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Justine Calma
Google calls its new AI model a “virtual satellite.”

Called AlphaEarth Foundations, the model stitches together data from actual satellite images, radar, climate simulations, and more to map Earth’s land and coastal waters.

”The Satellite Embedding dataset is revolutionizing our work by helping countries map uncharted ecosystems - this is crucial for pinpointing where to focus their conservation efforts,” Nick Murray, director of the James Cook University Global Ecology Lab and Global Science Lead of Global Ecosystems Atlas, said in a Google DeepMind blog post.

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Justine Calma
A tsunami advisory is in effect for the West Coast.

“Stay away from the coast!” the National Weather Service warns. A magnitude 8.7 earthquake off the east coast of Russia has triggered tsunami alerts across the Pacific. The tsunami advisory means that dangerous currents and waves are possible.

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Justine Calma
Suddenly, the EPA no longer thinks greenhouse gas emissions “endanger” public health.

The Trump administration proposed tossing out the landmark 2009 “endangerment finding” that allows the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act.

Greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane cause climate change, of course. Climate change is projected to lead to roughly 250,000 additional deaths each year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat illness between 2030 and 2050, according to the World Health Organization.

Trump’s AI plan is a massive handout to gas and chemical companies

The Trump administration wants to build data center projects on Superfund sites, and with as little oversight as possible.

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Elizabeth Lopatto
A crypto tycoon and a VC funded an experiment to literally block sunlight in California.

A University of Washington experiment with “a machine to create clouds” was shut down by the city of Alameda — because the scientists didn’t bother to tell the locals what they were up to, Politico writes. They were 20 minutes into the test when city officials ended the experiment.

Donors to the Marine Cloud Brightening Program include “cryptocurrency billionaire Chris Larsen, the philanthropist Rachel Pritzker and Chris Sacca, a venture capitalist.” Can’t wait to find out what new conspiracy theories this spawns!

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Justine Calma
The US could soon get a new private uranium enrichment facility.

Plans are in place to revive a shuttered plant in Kentucky. The Trump administration and Big Tech are trying to revitalize the nuclear energy industry to meet growing electricity demand from AI data centers.

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Justine Calma
Google’s investing in a CO2 battery.

It’s part of the company’s new push to support the development of technologies that can store renewable energy for longer periods of time than lithium-ion batteries. It’s the kind of thing that might be able to help Google meet growing data center energy demands and maybe even stop its fossil fuel emissions from continuing to rise.

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Justine Calma
A new satellite could help improve disaster response.

NASA and the Indian Space Research Organisation plan to launch the satellite on July 30th. The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) mission is supposed to track ice melt and land deformation, helping scientists better understand the impacts of flooding, earthquakes, and more.

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Justine Calma
The Citizen app will include weather warnings in NYC.

The announcement over the weekend follows flash floods that inundated subways. The app notifies users of nearby emergencies and crimes. Now, New York City is adding public safety warnings for floods, extreme heat, fires, and more.

An actually good flash flood alert system involves a lot more than sharing weather updates, experts tell The Verge. Officials also have to avoid causing “alert fatigue” if they’re sending out crime and weather alerts through the same platform.

How to design an actually good flash flood alert system

It takes an ‘all of the above’ approach.

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Justine Calma
Amazon’s greenhouse gas emissions are increasing.

It saw a 6 percent rise in planet-heating pollution last year, according to the company’s latest sustainability report. As it expands data centers for AI, Amazon is moving further away from a goal it set in 2019 to reach net zero carbon emissions.

“One of the biggest challenges with scaling AI is increased energy demands for data centers,” Amazon’s sustainability report says.

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Justine Calma
Local officials in a hard-hit Texas county didn’t send FEMA alerts to all cell phones.

In Kerr County — one of the most affected by deadly flash floods on July 4th — not everyone received alerts on their cell phones with safety instructions, according to records obtained by NBC News. The investigation adds to questions over why there wasn’t more done to warn people of the catastrophic flooding.

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Justine Calma
A science fair of “things we’ll never know.”

House Democrats are holding a science fair of canceled grants in Washington, DC today to call attention to research projects that the Trump administration has defunded.

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Justine Calma
The EPA is reportedly investigating employees who signed a letter critical of Trump.

The Environmental Protection Agency placed 144 employees on administrative leave, the New York Times reports. The move comes after hundreds of EPA employees signed a letter accusing the Trump administration of “ignoring scientific consensus to benefit polluters.”

Since Donald Trump stepped back into office, the EPA has worked to roll back dozens of environmental regulations, including plans to weaken protections against forever chemicals in drinking water. DOGE also tore into the agency, making it more difficult to hold companies accountable for breaking environmental laws.

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Justine Calma
Watchdog tells Republicans to drop environmental rollbacks from their ‘big, beautiful bill.’

The Senate parliamentarian — a nonpartisan congressional advisor — says Republicans are violating a budget reconciliation rule in their attempt to fast-track some parts of President Trump’s agenda.

That includes measures to undo Biden-era tailpipe pollution standards and repeal funding authorizations for climate programs under the Inflation Reduction Act. Republicans have been getting creative lately, however, with ways to get around the parliamentarian’s objections.

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Justine Calma
Make asbestos OK again?

The Trump administration is thinking about scrapping a ban on white asbestos, a material used in roofing, chlorine manufacturing, and more. White asbestos is banned in many countries; exposure to it has been linked to lung cancer and other serious health risks.

“By siding with corporate polluters and willfully ignoring decades of public health evidence, they are dismantling life-saving protections,” Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, said in a press release today.

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Justine Calma
Cool, cool.

The Trump administration is apparently trying to shut down the board that investigates chemical explosions in the US. What could go wrong?

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Justine Calma
EV and renewable energy jobs are on the line.

Senate Republicans’ version of President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” — similar to the bill the House passed last month — would slash tax incentives for electric vehicles, wind, and solar power.

Industry leaders warn that it could be a killer blow to new energy projects and factories in the US. “This bill will end any hope of onshoring domestic manufacturing,” Mike Carr, executive director of the Solar Energy Manufacturers for America Coalition, said in a press statement today.

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Justine Calma
California sues Trump over its EV plans.

Ten more states joined the suit filed today against President Trump and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Congress recently voted to revoke EPA waivers that allow California to set tougher air pollution standards for vehicles than the nation as a whole, in what the plaintiffs allege was an unlawful use of the Congressional Review Act.

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Justine Calma
The US is trying to throw out power plant pollution rules.

This saga has spanned several administrations since President Obama first tried to enact limits on greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Donald Trump tried to replace those rules with his own, weaker standards, only to be stymied by Joe Biden changing course.

“We are proposing to repeal Obama and Biden rules that have been criticized as regulating coal, oil, and gas out of existence,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced today.

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Justine Calma
Trump reportedly plans to sunset the main federal government website on climate change.

Climate.gov will soon stop publishing new content after most of the people maintaining the website saw their contacts terminated, the Guardian reports. We don’t know yet if the website will continue to be accessible to the public.

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Justine Calma
Devastating wildfires in Canada are creating an air quality disaster in the US.

The worst wildfires in decades are tearing through Saskatchewan, Canada, and at least two people have been killed in blazes in the neighboring province of Manitoba.

Smoke from those fires has triggered air quality warnings in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. It’s the kind of climate change-driven disaster that led young people from Minnesota to file suit against the Trump administration last week. Wildfire smoke can be 10 times as toxic as other air pollutants.

A high resolution view of wildfire smoke from the GOES-19 satellite’s ABI instrument.
Wildfire smoke overtakes skies above the Eastern United States on June 1st and 2nd.
Image: CSU/CIRA & NOAA.
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Justine Calma
One of the next five years will probably be the hottest on record.

2024 holds the current record, beating 2023. Now, there’s an 80 percent chance that at least one of the next five years will take the title, according to a recent forecast from the World Meteorological Organization.

Unless countries can transition to carbon pollution-free energy like wind and solar power, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels will keep on heating up our planet.