Ski events at the Beijing Winter Olympics take place on artificial snow amid otherwise snow-free mountains. Beijing is 9°F warmer today than it was in 1950.

Many of the world’s glaciers, particularly those in South America, contain far less ice than previously believed, spelling trouble for the millions of people who rely on them for drinking water.  

President Joe Biden vows to “bring an end” to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

A federal judge restores endangered species protections for gray wolves in much of the United States that had been removed in the final days of the Trump administration. The order does not apply to Idaho, Montana, or Wyoming, but will block any further wolf hunts in the Great Lakes region.  

South Carolina hunters can win a lifetime hunting license by killing one of 16 specially tagged coyotes released by wildlife officials. 

California’s attorney general says that the wealthy community of Woodside can’t escape its obligations under the state’s new affordable housing law by declaring itself mountain lion habitat.

Due apparently to a decline in human visitation since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, respiratory illnesses among mountain gorillas in Rwanda have declined greatly. Although the great apes are susceptible to COVID-19, the virus has not been detected among them.  

Electric car sales are surging worldwide, tripling from 2019 to 2021. 

The Biden administration allocates $5 billion for a nationwide network of electric-vehicle charging stations. 

Unable to handle a flood of requests from solar projects to connect to the grid, PJM Interconnection, one of the nation’s largest grid operators, proposes a two-year pause on new connections. 

A new study shows that cleaning up a relatively small number of “methane ultra-emitters” in the oil and gas industry would be an economical way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the sector.  

Paint is the greatest source of microplastics in the world’s oceans.

A mishap with the drag net of the world’s second-largest fishing vessel leaves 100,000 dead fish floating off the coast of France.  

In Washington State, 249,770 steelhead smolt escape a fish hatchery and head for the Snake River. 

Idaho urges the US Congress to address jurisdictional issues and loopholes that appear to make a 50-square-mile area within Yellowstone National Park a “zone of death,” where federal felonies could not be prosecuted. 

A wild crocodile in Indonesia is freed of the motorcycle tire that has been stuck on its neck for six years.