climate change

Lawsuit: EPA revoking greenhouse gas finding risks “thousands of avoidable deaths”

climate change, climate denial, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, greenhouse gas emissions, Policy, trump administration / Kelly Newman / February 18, 2026

EPA sued for abandoning its mission to protect public health.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency was accused of abandoning its mission to protect public health after repealing an “endangerment finding” that has served as the basis for federal climate change regulations for 17 years.

The lawsuit came from more than a dozen environmental and health groups, including the American Public Health Association, the American Lung Association, the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), the Clean Air Council, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Sierra Club, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.

The groups have asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to review the EPA decision, which also eliminated requirements controlling greenhouse gas emissions in new cars and trucks. Urging a return to the status quo, the groups argued that the Trump administration is anti-science and illegally moving to benefit the fossil fuel industry, despite a mountain of evidence demonstrating the deadly consequences of unchecked pollution and climate change-induced floods, droughts, wildfires, and hurricanes.

“Undercutting the ability of the federal government to tackle the largest source of climate pollution is deadly serious,” Meredith Hankins, legal director for federal climate at NRDC, said in an EDF roundup of statements from plaintiffs.

The science is overwhelmingly clear, the groups argued, despite the Trump EPA attempting to muddy the waters by forming a since-disbanded working group of climate contrarians.

Trump is a longtime climate denier, as evidenced by a Euro News tracker monitoring his most controversial comments. Most recently, during a cold snap affecting much of the US, he predictably trolled environmentalists, writing on Truth Social, “could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain—WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING?”

The EPA’s final rule summary bragged that “this is the single largest deregulatory action in US history and will save Americans over $1.3 trillion” by 2055. Supposedly, carmakers will pass on any savings from no longer having to meet emissions requirements, giving Americans more access to affordable cars by shutting down expensive emissions and EV mandates “strangling” the auto industry. Sounding nothing like an agency created to monitor pollutants, a fact sheet on the final rule emphasized that Trump’s EPA “chooses consumer choice over climate change zealotry every time.”

Critics quickly slammed Trump’s claims that removing the endangerment finding would help the economy. Any savings from cheaper vehicles or reduced costs of charging infrastructure (as Americans ostensibly buy fewer EVs) would be offset by $1.4 trillion “in additional costs from increased fuel purchases, vehicle repair and maintenance, insurance, traffic congestion, and noise,” The Guardian reported. The EPA’s economic analysis also ignores public health costs, the groups suing alleged. David Pettit, an attorney at the CBD’s Climate Law Institute, slammed the EPA’s messaging as an attempt to sway consumers without explaining the true costs.

“Nobody but Big Oil profits from Trump trashing climate science and making cars and trucks guzzle and pollute more,” Pettit said. “Consumers will pay more to fill up, and our skies and oceans will fill up with more pollution.”

If the court sides with the EPA, “people everywhere will face more pollution, higher costs, and thousands of avoidable deaths,” Peter Zalzal, EDF’s associate vice president of clean air strategies, said.

EPA argued climate change evidence is “out of scope”

For environmentalists, the decision to sue the EPA was risky but necessary. By putting up a fight, they risk a court potentially reversing the 2009 Supreme Court ruling requiring the EPA to conduct the initial endangerment analysis and then regulate any pollution found from greenhouse gases.

Seemingly, that reversal is what the Trump administration has been angling for, hoping the case will reach the Supreme Court, which is more conservative today and perhaps less likely to read the Clean Air Act as broadly as the 2009 court.

It’s worth the risk, according to William Piermattei, the managing director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. He told The New York Times that environmentalists had no choice but to file the lawsuit and act on the public’s behalf.

Environmentalists “must challenge this,” Piermattei said. If they didn’t, they’d be “agreeing that we should not regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act, full stop.” He suggested that “a majority of the public, does not agree with that statement at all.”

Since 2010, the EPA has found that the scientific basis for concluding that “elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated to endanger the public health and welfare of current and future US generations is robust, voluminous, and compelling.” And since then, the evidence base has only grown, the groups suing said.

Trump used to seem intimidated by the “overwhelming” evidence, environmentalists have noted. During Trump’s prior term, he notably left the endangerment finding in place, perhaps expecting that the evidence was irrefutable. He’s now renewed that fight, arguing that the evidence should be set aside, so that courts can focus on whether Congress “must weigh in on ‘major questions’ that have significant political and economic implications” and serve as a check on the EPA.

In the EPA’s comments addressing public concerns about the agency ignoring evidence, the agency has already argued that evidence of climate change is “out of scope” since the EPA did not repeal the basis of the finding. Instead, the EPA claims it is merely challenging its own authority to continue to regulate the auto industry for harmful emissions, suggesting that only Congress has that authority.

The Clean Air Act “does not provide EPA statutory authority to prescribe motor vehicle emission standards for the purpose of addressing global climate change concerns,” the EPA said. “In the absence of such authority, the Endangerment Finding is not valid, and EPA cannot retain the regulations that resulted from it.”

Whether courts will agree that evidence supporting climate change is “out of scope” could determine whether the Supreme Court’s prior decision that compelled the endangerment finding is ultimately overturned. If that happens, subsequent administrations may struggle to issue a new endangerment finding to undo any potential damage. All eyes would then turn to Congress to pass a law to uphold protections.

EPA accused of abandoning its mission

By ignoring science, the EPA risks eroding public trust, according to Hana Vizcarra, a senior lawyer at the nonprofit Earthjustice, which is representing several groups in the litigation.

“With this action, EPA flips its mission on its head,” Vizcarra said. “It abandons its core mandate to protect human health and the environment to boost polluting industries and attempts to rewrite the law in order to do so.”

Groups appear confident that the courts will consider the science. Joanne Spalding, director of the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program, noted that the early 2000s litigation from the Sierra Club brought about the original EPA protections. She vowed that the Sierra Club would continue fighting to keep them.

“People should not be forced to suffer for this administration’s blind allegiance to the fossil fuel industry and corporate polluters,” Spalding said. “This shortsighted rollback is blatantly unlawful and their efforts to force this upon the American people will fail.”

Ankush Bansal, board president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, warned that courts cannot afford to ignore the evidence. The EPA’s “devastating decision” goes “against the science and testimony of countless scientists, health care professionals, and public health practitioners,” Bansal said. If upheld, the long-term consequences could seemingly bury courts in future legal battles.

“It will result in direct harm to the health of Americans throughout the country, particularly children, older adults, those with chronic illnesses, and other vulnerable populations, rural to urban, red and blue, of all races and incomes,” Bansal said. “The increased exposure to harmful pollutants and other greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel production and consumption will make America sicker, not healthier, less prosperous, not more, for generations to come.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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EPA kills foundation of greenhouse gas regulations

carbon emissions, climate change, EPA, Policy, Supreme Court / 9u50fv / February 12, 2026

In a widely expected move, the Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it is revoking an analysis of greenhouse gases that laid the foundation for regulating their emissions by cars, power plants, and industrial sources. The analysis, called an endangerment finding, was initially ordered by the US Supreme Court in 2007 and completed during the Obama administration; it has, in theory, served as the basis of all government regulations of carbon dioxide emissions since.

In practice, lawsuits and policy changes between Democratic and Republican administrations have meant it has had little impact. In fact, the first Trump administration left the endangerment finding in place, deciding it was easier to respond to it with weak regulations than it was to challenge its scientific foundations, given the strength of the evidence for human-driven climate change.

Legal tactics

The second Trump administration, however, was prepared to tackle the science head-on, gathering a group of contrarians to write a report questioning that evidence. It did not go well, either scientifically or legally.

Today’s announcement ignores the scientific foundations of the endangerment finding and argues that it’s legally flawed. “The Trump EPA’s final rule dismantles the tactics and legal fictions used by the Obama and Biden Administrations to backdoor their ideological agendas on the American people,” the EPA claims. The claim is awkward, given that the “legal fictions” referenced include a Supreme Court decision ordering the EPA to conduct an endangerment analysis.

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COVID-19 cleared the skies but also supercharged methane emissions

atmospheric science, chemistry, climate change, Covid, greenhouse gasses, methane, pandemic, pollution, Science / Beth Washington / February 6, 2026

The remaining question, though, was where all this methane was coming from in the first place. Throughout the pandemic, there was speculation that the surge might be caused by super-emitter events in the oil and gas sector, or perhaps a lack of maintenance on leaky infrastructure during lockdowns.

But the new research suggests that the source of these emissions was not what many expected.

The microbial surge

While the weakened atmospheric sink explained the bulk of the 2020 surge, it wasn’t the only factor at play. The remaining 20 percent of the growth, and an even larger portion of the growth in 2021 and 2022, came from an increase in actual emissions from the ground. To track the source of these emissions down, Peng’s team went through tons of data from satellites and various ground monitoring stations.

Methane comes in different isotopic signatures. Methane from fossil fuels like natural gas leaks or coal mines is heavier, containing a higher fraction of the stable isotope carbon-13. Conversely, methane produced by microbes found in the guts of livestock, in landfills, and most notably in wetlands, is lighter, enriched in carbon-12.

When the researchers analyzed data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration global flask network, a worldwide monitoring system tracking the chemical composition of Earth’s atmosphere, they found that the atmospheric methane during the mysterious surge was becoming significantly lighter. This was a smoking gun for biogenic sources. The surge wasn’t coming from pipes or power plants; it was coming from microbes.

La Niña came to play

The timing of the pandemic coincided with a relatively rare meteorological event. La Niña, the cool phase of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation that typically leads to increased rainfall in the tropics, lasted for three consecutive Northern Hemisphere winters (from 2020 to 2023). This made the early 2020s exceptionally wet.

The researchers used satellite data from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite and sophisticated atmospheric models to trace the source of the light methane to vast wetland areas in tropical Africa and Southeast Asia. In regions like the Sudd in South Sudan and the Congo Basin, record-breaking rainfall flooded massive swaths of land. In these waterlogged, oxygen-poor environments, microbial methanogens thrived, churning out methane at an accelerated pace.

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Judge rules Department of Energy’s climate working group was illegal

climate change, doe, endangerment finding, EPA, greenhouse gasses, lawsuit, Policy, Science / Shannon Garcia / February 2, 2026

But the flaws weren’t limited to scientific deficiencies. Two advocacy organizations, the Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists, sued, alleging that the Climate Working Group violated various provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. This requires that any groups formed to provide the government with advice must be fairly balanced and keep records that are open to the public. The Climate Working Group, by contrast, operated in secret; in fact, emails obtained during the trial showed that its members were advised to use private emails to limit public scrutiny of their communications.

In response, the DOE dissolved the Climate Working Group in order to claim that the legal issues were moot, as the advisory committee at issue in the suit no longer existed.

No defense

In court, the government initially argued that the Federal Advisory Committee Act didn’t apply, claiming that the Climate Working Group was simply organized to provide information to the government. Based on Friday’s ruling, however, once the court tried to consider that issue, the government shifted to simply arguing that the Climate Working Group no longer existed, so none of this mattered. “The Defendants, in their Opposition and subsequent filings, ignore the allegations relating to the [Federal Advisory Committee Act] violations themselves,” the judge states. “Rather, the Defendants argue only that these claims are moot because the Climate Working Group has been dissolved.”

So, the court was left with little more than the accusations that the Climate Working Group had a membership with biased opinions, failed to hold open meetings, and did not keep public records. Given the lack of opposing arguments, “These violations are now established as a matter of law.”

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Zillow removed climate risk scores. This climate expert is restoring them.

California, climate change, insurance risk, Science, syndication / Kelly Newman / January 21, 2026

In this way, climate risk models today are better suited to characterize the “ broad environment of risk,” said Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. “ The more detailed you get to be either in space or in time, the less precise your projections are.”

Matouka’s California climate risk plugin is designed for communicating what he said is the “standing potential risks in the area,” not specific property risk.

While climate risk models often differ in their results, achieving increased accuracy moving forward will be dependent on transparency, said Jesse Gourevitch, an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund. California is unique, since so much publicly available, state data is open to the public. Reproducing Matouka’s plugin for other states will likely be more difficult.

Private data companies present a specific challenge. They make money from their models and are reluctant to share their methods. “A lot of these private-sector models tend not to be very transparent and it can be difficult to understand what types of data or methodologies that they’re using,” said Gourevitch.

Matouka’s plugin includes publicly available data from the state of California and federal agencies, whose extensive methods are readily available online. Overall, experts tend to agree on the utility of both private and public data sources for climate risk data, even with needed improvements.

“People who are making decisions that involve risk benefit from exposure to as many credible estimates as possible, and exposure to independent credible estimates adds a lot of extra value,” Field said.

As for Matouka, his plugin is still undergoing beta testing. He said he welcomes feedback as he develops the tool and evaluates its readiness for widespread use. The beta version is available here.

Claire Barber is a fellow at Inside Climate News and masters in journalism student at Stanford University. She is an environmental and outdoor journalist, reporting primarily in the American Southwest and West. Her writing has appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Outside, Powder Magazine, Field & Stream, Trails Magazine, and more. She loves to get lost in the woods looking for a hot spring, backpacking to secluded campsites, and banana slugs.

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

Zillow removed climate risk scores. This climate expert is restoring them. Read More »

Ocean damage nearly doubles the cost of climate change

climate change, ocean ecology, Science, syndication / Mike M. / January 18, 2026

Using greenhouse gas emission predictions, the report estimates the annual damages to traditional markets alone will be $1.66 trillion by 2100.

The study, which began in 2021, brought together scientists from multiple disciplines: Fisheries experts, coral reef researchers, biologists and climate economists. They assessed downstream climate change costs across four key sectors—corals, mangroves, fisheries, and seaports—measuring everything from straightforward market loss of reduced fisheries and marine trade to reductions in ocean-based recreational industries.

Researchers also placed a monetary figure on what economists call non-use values. “Something has value because it makes the world feel more livable, meaningful, or worth protecting, even if we never directly use it,” said Bastien-Olvera, referencing the fiscal merit of ecosystem enjoyment and the cultural loss caused by climate change. “Most people will never visit a coral reef during a full-moon spawning event, or see a deep-sea jellyfish glowing in total darkness. But many still care deeply that these things exist.”

Island economies, which rely more on seafood for nutrition, will face disproportionate financial and health impacts from ocean warming and acidification, the study said. “The countries that have the most responsibility for causing climate change and the most capacity to fix it are not generally the same countries that will experience the largest or most near-term damages,” said Kate Ricke, co-author and climate professor at UCSD’s School of Global Policy and Strategy. Including ocean data in social cost of carbon assessments reveals increased consequences for morbidity and mortality in low-income countries facing increased nutrition deficiency.

Despite the scale of the scientific discovery, Bastien-Olvera and Ricke are optimistic this data will be a wake-up call for international decision-making. “I hope that the high value of ‘blueSCC’ can motivate further investment in adaptation and resilience for ocean systems,” said Ricke, using the term of the ocean-based social cost of carbon and referencing the opportunities to invest in coral reef and mangrove restoration projects.

Meanwhile, Bastien-Olvera believes centering the framework on oceans also recognizes the longstanding conservation approaches of coastal communities, ocean scientists and Indigenous peoples. “For a long time, climate economics treated the ocean values as if it were worth zero,” he said. “This is a first step toward finally acknowledging how wrong that was.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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Trump withdraws US from world’s most important climate treaty

climate change, IPCC, Science, Trump, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change / Kelly Newman / January 8, 2026

The actual impact of the US withdrawal on many of the UN bodies singled out by Trump would depend on how aggressively his administration followed through on its announcement.

The head of one of the UN bodies named in the executive order said that the full effect of the move would become clear only during the UN’s annual budget allocation process.

“If they want to be difficult they could block the adoption of our budget. So it depends on how far they want to take it,” the person added.

Although the list caused anguish among environmental groups, it did not go as far as originally envisaged on trade and economic matters after the administration quietly dropped the World Trade Organization and the OECD from its list of potential targets last year.

In October, it emerged that Trump had authorized the payment of $25 million in overdue subscriptions to the WTO, despite the administration deriding the organization as “toothless” only a month previously.

The list also did not include the International Maritime Organization despite the Trump administration’s successful—and diplomatically bruising—move last year to block the IMO’s plan to introduce a net zero framework for shipping.

Sue Biniaz, the former US climate negotiator, said she hoped the retreat from the UNFCCC treaty was “a temporary one,” adding there were “multiple future pathways to rejoining the key climate agreements” in future.

Stiell of the UNFCCC agreed: “The doors remain open for the US to re-enter in the future, as it has in the past with the Paris Agreement. Meanwhile the size of the commercial opportunity in clean energy, climate resilience, and advanced electrotech remains too big for American investors and businesses to ignore.”

He added: “While all other nations are stepping forward together, this latest step back from global leadership, climate co-operation, and science can only harm the US economy, jobs, and living standards, as wildfires, floods, megastorms, and droughts get rapidly worse.”

Trump withdraws US from world’s most important climate treaty Read More »

NJ’s answer to flooding: it has bought out and demolished 1,200 properties

climate change, flooding, Housing, New Jersey, Policy / Mike M. / December 30, 2025

The state deals with flooding and sea level rise by buying homes in flood prone areas.

Heavy rains cause flooding in Manville, New Jersey on April 16, 2007. Credit: Bobby Bank

MANVILLE, N.J.—Richard Onderko said he will never forget the terrifying Saturday morning back in 1971 when the water rose so swiftly at his childhood home here that he and his brother had to be rescued by boat as the torrential rain from the remnants of Hurricane Doria swept through the neighborhood.

It wasn’t the first time—or the last—that the town endured horrific downpours. In fact, the working-class town of 11,000, about 25 miles southwest of Newark, has long been known for getting swamped by tropical storms, nor’easters or even just a wicked rain. It was so bad, Onderko recalled, that the constant threat of flooding had strained his parents’ marriage, with his mom wanting to sell and his dad intent on staying.

Eventually, his parents moved to Florida, selling the two-story house on North Second Avenue in 1995. But the new homeowner didn’t do so well either when storms hit, and in 2015, the property was sold one final time: to a state-run program that buys and demolishes houses in flood zones and permanently restores the property to open space.

“It’s pretty traumatic to watch your childhood home be bulldozed,” said Onderko, 64 and now the mayor of this 2.5-square-mile borough, which sits at the confluence of two rivers and a placid-looking brook that turns into a raging river when a storm moves through.

Blue Acres

His boyhood property—now just a grass lot—is one of some 1,200 properties that have been acquired across New Jersey by the state’s Blue Acres program, which has used more than $234 million in federal and state funds to pay fair market value to homeowners in flood-prone areas who, like the Onderko family, had grown weary of getting flooded over and over again.

Images of brown water flowing past partially submerged houses. — Flooding in Manville following a Nor’Easter in 2007 Credit: Bobby Bank

The program, started in 1995, is considered a national model as buyouts are an increasingly important tool for dealing with climate-related flooding. A report this month by Georgetown Climate Center said the program has achieved “significant results” by moving quicker than federal buyout programs, providing a stable source of state funding and shepherding homeowners through the process.

In addition, a report last month by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund warns that communities may well have to come up with new ways to pay for such initiatives as the Trump Administration continues to downsize government and cut programs.

Already, the NRDC said, billions of dollars in previously approved Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) resilience grants have been cancelled.

“We need to do a lot of things very differently,” said Rob Moore, an NRDC director who worked on the report, which suggests that states and counties consider using revenue from municipal bonds, local fees and taxes, revolving loan funds, and leveraging insurance payouts to offset some of the reductions in federal funding.

But Moore said the problem goes beyond funding uncertainty, as the science is showing that the impacts of climate change are “outpacing our efforts to adapt.”

The report, released Nov. 18, cited the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Storm Water Services, which has acquired some 500 homes in North Carolina in its buyout program, relying largely on stormwater utility fees to fund the sales. New Jersey’s program, Moore said, is a “wonderful example” of a plan that raised money with three bond issues while building a staff that developed a lot of expertise over the years.

Decades of experience may well come in handy as New Jersey, the nation’s most densely populated state, is likely to experience more significant flooding in the years to come.

Future risks

Sea level rose about 1.5 feet along the New Jersey coast in the last 100 years—more than twice the global rate—and a new study by the New Jersey Climate Change Resource Center at Rutgers University predicts a likely increase of between 2.2 and 3.8 feet by 2100, if the current level of global carbon emissions continues.

Torrential rain storms also have led to massive flooding in inland towns—like Manville—as rivers and streams overflow, sending waves of water into the homes of stunned owners. The stronger storms are attributed by scientists to the Earth’s changing climate, with warming oceans causing rising sea levels and fueling more intense atmospheric activity.

“Blue Acres has been a pioneering program,” said Robert Kopp, a climate scientist and professor at Rutgers University, calling buyouts a “very important tool” in how the state deals with the flooding repercussions of climate change.

The program, which so far has benefitted mostly inland rather than coastal communities, is funded with federal money as well as a share of the state’s corporate taxes, providing a consistent infusion of money at a time of uncertainty about the future of federal disaster funding.

Courtney Wald-Wittkop, who manages Blue Acres for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the program is an important solution for homeowners who have grown weary of repeated flooding. But deciding to give up a home and move away from the flood plain, she said, often takes time. “You have to give them space,” she said, to weigh the financial and personal costs of leaving a home with memories.

She said the program is known for its novel approach of assigning a case manager to every applicant to help them sort through the issues. “It’s really important that we walk hand in hand with these homeowners,” said Wald-Wittkop.

The program’s goals, however, go beyond the needs of homeowners. The idea is to help reshape the community by returning properties to permanent open space, which can better absorb rain water than impervious surfaces such as concrete, asphalt and buildings. That open space, in turn, is managed—mostly with lawn cutting and brush clearing—by the municipality.

Wald-Wittkop said the program is evolving, and that she would like to make the process move more quickly, provide sellers with more housing assistance, especially outside of flood-prone areas and encourage more community involvement in what to do with the newly acquired open space.

“We’ve tried to be as innovative as possible,” she said.

Epic floods

With its history of flooding, Manville is one of the towns that has benefitted the most from the state buyout initiative, with some 120 homes in the town sold to the state for about $22 million between 2015 and 2024. Another 53 buyouts are currently underway, according to Wald-Wittkop.

About an hour south, the city of Lambertville was hit hard by Hurricane Ida when a series of creeks overflowed in 2021, stranding residents and business owners in the popular tourist town wherever they happened to be when the massive downpour began. Hours later, residents emerged to stunning destruction.

An image of a green suburban area with large portions of it covered by brown flood waters. — Satellite image of Manville during the 2021 flooding. Credit: Maxar

“The force of the water was just unbelievable,” recalled Mayor Andrew Nowick, who said 130 properties were damaged and about two dozen homeowners ended up submitting applications for Blue Acre buyouts. Three eventually accepted buyout offers, he said.

The program, he said, can be attractive for sellers who are ready to move on but he said there was a lot of real soul-searching about the advantage of selling versus repairing homes that were filled with family memories. “These are all hard choices,” said the mayor.

Incorporated in 1929, Manville was named with a nod to the Johns-Manville Corp., a now-defunct asbestos manufacturer with jobs that transformed the area from a farming community to a factory town. As Manville grew so did the rest of once-rural Somerset County, with more housing, industry and roads. The result was less farmland and open space to absorb the rain and more impervious surfaces that cause substantial water runoff and flash flooding.

“It’s troubling today to see all the development that has gone on unabated,” said Onderko.

And when Manville floods, it is often epic.

In 1955, Hurricane Diane caused what was called the town’s “worst flood in history,” according to a special edition of the Manville News, which now hangs in Onderko’s office. “RIVER GOING DOWN; BE CALM!” screamed the banner headline. Then-Mayor Frank Baron urged residents not to panic. “You’re not forgotten, no matter where you live,” Baron declared.

Onderko said getting rescued after Hurricane Doria in 1971 was surreal. Their oil tank came loose from all the water, and he recalled seeing the fuel mix in with the water that was flooding the basement as it approached the first floor. “It was something that you will never forget,” he said.

Later, the remains of Hurricane Floyd caused widespread damage in 1999, as did Hurricane Irene in 2011, but the town largely escaped the fury of Superstorm Sandy, which caused catastrophic damage to parts of New Jersey in 2012.

But then came Hurricane Ida in 2021.

Onderko still chokes with emotion when recalling that night in September 2021 when Ida came roaring through. “It was a war zone,” he recalled in an interview at the borough hall, which was inundated with two feet of water in that storm. “The water came so fast. It was a flash flood event. We were just lucky we didn’t have any loss of life.”

For hours, the mayor and rescue personnel went door to door, urging residents to leave. By the next morning, about 10 to 11 feet of water had flooded the central part of town and surrounding neighborhoods. Two homes and a banquet hall exploded from natural gas leaks, and emergency personnel could not even reach them.

“It took a toll on me,” said Onderko, recalling how he had trouble sleeping and felt “kind of powerless” because of the extent of devastation.

Demolishing properties, saving the town

Wendy Byra and her husband, Thomas Kline, had already moved to higher ground.

Their house had flooded twice and they decided to sell their home to the Blue Acres program. The sale was approved in 2015 for a $185,000 buyout. Byra said a number of their neighbors also applied for the buyout, but had mixed feelings about the amount of money they were offered.

“A lot of people weren’t happy,” said Byra, recalling that some neighbors thought they should receive more money for their homes. Byra said she and her husband figured they would have a hard time selling on their own, so they accepted the buyout and moved to a home on higher ground, but still in Manville, where she grew up.

Except when a major flood happens, Onderko said, Manville is a good place to live. So homeowners, even in the two parts of town known for flooding, can go years without having to deal with a water disaster.

Onderko said residents had long relied on a mix of government help in rebuilding after flooding, but two years after Ida hit in 2021, the state said it would use federal funds only for Blue Acres buyouts of flood-prone properties in Manville.

Onderko said he and residents were caught off guard by the change in policy. He also believes that elevation and repair remained viable alternatives for some of the houses. The buyouts take time, he said, and the town loses tax revenue from the properties sold via the Blue Acres program. “It doesn’t help the town to lose [tax] rateables,” said the mayor, who said the town also bears the cost of maintaining the open space.

Now in his third term as mayor, Onderko, who lives in a house on higher ground than his boyhood home, seems more like a property manager than municipal executive as he presides over a town that is a mix of neighborhoods. Some are on higher ground and do not flood, but others are in areas that get caught repeatedly in deluges. There, vacant grass lots left from demolished Blue Acres properties are interspersed with homes that have been elevated, repaired or are still in recovery mode. “It’s very frustrating,” said Onderko.

Looking to the future, the mayor said he believes many more homes will be at risk whenever the next flood happens. And Onderko does not sound especially hopeful about how that will go.

“It’s going to take a miracle to try to save this town,” he said.

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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Trump admin threatens to break up major climate research center

atmospheric science, climate change, Earth science, NCAR, NSF, research, Science / Beth Washington / December 17, 2025

UCAR, for its part, has issued a statement indicating that the USA Today article was the first it has heard of the matter.

In many cases where the administration has attempted to take drastic actions like this, courts have ruled that they run afoul of a legal prohibition against “arbitrary and capricious” federal actions. That said, courtroom losses haven’t inhibited the administration’s willingness to try, and the time spent waiting for legal certainty can often accomplish many of its aims, such as disrupting research on politically disfavored subjects and forcing scientists to look elsewhere for career stability.

Scientists, meanwhile, are reacting with dismay. “Dismantling NCAR is like taking a sledgehammer to the keystone holding up our scientific understanding of the planet,” said Texas Tech climate researcher Katharine Hayhoe. “Everyone who works in climate and weather has passed through its doors and benefited from its incredible resources.”

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, called NCAR a “unique and valuable asset” and emphasized the wide range of research conducted there.

Obviously, shutting down one source of information about climate change won’t alter what’s happening—greenhouse gases will continue to behave as physics dictates, raising global temperatures. But the Trump administration seemingly views everything through the lens of ideology. It has concluded that scientists are its ideological opponents and thus that its own ideologically driven conclusions are equal to the facts produced by science. Because of that perspective, it has been willing to harm scientists, even if the cost will eventually be felt by the public that Trump ostensibly represents.

Story was updated on Dec. 17 to reflect a recently issued statement by the NSF.

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New report warns of critical climate risks in Arab region

arabian peninsula, climate change, extreme heat, heat index, Science, syndication / Kelly Newman / December 5, 2025

The new WMO report shows that the foundations of daily life across the Arab region, including farms, reservoirs, and aquifers that feed and sustain millions, are being pushed to the brink by human-caused warming.

Across northwestern Africa’s sun-blasted rim, the Maghreb, six years of drought have slashed wheat yields, forcing countries such as Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia to import more grain, even as global prices rise.

In parts of Morocco, reservoirs have fallen to record low levels. The government has enacted water restrictions in major cities, including limits on household use, and curtailed irrigation for farmers. Water systems in Lebanon have already crumbled under alternating floods and droughts, and in Iraq and Syria, small farmers are abandoning their land as rivers shrink and seasonal rains become unreliable.

The WMO report ranked 2024 as the hottest year ever measured in the Arab world. Summer heatwaves spread and persisted across Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt. Parts of Iraq recorded six to 12 days with highs above 50° Celsius (122° Fahrenheit), conditions that are life-threatening even for healthy adults. Across the region, the report noted an increase in the number of heat-wave days in recent decades while humidity has declined. The dangerous combination speeds soil drying and crop damage.

By contrast, other parts of the region—the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and southern Saudi Arabia—were swamped by destructive record rains and flooding during 2024. The extremes will test the limits of adaptation, said Rola Dashti, executive secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, who often works with the WMO to analyze climate impacts.

Climate extremes in 2024 killed at least 300 people in the region. The impacts are hitting countries already struggling with internal conflicts, and where the damage is under-insured and under-reported. In Sudan alone, flooding damaged more than 40 percent of the country’s farmland.

But with 15 of the world’s most arid countries in the region, water scarcity is the top issue. Governments are investing in desalination, wastewater recycling, and other measures to bolster water security, but the adaptation gap between risks and readiness is still widening.

The worst is ahead, Dashti said in a WMO statement, with climate models showing a “potential rise in average temperatures of up to 5° Celsius (9° Fahrenheit) by the end of the century under high-emission scenarios.” The new report is important, she said, because it “empowers the region to prepare for tomorrow’s climate realities.”

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.

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Google CEO: If an AI bubble pops, no one is getting out clean

AI, AI energy, AI infrastructure, AI investment, AI regulation, alphabet, Biz & IT, climate change, deepmind, dotcom bubble, Ed Zitron, Google, Jamie Dimon, Jensen Huang, large language models, machine learning, NVIDIA, openai, Sundar Pichai / 9u50fv / November 18, 2025

Market concerns and Google’s position

Alphabet’s recent market performance has been driven by investor confidence in the company’s ability to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, as well as its development of specialized chips for AI that can compete with Nvidia’s. Nvidia recently reached a world-first $5 trillion valuation due to making GPUs that can accelerate the matrix math at the heart of AI computations.

Despite acknowledging that no company would be immune to a potential AI bubble burst, Pichai argued that Google’s unique position gives it an advantage. He told the BBC that the company owns what he called a “full stack” of technologies, from chips to YouTube data to models and frontier science research. This integrated approach, he suggested, would help the company weather any market turbulence better than competitors.

Pichai also told the BBC that people should not “blindly trust” everything AI tools output. The company currently faces repeated accuracy concerns about some of its AI models. Pichai said that while AI tools are helpful “if you want to creatively write something,” people “have to learn to use these tools for what they’re good at and not blindly trust everything they say.”

In the BBC interview, the Google boss also addressed the “immense” energy needs of AI, acknowledging that the intensive energy requirements of expanding AI ventures have caused slippage on Alphabet’s climate targets. However, Pichai insisted that the company still wants to achieve net zero by 2030 through investments in new energy technologies. “The rate at which we were hoping to make progress will be impacted,” Pichai said, warning that constraining an economy based on energy “will have consequences.”

Even with the warnings about a potential AI bubble, Pichai did not miss his chance to promote the technology, albeit with a hint of danger regarding its widespread impact. Pichai described AI as “the most profound technology” humankind has worked on.

“We will have to work through societal disruptions,” he said, adding that the technology would “create new opportunities” and “evolve and transition certain jobs.” He said people who adapt to AI tools “will do better” in their professions, whatever field they work in.

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Corals survived past climate changes by retreating to the deeps

Biology, climate change, corals, evolution, extinction, Florida, mass extinction, Science / DJ Henderson / November 12, 2025

A recent die-off in Florida puts the spotlight on corals’ survival strategies.

Scientists have found that the 2023 marine heat wave caused “functional extinction” of two Acropora reef-building coral species living in the Florida Reef, which stretches from the Dry Tortugas National Park to Miami.

“At this point, we do not think there’s much of a chance for natural recovery—their numbers are so low that successful reproduction is incredibly unlikely,” said Ross Cunning, a coral biologist at the John G. Shedd Aquarium.

This isn’t the first time corals have faced the borderline of extinction over the last 460 million years, and they have always managed to bounce back and recolonize habitats lost during severe climate changes. The problem is that we won’t live long enough to see them doing that again.

Killer heat waves

Marine heat waves kill corals by messing with the photosynthetic machinery of symbiotic microalgae that live in the corals’ tissues. When the temperature of water goes up too much, the microalgae start producing reactive oxygen species instead of nutritious sugars. The reactive oxygen is toxic to corals, which respond by expelling the microalgae. This solves the toxicity problem, but it also starves the corals and causes them to bleach (the algae are the source of their yellowish color).

The 2023 marine heat wave was not the first to hit the Florida Reef—it was the ninth on record. “Those eight previous heat waves also had major negative effects on coral reefs, causing widespread mortality,” Cunning told Ars. “But the 2023 heat wave blew all other heat waves out of the water. It was 2.2 to four times greater in magnitude than anything that came before it.”

Cunning’s team monitored two Acropora coral species: the staghorn and elkhorn. “They are both branching corals,” Cunning explained. “The staghorn has pointy branches that form dense thickets, whereas elkhorn produces arm-like branches that reach up and grow toward the surface, producing highly complex three dimensionality, like a canopy in the forest.”

He and his colleagues chose those two species because they essentially built the Florida Reef. They also grow the fastest among all Florida Reef corals, which means they are essential for its ability to recover from damage. “Acropora corals were the primary reef builders for the last ten thousand years,” Cunning said. Unfortunately, they also showed the highest levels of mortality due to heat waves.

Coral apocalypse

Cunning’s team found the mortality rate among Acropora corals reached 100 percent in the Dry Tortugas National Park, which is at the southernmost end of the Florida Reef. Moving north to Lower Keys, Middle Keys, and most of the Upper Keys, the mortality stayed at between 98 and 100 percent.

“Once you start moving a little bit further north, there’s the Biscayne National Park, where mortality rates were at 90 percent,” Cunning said. “It wasn’t until the furthest northern extent of the reef in Miami and Broward counties where mortality dropped to just 38 percent thanks to cooler temperatures that occurred there.”

Still, the mortality rate was exceptionally high throughout most of Acropora colonies across the Florida Reef. “What we’re facing is a functional extinction,” Cunning said.

But corals have been around for about 460 million years, and they have survived multiple mass extinction events, including the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. As vulnerable as they appear, corals seemingly have some get-out-of-death card they always pull when things turn really bad for them. This card, most likely, is buried deep in their genome.

Ancestral strength

“There have been studies looking into the evolutionary history of corals, but the difference between those and our work lies in technology,” said Claudia Francesca Vaga, a marine biologist at the Smithsonian Institution.

Her team looked at ultra conserved elements, stretches of DNA that are nearly identical across even distantly related species. These elements were used to build the most extensive phylogenetic tree of corals to date. Based on the genomic data and fossil evidence, Vaga’s team analyzed how 274 stony coral species are related to one another to retrace their common ancestor and reconstruct how they evolved from it.

“We managed to confirm that the first common ancestor of stony corals was most likely solitary—it didn’t live in colonies, and it didn’t have symbionts,” Vaga said.

The very first coral most likely did not rely on algae to produce its nutrients, which means it was immune to bleaching. It was also not attached to a substrate, so it could move from one habitat to another. Another advantage the first corals had was that they were not particularly picky—they could live just as well in the shallow waters as in the deep sea, since they didn’t get most of their nutrients from their photosynthetic symbionts.

Descending from these incredibly resilient ancestors, corals started to specialize. “We learned that symbiosis and coloniality can be acquired independently by stony coral linages and that it happened multiple times,” Vaga said.

Based on her team’s research, past mass extinction events usually wiped out 90 percent of the species living in shallow waters—the ones that were colonial and reliant on symbionts. “But each such extinction triggered a process of retaking the shallows by the more resilient deep-sea corals, which in time evolved symbiosis and coloniality again,” Vaga said.

Thanks to corals’ deep-sea cousins, even the most extreme environmental changes—global warming or sudden, severe variations in the oceans’ acidity or oxygen levels—could not kill them for good. Each mass extinction event they’ve been through just reverted them to factory settings and made them start over from scratch.

The only catch here is time. “We’re talking about four to five million years before coral populations recover,” Vaga said.

Long way back

According to Cunning, the consequence of Acropora corals’ extinction in the Florida Reef is a lower overall reef-building rate, which will lead to reduced biodiversity in the reef’s ecosystem. “There are going to be cascading effects, and humans will be impacted as well. Reefs protect our coastlines by buffering over 90 percent of wave energy,” Cunning said.

In Florida, where coastlines are heavily urbanized, this may translate into hundreds of millions of dollars per year in damages.

But Cunning said we still have means at our disposal to save Acropora corals. “We’re not going to give up on them,” he said.

One option for improving the resilience of corals could be to crossbreed them with species from outside of Florida Reef, ideally ones that live in warmer places and are better adapted to heat. “The first tests of this approach are underway right now in Florida; elkhorn corals were cross bred between Florida parents and Honduran parents,” Cunning said. He hopes this will help produce a new generation of corals that has a better shot at surviving the next heat wave.

Other interventions include manipulating corals’ algal symbionts. “There are many different species of algae with different levels of heat tolerance,” Cunning said. To him, a possible way forward would be to pair the Acropora corals with more heat-tolerant symbionts. “This should alter the bleaching threshold in these corals,” he explained.

Still, even interventions like these will take a very long time to make a difference. “But if four or five million years is the benchmark to beat, then yeah, it’s hopefully going to happen faster than that,” Cunning said.

The upside is that corals will likely pull off their de-extinction trick once again, even if we do absolutely nothing to help them. “In a few million years, they will redevelop coloniality, redevelop symbiosis, and rebuild something similar to the coral reefs we have today,” Vaga said. “This is good news for them. Not necessarily for us.”

Science, 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.adx7825

Nature, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09615-6

Jacek Krywko is a freelance science and technology writer who covers space exploration, artificial intelligence research, computer science, and all sorts of engineering wizardry.

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