The USDA’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center has been the go-to resource for American beekeepers for over a century. When 1.6 million bee colonies collapsed between June 2024 and March 2025, scientists there worked quickly to find out why. Six months later, they had an answer it was a viruses spread by pesticide-resistant mites.

The Trump administration announced it was closing the lab. Their reasoning is the facility is “underutilized and redundant.” Bees pollinate roughly 80% of U.S. crops fruits, nuts, vegetables, cotton. The research happening at Beltsville isn’t “underutilized and redundant.” It’s what stands between a bad season and a food supply crisis. And the administration just shut it down right after it proved exactly why it exists.

Members of Maryland’s congressional delegation say the closure may be illegal without congressional approval. Farm groups are pushing back. But the administration is moving forward anyway.

This isn’t about budget efficiency. It’s about dismantling the federal science infrastructure that protects American agriculture one “redundant” lab at a time just like the Trump administration claimed about the forest service!

The USDA’s Beltsville... - Alt National Park Service
https://www.facebook.com/share/14eUGSMNAkN/

Rainforests pushed to breaking point by new demands for resources, report says | Deforestation | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/may/20/rainforests-pushed-to-breaking-point-by-new-demands-for-resources-report-says

Fresh demands for critical minerals, biofuels and pulp – used in fast fashion, processed food and packaging – are compounding existing pressures from cattle ranching, monocrops, oil and logging, the analysis finds.

Mining, in particular, has a far greater environmental footprint than previously thought owing to secondary impacts, such as water pollution and the construction of roads, settlements and other infrastructure development. Between 10% and one-third of the world’s forests are already affected and this proportion is expected to increase.

The authors say this highlights an urgent need to replace and reduce the use of products from forest regions, rather than simply adding new forms of consumption, as is currently the case.

The report tracks the commodity trends that are threatening forests in the Amazon, the Congo basin and south-east Asia, and weakening their capacity to regulate temperature, store carbon, recycle water and provide a home for nature.

Cattle ranching, agriculture and gold mining remain by far the biggest threats, finds the study, which was produced by the Dutch research organisation Profundo and commissioned by Rainforest Foundation Norway. All three are forecast to continue expanding.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/05/09/iran-farms-thailand-food/

A Thai rice farmer has decided that the rational response to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran is to leave 19 hectares of land empty. The Washington Post reports that Saithong Jamjai, 53, spent weeks calculating whether to plant again in central Thailand and reached the same answer each time: fuel, fertiliser, plastics and other inputs would cost at least $33,000, while the rice she expects to sell in August would bring in only $22,000. Her conclusion was blunt: “A confirmed loss”. So she is letting the land bake under the husks from last season.

The mechanism carrying the war into Asian rice fields is urea, the nitrogen fertiliser that modern high-yield farming depends on. Iran’s destruction of gas infrastructure in the Gulf, combined with U.S. and Iranian efforts to choke the Strait of Hormuz, has blocked supplies of fuel and gas-linked fertiliser products from leaving the Middle East. According to Pranshi Goyal, senior analyst at CRU Group, 30 per cent of global urea supply has effectively been “wiped out”. Urea spot prices are up 40 per cent since February; weekly production in Iran has fallen from 182,000 to 63,000 metric tons, while Qatar and Bahrain have dropped to zero in the figures cited. China has restricted fertiliser exports to protect its own farmers, and Russia is seeing demand rise in a way that could strengthen its economy and aid its war in Ukraine.

The Food and Agriculture Organization is warning that the shock is spreading through the global food system by calendar, not by geography alone. Speaking in Rome, FAO director general Dongyu Qu called the war “a disruption at the core of the global agrifood system”. FAO chief economist Maximo Torero said the worst effects are currently in Asia, where Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh and Australia are entering key sowing periods, but the crisis is “moving east to west and south to north”. Farmers are already skipping planting, reducing acreage, or cutting fertiliser use, which means lower yields later this year.

The next pressure point is June, when India and Brazil, two of the world’s biggest agricultural producers, are expected to ramp up urea orders. If ships carrying urea are still not moving by then, Torero warns of “significant yield loss” across many countries, higher commodity prices, renewed inflation, and a hit to economic growth “very close to what happened in covid-19”. A likely super El Niño this year could add extreme heat and drought to the fertiliser shock, making the same planting decisions even riskier.

Thailand’s official assurances are already colliding with shortages on the ground. The Commerce Ministry said in April that the country had 343,000 tons of urea, enough for the upcoming planting season. But the Post found fertiliser shops across Ayutthaya and Suphan Buri provinces out of urea for weeks. One wholesaler sent a truck to a marketplace used by large dealers and got nothing after four days. Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow says Thailand still has sufficient farming supplies, while also acknowledging that the country is competing against richer nations and has “not faced such a crisis before”. A Russian supply attempt is likely to fail because shipping disruptions mean the urea would take at least two months to arrive, too late for the current planting window.

Thai farmers are being squeezed from both sides. Their costs are rising because fertiliser and fuel are scarce, while their expected income is falling because the Middle East, one of their major export markets, has effectively shut. The region accounted for 17 per cent of Thailand’s rice exports in 2025, with Iraq the largest single destination. Since the war began, rice shipments to the Gulf have stopped. Malaysia and the Philippines have absorbed some of the excess supply, but not enough, leaving a glut that keeps rice prices low just as input costs spike.

The human consequences are already visible: farmers taking credit from local loan sharks, planting only part of their land, growing vegetables and fish for subsistence, considering day labour, and reporting anxiety, debt and depression. Pramote Charoensilp, president of the Thai Farmers and Agriculturists Association, says calls from villages now carry the same themes: debt, depression, desperation. His advice is painfully thin because the options are thin: “I ask them to try to keep going. Just to keep going”.

Even a quick reopening of the Strait of Hormuz would not immediately solve the problem. Goyal says cargo would still take one to two months to reach destinations and markets would need time to stabilise; the longer Middle Eastern production plants stay shut, the longer they will take to restart. “This problem builds in a nonlinear fashion”, she said. For farmers whose planting window is measured in days and weeks, a supply chain that recovers in months has already failed them.

Reduced economic activity caused by the current Iran war has not been sufficient to offset the surge in CO₂ emissionsgenerated by the conflict. While economic slowdowns typically lead to modest declines in emissions, the scale of disruption in this case has been relatively limited on a global level.

At the same time, the war has produced a sharp and concentrated spike in emissions from infrastructure destruction, fires, and intensified military operations, resulting in a clear net increase in CO₂ output. A key reason is that war-related emissions are largely additive rather than substitutive. Military fuel use, explosions, and the burning of oil and buildings introduce new emissions on top of ongoing civilian and industrial activity, rather than replacing it. Moreover, the destruction of infrastructure creates a pipeline of future emissions, as rebuilding cities, roads, and energy systems requires large amounts of carbon-intensive materials like cement and steel. These delayed emissions often outweigh any short-term reductions from decreased economic activity.

In addition, the war is triggering indirect effects that further raise emissions, such as shifts toward dirtier energy sources, increased fossil fuel investment for energy security, and longer transportation routes due to regional instability. Historical patterns from other conflicts show that even when emissions dip briefly during periods of disruption, they tend to rebound and exceed prior levels during recovery and reconstruction. Overall, the evidence indicates that the Iran war is contributing to a net increase in emissions both immediately and over the longer term, rather than being offset by reduced economic output.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AiasFSuCW/

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a major case that could reshape how climate accountability lawsuits move forward across the country.

At issue is a lawsuit filed in Colorado that seeks to hold energy companies financially responsible for the local costs of climate change things like wildfire mitigation, infrastructure damage, extreme weather response, and public health impacts. The companies are asking the Court to throw the case out entirely.

The justices’ decision to take up the case is significant. While the Colorado lawsuit is the one directly before them, the ruling will likely determine whether similar cases brought by cities and states nationwide can proceed. Across the country, municipalities have filed lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages, arguing that fossil fuel companies misled the public about climate risks while continuing business practices that worsened those risks.

If the Court sides with the energy companies, many of these cases could be dismissed before they ever reach trial. If the Court allows the Colorado case to move forward, it could open the door for more local governments to pursue compensation through the courts.

This isn’t just about one state it’s about whether communities across the United States can use state courts to seek accountability for climate-related costs, or whether those efforts will be shut down at the federal level.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1AhZn3nVui/

US supreme court takes up fossil fuel firms’ climate accountability case | US supreme court | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/23/supreme-court-suncor-exxonmobil-case

Flooded Futures: Understanding the Rising Threats and How We Prepare | Stefan Rahmstorf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtd8ZFWIFMA


Flooding has shaped human settlement for millennia—but the scale, speed and complexity of flood risk in the 21st century are unprecedented. In this opening keynote at the Holcim Foundation Forum 2025, climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf sets the scientific foundation for the Forum, outlining why flood risk is accelerating globally and why urgent, coordinated action is now unavoidable.

Rahmstorf presents the full spectrum of flooding—from coastal, riverine and pluvial flooding to groundwater and compound flood events—showing how multiple hazards increasingly coincide to create extreme impacts. Drawing on the latest climate science, he explains how rising sea levels, intensifying storms and shifting precipitation patterns are being amplified by urbanisation, land-use change and ageing infrastructure designed for past conditions.

A central focus of the talk is time. Rahmstorf challenges the audience to consider what we are planning for—and over what horizons—by examining projections for 2050 and 2100, the limits and strengths of flood models, and the growing role of real-time data, AI-driven analysis and historical records in improving preparedness.

The keynote also addresses the wider societal consequences of flooding, including cascading infrastructure failures, economic exposure, climate migration and the question of who ultimately pays for precautionary measures. Closing the talk, Rahmstorf frames the critical questions that will guide the Forum discussions, positioning the Retreat – Resist – Respond framework as essential for navigating an era of accelerating climate risk.

"Climate hushing"—the quiet trend undermining global climate action
https://www.talkingclimate.ca/p/climate-hushingthe-quiet-trend-undermining?

As political winds have shifted in the United States and elsewhere over the past year, “climate hushing” has become a real thing: and that’s bad news. “When leaders don’t talk about something, enthusiasm falls among voters,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island writes here. “In politics, you can often make your own wind, or you can make your own doldrums.”

Unfortunately, climate hushing is going global. This year, when world leaders spoke at the World Economic Forum’s meeting in January, nearly every single one of them avoided the topic—even Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. Why is this? “In today’s deeply polarizing U.S. political stance, climate discussion has come to feel so radioactive that many leaders would rather avoid it,” sustainable business professor Anjali Chaudhry writes.

The only major leader to break the silence was Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, who used his speech to press for collaborative climate action. ”We invite enterprises from all over the world to embrace the opportunities from the green and low-carbon transition, and work closely with China in such areas as green infrastructure, green energy, green minerals and green finance,” he said.

The organization We Don’t Have Time hosted an alternative WEF speech, held on a pile of snow and featuring several of my colleagues and leading systems thinkers, including Dr. Johan Rockström, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, and former Unilever CEO Paul Polman, who said,

“We know what needs to be done [about climate change]. It is not a failure of resources. Global capital has never been more abundant. It is a failure of collaboration and collective action. A failure of governments to align around shared interests rather than narrow advantage; of businesses to act as system-shapers rather than short-term competitors; and of leaders across sectors to share risk, and act in service of a common good.”

A huge heat dome is set to sit over parts of NSW & Victoria next week, baking the regions. Some places will see 49°C (120°F) — utterly insane temperatures. That is not sustainable for long without air conditioning. Expect major stress on infrastructure & ecosystems

https://x.com/i/status/2014652344554635412

The global cost of greenhouse gas emissions is nearly double what scientists previously thought, according to a study published Thursday by researchers at the University of California, San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

It is the first time a social cost of carbon (SCC) assessment—a key measure of economic harm caused by climate change—has included damages to the ocean. Global coral loss, fisheries disruption, and coastal infrastructure destruction are estimated to cost nearly $2 trillion annually, fundamentally changing how we measure climate finance.

Ocean Damage Nearly Doubles the Cost of Climate Change - Inside Climate News
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/15012026/ocean-damage-nearly-doubles-the-cost-of-climate-change/

‘No water, no life’: Iraq’s Tigris River in danger of disappearing | Rivers | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/16/no-water-no-life-iraqs-tigris-river-in-danger-of-disappearing

the health of the river has been in decline for decades. Iraq had state-of-the-art water infrastructure until the US made it a target in 1991’s Operation Desert Storm. With treatment plants destroyed, sewage flowed into the waterways. Years of sanctions and conflict mean the infrastructure has never fully recovered. Today, across southern and central Iraq, just 30% of urban households are connected to a sewage treatment facility. That number drops to 1.7% in rural areas.

In addition to municipal waste, chemical fertilisers and pesticides in agricultural runoff, industrial waste including from the oil sector, and medical refuse all find their way into the river. A 2022 study found that water quality at numerous sites in Baghdad was rated “poor” or “very poor”. In 2018, at least 118,000 people in the southern city of Basra were treated in hospital after drinking contaminated water.

The river has also dramatically shrunk in volume. In the past 30 years, Turkey has built major dams on the Tigris and the amount of water reaching Baghdad has decreased by 33%. Iran too has built dams and diverted water away from shared rivers that feed the Tigris. Within Iraq, water is frequently overused, especially in the agricultural sector that uses at least 85% of the country’s surface water.

The climate crisis is taking a toll. Iraq has recorded a 30%decline in precipitation and is in the grip of its worst drought in nearly a century. Demand for fresh water is expected to exceed supply by 2035. This summer, the Tigris was so low people could easily walk across it.

Elon Musk suggests AI satellites could dial down global warming
https://interestingengineering.com/space/elon-musk-solar-radiation-management-geoengineering

while Musk’s companies have unmatched reach in space infrastructure, scaling an SRM system to planetary levels is another story. “It would be far easier said than done,” as one analyst put it, especially given that even the most advanced SRM proposals remain largely theoretical.

Beyond the science, there’s also geopolitics. Who decides when and how to shade the planet? And what happens if one nation’s cooling efforts trigger droughts in another?

there’s no indication SpaceX is working on SRM-capable satellites. For now, the comment seems more like a thought experiment than a corporate roadmap.

Yet Musk’s timing is telling. With heat records being broken year after year, and progress on emissions lagging, even the most radical climate ideas are starting to sound less far-fetched

Trump couldn’t get it passed... - Alt National Park Service
https://www.facebook.com/share/1CEeHbqLqw/

Trump couldn’t get it passed in his big 💩 bill, so now here are his executive orders.

Let’s break down what Trump’s new AI executive orders actually mean. On July 23, the administration issued a sweeping directive to “facilitate the rapid and efficient buildout” of AI infrastructure by, in its own words, “easing Federal regulatory burdens.” One order explicitly calls on agencies to “streamline environmental reviews and permitting” by using existing exemptions or creating new ones. In practice, that means fewer safeguards, less public input, and fast-tracked approval for massive data center construction, even on federal land.

What’s more, the administration brags that it “revokes a Biden-era Executive Order that would have saddled AI data center development … with pages of DEI and climate requirements.” This signals a wholesale retreat from environmental accountability. These data centers are notoriously energy and water intensive, using millions of gallons of water daily and consuming electricity at rates that rival entire cities. And under this new policy, they can now be built without the oversight meant to protect air quality, local ecosystems, and public health.

We’re already seeing the real-world impact. In South Memphis, particularly in Boxtown, a neighborhood long burdened by industrial pollution, residents are now facing a new threat: up to 35 unpermitted methane gas turbines powering xAI’s “Colossus” supercomputer. These turbines emit massive quantities of nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde, smog-forming and carcinogenic pollutants that have increased local ozone by 30 to 60 percent and worsened asthma rates in a community already leading the state in emergency asthma visits. Advocacy groups, including the NAACP and the Southern Environmental Law Center, issued a Clean Air Act notice, calling the site potentially “the largest industrial source of smog-forming pollutants in Memphis.” Residents report rising cases of respiratory illness, days too unhealthy to be outside, and a cancer risk four times the national average. Although local officials recently approved a turbine permit, the very next day brought a Code Orange air alert, underscoring the mounting public health crisis tied to unchecked AI development.

The orders don’t stop there. They also cancel major clean energy infrastructure, like the 4.9 billion dollar Grain Belt Express transmission line, and steer AI growth toward fossil fuels and nuclear instead of renewables. This could severely hinder U.S. climate goals and lock in decades of carbon-heavy infrastructure. Taken together, the language of these executive orders makes it crystal clear: this isn’t just about AI, it’s a full-speed deregulation plan that prioritizes corporate expansion over the health of American communities.

Much chatter, little impact: Net zero reference slipped into German constitution - Euractiv
https://www.euractiv.com/section/eet/news/germany-climate-law-legislation/

BERLIN – As part of the deal over Germany's massive defence and infrastructure spending package, the Greens managed to write spending earmarks with a reference to climate neutrality into the country's constitution.

Champions and critics of climate action alike have been trying to play up the significance of adding in a mention of Germany's 2045 net-zero goal, although legal experts largely see the change as lacking broader legal significance.

The amendment to Article 143 of the Basic Law, Germany's constitution, allows for “a special fund with its own credit authorization for additional investments in infrastructure and for additional investments to achieve climate neutrality by 2045, with a volume of up to €500 billion.”

One line in the paragraph specifically sets aside €100 billion in an off-budget special fund for climate projects toward bringing emissions down to net zero, a goal already set down in Germany's Climate Action Act.

Diana Urge-VorsatzDiana Urge-Vorsatz
• 2nd • 2nd Vice Chair of the IPCC, Professor at Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University
2h • 2 hours ago

After immensely hard work and many sleepless hours, the IPCC can be very proud to have the planned content of all the products of the Seventh Assessment hashtag#AR7 cycle agreed on.

At the same time, I need to register my concerns about the future of both the IPCC as well as our global climate based on certain trends that the changes in the outlines signal.

It is concerning that key words that formed the backbone of previous reports, assessments that were consistent and among the most used components of ARs cycle after cycle after cycle were not accepted to be included in the outlines.

Key scientific concepts, such as hashtag#policies, hashtag#exPostEvaluation, hashtag#scenarios, hashtag#pathways, hashtag#infrastructure, national and subnational [policies], hashtag#lockin, hashtag#maladaptation, hashtag#targets, hashtag#goals, hashtag#NDCs, hashtag#fossilfuels, hashtag#subsidies, cost of inaction, hashtag#UNFCCC, hashtag#ParisAgreement, trade, conflict, market-based [instruments], non-state actors, hashtag#electrification, policy packages, acceleration, hashtag#overshoot, environmental impacts, hashtag#attribution, future emission trends, among others – have been questioned and either cut or replaced in many places, many of these key words do not appear any more in the outline of one WG.

Some words, like the hashtag#ParisAgreement, acceleration, pathways, that form important parts of one working group’s agreed outline, were considered as too policy prescriptive in another working group and were excluded.

In the cycle when we may officially exceed 1.5C global warming and thus the goal of the Agreement signed by virtually all governments, the IPCC will significantly compromise its policy relevance if it cannot focus its assessment, among all the other crucial topics well reflected in the outlines, also on knowledge and science related to NDCs, the Paris Agreement, accelerating not only adaptation but also mitigation action, comprehensive (and policy neutral) ex-post evaluation of policies.

Without a robust assessment of the exponentially growing experience and knowledge on the topics relevant to our global efforts, we are jeopardizing the effectiveness of these crucial multilateral processes – that have so far taken us off of the worst climate pathways since the PA, and that have helped catalyse important achievements such as loss and damage funds and other financial instruments.

We could also jeopardise the very existence of multilateralism about climate change. As already signalled by recent events and trends – if the perspectives and efforts of some parties are poorly reflected, if the relevance of IPCC reports to a crucial part of the global discourse is compromised – it is increasingly concerning how long some parties can still uphold their strong moral (and financial) commitment to not only IPCC but also the multilateral processes such as the UNFCCC, considering the shifts in preferences of their voters.

This is a risk to all of us.

Disclaimer: These are my personal views and not those of the IPCC

CHOSIE: tady peng xiao (4. min) - konzervativni odhad je ze "svet potrebuje" 200-300 GW na training+inference

Larry Fink and Peng Xiao on Financing AI Infrastructure
https://youtu.be/YCusGTuXP94?si=O1jBMbgAbR34zUBp

TADEAS: Jeste jsem necetl, nicmene odkladam si na tema

Long before the current AI power panic, there was another panic about a new technology with an insatiable thirst for electricity: the internet.

In 1999, Peter Huber and Mark Mills wrote an article for Forbes Magazine titled “Dig more coal -- the PCs are coming.” Reading that story today is eery in its similarities to the current moment. In the opening paragraph, the authors write, “Somewhere in America, a lump of coal is burned every time a book is ordered on-line.” They go on to cite statistics about the staggering growth of the internet: “Traffic on the Web has indeed been doubling every three months.” And then they make a prediction: “It’s now reasonable to project that half of the electric grid will be powering the digital-Internet economy within the next decade.”

Huber and Mills were, of course, right in their prediction about the ubiquity and importance of the internet. The technology changed nearly everything about our society, economy, and politics. They were correct in predicting that internet traffic, adoption, and infrastructure would explode. And yet, their forecast for how much electricity demand would ensue was fantastically wrong.

The Hidden Risks of Overestimating AI's Power Needs
https://www.distilled.earth/p/the-hidden-risks-of-overestimating