It is important climate news that 2023 and 2024 were the hottest years ever, and the increases have yet to be fully explained by scientists. The Washington Post reports that several new studies suggest that a key driver of the higher temperatures over the last several years is reduced cloud cover around the Earth. Low-altitude clouds reflect incoming solar radiation, keeping the Earth cooler. More ominously, it seems likely that, as the planet warms, cloud cover will continue to decrease resulting in even more warming. Salon describes another potential source of the recent warming, which is the reduction in particulate emissions from ships. The article notes that there is significant debate within the scientific community about this factor. But there is no debate about the fact that the Earth is warming and that human activity is driving this disruption of our climate.

After the Supreme Court found in 2007 that the EPA had to regulate greenhouse gases as a threat to public health and safety pursuant to the Clean Air Act, the agency spent two years preparing a public record of the evidence of the threat. They published this “endangerment finding” as the basis for all future climate regulation. Robinson Meyer notes that buried in one of Trump’s executive orders is a demand that the EPA revisit the endangerment finding. The New York Times notes that “eliminating the endangerment finding would debilitate the agency’s authority to curb emissions from automobile exhaust, power plants, oil and gas wells, factories and more.” Many organizations are preparing to defend the endangerment finding in administrative proceedings or in court. Grist notes that overturning the endangerment finding will not be easy, particularly because — as part of the Inflation Reduction Act — the Clean Air Act was amended to explicitly list greenhouse gases as pollutants that must be regulated.

Canary Media details what appears to be a failure-to-launch for offshore-wind power in New Jersey. Local opposition, higher interest rates, state budget shortfalls and Trump’s opposition appear to have created a pause in the development of Atlantic Shores, a 2.8 GW offshore-wind array. The key action was the cancellation of an offshore-wind-power solicitation by the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities, which is the process by which the state agrees to purchase the electricity from Atlantic Shores.

The story is different in Virginia. E&E News reports that the 2.6 GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind Project is on schedule to begin operating in 2026. The operating utility (Dominion) has installed 78 of the project’s 176 turbine foundations and completed 60% of the onshore infrastructure. An editorial in The Washington Post calls on Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who oversaw a doubling of wind power in North Dakota when he was governor, to inject rationality back into the wind-power debate.

Despite the insane rhetoric from many “red-state” politicians about renewable energy, The Guardian reports that 80% of the total funding for renewable-energy initiatives ($250 billion) is heading to Republican-leaning Congressional districts. The article focuses on how the Trump Administration is delaying solar projects in Indiana, to the dismay of Democrats, Republicans and the local activists that have been planning the projects to help lower-income communities. “Indiana residents have seen the seventh-highest electricity rate increase in the country. Nearly 83% of its electricity generation is sourced by natural-gas or coal plants.” Inside Climate News reports that Texas is leading the installation of renewable electricity in the U.S. “Texas added nearly 1,500 megawatts of battery storage to the grid’s summer-rated capacities in 2023. That figure almost tripled to 4,374 megawatts added in 2024.”

The Guardian reports on the progress signatory countries have made against the COP 28 plan to triple the world’s renewable energy and double its energy efficiency by 2030. Unfortunately, the world is lagging in its efforts to meet these goals. “The world’s renewable energy capacity was about 3.4 terawatts in 2022 — or 45 times the size of Great Britain’s total power system — but to meet the COP28 targets countries would need to reach just over 11TW by 2030.” Despite a projected doubling of renewable capacity to 7.2 TW by the end of the decade, this still leaves a shortfall of 3.7 TW. The International Energy Agency has indicated that the explosive growth of solar power around the world makes the 11 TW goal ambitious but achievable.

In the last In Brief, I noted that the Trump Administration has directed the federal government to consider abandoning the social cost of carbon when assessing the benefits and costs of regulations. In The Washington Post, Cass Sunstein, a past Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, points out that no social cost of carbon implies that “greenhouse gas emissions inflict no damage. Regulations that reduce those emissions have no benefits, which suggests that those regulations should be eliminated.” Sunstein goes into interesting detail (for the more nerdy among us) about the chance of this change coming about, and the moral, political and economic implications if Trump is successful.

The bloodbath for federal workers has reached the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The Guardian describes the firing of hundreds of workers at NOAA, people who one worker noted are “dedicated, hard-working civil servants who came to NOAA to help protect lives and keep our blue planet healthy.” My colleague, Andy Rosenberg, described these efforts perfectly: “There is no plan or thought into how to continue to deliver science or service on weather, severe storms and events, conservation and management of our coasts and ocean life and much more. Let’s not pretend this is about efficiency, quality of work or cost savings because none of those false justifications are remotely true.” Among the great “savings” is the evisceration of NOAA’s Environmental Modeling Center, which improves weather, marine and climate predictions.

Salon reports on an issue of great concern in the scientific community: the deletion of data and information on federal websites. On the EPA website, and many other places, pages have disappeared and language has been changed. The changes appear to be focused on information related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, environmental justice and climate change. Many scientists are concerned that the next step, the modification of data, is just around the corner. (Are tariffs triggering inflation and unemployment? No worries, just ask Musk’s unvetted tech boys to change the datasets at the Bureau of Labor Statistics!) Another major scientific worry is that the Trump Administration will decide to stop collecting and publishing vital economic and physical data used throughout the country (and the world).

The New York Times reports that employees and shareholders of Tesla are beginning to express doubts about Elon Musk’s activities. They are concerned that, as the company’s CEO, Musk is not giving enough attention to the job, and point to dropping sales (Tesla just fired a manager who criticized Musk). The article notes that “in January Tesla’s sales were down 59 percent in Germany, 63 percent in France and 12 percent in Britain after Mr. Musk endorsed right-wing politicians and made inflammatory statements on social media. Tesla sales fell 12 percent last year in California.” Musk’s antics are not Tesla’s only problem, as it remains reliant on two vehicles (the Model 3 and Model Y) for 95% of its sales. The Chinese manufacturer BYD has more than a dozen electric models, some costing less than $20,000, while the Model 3 starts at $42,000 in the U.S.

The chemistry of batteries is an area of active and important research, as different chemistries have different properties, costs and target applications. The Washington Post describes the rise of lithium-iron-phosphate batteries, which were originally developed in the U.S. but have been taken to a new level by Chinese companies (sounds familiar, eh?). Originally considered too heavy for any vehicles except those designed for short trips, manufacturing advances have now led to these batteries being used extensively in automobiles, including some U.S. cars. Among other features, they are less flammable and less expensive than traditional lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt EV batteries.

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