The strongest gusts are predicted to blow Friday night and Saturday along the Interstate 5 corridor, the northwestern Antelope Valley and the Santa Ynez Mountains, according to the National Weather Service. There's a 70% chance gusts could reach 40 to 55 mph in these areas, and a 20% chance they'll hit 60 mph or higher, forecasters said.
One load of laundry can release up to 1.5 million tiny plastic fibers into the water that drains out of your washing machine. Most water treatment plants can't catch fibers that small, so they end up in rivers, lakes, and the ocean. Scientists now think laundry is responsible for about 35% of the small plastic pieces found in the sea.
The researchers note that aerosols can also contribute to cloud formation, which also causes further losses. But the degree of that contribution is much harder to estimate, so the researchers focus on aerosols for much of the analysis. Some of those aerosols occur naturally, typically from dust kicked up by winds in desert regions. However, despite deserts' reputation as sunny paradises, the world as a whole hasn't built much solar infrastructure in the desert yet, so this isn't as much of a factor as you might expect.
Paper and paperboard make up roughly a quarter of municipal solid waste in the United States, it is the single largest category by weight. Eliminating paper waste entirely would take a Herculean effort for most households, but whether you want to do good, better, or best, you can cut what you use and recycle more of what you don't.
El Salvador's green coffee production is forecast to fall to 542,000 60-kilogram bags in market year 2026/27, a 7.5% drop tied mainly to El Niño weather amid broader structural challenges, according to the latest USDA Foreign Agricultural Service annual report.
The United States is the world's most committed buyer of single-use towels, by a margin no other country approaches. Americans alone consume nearly half of all paper towels produced globally, and Europeans use roughly 50 percent fewer than we do.
Asia’s last tropical glaciers can be found near Puncak Jaya, Papua, the highest peak in Southeast Asia. But it is unlikely that they will survive until the end of this decade. Over the past 44 years, the peak has lost 97% of its ice and four of its glaciers. Its remaining two glaciers, Carstensz and the East Northwall Firn glacier, are expected to disappear by 2030, adding Indonesia (alongside Venezuela and Slovenia) to the list of countries that have lost all of their glaciers.
Five pairs of rubbery feet carry velvet-sheathed black-and-white bodies towards the rope line separating the king penguins from the dozen or so visitors, who look on in awe. As these emissaries shuffle over, a hundred of their cohorts parade on a nearby bank, splashing around in the water and regurgitating food into their chicks' open beaks.
Datacentres are consuming 6% of electricity in the UK and US, with the growing strain of AI on energy supplies prompting community resistance, according to research. The proportion of electricity used by vast warehouses stacked with microchips to power AI and the internet has risen 15% worldwide in the past two years as annual global investment in datacentres approaches $1tn (740bn) nearly 1% of the global economy, according to the International Data Center Association (IDCA).
These are some of the things we can see in data from electricity grid provider UK Power Networks (UKPN), which provides electricity utilisation rates taken half hourly for 96 datacentre sites within its region. This stretches from the datacentre hotspots of west London and Docklands, south-eastwards to Kent, Surrey and Sussex, and includes all of Essex and East Anglia.
At the end of a dirt road along the northeastern edge of Montana's Crazy Mountains, a simple sign warns visitors they are now entering private property. For fifth-generation Montanan Brad Wilson, the notice marks a defeat with implications far beyond the Crazies. "The fate of our public lands and our rights are in jeopardy right now," Wilson told Floodlight.
As the unforgiving summer heat soared above 40C, she had walked for miles, piling the sticks and fallen branches into a bundle on her head while sweat ran down her face. Just a few weeks ago, the 35-year-old had been preparing meals for her four children on a small gas stove with little fuss. But as the crisis in the Middle East has choked India's vital supplies of imported liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) used by more than 60% of the country's population for cooking refills have been scarce and prices have risen far beyond what is widely affordable.
Whales are increasingly exposed to traffic and ship strikes. The United States-Israel war on Iran has disrupted global supplies of energy, fertilisers, medicines and even helium, devastating economies around the world. Now it's also threatening whales off the coast of South Africa.
Most well-known people who talk about climate change are in North America and Europe, says Kenyan rugby sevens star Kevin Wekesa, but for us this is a very relevant conversation. It is not only about future tournaments or big international pledges. In Kenya, we see the effects in rising heat, cracked pitches and changing weather in communities where young athletes are growing up.
Sand is sometimes referred to as the unrecognised hero of development, but its essential role in sustaining the natural services on which we depend is even more overlooked. Sand is our first line of defence against sea level rise, storm surges, and salination of coastal aquifers all hazards exacerbated by climate change. The most extracted solid material on Earth, sand is mined to build homes, roads and sea walls in concrete production, building foundations and masonry work.
Chevron spokesperson Paula Beasley told WIRED in an email that all tax incentives under consideration for the Energy Forge project "apply solely to the power generation facility" to "support new energy infrastructure, and do not extend to any future data center facilities that may be served." Beasley also said that there is currently "no definitive agreement" with Microsoft for this power plant.
Ray Valley Solar, south of Bicester in Oxfordshire, generates enough clean electricity to power about 7,000 homes for a year, and uses its profits to provide grants to community initiatives that help reduce carbon emissions and make homes, schools and businesses across Oxfordshire more energy efficient.
