For the first time ever, researchers have quantified the length and mass of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks globally and mapped the ecosystems where they are densest.

By Wyatt Myskow

Hidden underground around the world lie 110 quadrillion kilometers of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks—webs of ultra-thin threads that, if connected in a single line, would stretch almost a billion times thge distance between the Earth and the sun, according to new research published in Science on Thursday. 

Threads of Earth’s Underground Fungal Networks Are Long Enough to Reach Beyond the Solar System

The number of journalists registered to attend the annual climate negotiations in Bonn has declined this year, as climate reporters have been let go and media coverage of climate issues falls around the world.

Data from UN Climate Change, which runs the two weeks of talks, shows that just 135 media representatives have signed up to attend. Climate Home News analysis of previous data shows this is the lowest figure since 2021, when COVID-19 restrictions limited travel and the Bonn talks were held in a hybrid format to enable online participation.

The number of journalists that actually attend the talks will not be known until later this month but is typically significantly less than are registered. Press conferences, held back-to-back each day by campaign groups, have been sparsely attended in the first few days and often filled mainly with climate campaigners and researchers rather than journalists.

Alexandra Endres, a reporter for German-language website Table Briefings, told Climate Home News in Bonn there are fewer German journalists covering the conference in-person. “I think it is important to have more journalists covering the negotiations because when the climate coverage increases, the interest of the public grows,” she said.

Media outlets that have registered fewer journalists than previous years, or no journalists, include global heavyweights like Reuters, Bloomberg and the BBC, as well as German outlets like Deutsche Welle and ZDF television, and specialist publications like business information service Argus and climate broadcaster We Don’t Have Time.

Activist Harjeet Singh, who is in Bonn advising the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, said that “the empty press seats here in Bonn are a warning signal. While the world’s gaze is often fixed on the annual COP summits, the real-world consequences of the climate crisis—from financing the fossil fuel transition to protecting vulnerable populations—are being shaped, or ignored, in these mid-year negotiations right now.”

“Journalists are the essential eyes and ears of the public,” he said. “We need them to shine a light on these rooms: hold negotiators accountable, defend the principles of equity and historical responsibility, and ensure that ‘technical’ negotiations do not become an excuse for delay.”

UN Climate Change said they could not comment on the situation at this point in the Bonn talks.

Climate coverage is falling

Outside of Bonn and the official UN climate negotiations, coverage of climate change is falling to lows not seen since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to analysis of newspapers and television reporting conducted by the Media and Climate Change Observatory (MECCO).

MECCO’s head Max Boykoff told Climate Home News that climate coverage in the first five months of 2025 was 35% down on the same period of 2025 and 41% less than in 2021. New analysis by the Yale Programme on Climate Change Communication found a similar fall in climate coverage in 2026.

Boykoff said media attention has been drawn away from climate change to issues like the Iran war and now the World Cup getting underway in North America.

While both stories have climate implications, he said, the media have “failed to connect the dots” on the conflict in the Middle East, with coverage focusing on the politics, air strikes and violence of the war. “Reporters have been pulling up short,” he said.

He added that since 2025 there have been cuts to climate teams at US outlets like the Washington Post, CBS, National Public Radio and the Los Angeles Times. On top of this, the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s Context website has been shut down and Politico recently folded specialist environmental outlet E&E News into its broader energy coverage.

Mark Hertsgaard, head of global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now, also said that fewer reporters at Bonn is “part of a larger pattern”. He said no US television network sent reporters to the recent Santa Marta conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels “and as a result they missed covering what turned out to be a landmark development in the climate story”.

“No one can know if the Bonn talks will yield something similar until the [they] actually take place and conclude. But the fewer journalists that are on the scene, the less the world’s people and policymakers will know about that. And that’s a problem,” he said.

Media may also have been put off from attending by a new registration system which is more complicated, especially for freelance journalists. In addition, the rise in jet fuel prices has made travelling by plane to Bonn much more expensive than last year and reporters from many developing countries continue to face hurdles getting visas to enter the Schengen area, of which Germany is part.

Diego Arguedas Ortiz, who led the Oxford Climate Journalism Network from 2022 until it was shut down by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in 2025, said journalists can’t cover the talks so well remotely.

While press conferences, plenaries and open negotiating sessions are broadcast for the public to watch on the UNFCCC’s website, Ortiz said relying solely on this means “you miss the interviews in the hall”.

“You can´t catch scientists and ministers as they leave the rooms. And the audience is back home suffering. Because audiences are relying on reporters and editors to explain how these seemingly abstract negotiations have daily implications for them,” he explained.

The post Fewer journalists register for Bonn talks, as cuts to climate reporting bite appeared first on Climate Home News.

Fewer journalists register for Bonn talks, as cuts to climate reporting bite

Despite skyrocketing demand driven by data center development, the industry says it is not the cause of increasing costs for consumers.

By Jon Hurdle

Advocates for lower electricity prices in Pennsylvania said Wednesday their goals can be achieved by requiring large-load users like data centers to supply their own power rather than taking it from the grid, by reducing utility profits and by speeding up the interconnection of new clean-energy projects.

Pennsylvania Activists Urge Lawmakers to Help Curb Soaring Electric Bills