Rice farming has long been a significant source of methane emissions, a potent greenhouse gas formed when organic matter decomposes in flooded, oxygen-deprived soils. Traditional rice paddies create exactly these conditions, making the crop one of the largest agricultural contributors to methane globally. While its total share of global emissions ... [continued]
The post Rice Is A Greenhouse Gas Emitter; Rice Researchers Have Many Solutions appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Every spring Florida’s Miccosukee Tribe observes its corn dance season on lands the tribe holds as sacred within the fragile Everglades. But this year’s festivities are different, because of the migrant detention site that now looms among the tribal lands, Alligator Alcatraz.
With record temperatures bringing increased numbers of seals and dolphins, scientists say large predators could return to UK waters
Last year water temperatures in the North Sea reached record levels, with average surface temperatures a balmy 11.6C, the warmest since measurements started in 1969. And as waters continue to warm, a new study suggests great white sharks could start prowling British waters.
Olivier Lambert, from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, and colleagues studied whale fossils recovered from North Sea sediments dated to around 5m years ago. North Sea waters were warmer at this time and were home to several species of whale and shark. Fossilised tooth fragments embedded in the whale skulls revealed that sharks had feasted on them.
Continue reading...We’re now two months into Trump’s latest imperial adventure. The sudden attack on Iran’s leadership on February 28th (amidst ongoing negotiations between Iran and the US) led to a series of escalatory measures from both sides that have most notably caused the closure of the globe’s most important energy corridor: ... [continued]
The post Echoes From The Past: What The “Twin Oil Crises” From The 1970s Teach Us About The Coming Impacts Of Hormuz’s Blockade. appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Fresh from losing the argument that electric vehicles would ruin your weekend, Australia’s conservative politicians and their media enablers are now hell bent on attacking battery-powered semi-trailers. Of course, they have not admitted that they were wrong about the weekend, and won’t when Twiggy Forrest wins the heavy trucking argument ... [continued]
The post “Yes We Can” — BEV Heavy Trucks Already in Service appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Sunrun (Nasdaq: RUN), America’s largest provider of home battery storage, solar, and home-to-grid power plants, yesterday announced it has priced a securitization of leases and power purchase agreements. The securitization is Sunrun’s sixteenth securitization since 2015 and first issuance in 2026. “This $584 million securitization transaction further exhibits Sunrun’s ability ... [continued]
The post Sunrun Prices $584 Million Securitization of Residential Solar & Storage Assets appeared first on CleanTechnica.
It’s hard to miss the Powerhouse Visitor Center when you roll into Kingman. This massive building went up in 1907 to supply electricity to the town and local mines, but today it’s a completely different kind of hub. It serves as the main event in Kingman’s Route 66 scene, and ... [continued]
The post Kingman: Route 66’s Electric HQ & Gateway To Easy EV Adventure appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Prices for natural gas in Europe and Asia have diverged from those in the United States since the February 28 closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Futures prices for liquified natural gas (LNG) delivery to the Title Transfer Facility (TTF), the European benchmark price, increased to $14.80 per million British thermal ... [continued]
The post International LNG Prices Rise Amid Strait of Hormuz Closure appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Waymo is coming to the Rose City! Portland has always been a pioneer in urban design, balancing its independent spirit with a deep commitment to sustainable, forward-thinking living. This unique blend of innovation and community makes it the perfect place for Waymo’s next chapter. We are actively working with state ... [continued]
The post Waymo New City Alert: Portland, Oregon appeared first on CleanTechnica.
The UAE’s decision to leave OPEC+ is not just another Gulf oil story. It is an early signal of what happens when a producer with low-cost barrels, spare capacity ambitions, and a long view of electrification decides that flexibility may be worth more than cartel discipline. Oil demand is beginning ... [continued]
The post The Petroleum System Is Entering Its Volatile Decline Phase appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Saarbahn’s newly opened hydrogen refueling station in Saarbrücken is the moment its hydrogen bus program stops being a procurement story and becomes an operating system. The 28 Wrightbus Kite Hydroliner fuel-cell buses now have a depot station, three 350 bar dispensers, storage capacity, delivery logistics, trained staff, safety systems, and ... [continued]
The post When 28 Hydrogen Buses Have To Carry A €7.6 Million Refueling Station appeared first on CleanTechnica.
A mere quarter ago, we were celebrating the first time ever Latin America had seen more than 100,000 EVs sold in only three months. Now, thanks to significant growth year-on-year (YoY), we’re once again reaching a record, with Q1 surpassing 115,000 EVs sold in the region! This is a deviation ... [continued]
The post Latin America EV Sales Report: Sales in Q1 Grew 74%, Reaching a New Record of Over 115,000 Units! appeared first on CleanTechnica.
James Comey is not exactly someone we’ve ever been a fan of on Techdirt. He was a terrible FBI director in so many ways. We’ve spent years criticizing the man — for his crusade against encryption, his supporting the FBI’s ridiculously aggressive impersonation of reporters, his embrace of the FBI’s program to coerce and entrap people down on their luck into fake terrorist plots, and much more. And, while the impact has been exaggerated, it is true that he took multiple actions violating DOJ procedures that likely helped get Donald Trump elected in 2016. So it’s not like I’m rushing to support the guy. He’s a bad cop and has been for some time.
But the indictment the Department of Justice handed down against James Comey on Tuesday is a truly embarrassing legal document, and everyone involved in producing it should be professionally radioactive for the rest of their careers. I would have said it’s one of the most embarrassing legal documents that this DOJ has produced, but remember, just a day earlier they filed a legal brief that was indistinguishable from a Truth Social post.
The charge, in its entirety, concerns this Instagram post from May 2025:
If you can’t see that, it’s an Instagram post from Comey showing some shells on some sand with the shells spelling out 8647 and the caption on the post saying:
Cool shell formation on my beach walk
For this — for posting a photo of arranged seashells in a slightly sassy pattern and posting it to Instagram — Comey has been charged with two federal felonies: threatening the President under 18 U.S.C. § 871, and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce under 18 U.S.C. § 875(c). (For what it’s worth Comey has claimed he didn’t arrange the sea shells, but just found them. It’s unclear if that makes much of a difference, it’s protected speech either way).
Ken “Popehat” White, who has perhaps done more than any other lawyer in America to explain First Amendment doctrine to laypeople, didn’t mince words about what this is:
The charge is preposterous and no competent or honest prosecutor would bring it. It represents a betrayal of the professional and ethical obligations of every U.S. Department of Justice attorney involved, and reflects the complete collapse of the Department’s credibility and independence in favor of a cultish and cretinous devotion to Donald Trump.
He’s right, and the way to understand just how right he is requires understanding the path that brought us here.
Because this is the second time the Trump DOJ has tried to indict Comey. The first attempt collapsed in spectacular fashion last year, after Trump — in what was apparently supposed to be a private direct message but accidentally went out as a public Truth Social post — demanded that Pam Bondi install Lindsey Halligan, a former insurance lawyer with no relevant experience, as a U.S. Attorney specifically because she had promised to indict Comey. The problem: Halligan wasn’t legally appointed. The entire indictment got tossed before the court could dismiss it for being ridiculous (which would have happened) because the person who filed it wasn’t allowed to file it.
As we noted at the time, this pattern of procedural self-sabotage is a recurring feature of an administration that treats legal procedure as an inconvenience rather than the actual point of having a justice system.
So how did the DOJ respond to that humiliation? By coming back with something substantively even worse. In theory, they tried fixing the “wrong person filed it” problem by having an actually legally appointed person file something… even if that something has no legal basis whatsoever. Progress! Sort of?
The seashell indictment was filed by W. Ellis Boyle, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew R. Petracca listed as the prosecuting attorney. Remember those names. They put their signatures on this. Boyle is listed as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, but he’s serving in an acting capacity — Trump has nominated him multiple times, yet the Senate has still refused to confirm him.
The legal problem with the indictment is pretty easy to spot: to convict someone under either of the threat statutes the DOJ is invoking, the government has to prove the communication constituted a “true threat.” Under controlling Fourth Circuit precedent (this case is in North Carolina), a true threat is something “an ordinary, reasonable recipient who is familiar with the context in which the statement is made would interpret as a serious expression of an intent to do harm.”
As Ken White noted, the Supreme Court established this framework in Watts v. United States, a 1969 case involving an 18-year-old draft protester who said:
They always holler at us to get an education. And now I have already received my draft classification as 1-A and I have got to report for my physical this Monday coming. I am not going. If they ever make me carry a rifle the first man I want to get in my sights is L. B. J.
The Court found this was protected political hyperbole, not a true threat. An explicit statement about wanting a President in your rifle sights — protected.
If Watts isn’t damning enough, there’s United States v. Bagdasarian, a much more recent Ninth Circuit case where a man posted online statements about wanting to shoot then-candidate Barack Obama, including some genuinely vile racially explicit language about hoping Obama would be killed. The court held that even that did not constitute a true threat under the relevant statutes.
I’d be curious to hear from anyone defending this indictment whether they think Bagdasarian was wrongly decided. Or do we change the “true threat” standard when the target is Trump?
So the descending ladder of seriousness looks like this:
Any first-year law student who’s taken a basic First Amendment course could tell you the seashell post is constitutionally protected. Any prosecutor with five minutes of research time would know that Bagdasarian and Watts exist. But, of course, as we’ve seen over and over and over again in the Trump era, the point is not to bring a good case or a winnable case. The point is just to punish Trump’s enemies with vexatious, vindictive prosecutions in hopes of creating a chilling effect among the populace and stopping them from criticizing the President with the thinnest skin possible.
Now, “86” has had various meanings over the years — to “86” something in restaurant slang means to remove it from the menu or get rid of it. The DOJ’s theory is apparently that when used about a person, it means to kill them. No one else believes that. This is the kind of motivated reading that requires ignoring both the dictionary and how actual humans use language.
But fine, let’s grant the absolute most uncharitable reading and say “86 47” means “get rid of the 47th President through killing.” Even granting that — even doing all the work for the prosecution — it’s still obviously protected political expression, and still obviously not a true threat under the controlling case law.
Which brings us to the part that genuinely cannot be explained by anything other than pure vindictiveness. Here is a tweet from Jack Posobiec, a prominent Trump loyalist/conspiracy theorist, posted in January 2022:
That tweet is still up. I just made that screenshot minutes ago. As of this writing, it has been online for nearly four years. No FBI investigation. No federal indictment. No felony counts. Literally no one thought that was an actual threat. Because it’s not. Apparently the DOJ’s theory of criminal threats has a loyalty-based expiration date — the same numerical expression is a felony when arranged in shells by a Trump critic and a perfectly fine tweet when posted by a Trump supporter about a different President.
Indeed, the fact that Posobiec seems to have no issue keeping this tweet up is itself a sign that the MAGA world knows it’s engaged in purely theatrical vindictive prosecution — and wants you to know they know. To them, once again, nothing here is about justice or the rule of law. It’s just “will this make the people I dislike upset.” That is their only motivating factor.
The DOJ has baked the selective prosecution argument directly into its own theory of the case. Comey’s lawyers will surely refresh the selective prosecution motion they filed in the first, dismissed indictment, and the facial absurdity of this one — combined with the existence of identical, ignored expression by Trump allies — makes that motion approximately as easy to support as such motions ever get.
There’s a specific kind of institutional rot in play here, driven entirely by Donald Trump and his minions. Competent authoritarianism is dangerous in obvious ways. Incompetent authoritarianism that keeps trying anyway is dangerous in different ways: it normalizes the use of state power for personal vengeance while demonstrating that the people wielding it will stop at nothing — even on the most facially ridiculous grounds. That’s a chilling effect doubled: a politicized DOJ, staffed by people who can’t pass a First Amendment quiz.
White is right that the indictment is unlikely to survive. Comey’s attorneys can challenge it on its face, arguing that even taking every allegation as true, seashells spelling “86 47” are protected by the First Amendment as a matter of law. The assigned judge was appointed by a Republican but is reportedly not a partisan hack, and the case law here is so clear that it would take extreme judicial bad faith to let this proceed. The selective prosecution motion is also stronger now than it was the first time, with Posobiec’s untouched tweet sitting there as Exhibit A.
But as White notes, surviving the motion to dismiss isn’t actually the point:
The point of the indictment is to demonstrate that the United States Department of Justice is wholly an instrument of Donald Trump’s senescent pique, no more independent of him than a boil on his ass. The point is to show that the administration can, and will, use the Department’s mechanisms to punish enemies. The point is to show that the Department can, and will, punish protected speech. The point is to show that the Department is staffed by committed fanatics willing to do anything, however unethical and unconstitutional, to promote Trump.
The point is to show that in the war between Donald Trump and the U.S. Department of Justice, Trump has won. Now they’re on the field slitting the throats of the wounded and looting bodies.
W. Ellis Boyle and Matthew R. Petracca put their names on this indictment. They will, presumably, lose this case the way the previous Comey case was lost — embarrassingly, on grounds that any competent attorney not engaged in cult-like performative fealty to a wannabe authoritarian could have anticipated. And when this is all over, when there is some accounting for what was done to the Department of Justice in these years, the people who signed the seashell indictment should never be trusted with prosecutorial power, a bar membership, or any position requiring professional judgment ever again.
The shells, for what it’s worth, were on a beach. The tide has presumably long since rearranged them. The Instagram post was taken down fairly quickly when the MAGA world lost their minds over it. The federal felony charges, somehow, remain.
The US drone manufacturer Heven Aerotech has earned a streamlined contract with the US Army for its hydrogen fuel cell UAV and associated hydrogen systems.
The post Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars No; Fuel Cell Combat Drones Yes appeared first on CleanTechnica.
CATL and HyperStrong have inked a deal for 60 GWh of sodium-ion battery cells for energy storage systems over the next three years.
The post CATL Inks Deal For 60 GWh Of Sodium Energy Storage Batteries Over Next Three Years appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Original reporting, news analysis, and a roundup of links.
Those have been the three pillars of journalist Casey Newton‘s technology newsletter, Platformer, since it launched in 2017. But, Newton wrote Monday, two of them — link roundups and news analysis — may no longer work so well for his audience in a time of AI automation. So he’s experimenting with changes to Platformer’s offerings, spending more time on original reporting and scoops, less on aggregation and analysis.
“We’re betting that the value in tech journalism is moving away from aggregation and predictability,” Newton wrote, “and toward original reporting and surprise.”
There’s a lot to think about here for anybody who runs a small publication or sends out a daily newsletter. To be sure, Newton’s case is unique: Platformer is a paid newsletter whose tech-savvy readers are more likely to be using AI than the audiences of more general-interest publications. But the concerns he has now will become relevant to other beats and topics — politics and business, to name just a couple — sooner rather than later. So I asked Newton a few questions via email. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited for clarity and with a bunch of links added for context. By the way, Newton said readers have responded positively to his proposed changes: Monday was Platformer’s largest day for new paid subscriptions this year.
Like, are you seeing fewer publications and sources out there? Do you think the broken-ness of X has contributed to the problem?
The larger issue is that the press corps now feels too small to really swarm a story. When Cambridge Analytica broke in The Guardian and New York Times, the entire press corps got to work identifying their own angles of attack and amplified the story into an international scandal. It’s extremely hard for me to imagine that happening today — Jeff Horwitz has been on an all-time run discovering scandals at Meta over the past two years, and they’ve gotten shockingly little attention.
The press corps is too small, the business models have changed (a big part of fast-following other reporters’ scoops was the hunt for Google traffic), and (to your last point) distribution is broken. One of the best things about X was the way that tech reporters would amplify each other’s scoops; that’s gone now and has shown no real signs of re-emerging anywhere else.
Anyway, this has basically killed off one of my old jobs, which was that if there were 30 stories about Cambridge Analytica on a Tuesday, I could pick out the most important details across all of them and give you a sense of where things were headed. That felt really useful, for a time. But when it’s just me writing “here’s the news that Jeff Horwitz broke,” it’s much less valuable.
Is this concern specific to tech journalism, do you think, or does it apply to other areas of journalism, too?
So if you write a newsletter about, say, national politics, and your stock in trade is explaining what the latest poll numbers mean for Democrats, I absolutely think a bot is going to overtake people in its ability to interpret those numbers someday. I can also see it happening across various business journalism domains, as well as in sports.
There are lots of reasons I could be wrong. Chatbots have no moral authority, which makes their writing about tech policy (my beat) feel pretty bloodless and slop-py. Some writers excel at being entertaining (Matt Levine) or useful (Emily Sundberg) or building community (Anne Helen Petersen), and all of these make them less resistant to being replaced by NewsAnalysisBot 5000.
But if you’re not the very best in your field, and don’t already have some degree of renown, I think all of this is going to become more difficult. “What kinds of editorial businesses can only be built around a human being” feels like it is going to become a more and more important question.
O.K., last thing. In your post, you talk a lot about the importance of scoops to your new business model. More than a decade ago I worked for a tech news site and a big part of what we did was covering company and product announcements, embargoed news, etc.
What happens to all that in this environment? I know it’s never been a huge part of what Platformer covers, but it remains a key component of what the remaining big tech news sites cover. How does this type of journalism continue to work and where does it work?
Or does it not work anymore?
The big players like OpenAI will be fine, but startups have a real challenge here. I’ve found that there is very little appetite among readers to learn about a new tech company they’ve never heard of. And in a world where Google isn’t feeding traffic to publications for covering them, it can feel like there’s no incentive to pay attention. The flip side is that this creates room for new publications (like Alex Konrad’s Upstarts, which writes the sort of profiles that TechCrunch used to.)
A new in-depth study by the Media Insight Project, which surveyed both adults and teens as young as 13 , provides a deep look into how news engagement does and does not vary by generation.
The post Comparing news media habits and trust between teens and adults appeared first on Better News.
Despite popular support for a 25% levy on gas exports, Anthony Albanese opposes it and there is little discussion about how to reduce our usage
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We’re yet to see next month’s Australian federal budget, so mark this column with an asterisk. But barring a late change it is likely it will do a remarkable thing: give fossil fuel industries what they want.
That’s worth noting this week, as representatives from 57 national governments including Australia meet in Colombia for the first international conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels. That gathering heard France aims to remove coal from its national grid by 2027, end oil dependency by 2045 and stop using fossil gas by 2050.
Continue reading...With all the news about mostly declining sales of new electric vehicles in the US, there has been an unexpected “silver lining.” That is a steady stream of new public EV charger installations, including many fast chargers. Within the new installation trend, there is more of a “golden lining,” which ... [continued]
The post 150 New Fast EV Chargers To Use 100% Renewable Energy appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Familiar name, new era – with timelessly clear design, efficient drive, many innovations and excellent value for money Maximum versatility – the new ID. Polo will impress in future with three output levels (85 kW, 99 kW, 155 kW), two battery sizes and a range of up to 454 km Compact but spacious – thanks to the new ... [continued]
The post Much More Than A City Car: World Premiere Of The All-New Electric ID. Polo appeared first on CleanTechnica.
South Asian nation depends on imports for bulk of its oil and gas needs
The first quarter of 2026 saw plugin EVs take 64.9% share in Sweden, up from 58.0% in Q1 2025. BEV share grew strongly year on year (YoY), while PHEV share dipped slightly. Overall Q1 auto volume was 61,960 units, down some 2% YoY. The Volvo EX40 was the best-selling BEV ... [continued]
The post EVs Take 64.9% Share In Sweden – Volvo EX60 Finally Debuts appeared first on CleanTechnica.
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The post Cómo cubrir el Acuerdo de comercio entre la Unión Europea y Mercosur appeared first on Covering Climate Now.
Against the backdrop of an energy crisis and a warming planet, more than 50 countries have come to Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss concrete ways to phase out oil, gas, and coal.
(Image credit: Raul Arboleda)
Guangzhou — XPENG (NYSE: XPEV, HKEX: 9868), a leading China-based high-tech company, recently officially released its X-World Technical Report, providing a comprehensive breakdown of the model’s construction and deployment across data, architecture, training, validation, and application. X-World is a controllable, multi-view generative world model designed for autonomous driving. Built on ... [continued]
The post XPENG Releases World Model Technical Report, Powering VLA 2.0 Model R&D And Verification appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Amidst a surge in interest in electric vehicles in Australia, it looks like the charging networks are keeping up. We have high-speed chargers in supermarket carparks and airports along with Level 2 pole-mounted chargers in dense inner-city suburbs. Just walking through the local supermarket carpark gives you a glimpse into ... [continued]
The post Chargers Multiply in Australia appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Annual reports show progress toward net-zero goals NEW YORK — The Sierra Club applauds New York City Comptroller Mark Levine and trustees of three of NYC’s public pension systems for releasing new climate reports showing continued progress toward their net-zero by 2040 goals. The reports from NYCERS, TRS, and BERS affirm the pension systems as ... [continued]
The post Sierra Club Applauds NYC Pensions for Continued Climate Progress, Calls for Stronger Implementation appeared first on CleanTechnica.
TAMPA, Fla. – Tampa Electric Company’s (TECO’s) rising utility bills are forcing Tampa families to choose between essentials like food, rent, and medicine and access to power. In response, TECO customers have written letters to the utility’s Board of Directors detailing their personal experiences with increasingly unaffordable energy bills. Sierra Club ... [continued]
The post TECO Customers Issue Letters to Utility’s Board Members Addressing Bill Increases appeared first on CleanTechnica.
The Groups are Challenging the State’s Abysmal EPA-Approved Regional Haze Plan CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club, and Earthjustice lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) challenging the agency’s approval of West Virginia’s Regional Haze State Implementation Plan has advanced in the United States Court of Appeals for ... [continued]
The post Conservation Groups Issue Reply to EPA in West Virginia Regional Haze Lawsuit appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Washington, D.C. — Today, Sierra Club released a new web tool that shows that every year, approximately 6,500 Americans die prematurely from illnesses linked to coal air pollution. The updated Out of Control: The Deadly Impact of Coal Pollution — 2026 web tool provides county by county, plant by plant, and utility by ... [continued]
The post NEW: Sierra Club Tool Shows Deadly Impact of Coal on Public Health Across the Country appeared first on CleanTechnica.
An independent study for T&E assesses the near-term cost of e-petrol production for cars. E-fuels have entered the political debate on car CO₂ standards as a decarbonisation alternative to electric vehicles. To establish an up-to-date evidence base that can better inform ongoing policy discussions, T&E commissioned consultancy Ionect to assess the ... [continued]
The post E-fuels in Cars: Unaffordable for Drivers appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. It seems there is only one thing they agree on — artificial intelligence is dangerous. A majority of Americans agree. Quinnipiac University, well known for its polling prowess, summarized the results of a recent poll about AI ... [continued]
The post What Do Steve Bannon & Bernie Sanders Have In Common? Opposition To Artificial Intelligence appeared first on CleanTechnica.
When I wrote in 2021 that small modular reactors were mostly bad policy (peer reviewed version, CleanTechnica version), the argument was not that nuclear fission could not produce useful low-carbon electricity. It was already doing so every day. The United States had about 98 GW of operating nuclear capacity, and ... [continued]
The post Nuclear Scaling Requires Discipline. SMRs Deliver Fragmentation appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Since the start of his second term last year, President Donald Trump has sought to weaken the federal foundations underpinning American science, slashing or stalling research funding, firing or pushing out thousands of scientists, canceling grants for ideological reasons and shuttering research facilities across the country.
Drought and fire are a dangerous duo. The Southeastern United States is witnessing this firsthand as several major blazes burn tens of thousands of acres across the parched region, destroying homes and prompting evacuations in some areas. Florida and Georgia have been particularly hard hit, and strong winds and unusually low humidity have made it difficult to combat the flames.