew that it was time to leave Los Angeles. For those who have lost everything in climate disasters, the apocalypse has already arrived. And as the planet gets hotter, climate disasters will get more frequent and more intense. The cost of these fires will be immense, and they will affect the insurance industry and the housing market.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 January 2025

• Shares of Mercury General, whose insurance organization is mostly centered in California, crashed 35% in premarket trading. About 80% of its premiums of $4.6 billion in 2024 were derived from the state, making it one of the most exposed insurers to the LA County fire.
  - Zero Hedge, 10 January 2025

• California imposes 1-year moratorium on insurance policy cancellations in areas ravaged by wildfires
  - Zero Hedge, 10 January 2025

• How climate change and global heating is supercharging disasters. Extreme weather events - deadly heat waves, floods, fires and hurricances - are the consequences of a warming planet.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 January 2025

• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that La Niña conditions have officially developed in the equatorial Pacific. This weather phenomenon has the potential to impact weather patterns across the globe, more specifically in the US, in the months ahead. La Niña s typically associated with warm and dry winter conditions across parts of the USA, adding to drought concerns in California (plagued by devastating wildfires around LA County) and the southern USA.
  - Zero Hedge, 09 January 2025

• The Panama Canal's newest voyagers: fish crisscrossing between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. A multibillion dollar expansion helped the Panama Canal accomodate extremely large cargo ships. It might also be fueling economic disaster. In less than a decade, fish from both oceans - snooks, jacks, snappers and more - have almost entirely displaced the freshwater species that were in the canal system before, scientists with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama have found. Fishermen around Lake Gatún who rely on those species, chiefly peacock bass and tilapia, say their catches are growing scarce. Researchers now worry that more fish could start making their way through from one ocean to the other. And no potential invader causes more concern than the venomous, candy-striped lionfish. They are known to inhabit the Caribbean coast of Panama, but not the eastern Pacific. If they made it there through the canal, they could ravage the defenseless local fish, just as they have done in the Gulf of México and the Caribbean.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 January 2025

• The water hyacinth is the world's most widespread invasive species. As well as their impact on biodiversity and livelihoods, the floating plant can clog hydroelectric and irrigation systems, meaning that one does not need to live in their proximity to be affected. It is the highest-profile example of an invasive aquatic plant crisis that has cost the global economy tens of billions of dollars historically, and now more than $700 million annually. Now, a group in Kenya has developed technology to turn the water hyacinth into bioplastic, solving two environmental problems at once.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 07 January 2025

• The true threat to USA commerce involving the Panama Canal is not Zhōngguó - Trump's false claim, but global heating, which is reducing the sources of water that power the Panama Canal. Yet Trump hates anything to do that helps solve the problem of global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 January 2025

• Trump wants to illegally seize Greenland from Denmark, and illegally seize the Panama Canal from Panama. Global heating is making both places more important to global shipping and trade.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 January 2025

• Biologists in Florida are closely monitoring how alligators in the Everglades are responding to rising global temperatures due to burning of fossil fuels. Since the 1970s, researchers have documented erosion that is changing the nesting patterns of this reptile along the coast of the southern Everglades and in Florida Bay. Croc Docs team member Sergio Balaguera-Reina believes the overheating of our planet will make the situation worse - bad for the crocodiles .
  - The Cool Down, 31 December 2024

• In Ecuador, the rivers run dry and the lights go out: a warming nation's doom loop due to global heating. An extraordinary drought has drained the rivers and reservoirs of Ecuador, leading to power outages of up to 14 hours. Some fear this is the beginning of a larger global crisis.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 December 2024

• According to an October 2024 study published in Nature Geoscience, vegetation is taking over the Antarctic Peninsula, turning its edges into a verdant landscape. This is an ominous warning of faster vegetation growth that evidences the effects of global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - SF Gate, 30 December 2024

• Raging waves batter the coast and piers of California. An increasingly ferocious and volatile surf is raising questions about the future of the state's piers, which have defined the coastline for generations.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 December 2024

• The Paraguay River is a 2,100-mile (3,400-kilometer) waterway that carries much of the agricultural and mineral wealth of South America to the Atlantic. The riverine waterway connects Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay and carries much of the world's soybeans, ore and minerals. But the waterway also carries violence and drug trafficking. And the drug cartels, among them, the First Capital Command of Brazil, have found devious and complex ways to use the waterway to ship cocaine as far away as Belgium and Holland. In the last two years, more than 50 tons of cocaine that traveled this route through South America were seized from the European ports of Antwerp, Belgium and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Much of it was controlled by the First Capital Command.
  - Associated Press, 26 December 2024

• Trump's threat to seize the Panama Canal from Panama pushed down Panamanian government bond prices by about $0.01
  - Bloomberg, 22 December 2024

• Trump threatens to reassert USA control over the Panama Canal (to do so would violates international law), accusing Panama of charging excessive rates to use the Central American passage, which allows ships to cross between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Trump's threats were an exceedingly rare example of a leader of the USA saying he could push a sovereign country to hand over territory.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 22 December 2024

• During the past 14 years, sea levels in the southeast region of the USA and the Gulf of Mexico have risen twice as fast as the global average - all areas bordering states controlled by global-heating-denying Republicans lobbied/bribed to deny global heating by the fossil fuel industry
  - Jeff Bezos' Washington Post, 20 December 2024

• Three dozen luxury condos and hotels in south Florida are sinking, a new study determines. The study authors attributed the sinking to sand grains settling more densely in limestone layers, possibly influenced by construction vibrations, groundwater flow, tidal movements, or stormwater injection.
  - Zero Hedge, 19 December 2024

• How rolling electric power blackouts have transformed life in Ecuador. Since September 23, government-controlled blackouts have plunged the South American country of 18 million into darkness almost daily. Some outages can last up to 14 hours per day. The cuts aim to prevent the collapse of the electrical grid, as a months-long drought dries up the rivers that power hydroelectric dams.
  - Al Jazeera, 19 December 2024

• Illegal fishing is a global problem, with fishing companies from Zhōngguó and Rossiya engaged in more illegal fishing than fishing companies from other countries (these two are followed by Taiwan, South Korea and Bharat)
  - Zero Hedge, 19 December 2024

• Cocoa surges above $12,000 on supply concerns. Prices have more than doubled since the start of the year, as severe droughts resulted in poor harvests in Ghana and Ivory Coast.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 December 2024

• An acrimonious national debate about private water companies in Britain intensified this week as the country's environmental watchdog accused regulators of failing to comply with laws concerning sewage flowing into public waterways, a complaint that coincided with a request from England's largest water company, Thames Water, seeking a socialist cash subsidy.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 December 2024

• About 36 high-rise buildings in South Florida are sinking or settling in unexpected ways, in some cases because of nearby construction. Limestone under the South Florida beach is interspersed with layers of sand, which can shift under the weight of high-rises and as a result of vibrations from foundation construction.
  - Associated Press, 17 December 2024

• The world is losing winter and snow to global heating. A new analysis from Climate Central found that dozens of countries and hundreds of cities have lost entire weeks and more of days below freezing, throwing everything from winter sports to seasonal allergies into upheaval.
  - Splinter, 17 December 2024

• Ocean heat caused by global heating wiped out half these seabirds around Alaska. About four million common murres were killed by a domino effect of ecosystem changes, and the population is showing no signs of recovery, according to new research.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 December 2024

• Despite two weeks of pointless talks in Saudi Arabia's Riyadh, sponsored by the UN, the participating 197 nations failed to agree early Saturday on a plan to deal with global droughts, made longer and more severe by global heating. The biennial talks, known as COP 16 and organized by a UN body that deals with combating desertification and droughts, attempted to create strong global mandates to legally bind and require nations to fund early warning systems and build resilient infrastructure in poorer countries, particularly Africa, which is worst affected by the changes. This is the fourth time UN talks aimed at getting countries to agree to make more headway on tackling biodiversity loss, climate change and plastic pollution have either failed to reach a consensus or delivered disappointing results this year, worrying many nations, particularly the most vulnerable. Host Saudi Arabia has been criticized in the past for stalling progress on curbing emissions from fossil fuels at other negotiations. The Gulf nation is one of the world's largest oil producers and exporters with the second-largest global oil reserves. It wants to profit as much from the destruction of the environment as have developed countries, before any of them are forced to pay to fix the problems they caused.
  - Associated Press, 14 December 2024

• Dozens of luxury beachfront condos and hotels in Surfside, Bal Harbour, Miami Beach and Sunny Isles are sinking into the ground at rates that were "unexpected", with nearly 70 percent of the buildings in northern and central Sunny Isles affected, research by the University of Miami found. This is due in part to rising sea levels caused by global heating due to fossil fuel burning, global heating that is denied by the Republican politicians that control politics in Florida.
  - Miami Herald, 14 December 2024

• Norway considers nationalizing power and limiting exports, amidst a surge in electric power prices in Europe. "In spite of full water reservoirs, power prices are sky high. It is very hard to explain to people in Norway why a country with a large power surplus should have high electricity prices."
  - Zero Hedge, 14 December 2024

• The Arctic tundra has for a long time help cool the Earth. Now, the tundra is fueling global heating. Wildfires and thawing permafrost are causing the region to release more carbon dioxide than its plant remove, probably for the first time in thousands of years.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 December 2024

• BP will merge its offshore wind-energy business with that of Japanese power-utility JERA to create a standalone company, in line with BP's strategy to focus on its more profitable oil-and-gas operations.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 10 December 2024

• Global heating has caused three-quarters of the land on the Earth to become drier in recent decades
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 December 2024

• Overlooked grasslands must be protected. Grasslands - also known as prairies, steppes, pampas or savannas - are home to 25% of the world's population and all kinds of plants and wildlife, including elephants, rhinos and lions. They also combat climate change by absorbing carbon from the air and storing it underground. Yet, even though they cover more than 50% of the Earth's surface, just 12% of grasslands are protected, with conservation efforts often overlooking them. As a result, they are suffering heavily, especially through land degradation.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 06 December 2024

• The destructive legacy of failed aquaculture in Canada. Removing abandoned infrastructure is challenging, time-consuming, and costly. For decades, open-net-pen salmon farmers in British Columbia have faced criticism that their activities are harming the environment by promoting the spread of disease and fostering parasitic sea lice that can infect wild salmon. Whether degraded by poor maintenance, battered by heavy storms, or beset by financial woes, aquaculture operations have gone bankrupt before. And when they do, derelict equipment can find its way to the seafloor or become suspended in the water column.
  - Hakai Magazine, 06 December 2024

• Insured losses due to natural catastrophes to top $135 billion in 2024, according to the Swiss Re Institute. Global insured losses from natural catastrophes like hurricanes and floods are on track to exceed $135 billion in 2024, marking the fifth consecutive year with such losses surpassing a level of $100 billion.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 December 2024

• A silent crisis is unfolding on the coastlines of Costa Rica, threatening the natural wealth that defines the nation as an ecological paradise. The massive extraction of seashells, fueled by local and international tourism, is wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems and worsening beach erosion. This often-overlooked practice disrupts the delicate balance of beaches, critical habitats for species that support biodiversity and sustainable tourism.
  - Tico Times, 05 December 2024

• Last year was the hottest on record, oceans boiled, glaciers melted at alarming rates, and it left scientists scrambling to understand exactly why. Clouds. The rapid surge in warming was supercharged by a dearth of low-lying clouds over the oceans, according to the research. Fewer bright, low clouds mean the planet "has darkened", allowing it to absorb more sunlight. The Earth's albedo has been declining since the 1970s, according to the report, due in part to the melting of light-colored snow and sea ice, exposing darker land and water which absorb more of the sun's energy, heating up the planet.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 03 December 2024

• An extreme heat wave, the "Blob", off the coast of California seemed like an anomaly 10 years ago (when sea surface temperatures in the Pacific shot up to 11 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than normal). But as the ocean warms due to global heating, the catastrophe may be a glimpse of the future. Under the surface, the food web broke down and ecosystems convulsed, at first unseen to humans on shore. But soon, clues washed up. Now, the world is experiencing multiple "super-marine heat waves". By the time the Blob dissipated, more than 90 percent of the kelp forests in northern California were gone. Kelp is eaten by sea urchins, which are eaten by sea stars. During the Blob, a deadly disease spread among sea stars, causing urchin populations to explode. Urchins devoured the kelp, leaving behind a much more barren seascape to this day. Harmful algae bloomed, spreading toxic domoic acid through the valuable Dungeness crab fishery. Like the auklets and murres, seals and gray whales also starved.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 December 2024

• Zhōngguó surrounds a "sea of death" in the Taklamakan desert with a giant 'green belt'. Just completed multi-decade project in Xinjiang region is intended to help prevent desertification and boost local economies.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 28 November 2024

• Raging waters were headed their way. Why did nobody tell them? Torrential rains in Valencia, in eastern Spain, caused flooding that killed more than 200 people. The deluge started inland. It took the authorities hours to warn those downstream.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 November 2024

• US says a drug cartel, the Gulf Cartel, is behind the longstanding problem of illegal fishing in the Gulf of Mexico
  - Associated Press, 26 November 2024

• Salty oceanwater is creeping up the Delaware River, the source for much of the drinking water for Philadelphia and millions of others, brought on by drought conditions (due to global heating) and sea level rise, and prompting officials to tap reservoirs to push the unpotable tide back downstream.
  - Associated Press, 26 November 2024

• Cambodia wants to build a $1.7 billion canal that will link the Mekong River to the Gulf of Thailand and reduce Cambodia's shipping reliance on its neighbour Vietnam. But the project is in jeopardy because Zhōngguó has never committed to provide funding. Beijing has expressed misgivings about the project and has not made definitive commitments on its funding.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 22 November 2024

• According to the Global Climate Action Survey 2024, conducted by Gensler, Costa Rica is among the countries most severely impacted by extreme weather events attributed to climate change.
  - TicoTimes, 22 November 2024

• Global heating has driven hurricane wind speeds up by an average of nearly 30 kilometres per hour, an analysis of Atlantic storms shows - enough to have pushed 30 storms up a level on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity
  - Nature, 20 November 2024

• New York City declares a drought warning for the first time in 20 years. The warning, which extends beyond the city to include 10 other counties in New York State, was announced as wildfires burned and residents continued to await meaningful rainfall.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 November 2024

• Groundwater pumping by farmers is making the San Joaquin Valley in California sink about an inch per year across an area half of the size of New Jersey
  - The Hill, 19 November 2024

• As global heating causes the glaciers of South America to melt more quickly, the supply of freshwater is dwindling and its quality is getting worse. For thousands of years, the glaciers were replenished with ice in the winter. But they have shrunk by more than 40 percent since 1968, uncovering rocks that, when exposed to the elements, can trigger chemical reactions that leach toxic metals into the water and turn it acidic.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 November 2024

• Wildfires and drought (caused by global heating) ravage the Northeast of the USA. Record heat set the stage for a prolonged dry spell and extreme situations for this time of year.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 19 November 2024

• The world is losing its sandy beaches. Here is what can be done to save these beaches.
  - Real Clear Science, 13 November 2024

• The European Union will not renew a fishing agreement with Senegal that has been criticized by many people in Senegal. The current agreement signed in 2019 allows fishing vessels from Europe to fish in ocean waters offshore of Senegal, but has been criticized in Senegal where fishing stocks have been depleting for more than a decade due to overfishing by fisherman from richer Europe. One in six people in Senegal work in the fisheries sector.
  - Associated Press, 12 November 2024

• The corporate crime of 'forever chemicals' is a growing problem in the drinking water supplies of the USA. With more than 7,200 public water systems affected, water and waste professionals say tackling contaminated water in the USA is no easy task.
  - Zero Hedge, 12 November 2024

• Historic drought caused by global heating fuels blazes across Northeast as wildfires burn on both coasts. Wildfires are quickly becoming a year-round hazard in the USA.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 12 November 2024

• The Panama Canal says shipping rebound is underway after record drought. After record drought and worldwide trade issues, a new vessel booking system shows more cargo volumes ahead of Lunar New Year and decisions on a major dam project are coming.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 12 November 2024

• Locals in a French Alps town overwhelmingly voted to close down a struggling ski resort, Grand Puy, due to dwindling snowfall (caused by global heating ), fewer visitors (began there is less snow to ski on), and rising debts. It is the fourth ski resort to shut down in France this fall alone. The dangers to the future of mountain sports extend to the United States as well, with limited snowfall (because of global heating) hitting the economies of mountain resort towns particularly hard.
  - The Cool Down, 11 November 2024

• Return of drought in the USA (due to global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels) delays the rebuilding of cattle herds, hurting Tyson Foods
  - Thomson's Reuters, 11 November 2024

• Smoke from wildfires in New Jersey affects the air quality in New York City. Firefighters in New Jersey and New York were working to contain blazes fed by dry conditions and gusty wind.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 11 November 2024

• Farmers in California have a booming business by growing and exporting pistachios to Zhōngguó. Pistachios are growing fast in California, where farmers have been devoting more land to a crop seen as hardier and more drought-tolerant in a state prone to dramatic swings in precipitation. The crop generated nearly $3 billion last year in California and in the past decade the United States has surpassed Iran to become the top exporter of pistachios in the world.
  - Associated Press, 10 November 2024

• The sustainable giant fish harvest in the Amazon is threatened by severe drought caused by global heating. Two years of drought has fishermen and indigenous communities requesting government aid, in what is being called a matter of climate justice, as these people suffer .
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 09 November 2024

• The mussel harvest in the Aegean Sea of Greece has been destroyed by warming ocean waters due to global heating
  - Thomson's Reuters, 09 November 2024

• In a record, all but two states in the USA are in drought. Little rain has fallen since Hurricane Helene dropped huge amounts across the Southeast.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 November 2024

• Natural disaster destroyed part of Valencia, Spain. The populism of politicians - "only the people save the people" - further destroy Valenica. The "people" cannot solve complicated social logistics problems - only effective government. When populists seize power with these slogans, they don't make things better.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 November 2024

• A high-pressure system over North America has caused widespread dryness across the Lower 48, pushing a record percentage of the USA population into drought conditions, damaging crop harvests and cattle pastures.
  - Zero Hedge, 06 November 2024

• An angry Spain, still reeling from floods, faces more rain. Emergency workers continued the search for victims of flash floods one week ago, while a national debate raged over who was to blame for the catastrophe.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 November 2024

• Protesters in London demand that privatized water companies clean-up the sewage-tainted rivers. Private companies that provide both water and sewage have failed to update their often-Victorian infrastructure as populations have grown and demand swelled. Leaks are common, and during heavy rainfall companies discharge raw sewage into rivers, lakes and the sea. The number of discharges increased by more than 50% last year to a record 464,000 spills, according to the Environment Agency. Shareholders prefer the companies borrow more money for dividends, and not fix anything.
  - Associated Press, 03 November 2024

• Floating gardens in Mexico City have fed people for hundreds of years. Now the gardens are threatened. Gardens first built by the Aztecs hundreds of years ago, are under threat from encroaching urbanization. Low prices for farmers' produce are forcing more families to abandon the ancient practice in favor of more lucrative land uses, such as soccer fields or tourism.
  - Associated Press, 03 November 2024

• How a year of rain fell on parts of Spain in eight hours. The region is no stranger to storms like those that caused this week's deluges. But global heating caused by burning fossil fuels helps the storms become more destructive.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 November 2024

• One of the driest months in United States history is coming to a close after causing the worst drought in more than 20 years in parts of the East as temperatures soar well above average there. But an upcoming pattern flip could change things as the weather seesaws in the USA from one extreme to the next -- a telltale sign of the increasing weather extremes as the planet heats up .
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 31 October 2024

• At least 72 people have been killed in the deadliest flooding to hit Spain for three decades after torrential rain battered the eastern region of Valencia, sweeping away bridges and buildings, local authorities said on Wednesday. Meteorologists said a year's rain had fallen in eight hours in parts of Valencia on Tuesday, causing pile-ups on highways and submerging farmland in a region that produces two-thirds of the citrus fruit grown in Spain, a leading global exporter.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 30 October 2024

• The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) in the United States is adding significant strain to already stressed water supplies in the USA, according to a new report by JPMorgan Chase and consultancy ERM, which calls for urgent action to better manage this vital resource from being exploited [KM: to make rich tech companies richer].
  - Zero Hedge, 30 October 2024

• Recent whale deaths highlight risks from the booming krill fishery of Antarctica. The whale deaths, which have not been previously reported, were discussed during recent negotiations between the USA, Zhōngguó, Rossiya and two dozen other countries in which officials failed to make progress on long-debated conservation goals and lifted some fishing limits in the Southern Ocean that have been in place since 2009. Taken together, the whale deaths and rollback of the catch limits represent a setback for the remote krill fishery, which has boomed in recent years and is set to expand even further following the acquisition of its biggest harvester, Norway's Aker BioMarine, by a deep-pocketed American private equity firm (American Industrial Partners).
  - Associated Press, 30 October 2024

• Shocking rise in whale, dolphin, and porpoise strandings as wind farms proliferate around the British coast
  - Zero Hedge, 30 October 2024

• Mount Fuji, the iconic mountain in Nihon, has yet to see snow this winter, breaking a 130-year record
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 29 October 2024

• The idyllic Xinjian grasslands of Zhōngguó hid a salty soiled secret that has been solved. Nationwide efforts to convert salty soil into arable grasslands have extended to a high-elevation part of Xinjiang autonomous region where a quartet of mountains converge and the arid climate has long quelled attempts to cultivate crops. About 1,300 hectares (3,200 acres) of salt-affected desert in Tashkurgan Tajik county have been transformed into productive plains.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 28 October 2024

• The state of California increases fines for violations against excessive water usage by, among others, farmers and ranchers. The new bill increases the penalties to up to $10,000 per day. Additionally, a fine of $2,500 will be given for "each acre-foot of water diverted".
  - The Cool Down, 28 October 2024

• The massive fishing fleet of Zhōngguó overwhelms the fisherman of Peru. Off the coast of Peru, one of the world's richest fishing grounds is under pressure from the fishing fleets of Zhōngguó.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 October 2024

• The privatized water system in the UK is in crisis. Can it be fixed, or have investors wrecked the company while extracting excessive profits through debt financing?
  - BBC, 25 October 2024

• Landslides, dead bees and red algae: the hidden cost of two hurricanes. Environmental damages pile onto the losses caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 25 October 2024

• Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Arizona Department of Water Resources have made the first move toward regulating the use of groundwater in the state's rural southeast (the Willcox Groundwater Basin in the Cochise and Graham counties) that is being rapidly being drawn down through agricultural use. In the meantime, the basin is closed to new agriculture use while the department decides whether to create the management area southeast of Tucson that would allow it to set goals for the well-being of the basin and its aquifers.
  - Associated Press, 24 October 2024

• In Colombia, extreme drought (caused by global heating) affecting the Amazon River falls hard on Indigenous communities. "When the water is low, the first die." Since 2023, water levels for the Amazon River have dropped not only in Brazil, but other Amazon nations, wreaking havoc on local economies and food supplies.
  - Associated Press, 24 October 2024

• The Caspian Sea, the largest lake in the world - the size of Montana, is shrinking fast. Experts fear that it may never recover. Damming, over-extraction, pollution and, increasingly, the human-caused climate crisis are driving its decline.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 24 October 2024

• A radical approach to flooding in England: give land back to the sea. When a huge tract of land on the Somerset coast was deliberately flooded, the project was slammed as "extravagant, ridiculous" by a local conservative lawmaker. But the positive results have been transformative.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 October 2024

• Villagers are wary of plans to dam a river to ensure the water supply of Panama Canal. The plan would flood villages, where about 2,000 people would need to be relocated and where there is opposition to the plan, and curb the flow of the river to other communities downstream.
  - Associated Press, 22 October 2024

• Private water companies in the UK are lobbying for bill rises of up to 84 per cent in the next five years in a fresh blow to customers. They want to upgrade their infrastructure, after years of underinvestment during which they were exploiting their companies by paying large dividends to their private owners.
  - The Independent, 22 October 2024

• An alarming glimpse into a future of historic droughts due to global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Record dry conditions in South America have led to wildfires, power cuts and water rationing. The world's largest river system, the Amazon, which sustains some 30 million people across eight countries, is drying up.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 October 2024

• The world's carbon sinks are on fire. Carbon emissions from forest fires increased more than 60 percent globally over the past two decades, according to a new study.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 October 2024

• The geophysical system that moves water around the Earth is off-balance for the first time in human history. Decades of destructive land use and water mismanagement have collided with the human-caused climate crisis to put "unprecedented stress" on the global water cycle. Nearly 3 billion people face water scarcity. Crops are shriveling and cities are sinking as the groundwater beneath them dries out. The water crisis threatens more than 50% of global food production and risks shaving an average of 8% off the GDPs of countries by 2050, with much higher losses of up to 15% projected in low-income countries.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 October 2024

• Water crises threaten the world's ability to eat, studies show. Food production is concentrated in too few countries, many of which face water shortages. One study, published by World Resources Institute, found that one quarter of the world's crops is grown in places where the water supply is stressed, unreliable or both. These regions include Brazil, Henan province of Zhōngguó, southern Africa, parts of the USA and Europe.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 October 2024

• Storms be damned, as people in Florida keep building in high-risk areas. Nearly 300,000 new properties nationwide have been built in flood-prone areas since 2019.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 October 2024

• Homeowners in Florida fear soaring insurance cost after hurricanes. Average homeowner premiums in Florida surged nearly 60% between 2019 and 2023.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 17 October 2024

• The Small Business Administration's disaster assistance loan program is out of money after hurricanes Helene and Milton struck parts of the United States, the agency has announced. Through its loan program, homeowners can receive up to $500,000 to replace or repair their primary residence, while businesses and private nonprofit organizations can get up to $2 million to cover disaster-related physical damage and economic injuries that are not fully covered by insurance.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 October 2024

• The Small Business Administration's disaster assistance loan program is out of money after hurricanes Helene and Milton struck parts of the United States, the agency has announced. Through its loan program, homeowners can receive up to $500,000 to replace or repair their primary residence, while businesses and private nonprofit organizations can get up to $2 million to cover disaster-related physical damage and economic injuries that are not fully covered by insurance.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 October 2024

• Striking photographs of the Caspian Sea are evidence of large-scale environmental decay on the largest lake in the world . This is due to an enormous burden of pollution from oil extraction and refining, offshore oil fields, radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants and huge volumes of untreated sewage and industrial waste introduced mainly by the Volga River (which flows through Rossiya and into the Caspian Sea).
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 16 October 2024

• Four decades after privatization, calls to nationalize the water industry have swept across England and Wales amid sewage spills and rising household bills. The number of people getting sick from polluted waters is growing. Across England and Wales, insufficient investment in the sewage infrastructure and the water supply has led to a crisis that has been brewing for years. Now, more people are putting the blame on the ownership of the water utilities, which are regional monopolies, predominantly owned by multinational conglomerates and asset managers, including sovereign wealth funds and pension funds. Critics argue that shareholders in the water companies have received billions of pounds in dividends since privatization but failed to put enough money back into the water system while piling up debt.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 October 2024

• Trees and land absorbed almost no CO2 last year. Is nature's carbon sink failing? The sudden collapse of carbon sinks was not factored into climate models -- and could rapidly accelerate global heating due to the burning of fossil fuels.
  - The Guardian, 14 October 2024

• The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is on the verge of collapse, as soon as 2050. The current transports vast amounts of heat around the Atlantic. If the AMOC gets weaker and causes the northern hemisphere to cool, all the climate belts of the world - including the equatorial rainfall belt - will be shifted further south.
  - BBC, 13 October 2024

• Drought is parching the largest man-made lake in the world, Lake Karima in Zambia, depriving Zambia of its electricity generated by hydroelectric turbines
  - Associated Press, 11 October 2024

• Meteorologists hit with death threats from conservatives after debunking hurricane conspiracy theories
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 11 October 2024

• Global heating caused by the burning of oil and coal made Hurricane Helene more destructive. In cooler times, a similarly rare storm over the Southeast would have delivered less rain and weaker winds, a team of scientists concluded in an analysis.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 October 2024

• A giant hydraulic machine named Wanda has prevented hundreds of tons of garbage from ending up polluting the mangroves near the capital of Panama. Wanda is a machine that captures waste and separates what can be recycled. The energy that feeds Wanda is entirely green: a hydraulic wheel and solar panels.
  - Tico Times, 11 October 2024

• The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, continues to earn his bribes/lobbying dollars by denying that global heating is fueling stronger hurricanes that repeatedly destroy Florida, completely contradicting earth scientists. DeSantis previously voiced skepticism about climate change and signed legislation earlier this year to remove climate goals from state statutes.
  - Politico, 10 October 2024

• Analysts at Morningstar DBRS forecast insured losses from Milton in the range of $60-$100 billion if the hurricane directly hits the Tampa metro area. A $100 billion loss would put Milton on par with the 2005 storm called Katrina.
  - Zero Hedge, 09 October 2024

• Just how doomed is home insurance? Hurricanes like Milton and Helene are making it harder than ever to insure your home. Most banks will not offer a mortgage without homeowners insurance, and letting a policy lapse can lead to foreclosure. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), a federal program that provides flood coverage to 4.7 million policyholders, is more than $20 billion in debt to the US Treasury accruing $1.7 million in interest daily. In September, Congress reauthorized the program for a few months. The next funding deadline is December 20, 2024. If authorization lapses, the NFIP would stop selling and renewing flood insurance for millions of people. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have come home to a breakup letter from their private insurers, canceling their coverage. Others cannot find any company that will protect their home, leaving expensive, state-run insurers of last resort as their only option. Some private insurance companies have entirely pulled out of states like California, Florida, and Louisiana.
  - Vox, 09 October 2024

• The Alpe du Grand Serre ski station in southeastern France's Isere region to close as snow shortage leaves it struggling to build a future. The resort, near the higher altitude Alpe d'Huez, is one of several lower lying ski destinations in Europe to face an existential reckoning over the past couple of years as global heating, driven by humans burning fossil fuels, brings warmer, shorter winters.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 09 October 2024

• The great migration to global-warming-denying Florida is coming undone. A surplus of housing inventory and dwindling buyer interest are slowing sales and keeping homes on the market longer. Hurricanes and extreme weather are making it worse.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 08 October 2024

• The salmon population in England is declining to new lows due to poor water quality. The blame is on agricultural pollution, sedimentation, chemical runoff from industries, wastewater and roads for degrading salmon habitats, while calling on farmers, landowners and the water, energy and waste industries to do more to protect the species.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 07 October 2024

• Salmon swim freely in the Klamath River for the first time in over 100 years after dams removed
  - Associated Press, 07 October 2024

• Hurricane Milton is supercharged by hot Gulf waters (warmed by global heating due to burning fossil fuels) to a Category 5 superstorm, potentially rivalling a destructive 1848 hurricane
  - Zero Hedge, 07 October 2024

• Property and casualty insurance stocks in the USA plummeted on Monday after Hurricane Milton intensified into a category 4 storm on its path towards Florida's western coast, marking yet another costly disaster for the industry to cover this year. The S&P Insurance Select Industry (.SPSIINS) index was last down 2.7% on Monday. Heritage Insurance (HRTG.N), which has a big footprint in the state, was last down 26%. Universal Insurance (UVE.N), and HCI Group (HCI.N), fell 15% and 16%, respectively. Sector bellwether Travelers Companies (TRV.N) was last down 3.5%, while Allstate (ALL.N) and Assurant (AIZ.N), declined 4% each.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 07 October 2024

• Global heating due to fossil fuel use is scorching the biggest river in the world. As a punishing drought due to global heating dries up stretches of the Amazon River, Brazil is resorting to dredging to try to keep food, medicine and people flowing along the watery superhighway.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 October 2024

• Farmers in the heartland of the USA are restoring swaths of the prairie with government help. The aim is to reduce nutrient runoff from cropland, and help birds and bees.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 October 2024

• Homeowners are rushing to file insurance claims after Hurricane Helene left a trail of destruction across six states. Many of them will likely be able to buy full coverage. Property insurers in recent years have hollowed out coverage and sharply increased rates to compensate for steep underwriting losses driven by worsening natural disasters caused by global heating due to fossil fuel use.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 07 October 2024

• After the "historic" damage caused by Hurricane Helene, the Appalachian Trial may need years to recover. Downed trees and flooding have left the trail impassable in many of the 14 states on its route.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 October 2024

• Local officials, academic researchers, and volunteer responders have raised concerns about chemical and biological contamination brought by the floodwaters of Hurricane Helene in the southeastern U.S. last week, which potentially threaten the safety not only of drinking water but also the quality of soil -- leading experts to call for tighter regulations on stored pollutants. The storm passed through hundreds of industrial sites with toxic pollutants, including paper mills, fertilizer factories, oil and gas storage facilities, and even a retired nuclear plant. The researchers called for tighter regulations on the storage and release of chemical pollutants.
  - Zero Hedge, 05 October 2024

• Britain backs plan to store carbon dioxide under the sea. Two proposals in Northern England, led by the energy giants BP and Eni, aim to establish an industry in burying emissions from industrial plants.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 October 2024

• The ice-covered Antarctica is turning green, as scientists monitor the effects of global heating from images taken from low earth orbit.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 04 October 2024

• An updated Cochrane review has found that the dental health benefits of adding fluoride to drinking water may be smaller now than before fluoride toothpaste was widely available. The benefit of fluoridation has declined since the 1970s, when fluoride toothpaste became more widely available.
  - Cochrane (a non-profit), 04 October 2024

• The Coast Guard of Zhōngguó claimed it entered waters of the Arctic Ocean for the first time as part of a joint patrol with Rossiya -- in the latest sign of enhanced coordination between the two in a region where Beijing has long wished to expand its presence
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 03 October 2024

• Global heating denying Republican politicians in North Carolina rejected new standards to make homes less vulnerable to hurricanes and other disasters. The massive destruction caused by the recent Hurricane Helene proved the idiocy of this denial and rejection. Over the past 15 years, North Carolina lawmakers have rejected limits on construction on steep slopes, which might have reduced the number of homes lost to landslides; blocked a rule requiring homes to be elevated above the height of an expected flood; weakened protections for wetlands, increasing the risk of dangerous storm water runoff; and slowed the adoption of updated building codes, making it harder for the state to qualify for federal climate-resilience grants. Those decisions reflect the bribes influence of home building industry in North Carolina.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 October 2024

• After Hurricane Helene, lawyers gear up for battles over who should pay. As storms intensify, so do the legal clashes with insurance companies, aid agencies and others over compensation, rebuilding and even scams.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 October 2024

• Research on hundreds of tropical storms finds that mortality keeps rising for more than a decade afterward. Looking at 501 tropical storms from 1930 to 2015, researchers found that the average tropical storm resulted in an additional 7,000 to 11,000 deaths over the 15 years that followed. Overall during the study period, tropical storms killed more people than automobile crashes, infectious diseases and combat for soldiers.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 October 2024

• The governor of North Carolina said that "hundreds of roads" were destroyed and that entire communities were "wiped off the map" because of storm Helene last week and over the weekend. Tracking website PowerOutage.us shows that nearly 1 million people were without power in South Carolina and North Carolina. More than 450,000 were without power in Georgia, 73,000 lacked power in Virginia, and 64,000 had no power in Florida as of the morning of October 1st.
  - Zero Hedge, 02 October 2024

• An apocalypse hits the electric grids in the Carolinas: 360 substations down, power restoration could take "months"
  - Zero Hedge, 02 October 2024

• When Hurricane Helene hit, this disaster-proof neighborhood in Cortez, Florida, kept their lights on. Housing designed for strong hurricanes, and secure solar panels on the roof, proved themselves during the hurricane.
  - Fast Company, 30 September 2024

• Global-warming-aggravated Hurricane Helene to cause from $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage in southern states
  - Zero Hedge, 29 September 2024

• "This is a disaster" - western North Carolina is devastated by powerful rains and winds from Hurricane Helene, a destructive power caused by global heating of ocean waters that fuel hurricanes, a global heating denied by the Republicans of western North Carolina
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 September 2024

• As Hurricane Helene powers through Florida this week, a lot of damage is being done. But insurance companies are better prepared this year to handle the claims over those losses, thanks to higher premiums, strong investment returns, and relatively benign recent weather. The average home-insurance rate in Florida increased 42% last year to over $6,000 a year. And thanks to the mild hurricane season last year, most of that money has turned into profits.
  - Barron's, 27 September 2024

• A study finds that global heating and climate change doubled likelihood of recent floods in Europe. Storm Boris dumped record amounts of rain over Central and Eastern Europe this month. A new study found global heating and climate change made the deluge more likely.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 September 2024

• Many cities and counties in the USA are selling bonds to cover costs from storms and drought caused by global heating, which many of these Republican states deny is happening .
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 27 September 2024

• In global heating denying Florida, Hurricane Helen becomes a "nightmare" storm with "unsurvivable" storm surge ahead of landfall in Florida, having gained much destructive power in the ever-warming Gulf of Mexico waters
  - Zero Hedge, 26 September 2024

• Dramatic images show the severe effect of drought on Amazon and its rivers. Images of the Negro River, one of the main tributaries of Amazon, show just how dramatically water is dwindling, especially around the important city of Manaus
  - Associated Press, 26 September 2024

• Drinking bottled water is much worse for you than tap, scientists find. According to researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar, bottled water in the US is often not subject to the same rigorous quality and safety checks as tap water, meaning it can carry more harmful chemicals leaching in from the plastic bottles.
  - BBC, 24 September 2024

• A new variety of corn, 'short corn', could replace the towering cornfields steamrolled by a changing climate. The short corn developed by Bayer Crop Science is being tested on about 30,000 acres (12,141 hectares) in the Midwest with the promise of offering farmers a variety that can withstand powerful windstorms that could become more frequent due to climate change. The corn's smaller stature and sturdier base enable it to withstand winds of up to 50 mph -- researchers hover over fields with a helicopter to see how the plants handle the wind. The smaller plants also let farmers plant at greater density, so they can grow more corn on the same amount of land, increasing their profits. The smaller stalks could also lead to less water use at a time of growing drought concerns.
  - Associated Press, 24 September 2024

• Experts predicted a busy hurricane season, due to warm seas in the Atlantic Ocean. But so far there have only been seven storms, instead of the 15 to 25 storms predicted. The key difference this year was unprecedented rain in an unexpected place: the Sahara desert.
  - RealClearScience, 24 September 2024

• Deep-sea mining hits crunch point amid academic battle over ocean-floor resources. Scientific research, political uncertainty and cash worries are all creating headwinds for The Metals Company ahead of a crucial few months.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 24 September 2024

• The Earth may have breached seven of nine planetary boundaries, health check shows. Ocean acidification close to critical threshold, say scientists, posing threat to marine ecosystems and global liveability.
  - The Guardian, 23 September 2024

• Using the oceans to fight global heating by helping the oceans absorb more carbon. One solution, costs are still high, is known as alkalinity enhancement, which involves adding limestone, magnesium oxide or another alkaline substance to rivers and oceans, changing their chemistry in a way that makes them soak up more carbon dioxide.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 September 2024

• Scientists using ice-breaking ships and underwater robots have found the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting at an accelerating rate and could be on an irreversible path to collapse, spelling catastrophe for global sea level rise. Thwaites holds enough water to increase sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts like a cork, holding back the vast Antarctic ice sheet, its collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise, devastating coastal communities from Miami and London to Bangladesh and the Pacific Islands.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 September 2024

• The worst drought in more than 70 years in Brazil, due to global heating, punishes coffee farms and threatens to push coffee prices even higher
  - Associated Press, 20 September 2024

• [KM: The misanthropy of mostly useless AI (except for new crimes)]. Noisy, water and power hungry, data centers for AI are becoming a nightmare for the Americans who happen to live near one of the more than 5,000 data centers in the USA. People who live near one Northern Virginia center have complained that the mechanical whir of the fleet of industrial fans needed to cool the sensitive computer equipment inside can sound like a leaf blower that never turns off. Cooling the heavy equipment also diverts great volumes of water even in places where it is scarce. And some of the costs of powering the centers are socialistically shouldered by utility customers, in the form of hundreds of dollars a year added to household energy bills. Residents rarely learn how data centers may affect their lives until it is too late. Big tech operators are aggressively deploying nondisclosure agreements to force local officials, construction workers and others to keep these projects under wraps.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 September 2024

• Broken blades, angry fishermen and rising costs slow offshore wind power. Accidents involving blades made by GE Vernova have delayed projects off the coasts of Massachusetts and England and could imperil climate goals.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 September 2024

• Google on Tuesday said it would halt plans to develop a major $200 million data center in Chile to address environmental concerns, a decision reflecting growing worries about the impact of power-thirsty projects around the world that water from humans and gives it to computers.
  - Associated Press, 17 September 2024

• An influx of salt water in the Mississippi River, which feeds southeastern Louisiana's drinking water supplies, is once again creeping up the waterway. For the third year in a row, an underwater levee is being built to slow the brackish intrusion and prevent it from reaching water intake treatment facilities.
  - Associated Press, 17 September 2024

• Historic drought marks parched landscape of the Amazon. According to the National Center for Monitoring and Early Warning of Natural Disasters, the current drought is the most intense and widespread Brazil has experienced since records began in 1950.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 17 September 2024

• Floods devastate west and central Africa. Flooding caused by heavy rains has left more than 1,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed, with 1 million people forced to leave their homes in Nigeria, Mali, and Chad. Another consequence of global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 September 2024

• Floods brought on by days of heavy rainfalls have been ravaging countries in Central and Eastern Europe including Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and Austria. Another consequence of global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 16 September 2024

• Home sales in flood zones are booming. Here is why buyers take the risk. New Yorkers are spending billions on houses in flood-prone areas despite growing awareness of the effects of climate change.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 September 2024

• Drought is making the main Pinheiros River in Sao Paulo emerald green, while smoke turns its skies grey. The city suffered smoke-filled air, which the agency attributed to a hot, dry mass complicating the dispersal of pollutants originating in forested areas with ongoing wildfires.
  - Associated Press, 10 September 2024

• The outgoing president of Brazil pledges to finish paving road that experts say could worsen Amazon deforestation. The president, Luiz Lula da Silva is pledging to finish paving a roadway in the heart of the Amazon that experts and some in his own government say could worsen deforestation.
  - Associated Press, 10 September 2024

• A powerful drought in the Amazon rainforest led on Monday to the lowest water levels on the Paraguay River in more than a century, disrupting commerce on the major waterway, creating hazards for local transport and offering a grim warning for other parts of the world about the dangers of global heating due to burning fossil fuels.
  - Associated Press, 09 September 2024

• Shocked by extreme storms caused by global heating, a fishing town in Maine fights to save its waterfront. After two devastating storms hit Stonington in January, plans are multiplying to raise and fortify wharves, roads and buildings. But will that be enough?
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 September 2024

• Flooding is getting worse -- and fewer homeowners have insurance. Swaths of the USA that have never flooded before are now in danger of being swamped, but the risk is not covered by standard home-insurance policies.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 06 September 2024

• Two years after deadly floods damage Pakistan, it is happening again. Millions of people still recovering from the devastation of 2022 are bracing for the possibility of losing what they have rebuilt.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 September 2024

• To save the Panama Canal from drought, a disruptive fix. In the wake of a drought that hampered shipping, the Panama Canal's overseers are eager to expand water storage. Climate change leaves them no choice.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 September 2024

• Global heating can cause bridges to "fall apart like tinkertoys", experts say. Extreme heat and flooding are accelerating the deterioration of bridges, engineers say, posing a quiet but growing threat.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 September 2024

• Record rainfall spoils crops in Zhōngguó, rattling its leaders. Some vegetables cost more than they have in five years. Top officials in Zhōngguó have made a point of showing that they are doing something about it.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 September 2024

• Even desert plants in the southwest of the USA, known for their resilience, are burning and dying in the heat. But as global warminng makes heat waves more frequent, intense and long-lasting, experts say the increasingly severe conditions are testing some iconic desert plants known for their resilience -- including saguaro cacti and agave.
  - NBC News, 01 September 2024

• For generations of people in Alaskka, a livelihood is under threat. Something is broken in the economics of the fishing industry in Alaska, and the communities that have long depended upon it. Can Washington come to the rescue? The problem is not a lack of fish. Toward the end of the summer of 2023, nobody wanted to buy them. Processors, having already slashed by half the prices they paid fishermen for salmon, started turning them away entirely. Inflation-weary consumers turned from fish to less expensive protein sources like chicken. The strong dollar and the collapse of the yen made it difficult to sell to Japanese consumers, who have been eating less fish and high-value roe than generations past.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 September 2024

• Thailand wages war against invasive tilapia fish, the "most inveasive species" to ever hit Thailand, one which risks enormous damage to the environment. The core problem is that the blackchin tilapia prey on small fish, shrimp, and snail larvae, which are among the important aquaculture products of Thailand.
  - Zero Hedge, 31 August 2024

• Namibia, facing drought, plans to kill elephants for meat. Namibia plans to butcher over 700 wild animals, including 83 elephants and 300 zebras, to feed people and, it hopes, cut down on dangerous cross-species encounters.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 August 2024

• Over half of people worldwide expect harm from their water in next 2 years
  - Zero Hedge, 30 August 2024

• Drying lakes and thirsty trees: in drought-hit Greece, water trucks are keeping crops alive. This summer, southern Europe has been hammered by successive heat waves, following on from below-average rainfall for up to three years. Drought spots on the map of the region have expanded. In Greece, the effects include water shortages, dried-up lakes, and even the death of wild horses.
  - Associated Press, 28 August 2024

• Zhōngguó says Mekong dam did not discharge water downstream amid heavy flooding in Thailand. The Jinghong dam has previously been blamed for changes in water levels, but Bangkok embassy says no water was discharged last week.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 28 August 2024

• The world's largest wetland is burning, and rare animals are dying. In Brazil, wildfires have roared across the Pantanal, a maze of rivers, forests and marshlands that sprawl over an area 20 times the size of the Everglades. The Pantanal has suffered years of severe droughts due to global heating and deforestation (to grow more meat ).
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 August 2024

• "The ocean is overflowing." - the Secretary General of the United Nations issues a global call-for-help as new reports warn Pacific sea-level rise outstrips global average. This, as two UN reports detail how global heating is accelerating disaastrous changes to the ocean. Sea levels in the Pacific Ocean have risen at almost twice the global average over the past 30 years.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 27 August 2024

• Kyle, Texas, is one of the fastest-growing cities in the USA. But with extreme heat and limited water supplies, that is not necessarily a good thing.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 August 2024

• Zhōngguó is showing a growing willingness to escalate in the David-and-Goliath fight with the Philippines over control of the vital trade route in the South China Sea
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 26 August 2024

• The National Flood Insurance Program, a public insurance program sponsored by the federal government insures 4.7 million policyholders and protects more than $1.28 trillion in assets. Congress has until September 30 to reauthorize the NFIP. Without an extension, people are not going to be able to get a mortgage in any area that requires flood insurance, a man-made 'disaster'. If the NFIP experiences a lapse in its authority, it will not be able to issue new policies, including for people whose lenders require flood insurance or increase coverage on existing policies (including property owners looking to refinance existing mortgages). Sadly, there are very few private insurers that offer any type of flood insurance, in case Congress fails to do its job.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 26 August 2024

• Millions of people in Bangladesh are stranded by flooding in the country's floodplains. Many blame Bharat for releasing water from the Dumbur dam in neighboring Tripura state with no warning. Bharat denied the dam release was deliberate and said excessive rain was a factor -- although it conceded that a power outage and communications breakdown meant they failed to issue the usual warning to neighbors downstream.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 26 August 2024

• Conflicting federal policies may force thousands of residents in flood-prone areas to pay more for flood insurance or be left unaware of danger posed by dams built upstream from their homes and worksites. To get the best discount on flood insurance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency's points-based rating system requires communities to chart all the homes, businesses and critical facilities endangered by a potential dam failure and warn people of their risk. But that is difficult or even impossible in some communities, because other federal agencies restrict the release of such information for hundreds of dams that they own or regulate across the USA, citing security risks.
  - Associated Press, 24 August 2024

• Drinking water is at risk in parts of Long Island, a study finds. Decades of pumping have allowed saltwater to threaten the aquifers that supply many communities, including Long Beach and Great Neck.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 24 August 2024

• This hurriance could cause huge amounts of damage that will need to be repaired, causing huge amounts of spending. That could make the Fed's job harder when it comes to reducing interest rates.
  - Barron's, 24 August 2024

• Counting all the fish in the sea may be even trickier than scientists thought. A new study suggests that estimates of the health of the world's fisheries may be too optimistic.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 August 2024

• To supply water for a number of needs, from tourism to agriculture, Spain and other dry nations are increasingly relying on desalination plants that convert seawater into fresh water.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 August 2024

• More than half of the glaciers on the Tibetan plateau will melt by 2100, scientists warn. Researchers said that some areas of the 'Asian water tower' will see more than half of their glaciers melting by the end of the century.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 20 August 2024

• The mission to clean up the Motagua river in Guatemala, one of the most polluted rivers in Central America. Each year, the river transports 40 million pounds of trash into the Caribbean Sea, about 2% of the total oil-derived plastic waste that enters the oceans of the world each year.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 19 August 2024

• Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will continue to live with less water next year from the Colorado River after the U.S. government on Thursday announced water cuts that preserve the status quo. Long-term challenges remain for the 40 million people reliant on the imperiled river.
  - Associated Press, 15 August 2024

• Too much of our seafood has a deadly secret. Walk into your local supermarket, and you may still be buying snapper blasted from their reefs by Indonesian fishermen using dynamite or illegally caught yellowfin tuna and squid. U.S. fisheries may be much improved, but up to 80 percent of the fish and shellfish on American plates is imported. Much of it comes via obscure international seafood conglomerates that purchase fish from companies that have been accused of fishing illegally and profiting from forced labor, as the nonprofit Outlaw Ocean Project has documented. We in wealthy nations unwittingly support these abuses by using the world's supply of fish as if it were a limitless line of credit. But this credit is running out. The global catch of fish and other wildlife in the ocean peaked in the 1990s and has since drifted steadily downward. Soon, not even forced labor may be able to squeeze profit out of the remaining wild fish. Salmon and shrimp, the favorite farmed seafoods of people in the USA, are still fed wild fish caught in poorly regulated foreign waters.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 15 August 2024

• Deadly landslides in Bharat were made worse by climate change and global heating. Extreme rainfall made 10 percent heavier by human-caused (the buring of oil and coal) climate change and global heating triggered landslides that killed hundreds, according to a new study.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 August 2024

• Salmon farms in Patagonia face growing opposition. The salmon industry's expansion in Chile has drawn repeated challenges from environmentalists and Indigenous people of the region, and prompted calls for a moratorium. Chile is the top exporter of farmed salmon to the United States, the industry generating $6.5 billion in revenue in 2023. But the salmon industry has often been criticized for its heavy use of antimicrobials and accused of polluting waterways and contributing to record algal blooms. As primary aquaculture districts have deteriorated alongside the growing international demand, Chilean salmon farming has expanded into the pristine wilderness of the southernmost region of Chile, the Magallanes, in Patagonia.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 August 2024

• Elon Musk's SpaceX violated environmental regulations in releasing pollutants into or nearby bodies of water in Texas, a state environmental agency said in a notice last week. The violations could threaten SpaceX's ambitions to increase Startship launches from its Starbase facility in South Texas.
  - CNCB, 12 August 2024

• What to know about the Park fire, the 4th largest in the history of California, caused by a criminal idiot and his burning car. The rapidly spreading fire has consumed over 427,000 acres since it started burning in late July.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 August 2024

• Will we have to pump the Great Lakes to the Central Valley of California (which has depleted the groundwater used for farming) to feed the USA? For over a century, incompetent farmers in the USA have overpumped groundwater, and now, as the world warms and the Southwest becomes drier, the situation is only growing more dire. Rivers are slowing to a trickle, water tables are falling, land is sinking, and wells are drying up. Each year, roughly 25,000 more farmers fallow their fields, putting both food and water security in the United States at risk.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 August 2024

• Heat waves and droughts are a bonanza for sugary junk food companies. It is hard to find drinking water in La Guajira, an arid peninsula in northern Colombia, where drought and overuse are sucking wells and small reservoirs dry. But it is easy to find soda for sale. In 2017, Postobon, the largest soda company in Colombia, adopting drug trafficking tactics, gave free sugary fruit drinks to thousands of young people in La Guajira under the guise of ending malnutrition. As of 2020, children there still had a malnutrition mortality rate that was six times the national average. Since at least the early 2000s, from Bharat to Mexico to South Africa, Coca-Cola has been accused of extracting water from drought-prone areas. The company claims it returns 94 percent of the water it uses to nature, but the process is still incredibly water-intensive: One 2010 paper estimated that it takes hundreds of liters of water to produce just a liter of a standard carbonated, sugary beverage.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 August 2024

• Why the South Zhōngguó Sea is so important to Zhōngguó. Tensions are mounting in the sea, a hotly contested and globally significant waterway that has become a flashpoint for conflict.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 08 August 2024

• Heat raises fears of the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef within a generation. A new study found that temperatures in the Coral Sea have reached their highest levels in at least four centuries, due to global heating.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 August 2024

• The white wine harvest in Hungary is under threat as a heatwave forces an early harvest
  - Thomson's Reuters, 07 August 2024

• Watch the glacier outburst that sent a surge of water into Juneau, causing "unprecedented flooding". The outbursts have become a regular occurrence since 2011 and are a consequence of global heating denied by the Republicans who control the state's government.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 07 August 2024

• Scientists studying squaretail grouper have found that the increasing presence of fishermen in the water is changing their behavior from flirty to flighty. A team led by scientists at Lancaster University in the UK found that the fish are becoming more scared of humans and spending less time on courting behavior, with potentially important impacts on population levels.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 07 August 2024

• Rahui, the traditional conservation method of regulating human activity to help replenish and protect maritime ecosystems resources is being revived and showing results in Tahiti, including the area near the Paris Olympics surfing venue. While local communities and leaders acknowledge that rahui are not a one-stop solution to all environmental issues, they are working with researchers and scientists to help strengthen the ground-up, community-based approach. While the most common form of rahui is a no-fishing zone placed in a lagoon or offshore -- like a marine reserve -- rahui have also been established in local creeks and rivers in the form of planting taro crops to capture sediment from agriculture or other development before it flows into the ocean and harmfully settles onto reefs.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 07 August 2024

• "I lost everything" - many residents of Sarasota, Florida, dealing with huge property damage during to rising floodwaters after Tropical Storm Debby, which dumped huge amounts of rain on northern Florida due to global heating of the oceans (which fuel storms), a global heating denied by the governor of Florida.
  - Zero Hedge, 06 August 2024

• Modern hurricanes are rewriting the rules of extreme storms: their season is getting longer, they intensify faster, have strong peak intensities, and gather more water to produce more rain
  - BBC, 05 August 2024

• The International Seabed Authority votes to replace official accused of rushing start of seabed mining. The international agency charged with regulating seabed mining elected Leticia Carvalho, a U.N. environmental regulator, to replace a leader accused of too-close industry ties.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 August 2024

• Just as we are learning to appreciate the extraordinary service of creatures in the twilight zone of the ocean, companies that manufacture feed for industrial fish farms, fertilizer and omega-3 supplements are preparing to exploit this part of the ocean. Right now nations are considering authorizing commercial fishing fleets to grind life in the twilight zone into fish meal, fertilizer and plant food. Before they move forward with these plans, it would be wise to hit pause so we can understand how that decision will affect our planet. With a third of the fish stocks of the world already over-raped and over-exploited and fish populations in decline, it may be hard to turn fishing fleets away from opportunities that will make rich people richer. Most twilight zone fish are unpalatable for humans, but their high nutritional content makes them a good choice for fish meal. Aquaculture is the fastest expanding food sector worldwide, accounting for half of all fish harvested for consumption. With current fish meal sources stretched thin, the $240 billion industry is eyeing the protein-rich twilight zone to make rich people richer.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 August 2024

• Severe drought has returned to the Amazon. And the drought is happening earlier than expected. Regional governments to anticipate contingency measures to address issues ranging from disrupted navigation to increasing forest fires. In several rivers in the southwestern Amazon, water levels are the lowest on record for this time of year. Historically, the driest months are August and September, when fire and deforestation peak.
  - Associated Press, 03 August 2024

• Why the support of Zhōngguó for a canal in Cambodia on the Mekong River could push Vietnam closer to the USA. The 'historic' Funan-Techo canal, a 180-kilometer project from the Mekong River to the coast, aims to reduce the transport dependence of Cambodia on Vietnam.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 03 August 2024

• In Mexico City, a vast wetland park seeks to slake a thirsty megacity. Twice the size of Manhattan, the controversial $1 billion Lake Texcoco Ecological Park is emerging out of the foundations of the canceled airport project for Mexico City.
  - Bloomberg, 02 August 2024

• Four key pillars of the global climate are melting in the heat trapped by rising emissions of fossil fuels - oil, coal, natural gas. The relatively stable climate that nurtured human civilization depends in large part on these structures: the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica, the Amazon rainforest and the Atlantic currents that warm Europe.
  - The Hill, 02 August 2024

• A vital system of Atlantic Ocean currents that influences weather across the world could collapse as soon as the late 2030s, scientists have suggested in a new study -- a planetary-scale disaster that would transform weather and climate. Several studies in recent years have suggested the crucial system -- the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation -- could be on course for collapse, weakened by warmer ocean temperatures and disrupted saltiness caused by human-induced climate change. In the decades after a collapse, Arctic ice would start creeping south, and after 100 years, would extend all the way down to the southern coast of England. The average temperature of Europe would plunge, as would the temperature of North America -- including parts of the USA. The Amazon rainforest would see a complete reversal in its seasons; the current dry season would become the rainy months, and vice versa.
  - The Hill, 02 August 2024

• Gouda, the small city in the Netherlands where the renowned Gouda cheese is made, is subsiding as sea levels rise due to global heating. Experts say the industry may not survive there, even with the ingenuity of the water managers in the government. Gouda, built on peat marsh, has always been vulnerable to sinking, and that risk is now greater because increased rainfall and rising sea levels threaten to flood the river delta in which it sits.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 August 2024

• In Mexico City, women water harvesters help make up for drought and unreliable public water system
  - Associated Press, 01 August 2024

• Temperatures in the Antarctic rise 10C above average in near record heatwave. Reported temperatures on continent in midwinter reach 28C above expectations on some days in July.
  - The Guardian, 01 August 2024

• Rocks recently exposed to the sky in the Andes after being covered with prehistoric ice show that tropical glaciers have shrunk to their smallest size in more than 11,700 years, revealing the tropics have already warmed past limits last seen earlier in the Holocene age
  - Phys.org, 01 August 2024

• Zhōngguó experiences 25 large-scale floods this year, setting new record since 1998. Global wamring has caused the average temperature in Zhōngguó in July to the highest on record since 1961
  - Global Times, 01 August 2024

• How did the 'Park' fire get so big, so fast? The blaze, now the fifth-largest in state history, has been fed by exceptionally dry vegetation following more than a month of extreme heat in California due to global heating.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 31 July 2024

• A heatwave caused by global heating in Malaysia is causing critical shortages of water. Experts warn that the drought, caused by El Niño, could impact agricultural yeilds and lead to food price instability.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 31 July 2024

• As politicians allow the Great Salt Lake to dry up, it is emitting millions of tons of global-warming CO2, enough for the diminishing lake to become a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the climate to warm. Due largely to water diversions by farmers and booming population growth in Utah, the Great Salt Lake has shrunk by almost half in recent years.
  - NPR, 28 July 2024

• Major cities in the USA face "Day Zero Water" crisises. These crisises are the moment in which a city or region's water supply is almost depleted and officials cut tap supply to communities. 40 out of 50 state water managers in the USA "expect shortages in some portion of their states under average conditions in the next 10 years".
  - Zero Hedge, 25 July 2024

• The Santa Cruz province/department of Bolivia declares an emergency due to extreme weather including wildfires. "A departmental emergency is declared due to the climatic changes, which have and are causing heavy rains, floods, droughts, strong winds, extreme temperatures, forest fires, environmental pollution and other events."
  - Thomson's Reuters, 25 July 2024

• After losing crops to drought, Sicily fears losing tourism, too. Parts of southern Italy and other countries in the region are experiencing one of their worst droughts in decades. It is particularly devastating, experts say, because the lack of rainfall has been made worse by the higher temperatures caused by climate change. Agriculture, though, still accounts for the vast majority of water use, with the general population using just a fraction of it, even when it includes millions of tourists during the summer.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 July 2024

• The Greek Islands, known for their idyllic towns, rugged landscapes and sun-baked beaches, are in the grip of a serious crisis. Many are running alarmingly low on water -- a problem set to get worse as the tourist season hits full flow and hot dry weather continues. One stupidity is building too many pools on islands with such fantastic beaches.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 23 July 2024

• The world recorded its hottest ever day, as many parts of the Mediterranean face extreme wildfire risks
  - Bloomberg, 23 July 2024

• Thinking about a cruise on the Mississippi River? There is one big 'if'. Though operators are building ships, and towns are investing in landings and other infrastructure, fluctuations in the river's flow, exacerbated by climate change, are hampering sailings.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 July 2024

• While more rain due to La Ñina boosts water levels (and thus traffic) in the Panama Canal, repeated attacks by the Houthis - some fatal - have driven shippers to find alternatives to the Suez Canal
  - Zero Hedge, 21 July 2024

• "The sea has taken everything" - how the coast of Italy was reclaimed by the sea. Farmers and residents of the Po River delta are struggling as landmarks are lost to the water and crops are poisoned by salt.
  - Al Jazeera, 20 July 2024

• Supplies of dissolved oxygen in bodies of water across the globe are dwindling rapidly, and scientists say it's one of the greatest risks to Earth's life support system. With billions of people relying on marine and freshwater habitats for food and income, it's concerning these ecosystems' oxygen has been substantially and rapidly declining.
  - Science Alert, 19 July 2024

• Nearly 400 public water systems in California have failed to meet recommended safety standards for drinking water, according to a report last month from the State Water Resources Control Board
  - Zero Hedge, 17 July 2024

• Rising seas wiped out an entire US species for the first time. The combined effects of sea level rise, rising tides and intense storms drove the wild Key Largo tree cactus population to extinction in its only known US location in the Florida Keys. It is a grim first, but not last, as the scientists fear the demise of the plant is a 'bellwether' for other species as the climate crisis gets worse.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 14 July 2024

• Scientists say a 'reservoir of disease' is being created after discovering bacteria that naturally occur in rivers are becoming resistant to antibiotics due to the impact of sewage. Researchers at the University of Suffolk said bacterial strains found on the non-tidal section of the River Deben in Suffolk had acquired resistance by exchanging DNA with antibiotic resistant E. coli. "We are needlessly adding pathogenic and virulence genes to bacteria found in the environment, and that could be creating a reservoir of disease."
  - BBC, 12 July 2024

• The Three Gorges dam in Zhōngguó is on a flood alert as rain batters the megacity of Chongqing. Rainstorms kill six people, collapse highway and disrupt rail travel in southwest municipality while floods hit Yangtze River.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 12 July 2024

• Global heating - out-of-control heat is making the Earth more "weird" - and more deadly. For 13 straight months, global heat records have been shattered. This is unprecedented in human history, thanks to the burning of fossil fuels .
  - Salon, 11 July 2024

• As climate toll grows, FEMA imposes limits on building in flood plains. New restrictions are meant to reduce damage during floods. The rules were first proposed in 2016, then the climate-change-denying Trump administration scrapped the rules. The agency said Wednesday that projects constructed with FEMA money must be built in a way that prevents flood damage, whether by elevating them above the expected height of a flood or, if that is not feasible, by building in a safer location. The rule also makes it clear that building decisions must reflect risks now and also in the future, as climate change makes flooding more frequent and severe.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 July 2024

• British regulators on Thursday took the unprecedented step of placing the water utility for London and swathes of southern England into special measures, as the company seeks fresh investor funding to shore up its future. The crisis-hit company has more than 16 million customers and is seeking to avoid outcomes including temporary nationalization or being broken up. Another disastrous privatization that the public will have to pay for.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 11 July 2024

• Hawaii bans deep-sea mining as political support in the USA splits on party lines. Backing for seafloor extraction has largely come from Republicans, amid a push to extract rare minerals for defense applications; Democrats are coming out against the practice fearful miners will force the public to pay of the damages and pollution of mining operations such as seen on the surface.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 10 July 2024

• Blackened trees, dead animals and scorched earth -- early wildfires have already devastated the Pantanal wetlands in Brazil (the largest in the world), and local people worry they may lose the battle to save them. More than 760,000 hectares (1.8 million acres) have already burned across the Brazilian Pantanal in 2024. Every year its 'flood pulse' sees it swell with water during the rainy season and empty throughout the dry months. But the climate crisis, droughts and weak rains have disrupted this seasonal pattern, turning the land into a tinderbox.
  - The Guardian, 09 July 2024

• 2024 hurricane season predicted to be particularly active. NOAA has forecast this s hurricane season to be particularly active, with between 17 to 25 storms anticipated where winds are expected to be upwards of 39 mph.
  - Zero Hedge, 09 July 2024

• Greek islands face water crisis as tourist season peaks. Most of Greece has seen little or no rain in months.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 09 July 2024

• The 'killer' stalking the men of Sri Lanka. Climate change and contaminated water have combined to create an epidemic of kidney disease. In some communities, as many as one in five young men is affected. Experts say the illness is most likely the result of exposure to extreme heat, exacerbated in recent years by climate change, and the resulting dehydration, as well as an overuse of toxic pesticides that have seeped into the groundwater.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 July 2024

• Pakistan withers under deadly heat and fears the coming rains. Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, endured days of temperatures above 100 Fahrenheit, made worse by power cuts and high humidity. A port city on the Arabian Sea, Karachi is known for its hot summers and monsoon floods.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 08 July 2024

• Much of the much global-warming denying western USA is broiling under record-breaking heat. From Oregon to California to Arizona, several cities have seen scorching temperatures in recent days. And there is little relief in sight, forecasters say.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 July 2024

• A political fight over leadership of a global seabed agency turns nasty. An election over the future of a United Nations-affiliated organization could determine whether the Pacific Ocean floor will soon be mined for metals used in electric vehicles. The current leader, Michael Lodge, more favors industry. His challenger, Leticia Carvalho of Brazil, an oceanographer, more favors protecting the environment.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 July 2024

• Zhōngguó faces diluted early-season rice harvest as floods drench crops in farming hubs. Rainfall in the hubs for early-season rice threatens to reduce grain output for the year, presenting a challenge the efforts of Zhōngguó to maintain food security.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 03 July 2024

• A study finds that the Alaskan ice field is melting at an "incredibly worring" pace. The speed of decline in the Juneau Ice Field, an expanse of 1,050 interconnected glaciers, has doubled in recent decades, scientists discovered.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 July 2024

• Flash flooding after wildfires in New Mexico highlights climate risks. Flooding in Ruidoso, New Mexico, over the weekend showed how wildfire damage, worsening under climate change, can put people at even greater risk than the fires themselves. Climate change and global heating, driven primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, continues to cause increases in both high-severity fires that kill vegetation and dry out soils, and extreme rainfall events that deliver more precipitation in shorter amounts of time. The combination of dry soil and heavy rain increases the odds for hazards like flash flooding and debris flows -- a dangerous mix of water, mud, boulders and trees after a fire.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 July 2024

• Half of the water flowing through regional river basins in the USA starts in so-called ephemeral streams. Last year, the Supreme Court curtailed federal protections for these waterways on their god's Earth.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 June 2024

• These 'supercorals' are causing problems. As rice coral spreads it reduces biodiversity. The result is an eerie terrain that, while still flush with thriving coral, is otherwise largely devoid of life.
  - Smithsonian Magazine, 27 June 2024

• The highest mountain in South Korea is facing environmental damage from an unexpected source - instant ramen noodles. he National Park Office of Mount Halla has started a campaign to encourage hikers not to dump ramyun broth on the mountain or in its streams in order to preserve a "clean environment". "Ramen broth contains a lot of salt, so discarding it along the valley's water streams it impossible for aquatic insects to live in contaminated water."
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 27 June 2024

• The humble onion could be holding hostage the economy of Bharat. The price of raw onions has risen 165% over the past year. Prices have also inflated for other vegetates, such as tomatoes, which now cost nearly twice as much as this time last year. Poor weather has been behind much of the havoc - droughts and heat waves. "Food prices are holding back any consideration of possible changes in the monetary policy stance.".
  - Comcast's CNBC, 27 June 2024

• Beach closures in southern California prompt questions of whether Mexico is dumping sewage in the ocean that flow north into USA waters off of San Diego
  - Zero Hedge, 26 June 2024

• Scientists identify new Antarctic ice sheet 'tipping point', warning future sea level rise may be underestimated
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 25 June 2024

• The worsening water shortage in Bharat, triggered by high consumption amid rapid economic growth and frequent natural disasters, can negatively impact the sovereign credit strength of Bharat, Moody's Ratings said on Tuesday.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 24 June 2024

• More than a million people are under flood warnings in the upper US Midwest on Sunday after days of heavy rain that forced evacuations and rescues in several states
  - BBC, 23 June 2024

• Allstate Corporation on Thursday reported pretax catastrophe losses in May of about $1.4 billion. The Northbrook, Illinois-based insurer said 14 events contributed to nearly $1.5 billion in catastrophe losses for May, with 70% attributable to five wind and hail events mostly in the states of Texas, Colorado, and Illinois. A year ago Allstate recorded pretax catastrophe losses for May of about $885 million.
  - Zero Hedge, 21 June 2024

• Bharat plans to spend over $150 billion to reengineer how water flows around the nation. The 100-year project will connect severl of the subcontinent's rivers, transforming the disparate flows of neighboring watersheds into a mega-water grid spanning from the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.
  - Hakai Magazine, 20 June 2024

• Miami is entering a state of unreality. No amount of adaptation to climate change can fix the water flooding problems of Miami. Meanwhile, the politicians that control the state refuse to allow any government official to use the phrases "climate change" or "global heating". Ostriches are jealous, not that is there much sand left to stick heads into.
  - The Atlantic, 18 June 2024

• The first desert wheat crop in Xinjiang, Zhōngguó, is a milestone in Zhōngguó's efforts to improve food security. Zhōngguó, with the most 'desertified' land in the world, seeks to increase crop yields in the face of harsh conditions and climate change.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 18 June 2024

• A new way social injustice, : the growing business of surf pools, building artificial surfing pools inland, with many planned for areas facing water scarity where poorer residents don't have adequate water supplies
  - MIT Technology Review, 17 June 2024

• The climate is the economy. Intensifying hurricanes, floods, and heat waves are wreaking havoc across the country -- and on all of our bank accounts, as everything becomes more expensive.
  - Slate, 17 June 2024

• A water war is looming between Mexico and the USA. Neither side will win. Under an 80-year-old treaty, the United States and Mexico share waters from the Colorado River and the Rio Grande, respectively. But in the grip of severe drought and searing temperatures, Mexico has fallen far behind in deliveries, putting the ability of Mexico to meet its obligations in serious doubt. The Mexico-US treaty calculated water availability based on data from the first half of the 20th century. It foresaw short-term droughts, but not multi-year megadroughts. Demand for water shot up as development along the Rio Grande soared. The North American Free Trade Agreement, which went into effect in 1994, led to an explosion of farms and maquiladoras (factories) in Mexico, many growing and making products destined for US and Canadian markets. Both sides of the border urbanized and populations increased.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 17 June 2024

• How financial engineering sullied the Thames, the most famous river in Britain: "poo in the water". Critics say the the largest water utility in the UK, Thames Water, loaded up on debt to pay investors dividends while failing to upgrade the Victorian-era sewers of London, the classic private equity exploitation tactic.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 June 2024

• Zhōngguó looks to Africa to meet rising demand for seafood, but can it balance local interests with its own needs? looks to Africa to meet rising demand for seafood, but can it balance local interests with its own needs? Zhōngguó is investing heavily in port facilities across the continent, but its trawlers are accused of putting local stocks at risk. The presence of fish trawlers from Zhōngguó in African waters has raised concerns about illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and unsustainable practices that could put local livelihoods at risk and threaten food security.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 16 June 2024

• The state of Idaho restricts water supplies to 500,000 acres of farmland, about the same time that the state commissions a new cobalt mine in the state owned by an Australian company and for which over 200 local politicans invested
  - Zero Hedge, 15 June 2024

• The head of the military in the Philippines urges fisherman to ignore the new coastguard rules imposted by Zhōngguó
  - Comcast's CNBC, 14 June 2024

• Storms do not need a name to wreak havoc in south Florida. Between days of excessive heat and days of unrelenting storms, the summer rainy season is starting to feel different -- and highly unpredictable.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 June 2024

• Heavy rain and "life-threatening flooding" hit South Florida, prompting the climate-change-denying governor to declare an emergency.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 13 June 2024

• Rural Bharat runs dry as thirsty megacity Mumbai sucks water. Large-scale infrastructure for Mumbai includes reservoirs connected by canals and pipelines channelling water from 100 kilometres (60 miles) away. But experts say a failure of basic planning means that the network is often not connected to hundreds of rural villages in the region and several nearby districts.
  - AFP, 12 June 2024

• Crops in Zhōngguó at risk as extreme drought warning is issued for the north and center of Zhōngguó, including parts of Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, Shandong and Anhui. For these areas, which traditionally have high soy bean and corn production, it warned there was a high risk of crop seedlings being damaged.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 12 June 2024

• For shrinking Mississippi River towns, frequent floods worsen fortunes. Flooding has pushed people out of their homes near the Mississippi River at a roughly 30% higher rate than the USA as a whole.
  - Associated Press, 11 June 2024

• A mass death of fish in Chichuahua State in Mexico is blamed on severe drought. Thousands of dead fish have blanketed the surface of a lagoon in the northern state. Some form of drought is afflicting nearly 90% of Mexico, the highest rate since 2011.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 08 June 2024

• The United Nations says that more aquatic animals were farmed than fishes in 2022, the first time in history
  - Associated Press, 07 June 2024

• The bird flu virus adapted to sea mammals. It may not be done yet. Huge die-offs of elephant seals occurred after the virus gained nearly 20 troublesome new mutations, scientists found.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 07 June 2024

• Report calls for revamp of of over $500 million of federal farming subsidies in drought-ridden Colorado River basin. Federally funded drought adaptation incentives may be failing to equip Colorado River farmers with the tools necessary to adapt to changing climate conditions.
  - The Hill, 06 June 2024

• An abnormally dry Canada taps energy from the USA, reversing the usual flow. Lower-than-normal rain and snow have reduced hydropower production in Canada, raising worries in the industry about the effects of climate change.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 June 2024

• The toll to pass through the Panama Canal for natural gas carriers rises to $1 million. But data shows costs now falling at waterway as delays shrink.
  - Tradewinds, 05 June 2024

• In the parched slums of Delhi, life hangs on a hose and a prayer. A heat wave has left water in short supply across the capital region of Bharat. The poorest are left to crowd around tankers to get whatever they can.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 June 2024

• Deadly floods in Brazil were worsened by climate change and global heating. The southern region of Brazil received three months worth of rain in just two weeks. Global heating has made such deluges twice as likely as before, scientists said, a global heating denied by the right-wing politicians of the country.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 June 2024

• Thirsty in paradise: the water crisis on the islands of the Caribbean. Trinidad, Dominica, Granada and Jamaica are experiencing recurrent shortages of water, leading to fines and rationing.
  - El Tiempo, 02 June 2024

• Unprecedented ocean temperatures make this hurricane season especially dangerous and destructive
  - USA Today, 02 June 2024

• While good to eat, shrimp is bad for the environment. When it comes to the health of the oceans, many experts say shrimp is among the most damaging foods you can eat. Most prawns on American plates are imported, primarily from Asia and Latin America. More than half of them are raised in farms: sprawling networks of densely packed coastal ponds, often next to the ocean. Building them destroys crucial coastal habitats like mangrove swamps and other wetlands. And once built, farms can further pollute the coasts with runoff like fertilizers and antibiotics. Wild-caught shrimp also come with an enormous ecological price: bycatch. Because shrimp are so small, the nets used to catch them tend to catch everything else in their path. In some countries, as much as 90 percent of what comes up in a shrimp net is not shrimp. Those sharks, turtles, baby snappers and hundreds of other species tend to die in the nets or on the deck of the boat.
  - New York TImes, 31 May 2024

• A mysterious plague is wiping out sea urchins across the globe
  - The Independent, 31 May 2024

• Delhi, the capital of Bharat, breaks all-time heat record, as authorities impose water rationing
  - Zero Hedge, 29 May 2024

• Only 37% of the wastewater in Bharat is treated in sewage treatment plants, exacerbating the risks of communicable diseases and contaminated food and drinking water.
  - Zero Hedge, 26 May 2024

• Pristine, icy blue, waterways in Alaska are becoming orange in color. Samples from some of these waterways collected between June and September 2022 contained high concentrations of iron and other toxic metals, including zinc, copper, nickel, and lead, when compared to nearby healthy streams. "Our working hypothesis is that the thawing of permafrost soil is allowing water to infiltrate deeper and interact with minerals that have been locked away for thousands of years."
  - Science Alert, 26 May 2024

• The Yangtze River and the biggest lakes in Zhōngguó are at risk from "illegal fishing and illegal sand mining"
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 26 May 2024

• A reforestation project in the bay of Rio de Janeiro, planting 30,000 mangrove trees, shows the power of mangrove tree forests on bays to mitigate climate disasters
  - Associated Press, 24 May 2024

• Climate change and rapid urbanization worsened the impact of rains in East Africa, scientists say
  - Associated Press, 23 May 2024

• Hydrogen offers Deutschland a chance to take a lead in green energy. A subsidiary of ThyssenKrupp, the venerable steel producer in Germany, is landing major deals for a device that makes the clean-burning gas from water. On both sides of the Atlantic, government are granting huge socialist subsidies to promote hydrogen technology.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 21 May 2024

• Ocean water is rushing mile underneath the 'Doomsday Glacier' (the size of Florida) in Antarctica, with potentially dire impacts on sea level rise. The glacier, which already contributes 4% to global sea level rise, holds enough ice to raise sea levels by more than 2 feet. But because it also acts as a natural dam to the surrounding ice in West Antarctica, scientists have estimated its complete collapse could ultimately lead to around 10 feet of sea level rise -- a catastrophe for the coastal communities of the world.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 20 May 2024

• Mexico City has long thirsted for water. The crisis is worsening. A system of dams and canals may soon be unable to provide water to one of the largest cities in the world, a confluence of unchecked growth, crumbling infrastructure and a changing climate.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 May 2024

• Floods in southern Brazil have smasked through barriers designed to block the floods, trapping water in for weeks -- and exposing social woes. Income inequality remains high, with the rich being able to escape flood conditions by moving to their countryside homes.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 19 May 2024

• Heat stress is hitting Caribbean reefs earlier than ever this year
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 May 2024

• The lush tropical forests in Africa face a surprising threat - fire. Climate change and deforestation have increased the frequency of blazes in the humid forests of West and Central Africa.
  - Nature, 14 May 2024

• In a reservoir in Southeast Brazil, introduction of a fish native to the Amazon has reduced native species diversity
  - Phys.org, 13 May 2024

• Costa Rica is experiencing the worst drought in 50 years, forcing the temperary rationing of water and electricity. Other countries in Central America are facing the same problems.
  - Q Costa Rica, 10 May 2024

• Lethal cyanobacteria are creeping into rivers in the USA -- and no one knows exactly why
  - PNAS, 09 May 2024

• Considered among the worst aquatic weeds in the world, a northern hydrilla subspecies (lithuanica) hinders recreational activities by forming dense canopies. If unchecked, it has the potential to displace native species, and host a bacterium that produces a neuro toxin implicated in bald eagle and waterfowl deaths. Unfortunately, new research shows it is invading new waterbodies in the Northeastern USA very quickly.
  - Cambridge Core, 07 May 2024

• A team of oceanographers and planetary scientists at the Ocean University of Zhōngguó, working with a pair of colleagues from the U.S. and one in Germany, has found via computer modeling, that recent heat waves in the north Pacific may be due to a large reduction in aerosols emitted by factories in Zhōngguó.
  - Phys.org, 07 May 2024

• Floods in southern Brazil kill 57, dozens are missing, and 70,000 people are forced from their homes. Fast-rising water levels in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul were straining dams and also threatening the economically important Porto Alegre, a city of 1.4 million.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 05 May 2024

• How a 'hidden' tax of $1.4 billion will force water bills to rise in New York City. Mayor Adams plans to charge a rent to the city's Water Board.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 May 2024

• The drought that snarled the Panama Canal was linked to El Niño, a study finds. The low water levels that choked cargo traffic were more closely tied to the natural climate cycle than to human-caused warming, a team of scientists has concluded.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 May 2024

• Water heaters use lots of energy. The Energy Department wants to change that. The Biden administration is tightening efficiency rules for water heaters, stoves and other appliances, and conservative politicians are dialing up their criticisms to protect the environment and save consumers money.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 02 May 2024

• Deoleo, the world's largest olive oil producer, says the industry needs to undergo profound a "profound transformation" as it grapples with one of the most challenging moments in its history. A perfect storm of climate change, soaring prices, high interest rates and robust inflation has taken its toll throughout the olive oil value chain in recent months. Two consecutive years of scorching heat in Spain have limited olive harvests, culminating in an unprecedented price rally that has stunned consumers and industry veterans alike.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 02 May 2024

• A plan by the USA to protect oceans has a problem, some say: too much fishing. An effort to protect 30 percent of land and waters would count some commercial fishing zones as conserved areas.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 May 2024

• Half of all copper mining is at drought risk with climate change
  - Bloomberg, 30 April 2024

• A study reports that the deluge of snow in 2023 in California, that helped rescue California from a mega-drought, was essentially a once-in-a-lifetime rescue.
  - Associated Press, 29 April 2024

• Dozens killed after dam bursts in Kenya as weeks of heavy rain devastate region
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 29 April 2024

• Mar Menor, a salt water lagoon on the coast of southeastern Spain, is legally a person. Here is why that could help it to survive.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 29 April 2024

• In a desolate stretch of desert spanning West Texas and New Mexico, drillers are pumping more crude than Kuwait. The oil production is so frenzied that huge swaths of land are literally sinking and heaving. The land was subsided as much as 11 inches since 2015 in a prime portion of the Permian Basin. More earthquakes and pressure increases have local communities worried .
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 29 April 2024

• Miami is 'ground zero' for climate risk, especially flooding due to rising seas and stronger hurricanes. People are moving to the area and building there anyway. The average elevation of Miami is six feet -- the same amount of sea-level rise expected in Southeast Florida by the end of the century. The city is simultaneously sinking. It sits on porous limestone rock, which some engineers have likened to Swiss cheese; in other words, water can easily seep from underground.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 26 April 2024

• Colonies of emperor penguin chicks were wiped out last year in Antarctica, as global heating eroded their icy homes, a study published Thursday found, despite the birds' attempts to adapt to the shrinking landscape.
  - Phys.org, 25 April 2024

• As a drought in Mexico drags on, angry subsistence farmers have begun taking direct action on thirsty avocado orchards and berry fields of commercial farms that are drying up streams in the mountains west of Mexico City. Rivers and even whole lakes are disappearing in the once green and lush state of Michoacan, as the drought combines with a surge in the use of water for the lucrative export crops of Mexico, led by avocados. The rich get richer once again.
  - Associated Press, 24 April 2024

• La Paz County, a town in Arizona with land and homes that are sinking, where water and politics collide. Democrats see an opening to win back rural Trump voters fed up with their groundwater being pumped by huge farms, growing water-sucking alfalfa for dairy cows.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 24 April 2024

• Lake Urmia, in Iran, is the largest hypersaline lake in the Middle East, and risks turning into an environmental disaster zone, having reduced drastically in size in recent decades
  - Nature, 23 April 2024

• Antarctic sea ice has been disappearing over the last several summers. Now, climate scientists are wondering whether it will ever come back.
  - Live Science, 22 April 2024

• Heavy rains fall on southern Zhōngguó as Hong Kong experiences a waterspout. Bad weather in Guangdong Province forced evacuations as forecasters warned of more rain and potential flooding.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 April 2024

• How Big Tech is consuming more and more electricity and water in the USA (and thus causing more environmental harm)
  - Zero Hedge, 19 April 2024

• Rainfall in Yunnan, a province in the southwest of Zhōngguó, has fallen over 40% compared to last year. Yunnan is one of the leading producers of hydropower in Zhōngguó, but it is facing ongoing challenges to its agriculture and energy systems due to the prolonged drought.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 19 April 2024

• Drought pushes millions of people into "acute hunger" in southern Africa. The disaster, intensified by El Niño, is devastating communities across several countries, killing crops and livestock and sending food prices soaring. Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe have all declared national emergencies.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 April 2024

• Cities in Zhōngguó are sinking below sea level. Development and groundwater pumping are causing land subsidence and heightening the risks of sea level rise.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 19 April 2024

• "Water is more valuable than oil": the corporations exploiting water scarcity in the USA. In an unprecedented deal, a private company purchased land in a tiny Arizona town -- and sold its water rights to a suburb 200 miles away. Local residents fear the agreement has "opened a Pandora's box", though admittedly, building residential communities in the desert is just as exploitive and idiotic
  - The Guardian, 16 April 2024

• The widest-ever global coral crisis will hit within weeks, scientists say. Rising sea temperatures around the planet have caused a bleaching event that is expected to be the most extensive on record.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 April 2024

• A crop-rich region in California, part of the San Joaquin Valley, may fall under state monitoring to preserve groundwater flow. The Tulare Lake Subbasin covers a stretch of Kings County, which is home to about 150,000 people halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The county is a major producer of milk, pistachios, cotton and processed tomatoes, according to a county agricultural report.
  - Associated Press, 16 April 2024

• A growing shortage of water in Texas: a window into problems across the USA. Cities as small as San Angelo and as large as San Antonio have purchased water rights in rural areas, diverting the supply of water used by farmers and ranchers over long distances for urban use. Rural Texas, which already had serious water deficits, is in trouble. Farmers and ranchers must have reliable supplies of water to produce the food that we eat. Existing wells are drying up as demand for more wells arises with the building of new subdivisions. Many people, including those in existing subdivisions, are having to purchase water in bulk and have it delivered to meet their basic needs. County officials in Texas do not have sufficient authority to manage growth while protecting our water resources.
  - Zero Hedge, 15 April 2024

• A boat speed limit is pitting yacht owners against whale lovers. A proposed rule would slow boats to 10 knots along the East Coast.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 15 April 2024

• $750,000,000 - Tyco Fire Products, a Marinette manufacturer of firefighting foam, reached a $750 million settlement Friday with public water systems that detected harmful 'forever chemicals' in their drinking water.
  - WPR News, 12 April 2024

• PFAS exposure from high-seafood diets may be underestimated, finds study
  - Medical Xpress, 12 April 2024

• Ocean heat has shattered records for more than a year. What is happening? There have been record temperatures every day for more than a year. Scientists are investigating what is behind the extraordinary measurements.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 April 2024

• The EPA rules that "forever chemicals" must be removed from tap water. Water utilities argue that the cost is too great to protect the health of the public.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 11 April 2024

• Bogota, one of the highest cities in the world, starts retioning water as reservoirs fall to critical levels. The Chuza and San Rafael reservoirs, part of the Chingaza System that provides 70% of the drinking water in Bogota, are at particularly critical positions.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 11 April 2024

• How not to run a water utility. Let Thames Water go into bankruptcy. But after that, water bills need to rise.
  - Economist, 11 April 2024

• Humans have destroyed at least 250,000 acres of estuaries to build cities and farms in last 35 years, study finds
  - Phys.org, 09 April 2024

• Rossiya and Kazakhstan evacuate over 100,000 people amid the worst flooding in decades, after swiftly melting snow swelled mighty rivers beyond bursting point in the worst flooding in the area for at least 70 years.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 09 April 2024

• Rossiya and Kazakhstan evacuate over 100,000 people amid the worst flooding in decades, after swiftly melting snow swelled mighty rivers beyond bursting point in the worst flooding in the area for at least 70 years.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 April 2024

• The energy giant Eni, based in Italy, sees future profits from collecting carbon dioxide and pumping it into natural gas fields that have been exhausted.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 April 2024

• Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) - 'forever chemicals' - are pervasive in water worldwide, study finds. A global survey found harmful levels even in water samples taken far any obvious source of contamination. A new study of more than 45,000 water samples around the world found that about 31 percent of groundwater samples tested that were not near any obvious source of contamination had PFAS levels considered harmful to human health by the Environmental Protection Agency.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 09 April 2024

• Why the price of cacao and chocolate exploded: how climate change and drought drives inflation.
  - Salon, 08 April 2024

• Venezuela battles a record number of wildfires worsened by drougght in the Amazon
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 02 April 2024

• Hydroelectricity output in Bharat fell 16% at the steepest pace in at least 38 years during the year ended March 31, a Reuters analysis of government data showed, as erratic rainfall forced further dependence on coal-fired power amid higher demand.
  - Mises Institute, 01 April 2024

• The 'Silicon Valley' of Bharat faces a water crisis that software cannot solve. Bengaluru gets plenty of rain. But the city did not properly adapt as its soaring population strained traditional water sources. As the city rapidly grew, water management fell behind and never caught up as otherwise healthy aquifers were drawn dry by the unchecked spread of urban bore wells.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 April 2024

• They grow your berries and peaches, but often lack one item: insurance. Farmers of fruits and vegetables say coverage has become unavailable or unaffordable as drought and floods increasingly threaten their crops.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 01 April 2024

• Concern over food and water supply grows among Europeans
  - Zero Hedge, 31 March 2024

• Kongjian Yu has a plan for cities that flood: stop fighting the water. A landscape architect in Zhōngguó has a surprising strategy to help manage surges of water from storms supercharged by climate change -- the development of hundreds of landscaped urban water parks where runoff from flash floods is diverted to soak into the ground or be absorbed into constructed wetlands..
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 March 2024

• Lawmakers in Texas rush to stop "catastrophic-level event" at oil fields in Texas due to leaks of toxic and radioactive water from the oil wells. "We are going to have complete and utter ecological devastation."
  - The Cool Down, 29 March 2024

• Investors are refusing to inject $4 billion in new money into the biggest water company in Britain - Thames Water, leaving the beleaguered business at risk of an emergency government takeover. Thames Water has over 17 billion of debt. Water companies in England and Wales have racked up billions of pounds of debt since they were sold to private investors in 1989, while raising little new funding from shareholders and paying out billions of pounds in dividends to make the rich richer.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 28 March 2024

• What lies beneath: London boat race marred by sewage concerns. Rowers in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race this weekend have been warned of dangerously high levels of E. coli in the River Thames, the latest sign of the polluted waterways in England. One reason is privatization of water in 1989. Critics accuse the water companies of paying out huge sums in dividends to their shareholders while failing to make vital infrastructure investments.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 March 2024

• Canada had designs on being a hydropower superpower. Now its rivers and lakes are drying up. About 70% of the country is suffering from abnormally dry or drought conditions, forcing it to start up power plants fueled by gas or coal to meet mushrooming demand.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 28 March 2024

• Heat and drought are sucking US hydropower dry. Hydropower in the Western US last year was the lowest it has been in decades, and 2024 is not looking much better.
  - Thomson's Reuters, 26 March 2024

• Shipbrokers in the Atlantic dry bulk freight market are starting to price routes via the Panama Canal for the first time since October 2023, according to shipping sources. Waiting times at the canal have fallen to about three days on average.
  - MarkwetWatch, 26 March 2024

• 51 of the 164 countries and territories analyzed are expected to suffer from high to extremely high water stress by 2050, which corresponds to 31 percent of the population of the planet, most in Africa and the Middle East
  - Zero Hedge, 23 March 2024

• Barren fields and empty stomachs: a long, punishing drought in Afghanistan. In a country especially vulnerable to climate change, a drought has displaced entire villages and left millions of children malnourished.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 23 March 2024

• In a trailblazing study, researchers have discovered bottled water sold in stores can contain 10 to 100 times more bits of plastic than previously estimated -- nanoparticles so infinitesimally tiny they cannot be seen under a microscope. At 1,000th the average width of a human hair, nanoplastics are so teeny they can migrate through the tissues of the digestive tract or lungs into the bloodstream, distributing potentially harmful synthetic chemicals throughout the body and into cells, experts say.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 22 March 2024

• Why the Panama Canal did not lose money when ship crossings fell. A water shortage forced officials to reduce traffic, but higher fees increased revenue. In the 12 months through September, the canal's revenue rose 15 percent, to nearly $5 billion, even though the tonnage shipped through the canal fell 1.5 percent.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 March 2024

• Tens of millions of people in Bangladesh drink water contaminated with naturally occuring arsenic. It could get a lot worse, not only for Bangladesh, as global heating pushes up sub-surface waters with more arsenic.
  - Zero Hedge, 21 March 2024

• Reservoirs (embalses) in Colombia are 33% filled. If they drop to 6% more to 27%, a red alert will be raised and water restrictions imposed as at these levels, it is harder to generate power
  - El Nuevo Siglo, 20 March 2024

• The Panama Canal has avoided the worst of a shipping crunch that threatened to upend the global economy -- but at a cost to marine life and the the supplies of drinking water for Panama. Some of the seawater that is recycled in the Canal is leaking into the freshwater Lake Gatun, making the water saltier - which is used for drinking water in central Panama.
  - Phys.org, 18 March 2024

• The deadliest fire in Chile is said to have been made worse by a lack of water. Poor water pressure and dry hydrants posed major obstacles to fighting the February fire that killed scores of people along the Pacific Coast of Chile in the region of Valparaiso.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 March 2024

• Bengaluru, in the south of Bharat, is fast running out of water, and a long, scorching summer still looms. Groundwater, relied on by over a third of the 13 million residents of the city, is fast running out. City authorities say 6,900 of the 13,900 borewells drilled in the city have run dry despite some being drilled to depths of 1,500 feet. Those reliant on groundwater, like Muthuvel, now have to depend on water tankers that pump from nearby villages.
  - Zero Hedge, 16 March 2024

• In Louisiana, extreme weather does the unforgivable: endanger crawfish season. Drought conditions over the summer boiled crawfish before farmers could harvest them, creating a dire situation that the governor has declared a disaster.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 March 2024

• Beach town residents paid $600,000 for sand. It lasted a few days. Residents who live on Salisbury Beach, a seaside community in northern Massachusetts, paid for the sand dunes to protect their beachfront homes from storms. Then a storm came.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 March 2024

• How fears of Zhōngguó have raised interest in Washington on ocean-floor mining. Harvesting the ocean floor is growing in popularity in Washington amid a push to extract rare minerals for defense applications.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 16 March 2024

• Former military and political leaders in the USA call on the Senate to ratify the Law of the Sea treaty. The move is part of an effort to spur the country's interest in deep-sea mining amid competition with Zhōngguó for critical minerals.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 14 March 2024

• Native groups in Argentina sit on a treasure trove of lithium. Now mines threaten their water, culture and wealth. While the water inside the lithium lagoons is not drinkable, they are tethered to surrounding fresh water sources, sparse rains and nearby mountain streams, essential for the survival of thousands of indigenous communities.
  - Associated Press, 13 March 2024

• In the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, the lure of moving to the city grows even stronger amid climate shocks. Unsustainable extraction of groundwater and sand for construction have made matters worse. And with rising seas gnawing away at its southern edge and dams hemming the Mekong River upstream, farming in the fertile delta is getting harder.
  - Associatde Press, 12 March 2024

• Coastal land is sinking, doubling the potential damage from rising seas. That could have profound impacts on real estate, infrastructure and the U.S. economy. Coastal lands are sinking as much as five millimeters a year in some areas. Sea-level rise is about three millimeters a year. If you add the sinking of the land to sea level rise, it doubles the frequency of flooding and cuts the time that cities and coastal residents have to prepare in half.
  - Comcast's CNBC, 12 March 2024

• Rains are scarce in the Amazon. Instead, megafires are raging. Hundreds of square miles of the rainforest have burned as countries in the region battle a record number of fires fueled by extreme weather.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 March 2024

• Arizona officials said a Saudi-owned company, Fondomonte, they targeted over its use of groundwater to grow forage crops is moving its farming operation out of a valley in the western part of Colorado. Fondomonte, a subsidiary of Saudi dairy giant Almarai Co., held four separate lease agreements in the Butler Valley Basin to grow alfalfa that feeds livestock in the Gulf kingdom, a complete waste of vital water resources.
  - Associated Press, 08 March 2024

• The new-look of winter in Europe: floods, high sea levels and melting glaciers. People are seeing extreme weather in action, but not voting to stop it.
  - Economist, 07 March 2024

• The world must rethink plans for ageing oil and gas platforms. The oceans of Earth are awash with ageing energy infrastructure. A change in the law is needed to ensure that these structures are decommissioned in ways that maximize environmental and societal benefits.
  - Nature, 06 March 2024

• The Arctic ocean could be free of ice within 10 years
  - Los Angeles Times, 05 March 2024

• As 'zombie fires' smolder, Canada prepares for another season of flames. A government forecast suggests that there could be even more wildfires this season than during last year's exceptional fire period.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 05 March 2024

• Trillions of gallons of water leak from aging drinking water systems, further stressing shrinking US cities, leaks especially from decrepit systems in communities struggling with significant population loss and industrial decline that leave behind poorer residents, vacant neighborhoods and too-large water systems that are difficult to maintain.
  - Associated Press, 04 March 2024

• A new analysis of freshwater resources across the globe shows that human activity has pushed variation in the the freshwater cycle of Earth well outside of its pre-industrial range. Human pressures, such as dam construction, large-scale irrigation and global heating, have altered freshwater resources to such an extent that their capacity to regulate vital ecological and climatic processes is at risk.
  - Univ. Nottingham, 04 March 2024

• 1 in 5 species of fish in the Mekong river face extinction, with hydropower being the greatest threat. Some 19 per cent of the roughly 1,100 fish species in the longest river in SouthEast Asia are heading towards extinction, according to a report compiled by the WWF and 25 global marine and wildlife conservation groups.
  - Alibaba's South China Morning Post, 04 March 2024

• Court rulings give states new power to protect groundwater. In the space of a few weeks, judges in Idaho, Nevada and Montana have altered the landscape for conserving dwindling aquifers.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 March 2024

• Ranchers in climate-change-denying Texas face crippling losses. Fires burning across the plains of Texas, Kansas and Nebraska have hit ranchers hard. Dry, windy weather threatens to make the fires worse. Thousands of animals have been killed, and outbuildings and homes have been destroyed in fires across Texas, Nebraska and Kansas. Scorched grazing lands means their surviving cows may starve if left alone. Cattle prices are at all time highs, making buying new cattle, with interest rates also high, difficult when you already have a stack of bills for the next season.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 03 March 2024

• AI is draining the deserts of viral water resources. One Microsoft project in Arizona will use up to 50 million gallons of water every year. That might be a burden in the best of times. As of 2023, it seemed absurd. The Colorado River, which provides drinking water and hydropower throughout the region, has been dwindling. Farmers have already had to fallow fields, and a community on the eastern outskirts of Phoenix went without tap water for most of the year.
  - The Atlantic, 01 March 2024

• More than half of the ponds have disappeared in Britain. But "ghost" wetlands can be resuscitated.
  - Economist, 29 February 2024

• The East Coast is sinking. New satellite-based research reveals how land along the coast is slumping into the ocean, compounding the danger from global sea level rise. A major culprit: overpumping of groundwater.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 February 2024

• A devastating wildfire ravages parts of the Texas Panhandle, home to more than 85% of the state's cattle herd. This comes when the nation's cattle herd has collapsed to a seven-decade low, pushing up retail beef prices at the supermarket to record high levels.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 February 2024

• Climate change is raising the already high wildfire risks of climate-change-denying Texas. The Smokehouse Creek fire is a sign of more to come. Property insurers in Texas are already raising the price of their policies, and withdrawing sales from some parts of the state. Homeowners in Texas saw their insurance rates increase 53.6 percent between 2019 and 2023.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 February 2024

• The second-largest wildfire on record in Texas raged across 850,000 acres on Wednesday, as firefighters from around the state tried to contain it. The blaze has consumed houses, burned vast ranch lands, killed livestock and forced evacuations across the sparsely populated Texas Panhandle.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 29 February 2024

• Why is mercury stubbornly high in tuna? Old accumulations of the toxic metal in the deep sea are circulating into shallower waters where the fish feed, new research found.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 28 February 2024

• The government of Zhōngguó arrests more than 1000 people in Tibet, after protests against a project to build a dam
  - Zero Hedge, 26 February 2024

• Mexico City may be just months away from running out of water, a huge problem from one of the biggest cities in the world with 22 million people. Years of abnormally low rainfall, longer dry periods and high temperatures have added stress to a water system already straining to cope with increased demand. Authorities have been forced to introduce significant restrictions on the water pumped from reservoirs. When the Spanish arrived in the early 16th century, they tore down much of the city, drained the lakebed, filled in canals and ripped out forests. Their decision paved the way for many of the modern problems for Mexico City. Wetlands and rivers have been replaced with concrete and asphalt. In the rainy season, it floods. In the dry season, it is parched.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 25 February 2024

• Native American tribes are finally given the power to halt hydroelectric projects on their lands if they oppose the plans
  - OilPrice.com, 23 February 2024

• Inside the search for a super kelp that can survive hotter oceans. Scientists are using AI, genetic analysis and even a salmon farm to save disappearing underwater forests.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 23 February 2024

• The Great Lakes bordering the USA and Canada re nearly ice-free this winter. Generally warmer weather and El Niño this year have led to the lowest ice cover over the lakes since records began.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 17 February 2024

• Because of global heating, ocean temperatures are skyrocketing arond the world, and scientists do not understand why. Shattered temperature records have grim implications for hurricane season. The oceans have been steadily warming over the decades, absorbing something like 90 percent of the extra heat that humans have added to the atmosphere.
  - Condé Nast's Ars Technica, 16 February 2024

• Extreme flooding and droughts may be the new norm for the Amazon, challenging its people and ecosystems
  - Science, 15 February 2024

• The Amazon rain forest has survived changes in the climate for 65 million years. Now the Amazon is heading for collapse, a study says. The Amazon rainforest is on course to reach a crucial tipping point as soon as 2050.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 14 February 2024

• The Amazon rain forest has survived changes in the climate for 65 million years. Now the Amazon is heading for collapse, a study says. The Amazon rainforest is on course to reach a crucial tipping point as soon as 2050.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 14 February 2024

• Wildfire smoke will worsen, new study shows, and protections are few. Climate change is amplifying wildfires, and more smoke means higher risk of heart and lung disease from inhaling tiny particles that can drift far and wide, researchers said.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 February 2024

• Greenland has lost volumes of ice that are 36 times the size of New York in the last 30 years. That is a huge problem for the planet, for example, accelerating the rise of global sea levels.
  - Warner Brothers CNN, 13 February 2024

• The deadliest outbreak of cholera in the past decade hits southern Africa. The waterborne disease has killed more than 4,000 people in seven countries over the past two years. Experts blame severe storms, a lack of vaccines, and poor water and sewer systems.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 13 February 2024

• The Great Salt Lake in Utah is filled with lithium. A startup wants to harvest it. The company, Lilac, has raised $145 million from Bill Gate's Breakthrough Energy Ventures and other investors.
  - Murdoch's Wall Street Journal (locked), 13 February 2024

• In a victory bought by Poland Spring (backed by private equity funds), the Senate of Maine voted down a bill that would have limited large-scale pumping of groundwater in the state. Poland Spring, the bottled-water giant, had lobbied aggressively against the measure. The proposal would have placed a 10-year limit on large-scale water-extraction contracts, a restriction that the bill's supporters said would protect precious groundwater in Maine at a time when water levels are falling across the country.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 10 February 2024

• More than 70 million Americans have water contaminated with 'forever chemicals' (PFAS) which are linked to cancer, as well as reproductivae and immune system damage.
  - Murdoch's New York Post, 09 February 2024

• Circulation of waters in the Atlantic Ocean, in particular the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, is nearing a tipping point that is "devastating" in that it would collapse at speeds making adaptation impossible. Sea levels in the Atlantic would rise by a meter in some regions, inundating many coastal cities. The wet and dry seasons in the Amazon would flip, potentially pushing the already weakened rainforest past its own tipping point.
  - The Guardian, 09 February 2024

• Circulation of waters in the Atlantic Ocean, in particular the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, is nearing a tipping point that is "devastating" in that it would collapse at speeds making adaptation impossible. Sea levels in the Atlantic would rise by a meter in some regions, inundating many coastal cities. The wet and dry seasons in the Amazon would flip, potentially pushing the already weakened rainforest past its own tipping point.
  - Live Science, 09 February 2024

• Water level projections threaten future Panama Canal transits
  - Freight Waves, 08 February 2024

• $500,000,000+ - A yearlong New York Times investigation, drawing on thousands of pages of government records and interviews with city officials across Mississippi, reveals how Siemens and other corporations (McNeil Rhoads, Mueller) went from one small, cash-strapped town to the next making grand promises to modernize water systems and boost revenues. The deals racked up debt and left many worse off than before. Officials in some of the cities say they have been financially crippled. Out of the six known cities that hired McNeil Rhoads, four are majority Black. Jackson, Mississippi, lost an estimated $450 million in expenses and lost revenues.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 February 2024

• The 'fingerprints' on fires in Chile and floods in California: El Niñno and global heating. Two disasters, far apart, show how a dangerous climate cocktail can devastate places known for mild weather.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 February 2024

• By examining centuries-old sponges in the Caribbean Sea, scientists have determined that humans raised global temperatures by a total of about 1.7 degrees Celsius, or 3.1 Fahrenheit, not 1.2 degrees Celsius, the most commonly used value.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 06 February 2024

• Fishermen who harvest one of the most valuable marine species in the USA hoped for permission to catch more baby eels next year, but regulators said Monday the tight restrictions that have been in place for several years are likely to stay the same
  - Associated Press, 05 February 2024

• William Ruto, president of Kenya, wants to build a paved road through a forest, the Aberfare Range, that is a key water source for the country and a key wildlife habitat.
  - AP News, 03 February 2024

• Prices for cocoa rise to a 46-year high as drought concerns threaten crops in West Africa
  - Zero Hedge, 02 February 2024

• How a US mining firm sued Mexico for billions -- for Mexico trying to protect its own seabeds. Local fishers helped halt undermining mining off the coast of Baja California om 2018. But then an obscure international legal process -- investor-state dispute settlements -- which favors rich corporations, was put into motion.
  - The Guardian, 31 January 2024

• The western provinces of Canada have been hit by the worst drought in years and provincial utilities are getting into losses as their hydropower generating capacities are lower amid low reservoir levels
  - Zero Hedge, 29 January 2024

• Colombia, a usually wet nation, reels amid widespread wildfires. Firefighters, many of them volunteers, have been confronting dozens of blazes amid high temperatures this month. The conditions have been linked to climate change.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 27 January 2024

• Wildfires rage near the capital of Colombia as temperatures soar. Forest fires have destroyed more than 17,000 hectares, with blazes burning kilometres from residential areas in Bogota.
  - Al Jazeera, 27 January 2024

• Pumped storage hydropower plants can bank energy for times when wind and solar power fall short
  - Science, 25 January 2024

• Thg 6 states in the USA experiencing the most serious crises with groundwater depletion: California, Texas, Idaho, Arizona, Utah
  - The Hill, 26 January 2024

• Global heating increased drought in the Amazon
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 25 January 2024

• Groundwater levels are rapidly declining around the world -- with a few notable exceptions (Bangkok, Arizona, New Mexico). Groundwater levels declined between 2000 and 2022 in 71% of the 1,693 aquifer systems included in the research, with groundwater levels declining more than 0.1 meter a year in 36%, or 617, of them.
  - Newhouse CNN, 24 January 2024

• Groundwater levels are rapidly declining around the world -- with a few notable exceptions (Bangkok, Arizona, New Mexico). Groundwater levels declined between 2000 and 2022 in 71% of the 1,693 aquifer systems included in the research, with groundwater levels declining more than 0.1 meter a year in 36%, or 617, of them.
  - Nature, 24 January 2024

• Emergency declared in San Diego as wettest January day on record brings widespread flooding
  - NBC News, 23 January 2024

• As glaciers in Switzerland shrink, a way of life may be melting away. Rising temperatures and retreating glaciers threaten sources of water in Europe, forcing local farmers to adapt and presaging larger troubles downstream. Switzerland has long been considered the water tower of Europe, the place where deep winter snows would accumulate and gently melt through the warmer months, augmenting the trickling runoff from thick glaciers that helped sustain many of the rivers in Europe and its ways of life for centuries. In the past two years alone, Swiss glaciers have lost 10 percent of their water volume -- as much as melted in the three decades from 1960 to 1990.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 22 January 2024

• Farmers drained part of the Merced river for months. Officials did not find out about the theft until after the fact, raising questions about the state's ability to manage supplies during droughts. Worse, it was not illegal. The water system of California is geared more toward protecting water users' rights than helping the environment.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 20 January 2024

• Greenland is shedding 20 percent more than previously estimated, a study found, potentially threatening ocean currents that help to regulate global temperatures
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 18 January 2024

• It is January at a big ski resort in the Himalayas. But where is the snow? A dry winter has been devastating to Gulmarg, one of the highest ski resorts in Asia, in Kashmir which is controlled by Bharat.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 17 January 2024

• As realestate development alters the nature and culture of the islands of Greece, some local residents fight back. As a proliferation of pools threatens some water supplies and housing costs skyrocket, people of the Cycladic islands say the Aegean islands' character is being lost to the crime of real-estate homogenization.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 January 2024

• Drought affects a quarter of humanity, disrupting lives around the world
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 16 January 2024

• Many laws to protect sharks have backfired, researchers find. A few countries have successful policies, but well-intentioned rules in others appear to have inadvertently increased demand for shark meat.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 January 2024

• Global heating is driving a sharp drop in the levels of snow. Parts of the Northern Hemisphere are warming enough that their prospects of future snow are rapidly declining.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 12 January 2024

• Analysis of a large, varied data set reveals that snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has undergone marked changes in the past four decades. Evidence that humans caused the shift suggests that snow loss will accelerate in the future.
  - Nature, 10 January 2024

• People are swallowing hundreds of thousands of microscopic pieces of plastic each time they drink a liter of bottled water. A new study finds that 'nanoplastics' are even more common than microplastics in bottled water.
  - Jeff Bezos' Washington Post, 08 January 2024

• Land along the East Coast of the USA continues to collapse at a worrying rate of up to 2 millimeters a year (while coastal waters are rising 4 millimeters a year). It is steadily sinking or subsiding, which is destabilizing levees, roads, and airports. With each millimeter of subsidence, it gets easier for storm surges to creep farther inland, destroying more and more infrastructure.
  - Condé Nast's Ars Technica, 06 January 2024

• Desert swallows livelihoods as climate shocks continue in northeast Nigeria. More communities on the fringes of the Sahara desert say they are losing their farmlands and homes.
  - Al Jazeera, 05 January 2024

• A case study for strawberry farmer: what if farmers had to pay for their use of groundwater? With aquifers nationwide in dangerous decline, one part of California has tried essentially taxing groundwater. New research shows that it is working.
  - Ochs-Sulzberger's New York Times, 04 January 2024

• Three-quarters of all industrial fishing vessels and a quarter of transport and energy ships (a category that includes oil tankers, cargo ships, passenger ships and support vessels), have been left out of previous tallies of human activity at sea.
  - Economist, 03 January 2024

• Great Lakes ice cover is nearly non-existent and reaches 50-year record low
  - Newhouse CNN, 03 January 2024