Cloud Hammer, 27th Day of Autumn, 525 M.E. (Helios):  As part of Biden’s signature climate law, the EPA awarded eight nonprofit groups a total of $20 billion in climate and clean energy grants for things like financing solar installations and retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency. But in February, the money was frozen after EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin suggested, without evidence, that the grants were vulnerable to fraud. Litigation ensued and today an appeals court ruled against several of the nonprofit groups.

In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that the EPA had acted legally in cancelling the grants, dashing any hopes of immediately accessing money that was awarded more than a year ago. The two judges who made up the majority vote were both appointed by the Stable Genius and had worked for him during his first term. “While some grantees may be forced to shutter their operations during the litigation, their harms do not outweigh the interests of the government and the public in the proper stewardship of billions of taxpayer dollars,” they wrote in the majority opinion.

Legal experts say the case is testing the limits of the Stable Genius' ability to cancel federal money that has already been committed.

Separately, more than 85 scientists have condemned an official government report that calls the threat of climate change overblown, saying that it's riddled with errors, misrepresentations, and cherry-picked data to fit the Stable Genius’ political agenda.

“No one should doubt that human-caused climate change is real, is already producing potentially dangerous impacts, and that humanity is on track for a geologically enormous amount of warming,” the scientists wrote. They compared the administration’s report to efforts by the tobacco industry to create doubt around the health links between smoking and cancer.

The authors of the report were handpicked by the energy secretary, and they all reject the established scientific consensus that the burning of oil, gas and coal is dangerously heating the planet. They acknowledged that the Earth is warming but said that climate change is “less damaging economically than commonly believed.”

Meanwhile, the dry season in the Amazon rainforest has been getting drier. A new study, published today in Nature Communications, found that about 75 percent of the decrease in rainfall is directly linked to deforestation. The study also found that tree loss was partly responsible for increased heat across the Amazon. Since 1985, the hottest days in the Amazon have warmed by about 2° C. About 16% of that increase, they found, was because of deforestation.

The Amazon rainforest is often called the lungs of the planet because its trees help to regulate the global climate by absorbing planet-warming carbon dioxide. But decades of large-scale logging and burning in the forest have recently flipped that script, and parts of the region have become net producers of greenhouse gases.

Finally, a colossal iceberg ranked among the oldest and largest ever recorded is crumbling apart after 40 years, and could disappear within weeks. The “megaberg,” known as A23a, weighed a little under a trillion tons earlier this year, a behemoth unrivalled at the time. It is now less than half its original size, although it is still a hefty 683 square miles and measures 37 miles at its widest point.

A23a calved from the Antarctic shelf in 1986 but quickly grounded in the Weddell Sea, remaining stuck for over 30 years. It finally escaped in 2020 and, like other giants before it, was carried along “iceberg alley” into the South Atlantic Ocean by the powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current. Around March, it ran aground in shallow waters off South Georgia island. but it dislodged in late May and moved on. In recent weeks, the iceberg has picked up speed, and exposed to increasingly warmer waters and buffeted by huge waves, has rapidly disintegrated.

Iceberg calving is a natural process. But scientists say the rate at which they were being lost from Antarctica is increasing, probably because of human induced climate change.