Solar desert power: Inside China's mega farm

What an environmental disaster created by the communist party of China!

Davos Reality Check: Pollution Hurts Indian Economy More Than Tariffs with Palki Sharma

Serious stuff! When will India clean up?

President Trump has exempted coal used in steelmaking from Biden-era Clean Air Act

Good news! Excessive environmental protection?

"President Trump has exempted coal used in steelmaking from Biden-era Clean Air Act regulations for two years, overriding a rule limiting the release of certain pollutants from coal-fed coke ovens."

"... When it issued the rule, the EPA estimated it would apply to 11 facilities, costing them about $500,000 each for compliance. The Trump exemption applies to 11 facilities. ...

The Environmental Protection Agency earlier this year set up a portal to make it easier for companies to request exemptions to Clean Air Act rules. 

Since that time, the Trump administration has exempted dozens of polluters from regulations, including oil refineries, coal plants and medical device sterilizers. ..."

Tuesday, November 25, 2025 - Join The Flyover

Trump exempts coal used in steelmaking from Clean Air Act rule

Image of the day

Russian glass fiber pollution in eastern Ukraine. All these white colored wires represent dozens or hundreds of glass fibers used for Russian drones.

By the way, the frequent reports by Julian Röpke about the Russo-Ukraine war are excellent and highly recommendable.

Source

Bio-based fibers could pose greater threat to environment than conventional plastics

Beware of alternative solutions! They might even be worse!

Terms like "environmentally friendly" or "clean energy" are often misnomers if not demagoguery!

"... To address that, a study ... has tested the effects of conventional polyester fibers and two bio-based fibers—viscose and lyocell—on earthworms, a species critical to the health of soils globally.

The study found that in high concentrations of fibers, 30% of earthworms died after 72 hours when exposed to polyester, while those exposed to the bio-based fibers experienced much higher mortality of up to 60% in the case of lyocell and 80% for viscose.

A second experiment, using environmentally relevant concentrations of the fibers, indicated that earthworms housed in soils containing viscose fibers exhibited reduced reproduction compared to those exposed to polyester fibers. Earthworms in the soils containing lyocell fibers showed reduced growth and also higher rates of burrowing within the soil compared to exposure to the other types of fiber. ..."

From the abstract:

"Biobased plastics are sometimes promoted as “environmentally friendly” compared to their conventional petrochemical-based counterparts, but their ecotoxicity is only partially understood. Biobased fibers are widely used in clothing and wet wipes and can accumulate in soils through the application of biosolid fertilizers. This study examined the lethal thresholds and sublethal toxicity of chemically characterized, additive-free, biobased (viscose and lyocell) compared to petrochemical-based (polyester) fibers on the key ecosystem engineer, Esenia fetida. Viscose and lyocell had LC20 values of 14.00 and 22.66 mg·L–1, respectively, and no observed effect concentrations (NOEC) of 0–2.8 mg·L–1 (72 h, OECD TG207 filter paper method), while for polyester these were LC20 15.6–31.3 mg·L–1 and NOEC 0–15.6 mg·L–1. Following 28 days of exposure to soils (OECD TG222) contaminated with environmentally relevant concentrations (100 mg kg–1), viscose significantly reduced the mass of progeny compared to polyester. Earthworms exposed to lyocell had a marginal growth reduction (−18%; compared to −11% to −13% in other treatments) linked to increased bioturbation activity. The biobased fibers examined here have greater acute toxicity at high concentrations and broadly similar sublethal effects on E. fetida compared to polyester. Our study highlights the importance of detailed testing before advocating specific materials as plastic alternatives/substitutes to conventional plastics."

Bio-based fibers could pose greater threat to environment than conventional plastics "Bio-based materials may pose a greater health risk to some of the planet's most important species than the conventional plastics they are designed to replace, a new study has shown."

Bio-based fibres could pose greater threat to the environment than conventional plastics (original news release)

Are Biobased Microfibers Less Harmful than Conventional Plastic Microfibers: Evidence from Earthworms

Graphical abstract

Light pollution is shrinking the brains of city-dwelling spiders, study says. Really!

How much can a small brain shrink? 😊 

Will the brains swell again if we were to turn off city lights at night? 😊

Light pollution is also one of the terms of art of propaganda & demagoguery! The history of (often unfounded) complaints about night time light pollution is decades long and voluminous!

A case of alarmism and hysteria? Probably!

Of course, this study was picked up by the leftist The Guardian and other leftist leaning outlets! In this case, it was spread by the famous Royal Society!

"Light pollution is shrinking the brains of city-dwelling spiders in ways that could affect their ability to climb and hunt, according to new research.

The study published in the journal Biology Letters found exposing juvenile garden orb weaving spiders to light pollution reduced their brain development, particularly in an area used for vision. ..."

From the abstract:

"Artificial light at night (ALAN) is an increasingly pervasive pollutant that alters animal behaviour and physiology, with cascading impacts on development and survival. Recent evidence links exposure to ALAN with neural damage, potentially due to its action on melatonin synthesis, a powerful antioxidant. However, these data are scarce and taxonomically limited. Here, we used micro-CT to test the effects of short-term ALAN exposure on brain volumes in the Australian garden orb-weaving spider (Hortophora biapicata), a species commonly found in urban areas and, specifically, around street lights. We found that short-term ALAN exposure was linked to reductions in the volumes of brain structures in the primary eye visual pathway, potentially as a consequence of oxidative stress or plastic shifts in neural investment. Although the effects of ALAN were subtle, they provided new insights into potential mechanisms underpinning the behavioural and physiological impacts of ALAN in this important urban predator."

Light pollution is shrinking the brains of city-dwelling spiders, study says | Environment | The Guardian

Credits: The Royal Society: Public Newsletter

The effects of artificial light at night on spider brains (open access)

Figure 1. Schematic for the central nervous system (dorsal view) of H. biapicata. 

Antidepressant pollution is rewiring fish behavior and reproduction

How depressing! It is all in the food chain. Don't choke!

Is this a case of alarmism and hysteria? How much are artificial lab results comparable to reality? How much of this kind of research is more comparable to a worst case scenario?

The possible effects of medications dissolved in bodies of water has been reported for several decades. So  far it seems we have managed the issue quite well without causing a catastrophe or anything like it. 

The strengths of this study seems to be that it is a long-term study (five years) over several generations of subjects.

"An international study ... has revealed how long-term exposure to pharmaceutical pollutants is dramatically altering fish behavior, life history, and reproductive traits. ...

Pharmaceutical pollutants, especially antidepressants like fluoxetine, have become a pervasive issue in water bodies worldwide. These pollutants, often introduced through wastewater discharge, persist at low levels in rivers, lakes, and oceans. ...

The five-year investigation, focusing on wild-caught guppies exposed to the widely prescribed antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac), highlights the profound and interconnected effects of this pollutant on aquatic ecosystems. ..."

From the abstract:

"1. In our rapidly changing world, understanding how species respond to shifting conditions is of paramount importance. Pharmaceutical pollutants are widespread in aquatic ecosystems globally, yet their impacts on animal behaviour, life-history and reproductive allocation remain poorly understood, especially in the context of intraspecific variation in ecologically important traits that facilitate species' adaptive capacities.

2. We test whether a widespread pharmaceutical pollutant, fluoxetine (Prozac), disrupts the trade-off between individual-level (co)variation in behavioural, life-history and reproductive traits of freshwater fish.

3. We exposed the progeny of wild-caught guppies (Poecilia reticulata) to three field-relevant levels of fluoxetine (mean measured concentrations: 0, 31.5 and 316 ng/L) for 5 years, across multiple generations. We used 12 independent laboratory populations and repeatedly quantified activity and risk-taking behaviour of male guppies, capturing both mean behaviours and variation within and between individuals across exposure treatments. We also measured key life-history traits (body condition, coloration and gonopodium size) and assessed post-copulatory sperm traits (sperm vitality, number and velocity) that are known to be under strong sexual selection in polyandrous species. Intraspecific (co)variation of these traits was analysed using a comprehensive, multivariate statistical approach.

4. Fluoxetine had a dose-specific (mean) effect on the life-history and sperm trait of guppies: low pollutant exposure altered male body condition and increased gonopodium size, but reduced sperm velocity. At the individual level, fluoxetine reduced the behavioural plasticity of guppies by eroding their within-individual variation in both activity and risk-taking behaviour. Fluoxetine also altered between-individual correlations in pace-of-life syndrome traits: it triggered the emergence of correlations between behavioural and life-history traits (e.g. activity and body condition) and between life-history and sperm traits (e.g. gonopodium size and sperm vitality), but collapsed other between-individual correlations (e.g. activity and gonopodium size).

5. Our results reveal that chronic exposure to global pollutants can affect phenotypic traits at both population and individual levels, and even alter individual-level correlations among such traits in a dose-specific manner. We discuss the need to integrate individual-level analyses and test behaviour in association with life-history and reproductive traits to fully understand how animals respond to human-induced environmental change."

Antidepressant pollution is rewiring fish behavior and reproduction, biologists reveal

Antidepressant pollution is rewiring fish behaviour and reproduction, study finds (original news release)

Long-term effects of widespread pharmaceutical pollution on trade-offs between behavioural, life-history and reproductive traits in fish (open access)

Fig. 1 Schematic of the exposure protocol and experimental design.

Government regulation abruptly and drastically reduced sulfur content in shipping fuel associated with increased maritime atmospheric warming

The so called unintended consequences at work! Cleaner air, warmer earth! Poetic justice! 😊

Since climate models are junk, can we trust this modeling study? The study also uses the very controversial term "anthropogenic green house gases" indicating  politicization!

These scientists even suggest more government intervention into nature by calling for more geoengineering! It can be a curse to be a PhD leading to a pretense of knowledge!

"An 80% reduction in sulfur dioxide shipping emissions observed in early 2020 could be associated with substantial atmospheric warming over some ocean regions, according to a modeling study published in Communications Earth & Environment. The sudden decline in emissions was a result of the introduction of the International Maritime Organization's 2020 regulation (IMO 2020), which reduced the maximum sulfur content allowed in shipping fuel from 3.5% to 0.5% to help reduce air pollution. ..."

From the abstract:

"Human activities affect the Earth’s climate through modifying the composition of the atmosphere, which then creates radiative forcing that drives climate change. The warming effect of anthropogenic greenhouse gases has been partially balanced by the cooling effect of anthropogenic aerosols. In 2020, fuel regulations abruptly reduced the emission of sulfur dioxide from international shipping by about 80% and created an inadvertent geoengineering termination shock with global impact. Here we estimate the regulation leads to a radiative forcing of 

Wm−2 averaged over the global ocean. The amount of radiative forcing could lead to a doubling (or more) of the warming rate in the 2020 s compared with the rate since 1980 with strong spatiotemporal heterogeneity. The warming effect is consistent with the recent observed strong warming in 2023 and expected to make the 2020 s anomalously warm. The forcing is equivalent in magnitude to 80% of the measured increase in planetary heat uptake since 2020. The radiative forcing also has strong hemispheric contrast, which has important implications for precipitation pattern changes. Our result suggests marine cloud brightening may be a viable geoengineering method in temporarily cooling the climate that has its unique challenges due to inherent spatiotemporal heterogeneity."

Reduced sulfur content in shipping fuel associated with increased maritime atmospheric warming

Abrupt reduction in shipping emission as an inadvertent geoengineering termination shock produces substantial radiative warming (open access)

What a pseudoscience or demagoguery chart looks like (there is absolutely no evidence that the linear trend would continue):

Fig. 3: Time series of global temperature anomaly since 1980 (Lensen et al., 2019).

Study: Heavier electric vehicles Release More Toxic Emissions through tire wear particles than Gas-Powered Cars

Maybe, EVs are not as environmentally friendly as advertised and promoted!

Perhaps, EVs are the future when fossil fuels run out or fossil fuels can not be replaced by synthetic fuels, but they are not as clean as claimed! What about e.g. manufacturing all these batteries etc. etc.

"... Emission Analytics found in its 2022 study that brakes and tires on electric vehicles release 1,850 times more particle pollution than tailpipes on gas-powered vehicles, which are considered to have “efficient” exhaust filters. ...

Most most pollution from vehicles today reportedly comes from tire wear, as most of them are made from petroleum, crude oil, and other harmful elements, which generates particle pollution and releases harmful chemicals into the air as the tires wear down, Emission Analytics said.

Notably, electric vehicles are on average 30 percent heavier than gas-powered vehicles, so the brakes and tires on EVs wear out much faster. This problem is made worse by the heavy batteries in Tesla EVs, which will only get worse as larger electric trucks are introduced into the market. ..."

Study: EVs Release More Toxic Emissions and Are Worse for the Environment than Gas-Powered Cars Electric vehicles including EVs produced by Elon Musk’s Tesla release more toxic emissions into the atmosphere and are worse for the environment than gas-powered vehicles, a resurfaced study from 2022 revealed.

Gaining traction, losing tread Pollution from tire wear now 1,850 times worse than exhaust emissions

Harm to human health from air pollution in Europe: burden of disease 2023 — European Environment Agency

The usual alarmism and hysteria! Air pollution in most Western countries has improved tremendously in recent decades!

What about existing morbidities of EU citizens (e.g. obesity) and their effects?

Concepts like burden of disease or attributable deaths or years of life lost are rather dubious and open to manipulation!

"Toxic air killed 500,000+ people in Europe in 2021, according to an EU report released Friday; reducing those pollutants to WHO-recommended levels could have prevented half of those deaths. The Guardian"

"Key messages

Air pollutant concentrations in 2021 remained well above the levels recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its air quality guidelines. Reducing air pollution to these guideline levels would prevent a significant number of attributable deaths in EU Member States (EU-27); 253,000 from exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5); and 52,000 from exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Furthermore, reducing the short-term exposure to ozone (O3) would have avoided 22,000 attributable deaths. ..."

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: Global Health NOW

Harm to human health from air pollution in Europe: burden of disease 2023 — European Environment Agency

Chart of the day

Looks like Western countries are hardly to blame, except for their massive exports of plastic waste to developing countries!

Alert: Plastophobia is a serious disease. Please seek immediate medical attention! (Caution: satire)

"... One river alone, the Pasig in the Philippines, is responsible for 6.4 percent of the waste that enters the world’s oceans through rivers ...
After all, Europe in particular is literally exporting its plastic problem. In 2019 alone, the EU exported 1.5 million metric tons of plastic waste to developing countries, which are clearly overburdened with the task of recycling and recovering such masses. ..."

Source: Where to Go with the Mountains of Plastic?

How Our Medicines Pollute the Environment

Recommendable! Reason for concern, but not for alarmism! The issue needs to be monitored! Better wastewater treatment plants may need to be developed etc.

"... In the 1970s, scientists began to detect the presence of drugs in aquatic ecosystems: antibiotics, analgesics, anti-inflammatory drugs, antihistamines, contraceptive oestrogens, clofibrate against cholesterol, and beta-blockers for hypertension, among others. Pharmacological contamination is now so ubiquitous that up to 631 active ingredients have been detected in 71 countries on all continents, according to a review of studies published by the German government in 2016. ...
Globally, the main source of this pollution is urban wastewater, i.e. drugs thrown away or expelled in the urine, although certain areas are affected by discharges from industry, hospitals or livestock farming. ...
that new advanced treatment technologies, such as oxidation using ultraviolet light and ozone, filtering water through activated carbon or reverse osmosis can improve removal."

How Our Medicines Pollute the Environment | OpenMind