Enlarge / Magnified view of Vibrio vulnificus bacteria. (credit: Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images)

Cases of a potentially fatal infection from a seawater-borne pathogen have increased off the US Atlantic coast as ocean waters warmed over the last 30 years and are expected to rise further in future because of climate change, according to a study published on Thursday by Scientific Reports, an open-access journal for research on the natural sciences and other topics.

The incidence of infections from Vibrio vulnificus, a pathogen that thrives in shallow, brackish water, was eight times greater in the Eastern US in 2018 than it was in 1988, and its range shifted northward to areas where waters were previously too cold to support it, according to the paper, “Climate Warming and Increasing Vibrio Vulnificus Infections in North America,” by academic researchers in the US, England, and Spain.

By the middle of the 21^st century, the pathogen is expected to become more common in major population centers, including New York City, and by the end of the century, infections may be present in every US Atlantic coast state if carbon emissions follow a medium- to high-level trajectory, the report said.

Enlarge / A view of the Colorado River from the Navajo Bridge in Marble Canyon, Arizona on Aug. 31, 2022. (credit: Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

In 2007, the seven states that rely on the Colorado River for water reached an agreement on a plan to minimize the water shortages plaguing the basin. Drought had gripped the region since 1999 and could soon threaten Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the largest reservoirs in the nation.

Now, that future has come to pass and the states are again attempting to reach an agreement. The Colorado River faces a crisis brought on by more than 20 years of drought, decades of overallocation and the increasing challenge of climate change, and Lake Mead and Lake Powell, its largest reservoirs, have fallen so low that their ability to provide water and generate electricity in the Southwest is at risk. But reaching consensus on how to avoid that is proving to be more challenging than last time.

“The magnitude of the problem is so much bigger this time, and it’s also so much more immediate,” said Elizabeth Koebele, an associate professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Enlarge / A train carrying cars loaded with coal leaving a nearby coal mine is seen in front of Dry Fork Station, a coal-fired power plant operated by Basin Electric Power Cooperative, on Monday May 8, 2017, in Gillette, Wyoming. (credit: Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

A coal-fired plant near Gillette, Wyoming, stands alone in the nation on one measure of economic viability—a positive distinction for that plant, but a damning one for coal-fired electricity in general.

Dry Fork Station, with generating capacity of 405 megawatts, is the only coal plant in the country that costs less to operate than it would take to replace the plant’s output by building new wind or solar plants in the same communities or regions, according to a new report issued today by the think tank Energy Innovation.

The report joins prior editions in 2019 and 2021 that, when viewed together, show how the economics of coal power are deteriorating. In 2019, the authors found that more than 70 percent of coal plants were more expensive to operate compared to the alternative of building new wind or solar. That share has now grown to 99 percent, with only the plant in Wyoming stopping it from being 100 percent.