United States

Last October, when the old propane boiler failed at 23 Hardware and Lumber in Askov, owner Scott Peterson did something that many experts say is critical for Minnesota to combat climate change and reach its greenhouse gas reduction goals. He replaced it, not with a traditional boiler or furnace, but with an electric air-source heat pump. He didn’t do it to save the planet. He did it to save money — and to get air conditioning for the first time. One year later, he’s happy he made the switch. He admitted to a bit of sticker shock when he got the quote for his new system, which included the heat pump, new ductwork, and a backup propane furnace. “But, you know, if you’re saving two to three grand a year on propane, it don’t take very long to pay for it,” Peterson said. Meanwhile, he said his electric bill has increased only modestly, by about $20 to $30 per month. Peterson hadn’t heard much about heat pump...

Gov. Jay Inslee proposed on Monday another $941 million for action on climate change, including environmental justice, clean energy and transportation projects, in his 2024 supplemental budget. The budget would tap into stronger-than-expected revenue from the state’s carbon-pricing program. The proposal comes toward the end of the first year of the program that makes the state’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases pay for their pollution. It would add to the $2.1 billion already allocated by lawmakers during the 2023 session for the next two years toward climate and clean energy projects. Also Monday, Inslee’s office announced pieces of legislation for the upcoming session intended to increase transparency over gas prices, pursue linkage with the California and Quebec carbon markets, and transition Puget Sound Energy out of the gas sector and limit future methane gas use. The additional funding also would include a on...

A new report from the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office on salmon and water quality in Puget Sound says the Washington State Department of Ecology has routinely missed deadlines to develop an “impaired waters list,” as required every two years by the Clean Water Act. The report also reiterates existing research that high temperatures, low levels of dissolved oxygen, sediment and toxic contaminants like a chemical linked to tires can hurt the survival of the threatened Puget Sound Chinook, Hood Canal chum salmon and Puget Sound steelhead. According to the report, Ecology is “behind most other states” and missed deadlines for the lists that were due in 2020 and 2022 and in the prior assessment cycles, submitted in 2021 a “combined list” covering the 2014, 2016 and 2018 assessment cycles, three years after the deadline. In response, Ecology and Gov. Jay Inslee’s office defended thei...

The most potent El Niño event in almost a decade is about to exert its peak influence on North American weather. Many parts of the world are affected by El Niño, a periodic one- to two-year warming of the eastern tropical Pacific. In fact, El Niño is the biggest single shaper of Earth’s year-to-year weather variations atop human-induced climate change. And North America is one of the places where El Niño’s influence is most pronounced. Think of El Niño as the boisterous guest around which people gather, or scatter, during the course of a holiday party. For a few months to a year or longer, unusually warm water spreads across a vast area centered on the equator, extending from South America westward. In Spanish, the phenomenon’s name refers to “the Christ child” (literally, the male infant). The name arose because of timing: Anchovy fishers had long noticed that the waters off Peru sometimes warmed,...

Meteorologists began warning about severe weather with the potential for tornadoes several days before storms tore across the Southeast and the Central U.S. in late March 2023. At one point, more than 28 million people were under a tornado watch. But pinpointing exactly where a tornado will touch down – like the tornadoes that hit Rolling Fork, Mississippi, on March 24, and towns in Arkansas, Illinois and multiple other states on March 31 – still relies heavily on seeing the storms developing on radar. Chris Nowotarski, an atmospheric scientist, explains why, and how forecast technology is improving. Why are tornadoes still so difficult to forecast? Meteorologists have gotten a lot better at forecasting the conditions that make tornadoes more likely. But predicting exactly which thunderstorms will produce a tornado and when is harder, and that’s where a lot of severe weather research is focused today. Often, you’ll have a line of thunderstorms in an envi...