A tentative truce, a weakening ocean current and a parched river. Plus, the Justice Department tries to stop a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company.
Today, we’re catching up on several consequential stories we’ve been monitoring.
Energy
What happens if the Strait of Hormuz is reopened?
A preliminary agreement between the United States and Iran to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz sent oil prices plummeting. But it will take months for the world’s energy supply chain to return to normal, Rebecca Elliot writes. And the effects of the war will continue to ripple for years to come.
As we wrote earlier this month, the effective shut-off of roughly 15 percent of the world’s oil and gas has disrupted business, agriculture and daily life around the globe and pushed some countries to ration energy.
Even if the hundreds of tankers stuck in the Persian Gulf start moving soon, it will take weeks or months for them to reach their destinations. And it will be much longer than that before Gulf nations can fully restore production, after months of fighting left critical infrastructure damaged and supply chains in tatters.
So energy prices are likely to remain high for the foreseeable future. As Emmett Lindner reports, those prices go “up like a rocket, down like a feather.”
Outside of the Middle East, disruptions from the war are pushing some countries to look beyond oil and gas. As we reported this year, spiking energy prices are prompting many developing nations to seek out more renewable power, notably solar. (Many of them are also burning more coal.) As one analyst told my colleague Chico Harlan, “the long-run signal is pretty clear: Do everything you can to reduce your dependence on imported petroleum.”
The world is more power hungry than ever before. Data centers, industrialization and electrification are driving demand in rich nations, while cheap solar is making electricity more accessible even in the poorest places on Earth.
What that means in practice: The world will get its power wherever it can these days, whether that’s oil and gas from the Middle East or solar panels from China.
Climate science
Warning signs about a crucial ocean current
Even while many of the world’s oceans continue to experience record warmth as the planet heats up, a patch of cold water in the North Atlantic is worrying scientists.
According to a recent study, evidence that this “cold blob” is getting even colder could suggest that a critical ocean current that brings warmth from the tropics up to Northern Europe could be breaking down.
Scientists consider a collapse of that current, known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, as one of the major tipping points that would upend global weather patterns.
In a study published late last month, a team led by researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany found that the cold blob is most likely the result of a weakening AMOC.
While some studies have suggested that cooling of the cold blob might be the result of changes to sea surface heat patterns, the new research concludes that changes in ocean heat transport are responsible for most of the cooling. That would mean a breakdown in the AMOC may have already begun.
“A further weakening of Atlantic heat transport in future climate change could lead to serious impacts on climate and weather conditions in Europe and other parts of the world,” the team concludes. While scientists can’t say exactly what would happen in the event of a shutdown, it would likely result in significantly colder temperatures across Europe.
Last year, Raymond Zhong took to the seas off eastern Greenland with a different group of scientists who were studying the AMOC.
Water
Tensions rise as the Colorado River dries up
Water in the Colorado River is dwindling to levels that haven’t been seen in decades. Now, the seven states whose residents and farmers depend on the river are squabbling over how to divide up what’s left.
As Scott Dance reports, “The river’s system of reservoirs and canals was designed for the climate and population of a century ago.” But with both “a declining water supply and enormous growth in communities in the river basin,” there is simply not enough to go around.
The Trump administration has twice tried to broker a deal, both times unsuccessfully.
This crisis has been simmering for years as drought and overdevelopment tax the West’s watershed. About 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of cropland depend on the Colorado for drinking water and irrigation, Dance writes.
The West isn’t the only part of the country facing water shortages. Last month, Lauren McGaughy reported from Corpus Christi, Texas, where local officials are warning the city of more than 300,000 could run out of water soon.
Climate law
D.O.J. seeks to halt pollution lawsuit against Elon Musk’s A.I. company
In an unusually aggressive move, the Justice Department told a federal court in Mississippi that Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has the right to run dozens of polluting gas-burning turbines in the state despite not having permits for them.
The Justice Department late on Monday said that the court should throw out a lawsuit against xAI that had been brought by the NAACP, which claimed that the turbines violate the Clean Air Act. The suit threatens national security by “seeking to shut off the power supply for artificial-intelligence innovation that supports the Department of War’s military operations,” wrote Stanley Woodward Jr., associate attorney general and the No. 3 official in the department.
The memo also argued that the federal government should have unchallenged authority to stop environmental lawsuits brought by private groups or individuals. — Karen Zraick and Hiroko Tabuchi
In one image
Trump ordered ‘American Flag Blue’ for the reflecting pool. It’s green again.
Days after the Trump administration completed a $14.2 million project to coat the Reflecting Pool’s concrete floor with dark blue waterproofing material, clumps of algae dotted the surface on Sunday and Monday, giving parts of the pool a green hue. — Maxine Joselow
One last thing
Ticks are moving to the city
Bedbugs, step aside: Ticks are moving into Northeastern cities, my colleague Remy Tumin reported recently. Health officials in New York City said cases of tick-borne diseases like Lyme and others are trending upward, and in Washington, tick bites started earlier than usual this year.
I’d read that climate change is contributing to tick population growth and fueling their expansion into new territories. But it was news to me that some were trading grassy meadows for the city, hitching rides on deer, mice, and birds.
I spoke with Tumin about her story from New York City, where both of us work. Here are a takeaways.
The urban park factor
Many cities have created a lot of green space in recent years. That’s meant there’s more space for wildlife to live, Nicole Chinnici, a tick researcher, told Tumin. Central Park, for example, is home to an estimated 20 coyotes.
“Where there’s wildlife, there are ticks,” Tumin said. “As wildlife increasingly moves into cities, that’s a big reason why we’re seeing incidences of ticks and tick-borne illnesses go up,” she added.
Ticks in cities still prefer wooded parks over manicured lawns. Blacklegged ticks, also known as deer ticks, are the most common in urban settings. One researcher said they can be found in “virtually all” New York City parks.
Climate change means more ticks can survive the winter
In the past, long winter cold snaps have killed off tick populations. But shorter, warmer winters have meant that more survive the cold months. As a result, they’re coming out “earlier and hungrier,” Tumin said.
Across much of the nation, the month of April saw the highest number of E.R. visits for early-season tick bites since 2017.
This was the third-warmest April on record across the contiguous United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with an average temperature of almost 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Ticks can be active when temperatures rise above about 39 Fahrenheit.
The same dynamics are causing ticks to expand their range. The deer tick, for example, marches an estimated 20 miles further north each year.
Researchers think the rise of tick populations has contributed to the rise of tick-borne diseases like Lyme and alpha-gal syndrome, which can cause a red meat allergy. They worry that new species of ticks will begin carrying diseases as populations overlap more and more, and that some ticks may already be capable of carrying more than one disease at a time.
More climate news from around the web:
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The combined effects of El Niño and the Iran war could lead to a hunger crisis for more than 100 million people, The Washington Post reports.
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Reuters reports that Australia’s weather bureau projects that the El Niño forming in the tropical Pacific could be one of the strongest in seven decades.
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“The U.S. residential solar industry is cratering after President Donald Trump eliminated a key tax credit for homeowners to install solar panels last year,” Bloomberg writes.
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