Environment

Carrboro, NC is suing for damages it expects to incur as climate change leads to more extreme weather. It alleges that Duke Energy has delayed a transition from the fossil fuels to renewable energy as part of a “campaign of deception.”

Hurricane Helene — supercharged by greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels — tore a path of destruction through North Carolina earlier this year.

Google DeepMind researchers say their machine learning model “better predicts extreme weather, tropical cyclone tracks and wind power production” in a paper published today in the journal Nature.

“It’s a big deal,” Kerry Emanuel, a professor emeritus of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tells the New York Times.

The FBI is investigating, Reuters reports. Hackers allegedly targeted US nonprofits and activists who have spoken out against ExxonMobil. Lawyers for ExxonMobil wielded hacked documents to fight lawsuits filed against the company, according to Reuters.

A treaty could potentially put a cap on plastic production. Recycling just isn’t enough to stop the flood of plastic pollution building up in landfills, waterways, in marine life, and that’s even found in baby poop.

And since plastics are made from fossil fuels, curbing production would also cut down the pollution causing climate change.

We’ve been saying this for a while at The Verge: filtering CO2 out of the air is absurdly expensive and not a realistic alternative to fighting climate change by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.

Nevertheless, Big Tech — including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google — has pumped hella money into carbon removal strategies that have yet to prove that they can make a meaningful impact.

Negotiations at the United Nations climate summit ended with a deal that falls well short of what vulnerable nations fought for — $1.3 trillion in climate funding that economists estimate is needed to help less affluent countries adapt to disasters and deploy clean energy.

“We don’t have anything there this year,” Meta told the Financial Times.

The annual UN summit is arguably the biggest climate event of the year, and typically an opportunity for tech companies to grandstand. But Big Tech’s obsession with AI has led to growing greenhouse gas emissions, pushing companies further away from climate goals.

Elon Musk’s xAI has a rapidly growing supercomputer that other AI companies are worried about, The Information reports. Hopefully, they also find out how the facility affects the local environment.

Rivian released a short film today in which the company’s CEO RJ Scaringe issues a call to action on climate change, arguing the time is now to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy solutions.

The scale of the challenge means we need to be making these changes now, and we need to begin working toward every increasing renewable content on our grid. We need to replace the roughly one-and-a-half billion combustion powered vehicles on our planet with electric vehicles, but also know that on the path to the end state, we’re going to have solutions that are imperfect, but we need to start.

Trump tapped former New York Representative Lee Zeldin to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin has a 14 percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters.

He’ll “ensure fair and swift deregulatory decisions that will be enacted in a way to unleash the power of American businesses, while at the same time maintaining the highest environmental standards,” Trump said.

Hurricane Rafael cut off power across the island even before it made landfall on Wednesday as a Category 3 storm. Authorities are still working to restore power after weeks of widespread, prolonged blackouts exacerbated by another hurricane that struck Cuba in late October.

Utility planning documents show rising costs for customers in some regions of the US as tech companies build out energy-hungry data centers, the Washington Post reports:

“A lot of governors and local political leaders who wanted economic growth and vitality from these data centers are now realizing it can come at a cost of increased consumer bills,” said Neil Chatterjee, former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Meta wanted to build a nuclear-powered AI data center in the US — until a rare species of bee was found at the site, according to the Financial Times.

Tech giants have inked a string of nuclear energy deals lately to try to meet growing electricity demand for AI data centers.

The Quartz Corp CEO Thomas Guillaume said the company’s assets have been “largely preserved” after Hurricane Helene brought devasting flooding and power outages to the area.

Sibelco, another quartz mining company crucial to the chip-making process, resumed operations earlier this month.

The live camera shows four-year-old female Xin Bao and five-year-old male Yun Chuan. Xin Bao can be “easily recognized by her large, round face and big ears” and Yun Chuan has a recognizable “long, slightly pointed nose,” according to the zoo.