Water is seeping into the storage room of the Smithsonian American History Museum. The repair did not appear until a few years later.

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We also reported on the political struggles that could shape the future of clean energy, the US government’s report on oil drilling barely mentioned climate change, and the divorce of albatross.

The world's largest museum complex is working hard to protect itself from the effects of climate change-a warning, even for organizations with top experts and financial resources, the difficulty of adapting to warming is the same.

In a document released this fall, the Smithsonian Institution warned that increased flooding on the National Mall (a two-mile park in the heart of Washington that contains most of the museums) threatened the Smithsonian Institution’s protection of these museums. And its museum capabilities. Priceless content.

Smithsonian managers agreed to let me and Erin Schaff, photographer of the New York Times, visit its building most severely affected by the flood, the National Museum of American History. We saw a storage room filled with porcelain from centuries, and a tarp and trash can device was placed in the corner to catch the water flowing from the ceiling. Rainwater will also flow through the windows and ventilation ducts on the first floor, and even gurgle from the ground.

Museum staff have been experimenting with a series of defensive measures, including flood protection barriers outside windows and under doors, electronic water alarms throughout the building, and buckets filled with absorbent cat litter that can be washed into floodwaters. Long-term solutions, including flood gates around buildings and moving items to new storage facilities in suburban Maryland, will take years. You can read my article here.

Quote: "We follow the rain in a way you wouldn't believe it," said Nancy Bechtol, the head of facilities at the Smithsonian Museum. "We have been paying attention to those weather forecasts to see if we have a weather forecast."

Mine business in the Democratic Republic of Congo is booming. The country produces about two-thirds of the world's cobalt, and cobalt is essential for electric vehicle batteries.

But Congo also has a problem: it is known for tolerating dangerous temporary mining operations, in which unskilled and poorly equipped workers, including children, are exploited, injured and killed.

Some Congolese leaders want to clean up the industry. But according to Congolese and American officials, the person who puts himself in charge of this work, Albert Yuma Mullimbi, chairman of the state-owned mining company, is a problem. They accused him of abusing his power for the benefit of friends, family and political allies. Mr. Yuma denied any wrongdoing and conducted elaborate lobbying activities in Washington and the Congo’s capital Kinshasa to clear his name.

Will Mr. Yuma help the country ride the global green wave into a new era of prosperity, or will it help it condemn more conflicts and unrest? You can read our survey of Mr. Yuma’s transactions, this is the third in a series of articles written by my colleague Eric Lipton in the New York Times. And, please check the first two issues:

Part 1 looks at how Congo’s abundant cobalt reserves allow the country to play a central role in the electric vehicle revolution.

Part 2 explores how China dominates Congo’s cobalt mining despite decades of diplomatic efforts by the United States.

A report from the Department of the Interior recommended that the federal government increase the cost of oil and gas companies drilling on public land.

But the report hardly mentions the impact of drilling on public land on the climate. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that nearly a quarter of the greenhouse gases that the United States produces to warm the planet are caused by drilling on public lands and federal waters.

As my New York Times climate team colleague Lisa Friedman reported, this silence has angered some environmentalists who want the federal government to consider the impact of drilling on the climate when weighing new lease applications. This will be a step towards ending new oil and gas drilling on public lands, which President Biden promised during the campaign.

Backstory: If the royalties for drilling rose, it would be the first increase since 1920.

Canadians are repairing washed-out roads and destroyed bridges-and want to know what climate catastrophe will follow.

New transmission line projects can bring clean energy to northern New York and Canada.

It may take many years for the albatross to find that. But once they do, it is almost always for preservation. The giant seabird is one of the most monogamous creatures on the planet.

Normally, couples of albatross will only separate if they cannot successfully raise their chicks. (For abandoned males who rarely incited divisions, breakups usually herald lifelong singles.) However, researchers now say that some albatross separation may be related to climate change.

According to a 15-year survey of 15,500 black-browed albatrosses in the Falkland Islands, the separation rate between birds rose from an average of about 4% to nearly 8% during the warmest years of the sea.

Francesco Ventura, Ph.D. student of Conservation Biology at the University of Lisbon and the lead author of a recent paper on the survey, told me in an interview with me this week about the divorce of albatross that the researchers already know that there is a lack of water In years, reproduction failures are more common. Warmer. Nevertheless, this alone cannot fully explain the increase in turnover. "We see that there are still some unexplainable things," he said.

One possible explanation may be that females feel very stressed in an unusually warm environment, mistakenly fortunate male partners as a source of stress, and decide that they will live better without them.

Currently, the population of Falkland albatross under study is booming. Although splits are more common than before, the overall reproductive capacity of birds appears to be almost unimpeded. But Ventura said the results show that we know very little about the potential of climate change to cause severe damage in unexpected places.

"We are very arrogant that we can measure everything, we know everything, we know everything," he said. "This is actually not true."

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