When hurricane Sandy made landfall on the east coast it wasn’t actually considered a hurricane anymore. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory

Mother Nature is unrelenting. Earlier in the week, Oklahoma saw one of the most costly tornadoes of all time. Then came word that not only is this year supposed to be another awful year for forest fires, but that forest fires are supposed to grow ever larger in the coming decades. Now, NOAA is forecasting an awful Atlantic hurricane season for the coming year.

For the East coast, hurricane season kicks off at the beginning of June and runs through November. Within this period, says the Associated Press, NOAA’s forecasters are expecting seven to eleven hurricanes, three to six of which will be big hurricanes. The total call is for 13 to 20 named storms, which includes hurricanes and the weaker tropical storms.

This expectation, of seven to eleven hurricanes, means this season could be more active than last year’s. In 2012, the Atlantic U.S. saw ten hurricanes, with two of them being classed as major storms. A normal year, says the AP, has six hurricanes and three major storms. The AP:

This year, all the factors that go into hurricane forecasts are pointing to an active season, or an extremely active one, said lead forecaster Gerry Bell of the Climate Prediction Center.

Those factors include: warmer than average ocean waters that provide fuel for storms, a multi-decade pattern of increased hurricane activity, the lack of an El Nino warming of the central Pacific Ocean, and an active pattern of storm systems coming off west Africa.

The Atlantic hurricane season goes through cycles of high and low activity about every 25 to 40 years based on large scale climatic patterns in the atmosphere. A high activity period started around 1995, Sullivan said.

“What NOAA could not say was how many of these storms would make landfall,” says Climate Central. “That level of prediction is beyond the level of current science.”

The names for this year’s hurricane season have already been picked. Look for tropical cyclone Andrea in an Atlantic Ocean near you.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Watch Out: This Year’s Fire Season Will Be Another Bad One for the West
Why We May Not See the Next Sandy Coming
Watch All of 2012′s Hurricanes in One Video

Smog in a Beijing neighborhood. Photo: Chris Aston

Next month, China will begin its first carbon-trading pilot program in Shenzhen, a major Chinese city just north of Hong Kong, the Guardian reports. The program will begin modestly, targeting only certain Shenzhen companies, but will soon expand to other sectors and cities. Environmentalists hope these initial trials will help the country determine how to best go about setting caps on emissions, the Guardian writes.

China ranks as the world’s number one carbon dioxide emitter, thanks in part to the massive amounts of coal the country burns. China currently builds a new coal-fired power plant at a rate of about one every week to ten days. The country’s coal burning levels are nearly on par with the rest of the world combined.  

Politicians around the world have focused on carbon trading as the market-based strategy of choice for regulating greenhouse gas emissions. HowStuffWorks explains the basic concept:

Cap-and-trade schemes are the most popular way to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) and other emissions. The scheme’s governing body begins by setting a cap on allowable emissions. It then distributes or auctions off emissions allowances that total the cap. Member firms that do not have enough allowances to cover their emissions must either make reductions or buy another firm’s spare credits. Members with extra allowances can sell them or bank them for future use. Cap-and-trade schemes can be either mandatory or voluntary.

But in the European Union, this system has not worked so well. The Royal Society of Chemistry explains the problem:

In theory, the cost of buying the allowances, either directly from other companies or on the open market, is supposed to provide financial incentives for companies to invest in carbon reducing technology or shift to less carbon intensive energy sources. But after reaching a peak of nearly €30 (£25) per tonne in the summer of 2008, prices have steadily fallen. By January they had crashed to under €5, providing little, if any, financial incentive for companies to reduce emissions.

This initial effort in China will extent to just 638 companies, the Guardian reports, though those businesses are responsible for 68 percent of Shenzhen’s total greenhouse gas emissions. While any efforts China undertakes to reduce its emissions will help ward off global climate change and reduce greenhouse gas build up in the planet’s atmosphere, China’s leaders say the decision primarily stems from it’s escalating in-country problems with air pollution, the Guardian reports.

If things go well, the scheme will further incorporate transportation, manufacturing and construction companies as well. China plans to enroll seven cities in the experiment by 2014. By 2020, China hopes to have implemented a nation-wide carbon control program—just in time for the country’s estimated emissions peak in 2025.

More from Smithsonian.com:

The Political History of Cap and Trade 
China Acknowledges It Has a Problem with Pollution-Laden ‘Cancer Villages’ 

Photo: NOAA

Climate change is making the world warmer and, in many places, dryer, setting the stage for increased forest fire activity across the country. In a new study, scientists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service say that the amount of land affected by forest fires in the U.S. is expected to increase by at least 50 percent but maybe as much as 100 percent by 2050—a doubling of burned area within less than 40 years.

In the study, led by meteorologist Yongqianq Liu, the researchers say that, more than just responding to a warming world, forest fires actually stoke themselves over the long term. By releasing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, forest fires increase the likelihood of future fires. According to earlier research forest fires account for about a third of global carbon dioxide emissions. Some of this carbon dioxide will eventually get pulled back out of the atmosphere by plants regrowing in the burned region. But in the short term, say the scientists, the carbon dioxide is an important part of the amplified greenhouse effect.

According to the study, smoke streaming from fires can actually make the area under the cloud colder, because smoke in the air reflects sunlight. That might seem like a silver lining to the ash cloud. But the smoke also suppresses rain, increasing the potential for drought. So, really, it’s not much of a silver lining after all.

In the end, the scientists say that climate change is going to make forest fires worse, and it seems that the fires themselves will encourage this trend.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Fires Are Escaping Our Ability to Predict Their Behavior
Watch Out: This Year’s Fire Season Will Be Another Bad One for the West

For the first time in human history the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has reached 400 parts per million. Photo: Mauna Loa Observatory

There’s an interesting relationship, borne out in polling numbers, between the “general public’s” belief in global climate change and the weather. When it’s hot out, people believe in climate change. When it’s cold, they don’t.  When summer heat and drought and wildfires tore through the U.S. last summer, 74 percent of Americans believed that climate change was affecting the weather. Only 46 percent of Americans think that this climate change is caused by human activities – most directly the burning of fossil fuels.

The numbers are a little different when it is climate scientists, and the scientific research conducted on climate change, that are polled.

Writing in the Guardian, Dana Nuccitelli and John Abraham describe a new study that polled the recent research to see what scientists thought of climate change. (Nuccitelli is one of the voices behind the website Skeptical Science and one of the authors of the new scientific study.) They found that the vast, overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that humans are causing climate change.

The team searched a database of scientific studies for the words “global climate change” or “global warming.” They found 11,944 relevant studies published between 1991 and 2012. Then, they read through the study’s summaries to figure out whether the study supported, rejected, was uncertain about or said nothing at all about our role in causing climate change. They also asked the scientists behind the papers whether their research supported or refuted the idea of man-made global warming.

Of the studies that expressed some sort of position on global warming, of which there were 4,000, the team write in their paper, “97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.” When the climate scientists themselves said whether or not their work supported the idea of anthropogenic climate change, “97.2% endorsed the consensus.”

For the papers that didn’t seem to have an opinion on whether humans were causing climate change, the reason, they write, is not that the scientists don’t know. Rather, it’s that the debate is so fully and completely settled within the scientific community that they aren’t going to use space re-hashing old fights.

Some people may mention that the scientific community is conflicted over the cause of climate change. This new survey would like to remind that that is not true.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Three Quarters of Americans Now Believe Climate Change Is Affecting the Weather
We’re About to Pass a Disheartening New Climate Change Milestone

Photo: Christien Zenino

Climate change is changing the planet. Yes, it’s doing it in all those ways that you already know about: rising seas, rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, more extreme weather. But climate change is changing the planet in another dramatic way, too: It’s actually causing the entire crust of the Earth to shift. According to new research by Jianli Chen and colleagues, climate change–induced glacier melt and sea level rise have thrown the whole planet off-kilter.

The Earth is a ball that floats in space, and the Earth’s surface—the tectonic plates that make up the land—are like a shell that floats on the mantle below. Just like the hard chocolate coating can slip and slide on your soft serve ice cream, the crust of the Earth can slide over the mantle. This is different than continental drift. This is the whole surface of the planet moving as one. The rotation axis of the Earth stays steady, the land masses shift around it. The idea is known as “true polar wander,” and its occurrence is a part of the planet’s history.

The Earth is not a perfect sphere—it’s kind of fat at the middle—and changing how the mass on the surface is distributed changes how the tectonic plates sit in relation to the planet’s rotation axis. By melting Greenland and other glaciers, say the researchers, the Earth’s geographic North Pole has drifted to the east at around 2.4 inches each year since 2005. Nature:

From 1982 to 2005, the pole drifted southeast towards northern Labrador, Canada, at a rate of about 2 milliarcseconds — or roughly 6 centimetres — per year. But in 2005, the pole changed course and began galloping east towards Greenland at a rate of more than 7 milliarcseconds per year.

Seasonal shifts in how ice and water are spread around the world mean that the North Pole is always sort of wandering around. But drift triggered by climate change is new. It’s a sign that global warming isn’t just changing how we might live in the world, but the very face of the world itself.

More from Smithsonian.com:

When Continental Drift Was Considered Pseudoscience
Climate Change in Your Backyard

The Waldo Canyon fire was the most destructive in Colorado’s history. Photo: NASA Earth Observatory

Last year was one of the worst wildfire seasons in Colorado’s recent history. A series of destructive blazes drove tends of thousands of people from their homes and caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage.

Last year’s awful fire season was spurred by a dry winter and higher-than-average temperatures. Those same conditions are back, says Climate Central, and the western U.S. is at risk once more.

Drought conditions have encompassed nearly the entire Western half of the country, with the worst of it centered in the Southwest and into California, which received only about 25 percent of its average precipitation during the year-to-date. “We’re confident we’re going to see above-normal significant fire potential,” Sullens said.

From California to Colorado, he says, the early-summer fire risk is high. Indeed, California has already seen a big blaze.

Forecasters are also concerned about a high risk of large wildfires along the Pacific Coast from California northward to Washington, and inland into Idaho and Southwest Montana, where very dry conditions exist in areas that have an abundance of vegetation, or fuel, to support potential fires.

… Vilsack said the combination of the drought, an abundance of dead or weakened trees from an epidemic of mountain bark beetles, and a likelihood of another unusually hot and dry summer is “a combination that doesn’t bode well.”

In many places the spring fire season has been off to a slow start, says Andrew Freedman, but according to the federal government this “has no bearing on where we think this fire season is going to go.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

Here’s What $110 Million in Fire Damage Looks Like
Australia is Burning, And It’s Only Going to Get Worse as the World Warms
Devastating Colorado Wildfires Most Recent in Decades-Long Surge
Fires Are Escaping Our Ability to Predict Their Behavior

Photo: erictomer

Even the roof of the world is not immune to climate change. New research indicates that Mount Everest and its surrounding peaks are losing their ice cover, and that snowfall in the region has been declining since the 1990s amidst warming temperatures.

Over the past 50 years, the snow line has receded nearly 600 feet up the mountain and glaciers in the region have shrunk by 13 percent, the researchers report. Smaller glaciers, less than half a square mile, are melting the quickest and have shrunk by about 43 percent since the 1960s. Most glaciers in the national park, they found, are shrinking at an increasing rate.

The team arrived at these findings by surveying around 700 square miles surrounding Mount Everest and comparing the current conditions to past images reconstructed from satellite imagery and maps. They relied upon data collected by observatory stations and Nepal’s Department of Hydrology and Meteorology for calculating temperature fluctuations throughout the years. Since 1992, they found, the Everest region has increased in temperature by nearly two degrees Fahrenheit while snowfall decreased by almost four inches during that same period.

While the researchers cannot definitively link the changes seen on Mount Everest and its surroundings to increases in human-generated greenhouse gases, they strongly suspect climate change is the culprit behind their observations.

More from Smithsonian.com:

There Are Over 200 Bodies on Mount Everest, and They’re Used as Landmarks 
Climbing Mount Everest in the Internet Age 

The Petronius Rig in the Gulf of Mexico, operated by Chevron and Marathon Oil. Photo: Extra Zebra

Shell plans to drill more than two miles underwater in the Gulf of Mexico in pursuit of new sources of oil and gas. If successful, the Guardian reports, the project will rank as the world’s deepest offshore facility.

The move is being viewed in the oil industry as a demonstration of Shell’s confidence that its technology can deliver returns on expensive and risky offshore projects, despite a recent downturn in oil prices.

Although BP recently put its Gulf of Mexico project—called “Mad Dog Phase 2″—on hold, Shell is not alone in its endeavors in the Gulf. ExxonMobil is planning a $4 billion project in the region, as well.

Shell’s executive vice president, John Hollowell, told the Guardian that the new project demonstrates the company’s ongoing commitment to meet U.S. energy demands. “We will continue our leadership in safe, innovative deepwater operations,” he said. The Guardian:

The move comes despite ongoing controversy over offshore exploration – especially in the Gulf of Mexico, where in April 2010 a fire and explosion on the BP Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and started a leak that took three months to cap. Last month BP said it had paid $25bn (£16bn) of the $42bn it has set aside to cover the damage caused by the spill.

Shell expects its new well to produce 50,000 barrels of oil per day once it reaches peak production. It estimates that the well, located in an oil field discovered eight years ago about 200 miles southwest of New Orleans, contains around 250 million barrels of recoverable oil total—just over three percent of the 6.9 billion barrels of oil the U.S. currently burns through each year.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Oil Pipeline Spills Heavy Crude in Arkansas 
Victims of the Oil Spill 

Over the past few decades Lake Urmia in Iran has steadily dried up. Photo: Google / Landsat 

Since 1972, the U.S. has flown a series of satellites known as the Landsat program, a fleet of Earth-observing satellites that were tasked with taking pictures from space. Landsat’s gorgeous photos have been a favorite of the Earth-as-art crowd, and the satellites’ observations have provided an absolutely critical long-term record of how our planet is changing.

The development of Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Photo: Landsat / Google

Today, Google put out the Earth Engine, a fascinating tool that showcases a scrollable, zoomable time-lapse of the entire planet as seen by Landsat over the decades. The Landsat photos only go back to 1984, but they show the dramatic ways in which the planet has changed in such a brief period of time. To help you get started, Google pulled out some highlights to look at, such as the drying of the Aral Sea or the deforestation of the Amazon. But the tool does show the whole planet (just the land, not the oceans), and there are many more cool things to be seen.

NASA’s Earth Observatory has a more detailed look at this, the development of the oil sands project in Alberta, Canada. Photo: Landsat / Google

But don’t bother looking for Antarctica, because it’s not included. (Sad.)

More from Smithsonian.com:

NASA Has Been Recording Earth’s Surface for 40 Years, and Today Is Its Last Chance to Keep That Going
Share a Bit of Earth’s Majesty With Every Letter You Send

We’ll likely hit a CO2 milestone of 400 ppm sometime this month. Photo: Scripps Institution of Oceanography

For the first time in human history, later this month the world’s atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide will likely exceed 400 parts per million, according to a study conducted by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The researchers monitor CO2 concentrations from a station in Hawaii, and those levels usually peak in May. Right now, levels are teetering at 399 ppm. If they do not exceed 400 ppm this year, the researchers say, they almost certainly will next year.

In March 1958, when the first measurements of atmospheric CO2 were made, the northern hemisphere stood at 316 ppm. Researchers project that the pre-industrial atmosphere was around 280 ppm. For the past 800,000 years prior to the industrial revolution, Scripps points out, CO2 levels never exceeded 300 ppm. At this rate, however, we’re likely to hit 450 ppm within the next few decades. “With global emissions showing no sign of slowing, it may well be that within our lifetimes we look back on 400 ppm as a fond memory,” muses the Carbon Brief.

This landmark is more symbolically the scientifically significant, however. The International Herald Tribune  points out:

While the milestone is arbitrary (why is hitting 400 parts per million more alarming than a measurement of 399?), scientists say it’s an important reminder of how the levels continue to rise.

Regardless of whether we’re at 390 or 400 ppm, the fact is that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are rising are projected to continue to do so. Some researchers and advocates hope that crossing the 400 ppm threshold will help kick politicians and the public into action since climate change is just as much a political issue as a scientific one these days. Responding to Climate Change writes:

Let us hope that reaching 400ppm can serve as a spark to ignite a new sense of urgency about climate change. Otherwise, in a few decades, we’ll lament our inaction when we hit 450ppm.

But there’s no guarantee or even hint that this latest development will cause significant ripples in policy, attitude or action. Indeed, the station in Hawaii that monitors CO2 levels is in danger of shutting down because of budget cuts and the perception that the research conducted there is not essential, reports Nature News. “It’s kind of silly that we chose to go all ostrich-like,” biogeochemist Jim White told Nature. “We don’t want to know how much CO is in the atmosphere, when we ought to be monitoring even more.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

Plants Won’t Help Fight Global Warming as Much as We Thought  
The Carbon Dioxide in a Crowded Room Can Make You Dumber 

Photo: CERTs

Buying a green product—an energy-saving lightbulb or bird-friendly coffee—can give shoppers a feeling of satisfaction for doing a small part to help the environment. But green-certified product label don’t give everyone the warm fuzzies. New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences found that some politically conservative shoppers actively avoid products that advertise their environmental friendliness.

The researchers conducted two studies to investigate how political ideology might influence a shopper’s choices. The researchers surveyed around 650 Americans ranging in age from 19 to 81. The interviewees answered questions about their political leanings, the value of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, and their thoughts on the environment and on energy efficiency.

The results revealed that the more conservative a survey taker, the less likely he was to support energy-efficient technology. The researchers attributed this finding to the lower value that political conservatives place on reducing carbon emissions rather than on energy independence or reducing energy costs, both of which still appealed to this group of people.

In a second study, around 200 participants were given $2 to spend on either a compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulb or an incandescent bulb. Before making their purchase, the researchers informed the participants that the CFL bulb reduce energy costs by 75 percent. Some of the CFL bulbs also included a “Protect the Environment” sticker on their box.

When the researchers placed the CFL bulbs at $1.50 and the incandescent bulb at just 50 cents, conservative participants but not liberal ones were less likely to buy it. However, when that more expensive CFL bulb did not include a “Protect the Environment” sticker, liberals and conservatives were just as likely to buy it.

In other groups of participants, the CFL and incandescent bulbs were both sold for 50 cents. In this case, conservatives bought the CFL more often than the incandescent bulb.

While energy efficiency and green labeling is a popular marketing strategy today, the researchers point out that in some cases this may work against the product and polarize potential customers. Instead, in order to attract political conservatives, providing a competitive price tag may be the surest way to promote purchases.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Greening the Mall
Documenting “The Last Green Spot Between New York and Philly”

Photo: WilliamNYC

It took a while for Americans to get comfortable with the idea of shopping for groceries online. The first ventures into online groceries through sites—like Webvan, founded in the 1990s, closed in 2001—flopped. But as consumers bought more books, movies, shoes, clothes, toys and everything else online, companies like New York-centric FreshDirect made web grocery shopping and delivery work.

Services like FreshDirect don’t just cut down on hassle of having to drive to the grocery store. New research shows that they can also be good for the environment. Ordering online cuts carbon emissions on average by half when compared with traveling to the store by car, the researchers found, especially when delivery trucks were filled to capacity. 

This is how a delivery truck can save on mileage when compared with personal vehicles driving to and from a store. Photo: Goodchild/Wygonik, UW

In their analysis, the researchers randomly sampled Seattle households. To calculate emissions, they included data such as the type of car families owned, the roadway type, the distance to the grocery store and the speed limit.

They found that grocery delivery trucks produced 20 to 75 percent less CO2 emissions than the corresponding number of personal vehicles would have. If households were targeted based upon established routes rather than individual delivery time requests, that figure jumped to 80 to 90 percent fewer emissions. This finding held true in both Seattle’s dense downtown and in the suburbs.

Nothing beats walking or riding a bike, however, for those shoppers living close enough to the grocery store to enjoy that option.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Shopping Gets Personal 
A Week Without Groceries 

Soviet Russia’s Dneprostroy dam in the Ukraine is really, really big. A dam across the Pacific Ocean, though, would have been much, much bigger. Photo circa 1941: Smithsonian Science Service

The Cold War was a strange time. Fresh off the Manhattan Project and steeped in the race for space, Big Science—or rather, Big Engineering—was in full swing, and Derek Mead is doing an excellent job of documenting, for Motherboard, the weird results. With nothing to do with their stockpiled nukes, for instance, America turned to Project Plowshare, a plan to use nuclear explosions to dig tunnels and dredge ports and do anything else you can think of where making a really big hole would come in handy. And on the other side of the Pacific, Mead writes, the Soviets had their own wacky scheme—a plan so big, so expensive and so replete with likely devastating consequences for the entire planet that it makes it all the more awesome to hear that people were taking the plan quite seriously.

The Russians, says Mead, wanted to melt the Arctic.

You might laugh, but while Soviet Russia was blessed with the largest land mass of any nation on Earth, much of it resource rich, putting that land to use was stunningly difficult.

…Russia was already spending an enormous amount of money combating the ice. Exploiting the vast petroleum reserves of the Arctic and Siberia was crucial to the growth of the Soviet economy, but every well pitted far-flung men against frozen earth and wind.

So, to exploit their trove of resources and beat the Americans, Russia needed Siberia to thaw. And their plan to do so was completely and absolutely ridiculous. The Soviets wanted to build a dam. A really, really, really big dam. A dam from Russia to Alaska, choking off the Pacific Ocean’s access to the Arctic Ocean. They thought that by doing so they could redirect the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic Ocean (which brings warm water from Florida up to Europe) to flow into the northern reaches, bringing warm salty water that would nullify the Arctic’s chill.

The plan isn’t necessarily ridiculous from a scientific standpoint. Changing the ocean currents would certainly have consequences. Indeed, 50 million years ago, when Antarctica was still connected to Australia with a long land bridge and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current didn’t exist, Antarctica had palm trees. So consequences, yes. Controlled consequences, probably not. Unintended consequences that could devastate the rest of the world? Certainly.

From pretty much every perspective other than “this might potentially work,” the Russian’s plan was crazy. Which makes it all the more suprising that America were almost on-board.

Borisov dreamed of enlisting the US, Canada, Japan, and Northern Europe in the plan, as all would theoretically benefit from a warmer climate. Surprisingly, the US was intrigued by the idea. In fact, in a response to a series of questions sent in 1960 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to presidential candidates Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, Senator Kennedy noted, as part of a larger point about the value of innovation in fostering cooperation, that the Siberia-Alaska dam was “certainly worth exploring.”

Big Science of today is big, but it is also certainly much more careful. Mead’s story explores a time when engineering dreams quite nearly ran ahead of engineering caution.

More from Smithsonian.com:

Ancient Climate Change Meant Antarctica Was Once Covered with Palm Trees
The Russian Government Once Funded a Scientist’s Quest To Make an Ape-Human Hybrid
The U.S. Once Wanted To Use Nuclear Bombs as a Construction Tool

Photo: Michael Balint

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is going up, but we’d rather it were going down. Trees use CO2 as food. So, maybe if we had more trees, that would help, right? You know what might even help more? Really, really BIG trees, like those Giant Redwoods that grow out in California. You know, the ones that reach hundreds of feet into the air. I bet they use a ton of carbon dioxide.

The thought isn’t bad, and as USA Today reports, that’s basically the plan laid out by the founders of a new non-profit group, the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive. The group is on a quest to plant redwoods around the planet. “We need to reforest the planet; it’s imperative. To do that, it just makes sense to use the largest, oldest, most iconic trees that ever lived,” Milarch said to USA Today.

The group’s founders, the Milarchs, lead by David and his sons Jared and Jake, think that redwoods, being so big and so tall and so old are somehow genetically superior to other species. So, they’re taking offshoots from big redwoods and planting them all over, in “Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Ireland, Canada, Germany and the U.S.”

It’s an inspiring idea. The presence of a huge redwood would certainly grab attention and, one would suspect, make people think more about the forest.

But as a real plan to save the environment? Planting redwoods may not be the easiest or most effective route. Despite their often huge size, redwoods don’t actually grow all that easily. Sequoias are native to just one place: a narrow strip of land along the west coast of the U.S. The redwoods like the moderate temperatures, and the fog rolling in off the ocean provides water for the behemoth of a tree. The University of Wisconsin:

Though fog is not exactly essential for redwoods, the forests would be more restricted within their range without its cooling and dampening properties. These coastal fogs help to protect the redwoods from drought and heat during summer. The frequent fogs in summer appear to be more important than the amount of precipitation to this species of tree.

With ideal growing conditions, redwoods can grow a few feet each year. “But when the trees are stressed from lack of moisture and sunlight they may grow as little as one inch per year,” says the Government of California.

And, surprisingly, redwoods actually grow faster and store more carbon (and are thus better at limiting climate change) as they get older, says National Geographic. So, from a save-the-planet perspective, it actually makes more sense to try to save the existing redwoods—whose range is shrinking through climate change—than to try to plant them elsewhere. (Or, you know, do both.)

Redwoods may be hard to grow, but the spirit behind this idea is still quite good—figuring out which plants would be best at trapping and storing carbon dioxide is a field of ongoing research.

More from Smithsonian.com:

At a Glance: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the Oregon Coast

A house in Lancaster, California gets a solar power retrofit. Photo: KN6KS

A desert terrain, a southerly latitude and a “colorful mayor” have joined forces to turn Lancaster, California, a city of around 150,000 that lies northeast of Los Angeles, into the solar capital “of the universe” says the New York Times. The city, says Geek.com, “now officially earned the distinction of being the first US city to mandate the inclusion of solar panels on all new homes built within the city limits.”

Technically the solar powered mandate isn’t so hard and fast, and builders have a bit of wiggle room. Starting January 1st, either they can build solar panels into their designs, producing one kilowatt of electricity for each city lot, or the builders can buy a “solar energy credit” to offset their non-energy-producing ways—money which would go to fund larger solar developments.

The city’s push into solar, says the Times, is being spearheaded by its Republican mayor Robert Rex Parris.

His solar push began about three years ago; City Hall, the performing arts center and the stadium together now generate 1.5 megawatts. Solar arrays on churches, a big medical office, a developer’s office and a Toyota dealership provide 4 more.

The biggest power payoff came with the school system. After the Lancaster school board rejected an offer from SolarCity, saying it was unaffordable, the city created a municipal utility. It bought 32,094 panels, had them installed on 25 schools, generated 7.5 megawatts of power and sold the enterprise to the school district for 35 percent less than it was paying for electricity at the time. Another 8 megawatts now come from systems operating at the local high school and Antelope Valley College.

Parris’ goal for Lancaster, says a 2010 story from the Los Angeles Times, is to see the city “produce more energy than we consume before 2020.”

More from Smithsonian.com:

Island Nation Now Runs Entirely On Solar Power