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On March 15, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a stay of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new climate-disclosure rules, which were adopted March 6. The three-judge panel granted the requests for injunctive relief brought by seven companies, trade associations and three states, which asserted that being required to comply with the rules would result in irreparable harm. The panel did not elaborate on the rationale behind its decision. For a summary of the climate-disclosure rules and other legal challenges the rule faces, see our Securities Advisory: SEC Adopts New Rules for Climate-Related Disclosures; Lawsuits Challenge New Rules. The stay is temporary pending further judicial review.
To date, litigation challenging the rules has been filed in four federal courts of appeal, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Eleventh Circuits. KMK will continue to monitor the litigation and any guidance issued by the SEC with respect to the rule’s implementation.
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DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.
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The 1,200-square-foot home in coastal Maine uses a fraction of the energy required to heat the average house, and the pigs handle most of the yardwork.

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By Julie Lasky
This is the story of two athletic people who formed an attachment while cycling and made a home together near the coast of Maine. They built a small, energy-efficient house northwest of Camden that is comfortable throughout the year: in frigid season, sopping season, insect season. It’s got it.
This is also the story of three not-so-little pigs that chomp down on their field. We’ll get to them eventually.
Didier Bonner-Ganter and Nathalie Nopakun met seven years ago while participating in the Cadillac Challenge, an annual bike ride in Acadia National Park. Ms. Nopakun was living in Cambridge, Mass., and had a job as a compliance officer for a Medicaid/Medicare plan, while Mr. Bonner-Ganter was working as a forester and arborist in Midcoast Maine.
“It was just one of those things,” Ms. Nopakun said, sounding like a very fit, female Cole Porter. “We just were totally drawn to each other. We tossed around a bunch of ideas about where to relocate, because we’re older.” (Ms. Nopakun is now 47, and Mr. Bonner-Ganter is 53.)
She added: “It was not like we were about to start a family or anything like that.”
But Mr. Bonner-Ganter had an established business in Maine, which Ms. Nopakun joined in the pandemic after an unhappy bout of working at her job remotely. “I just burned out, so I begged and pleaded and he finally took me on,” she said.
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Intel’s green dream is chips without any dips in Mother Nature’s health  The Register
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In the recent years, Malaysia Airlines has been continuously expanding, now having a network that spans 1,000 destinations in over 170 territories. The national carrier of Malaysia has, in fact, recently also been awarded as the airline with the Best Seat Comfort in Eastern Asia at the 2023 Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX) Passenger Choice Awards and is celebrating 35 years of its Frequent Flyer Programme. Amid this, BW HOTELIER spoke to Amit Mehta, Country Manager-South Asia of Malaysia Airlines on his expectations from the festive season, the expected trends in the coming year and expansion plans. Edited excerpts:
What are your expectations from the last quarter of the year and the festive season?
With more tourist destinations gradually easing restrictions, we remain bullish that travel demands will continue to improve. We are gradually increasing our frequencies and network as we aim to achieve more than 70 per cent of pre-COVID-19 capacity for domestic and international travel by the end of 2022.
With pressure on fuel prices and market fluidity, our priority will be in proactively managing our capacity to mitigate unprofitable routes. We are cautious of potential downsides and market fluidity and are taking steps to cushion the impact they may have on our businesses.
Do you have any campaigns/offers around the festive period to encourage customers to travel?
We aim to make travelling a seamless experience for all. Earlier this year we relaunched our Bonus Side Trip programme that allows passengers to add an extra leg to their journey by exploring the domestic wonders of Malaysia at minimal costs. With travel demands continuing to pick up and many planning for year-end getaway, we encourage passengers to take advantage of this unique offer and make the most out of their itinerary.
Additionally, with programmes like MHholidays, travellers can seamlessly plan their next vacation via a single platform that enables them to select and customise their getaways, which can include flights, lodging, ground transfer services, and holiday packages.
Travelling can also be rewarding beyond just airline perks. Our travel and lifestyle loyalty programme, Enrich, offers a wide variety of ways for members to earn and redeem Enrich Points, including through flights and a host of lifestyle partners, including F&B, hotel stays, spas, premium retail brands and even point conversions with other loyalty programmes.
In your opinion, what are the travel trends for 2023?
The airline industry is seeing indications that many more people are now flying for work, and we expect that momentum to build next year. The expanding business scene in India is expected to boost business travel as well.
Eco-travel, or sustainable tourism, was a big trend in 2022 and will likely carry over into 2023. Consumers are also becoming more climate conscious, especially the younger generation, with emphasis on sustainable and eco-friendly travel decisions. They are asking for information on carbon emissions and how to offset them to make their trips more sustainable. Therefore, travellers can be expected to lean towards more eco-friendly travel options in the future, such as options for carbon offsetting or use of sustainable aviation fuel.
Apart from that, a recent research shows that there will be an increase in spontaneous travel which effectively means travellers will be looking for last-minute deals. This will ensure players across the tourism industry, including airlines, will continue to launch campaigns, experiences and deals that excite and encourage customers to choose their business.
A recent report says that Outbound trips from India will surpass USD 42 billion by 2024. How do you see the opportunities for Malaysia?
India has always been a key market for us, and we will continue to leverage on this opportunity by gradually increasing our capacity and network from both countries. The Outbound Travel and Tourism – An Opportunity Untapped report also stated that Europe sees 20 per cent of the travellers from India’s outbound traffic, while 10 per cent travel to Australia and New Zealand, and the rest of the traffic is towards Southeast Asia.
Many Indian tourists favour Southeast Asian countries for their travels, with Malaysia being one of their top choices due to its proximity to India, the consequent reduction in travel time as well as its melting pot of multicultural offerings which are not too dissimilar with Indians in terms of culture and food, and the familiarity factor gives a feeling of safety.
To ensure that customers enjoy our inimitable Malaysian hospitality, we constantly develop and improve our products and offerings. various fare families and products that offer highly flexible and convenient perks, including free flight changes, in response to the increasing demand from travellers for greater flexibility in their itinerary.
Our Horizontal Fare Family (HFF) offers customers a flexible fare based on their travel needs, preferences, priorities, and purchasing capabilities consisting of Lite, Basic, and Flex where each fare family has different benefits such as baggage allowance, seat selections and priority services.
When do you expect to achieve the pre-pandemic capacity in India?
We are looking at achieving pre-pandemic capacity back for India by end of the year by deploying fleet and network expansion opportunistically during peak periods to service high demand/capacity sectors.
Your views on the current status of connectivity with Indian cities and your expansion plans.
Malaysia Airlines has reinstated its scheduled commercial services from India with 31 weekly flights from five major cities, namely New Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. By December 2022, we will ramp up the weekly flights on the existing routes and also reinstate weekly flights from Kochi, which will increase the overall weekly flights from India to 52.
We are continuously reviewing the opportunities in the Indian market and will gradually add new routes, increase frequencies or upgrade aircraft wherever needed to meet these demands especially during peak travel periods.
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By Julia Fennell ’21
Dr. Corina McKendry, CC Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Environmental Studies Program, and Dr. Miro Kummel, CC Professor and Associate Director of the Environmental Program and a group of their students won a merit award from the Colorado American Planning Association for their research on food access and temperature in Southeast Colorado Springs.
What started off as a research project for an earlier capstone class turned into important, community-based research with community partners leading the way.  
“Our focus was on the community group and the students; applying for an award never would have occurred to me,” McKendry said. “But why it is important to me is because it is a recognition that class projects, if done thoughtfully and in partnership with community organizations, can be impactful, high quality, and make a difference.”
A few years ago, McKendry and Kummel were teaching Environmental Synthesis, the senior capstone course required for Environmental Science and Environmental Studies majors. The class did a climate vulnerability assessment for Colorado Springs, where the students created a map of summer surface temperature for Colorado Springs and analyzed it with respect to the social data found by the U.S. Census. The class also did a spatial examination of food access in the area.
“One of our most striking findings was that Southeast Colorado Springs, which is the most racially diverse part of the city, was several degrees hotter than the city average,” McKendry and Kummel said. “Our students presented the findings to members of City Council, and the finding was reported frequently in local newspapers and in discussions of the need for more trees and green spaces in the Southeast, two of the interventions that can decrease temperature and therefore help mitigate the urban heat island.”
McKendry and Kummel were scheduled to teach the capstone class again in Spring 2022, so towards the end of 2021, the two were trying to pick a research project for the class. Around that time, they were contacted by a staff member of the Solid Rock Development Corporation, a social and environmental justice organization based out of Southeast Colorado Springs. One of the key officers in the organization had seen the research McKendry and Kummel and their class had done, and wanted to get more information and see if there was additional research on the issue. After a few weeks of discussing with Solid Rock, McKendry and Kummel decided it would be useful for the organization if their upcoming class did a more in-depth analysis of heat in Southeast Colorado Springs.
“Led by Solid Rock and their interests, we designed research projects for our students to do as their Synthesis capstone project,” McKendry said. “The main reason we did this research was in support of a request for research by a community organization, but also because it was a great opportunity for students to apply what they had learned in their majors to a number of pressing environmental justice issues in Colorado Springs.”
All Environmental Studies and Environmental Science majors in the graduating Class of 2022, 47 students in total, took part in this research. McKendry and Kummel divided the students into teams for each specific question, though all teams had both Environmental Studies and Environmental Science majors.
“We thought this was important because each question had both policy aspects and physical science aspects associated with it,” the two professors said. “This allowed the students to complement each other’s expertise, to teach each other and led to better product in the end.”
This project intersected with what McKendry’s research focuses on, as she studies cities and climate governance, and is particularly interested in how cities can address the impacts of climate change and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in a socially just way. The study also related to important themes in Kummel’s research, as he focuses on local climates and food justice.
“It was incredibly rewarding to work on a project that had real-world consequences and that was guided by the needs and questions of our community partners,” Kummel said. “Importantly, it is the work of our partners, Solid Rock primarily and City Planning secondarily, that needs to be celebrated here.”
The Colorado Chapter of the American Planning Association is a non-profit that provides a vision and leadership for future development of communities in the state. There are eight project category awards, including student and recent graduate projects, which is the category in which McKendry, Kummel, and their students won an award.
 
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Rising global temperatures could decimate global wine production over the new few decades, according to a study published Tuesday in the science journal Nature.
Researchers estimated that as much as 70 percent of the world’s suitable regions for wine will become too warm this century, including as much as 90 percent of wine’s best traditional regions in Spain, Italy, Greece and Southern California.
Increasing temperatures reduce grape crops and the quality of wine, leading to lessened production over time. The effects will be felt most immediately in already warm regions, the researchers said, focusing on Southern California, the southern Mediterranean, South Africa and Australia.
But more moderate climates like California’s renowned Napa Valley and the winemaking regions of France will also likely take a hit, though to a lesser extent.
“Climate change is affecting grape yield, composition and wine quality. As a result, the geography of wine production is changing,” researchers wrote in the study. “The degree of these changes in suitability strongly depends on the level of temperature rise. Existing producers can adapt to a certain level of warming. … However, these adaptations might not be enough to maintain economically viable wine production in all areas.”
Warmer weather has already begun moving grape harvests earlier into the year by about two to three weeks on average worldwide in the past 40 years, the researchers said. Earlier harvests can change a wine’s flavor profile and impact quality.
Climate change has also increased the risk of drought and wildfires, extreme weather that could have massive impacts on year-to-year harvests and quality. That impact is the most important for California’s wine industry, the experts said, noting that California wine lands may degrade by as much as 50 percent by the end of the century.
However, there is a silver lining for some parts of the world. As warmer climates get phased out of high-quality wine production, formerly cooler areas become more suitable.
Researchers identified the Pacific Northwest, Northern Germany and Scandinavia as some areas which could see booming wine production in coming decades.
The study estimated that as much as 25 percent of current wine production regions could actually see better production due to warmer climate, in addition to making new areas suitable. 
Researchers emphasized that the changing climate does not mean the end for wine, merely that its geographical range is changing.
“Without radical adaptation, some of these regions are clearly threatened. Change also brings with it opportunities, as some regions will benefit, and new wine regions will surely emerge,” the study reads. “However, these changes are not without consequences either, and expanding viticulture could bring with it impacts on natural resource consumption and wild habitats.”
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Are Americans’ sustainability efforts making a difference? | Outdoors | bluemountaineagle.com  Blue Mountain Eagle
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Vermont Electric Co-op prepares for an increase in severe weather due to climate change  Local 22/44 News
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Melting ice sheets are slowing Earth’s rotation speed, complicating global timekeeping
The rapidly accelerating melting of Earth’s polar ice sheets — including ice atop Greenland (shown here) — is slowing the planet’s spin, which affects global timekeeping.
KEREM YUCEL/AFP via Getty Images
By Carolyn Gramling
March 27, 2024 at 1:34 pm
Climate change may be making it harder to know exactly what time it is.
The rapid melting of the ice sheets atop Greenland and Antarctica, as measured by satellite-based gravitational measurements, is shifting more mass toward Earth’s waistline. And that extra bulge is slowing the planet’s rotation, geophysicist Duncan Agnew reports online March 27 in Nature. That climate change–driven mass shift is throwing a new wrench into international timekeeping standards.
The internationally agreed-upon coordinated universal time, or UTC, is set by atomic clocks, but that time is regularly adjusted to match Earth’s actual spin. Earth’s rotation isn’t always smooth sailing — the speed of the planet’s spin changes depending on a variety of factors, including gravitational drag from the sun and the moon, changes to the rotation speed of Earth’s core, friction between ocean waters and the seafloor, and shifts in the planet’s distribution of mass around its surface. Even earthquakes can affect the spin: The magnitude 9.1 earthquake in Indonesia in 2004, for example, altered the land surface in such a way that it caused Earth to rotate a tiny bit faster, says Agnew, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.
But the impact of that quake is much smaller than that of the ice sheets’ melting — a point that Agnew says he finds particularly startling. Humankind “has done something that affects, measurably, the rotation rate of the entire Earth.”
The need for occasional tweaks to the synchronization of atomic clocks and Earth’s rotation gave birth in 1972 to the “leap second,” an extra tick that international timekeepers agreed to add to UTC as needed (SN: 1/19/24). Timekeepers have added 27 leap seconds to the clock since the idea was introduced.
Still, metrologists — measurement scientists — aren’t overly fond of this system. For one thing, it doesn’t happen on a regular schedule, but only whenever it seems to be needed. And financial markets and satellite navigation systems, which rely on precise timing, each have their own methodologies for incorporating a leap second. Those inconsistencies can, counterproductively, make it more challenging to have a universal time. So in 2022, an international consortium of metrologists voted to do away with leap seconds in favor of adding larger chunks of time, perhaps a minute, less frequently. The group resolved to settle those details at its next meeting, in 2026.
That may not come a second too soon. The slightly slower rotation has actually delayed the need for timekeeping adjustments by a few years, Agnew says — in fact, as a result of this change, the last time a leap second was required to be inserted was in 2016. At the moment, in fact, Earth’s rotation and atomic clocks are nearly in sync.
But that’s just a brief respite, Agnew’s calculations show. The biggest changes to Earth’s rotation right now are coming from its heart: slowing rotation of Earth’s core is actually speeding up the spin of the outer layers (SN: 1/23/23). That slowdown will ultimately mean that timekeepers, under the current system, must begin removing leap seconds from the UTC, rather than inserting them, to keep things in sync.
That shift in strategy might have begun as soon as in 2026. But the study suggests that, thanks to climate change, global timekeepers now have an extra two or three years before they need to adjust, notes geophysicist Jerry Mitrovica of Harvard University. But no realistic projections of future melting can forestall the inevitable beyond 2030, Mitrovica adds: One way or another, the world is going to have to start losing time — or international timekeeping guidelines will need to change.
Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org | Reprints FAQ
D. C. Agnew. A global timekeeping problem postponed by global warming. Nature. Published online March 27, 2024. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07170-0.
Carolyn Gramling is the earth & climate writer. She has bachelor’s degrees in geology and European history and a Ph.D. in marine geochemistry from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
This article was supported by readers like you. Invest in quality science journalism by donating today.
Science News was founded in 1921 as an independent, nonprofit source of accurate information on the latest news of science, medicine and technology. Today, our mission remains the same: to empower people to evaluate the news and the world around them. It is published by the Society for Science, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to public engagement in scientific research and education (EIN 53-0196483).
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Washington State University
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Using a model validated by historic records, researchers found that in 1900, Canada lynx had more suitable habitat in the U.S. than the few northern corners of the country where they are found currently. The model also helped reveal more potential future habitat for lynx in the future: namely in parts of Utah, central Idaho and the Yellowstone National Park region. 

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Using a model validated by historic records, researchers found that in 1900, Canada lynx had more suitable habitat in the U.S. than the few northern corners of the country where they are found currently. The model also helped reveal more potential future habitat for lynx in the future: namely in parts of Utah, central Idaho and the Yellowstone National Park region. 
Credit: Washington State University
PULLMAN, Wash. – A broader past could mean a brighter future for Canada lynx in the U.S., according to recent research.
The study, published in the journal Biological Conservation, indicates that lynx might do well in the future in parts of Utah, central Idaho and the Yellowstone National Park region, even considering climate change and the lack of lynx in those areas now.
Using a model validated by historic records, researchers first found that in 1900, Canada lynx had more suitable habitat in the U.S. than the few northern corners of the country where they are found currently. The study showed the elusive big cat likely roamed over a larger area in the Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountains, Great Lakes region and parts of New England.
“History matters even for wildlife,” said lead author Dan Thornton, a Washington State University wildlife ecologist. “As part of the criteria for species recovery, we have to understand their historic distribution. Otherwise, how can we help recover a species, if we don't know what we’re recovering to?”
Having a more accurate picture of a species’ past can also help avoid an effect known as “shifting baseline syndrome,” Thornton added, which is a gradual change in what people accept as normal for the environment, or specifically in this case, a species’ habitat.
True to their name, Canada lynx are still abundant in Canada, but in the U.S. their numbers have dwindled. Currently, they are only found in limited, northern portions of Washington, Idaho, Montana, Minnesota and Maine. So far, recovery plans for lynx have been based on assumptions that they were never found much beyond these areas in the U.S., although a small population was successfully re-introduced to the Colorado Rockies in 1999.
This study, which has conservation implications for not only lynx but other threatened species, proposes one new way of estimating a species’ historic range, using modelling of suitable habitat validated by historical records.
Thornton and co-author Dennis Murray of Trent University in Canada created the model using factors to determine lynx’s suitable habitat like temperature, precipitation and land use in the last 40 years. They ran that model back in time to 1900 using historic climate and land use data to discover the possible past range, which they validated using records of lynx from museums as well as hunters and trappers who have prized the big cat for its fur.
The researchers then used the model to project suitable habitat into the future of 2050 and 2070. Even when accounting for climate change effects, they found areas that could be good for lynx that fall outside the species’ current range but likely within historically occupied areas: namely in central Idaho, northern Utah and the area in, and around, Yellowstone National Park. Whether or not these areas could support viable lynx populations now or in the future would require additional research, the authors noted.
Conserving lynx as a key predator is important for maintaining the integrity of forest ecosystems, the authors contend, and lynx are an iconic species in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.
The researchers also hope that this approach to estimating historic range could help inform conservation efforts for other species.
“Thinking about historic range is really important. It’s also quite difficult because we often have limited data on where species were in the past,” Thornton said. “But there are potential ways to go about addressing that, and we wanted to provide one possible approach in this paper.”
This research received support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
Biological Conservation
10.1016/j.biocon.2024.110541
Modeling range dynamics through time to inform conservation planning: Canada lynx in the contiguous United States
28-Mar-2024
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
Media Contact
Sara Zaske
Washington State University
sara.zaske@wsu.edu
Office: 509-335-4846

Expert Contact
Daniel Thornton
WSU School of the Environment
daniel.thornton@wsu.edu
Office: 509-335-3713

Washington State University


Copyright © 2024 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Copyright © 2024 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

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