Articles on or after 4/19/2024: |
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| Climate Change News - Energy,Climate Change News - Science,Economist,Eric Holthaus (The Correspondent),Grist Climate and Energy,Guardian - Climate Change,MIT - Climate,MIT - Greenhouse Gases,Washington Post - Climate and Environment,Scientific American - Climate,Technology Review - Climate Change,DeSmogBlog,New York Times - Climate Forward,New York Times - Climate Section,VOX -Environment |
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Climate Change News - Science:
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Argentinian scientists condemn budget cuts ahead of university protest - Climate Change News - Science (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Right-wing President Javier Milei has taken an axe to funding for education and scientific bodies, sparking fears for climate research
A medical student walks past a placard announcing the time left before the budget for the university runs out, at the entrance of the University of Buenos Aires Medical School, in the run-up to a national strike on April 23 against Argentina's President Javier Milei's policy of cuts in public education, in Buenos Aires, Argentina April 17, 2024 (Photo: REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian)
As a budget freeze for Argentina’s public universities amid soaring inflation leaves campuses unable to pay their electricity bills and climate science ... | By Julian Reingold Read more ...
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Grist Climate and Energy:
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How should Georgia elect key utility regulators? US Supreme Court asked to weigh in - Grist Climate and Energy (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · This coverage is made possible through a partnership with WABE and Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.
In a case that could impact other lawsuits on voting rights, Black voters who sued over Georgia’s elections for key utility regulators are appealing their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Those elections for the Georgia Public Service Commission have been on hold for years and while last week a federal appeals court lifted an injunction blocking the elections from taking place, there is little chance the elections will happen this year.
Public Service Commissioners have enormous ... Read more ...
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Pediatricians say climate conversations should be part of any doctor’s visit - Grist Climate and Energy (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · The reality of climate change came home for Dr. Samantha Ahdoot one summer day in 2011 when her son was 9 years old.
She and her family were living in Charlottesville, where Ahdoot is an assistant professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. There was a heat wave. Morning temperatures hovered in the high 80s, and her son had to walk up a steep hill to get to his day camp.
About an hour after he left for camp, she received a call from a nearby emergency room. Her son had collapsed from the heat and needed IV fluids to recover.
“It was after that event that I realized that I had to do something,” she said. “That, as a pediatrician and a mother, this ... Read more ...
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MIT - Greenhouse Gases:
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Featured video: Moooving the needle on methane - MIT - Greenhouse Gases (Apr 21) |
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Apr 21 · d="M12.132,61.991a5.519,5.519,0,0,1-5.866,5.753A5.554,5.554,0,0,1,.4,61.854a5.809,5.809,0,0,1,1.816-4.383,6.04,6.04,0,0,1,4.05-1.37C9.9,55.965,12.132,58.43,12.132,61.991Zm-8.939-.137c0,2.328,1.117,3.7,3.073,3.7s3.073-1.37,3.073-3.7-1.117-3.835-3.073-3.835C4.45,58.156,3.193,59.526,3.193,61.854Z" transform="translate(-0.4 -55.965)" fill="#333"/> d="M17.884,67.531l-3.352-5.753-1.257-2.191v7.944H10.9V56.3h2.793l3.212,5.616c.419.822.7,1.37,1.257,2.328V56.3h2.374V67.531Z" transform="translate(3.765 -55.889)" fill="#333"/> ... Read more ...
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New York Times - Climate Section:
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'Discomfort May Increase’: Asia’s Heat Wave Scorches Hundreds of Millions - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · April is typically hot in South and Southeast Asia, but temperatures this month have been unusually high.
Saif Hasnat reported from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and Mike Ives from Seoul.
Hundreds of millions of people in South and Southeast Asia were suffering on Monday from a punishing heat wave that has forced schools to close, disrupted agriculture, and raised the risk of heat strokes and other health complications.
The weather across the region in April is generally hot, and comes before Asia’s annual summer monsoon, which dumps rain on parched soil. But this April’s temperatures have so far been unusually high.
In Bangladesh, where schools and universities are ... | By Saif Hasnat and Mike Ives Read more ...
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Biden Earth Day Event Will Try to Reach Young Voters, a Crucial Bloc - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · At a national park in Virginia on Monday, the president will point to investments in clean energy and appear with future members of his American Climate Corps.
Reporting from Washington
President Biden will travel to a national park in Virginia on Monday, Earth Day, to spotlight his clean energy investments, with an eye on bolstering support among young voters disillusioned with their choices for the 2024 election.
Against the backdrop of the park, Prince William Forest, Mr. Biden will announce $7 billion in grants to fund solar power for hundreds of thousands of homes in primarily disadvantaged communities, according to the White House. He will be joined by future ... | By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Brad Plumer Read more ...
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Biden Shields Millions of Acres of Alaskan Wilderness From Drilling and Mining - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · The administration has blocked a proposed industrial road needed to mine copper in the middle of the state, and has banned oil drilling on 13 million acres in the North Slope.
The Biden administration expanded federal protections across millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness on Friday, blocking oil, gas and mining operations in some of the most unspoiled land in the country.
The Interior Department said it would deny a permit for an industrial road that the state of Alaska had wanted to build through the Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve in order to reach a large copper deposit with an estimated value of $7.5 billion. It also announced it would ban drilling ... | By Lisa Friedman Read more ...
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Breaking Down New Rules About 'Forever Chemicals’ - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · Lisa Friedman, who covers climate change, discussed the fight to regulate toxic chemicals found in nearly half of America’s tap water.
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
Cookware. Dental floss. Shampoo.
Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, can be found in those items and hundreds of other household products. Nicknamed “forever chemicals” because they do not fully degrade, PFAS are resistant to heat, oil, grease and water. (One of the first uses of PFAS chemicals was as a nonstick agent in Teflon cookware in the 1940s.) But exposure to PFAS has been ... | By Josh Ocampo Read more ...
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Carbon Dioxide Levels Have Passed a New Milestone - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 20) |
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Apr 20 · The chart shows monthly numbers of carbon dioxide molecules per million molecules of dry air. Because of seasonal differences, levels are higher in May than in August.
Carbon dioxide acts like Earth’s thermostat: The more of it in the air, the more the planet warms.
In 2023, global levels of the greenhouse gas rose to 419 parts per million, around 50 percent more than before the Industrial Revolution. That means there are roughly 50 percent more carbon dioxide molecules in the air than there were in 1750.
As carbon dioxide builds up in the atmosphere, it traps heat and warms the planet.
The chart shows the change in global surface temperature relative to ... | By Aatish Bhatia Read more ...
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Chinese Export Surge Clouds U.S. Hopes of a Domestic Solar Boom - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · The decision by a Massachusetts solar company to abandon plans to build a $1.4 billion U.S. factory highlights the risks amid a flood of Chinese clean energy exports.
Reporting from Washington
Less than a year ago, CubicPV, which manufactures components for solar panels, announced that it had secured more than $100 million in financing to build a $1.4 billion factory in the United States. The company planned to produce silicon wafers, a critical part of the technology that allows solar panels to turn sunlight into electrical energy.
The Massachusetts-based company called the investment a “direct result of the long-term industrial policy contained within the ... | By Alan Rappeport Read more ...
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Climate Doom Is Out. 'Apocalyptic Optimism’ Is In. - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 21) |
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Apr 21 · Focusing on disaster hasn’t changed the planet’s trajectory. Will a more upbeat approach show a way forward?
Credit...Photo Illustration by Doug Chayka
The philanthropist Kathryn Murdoch has prioritized donations to environmental causes for more than a decade. She has, she said, a deep understanding of how inhospitable the planet will become if climate change is not addressed. And she and her colleagues have spent years trying to communicate that.
“We have been screaming,” she said. “But screaming only gets you so far.”
This was on a morning in early spring. Murdoch and Ari Wallach, an author, producer and self-proclaimed futurist, had just released their new ... | By Alexis Soloski Read more ...
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Is Online Shopping Bad for the Planet? - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · In theory, getting deliveries can be more efficient than driving to the store. But you may still want to think before you add to cart.
Credit...Naomi Anderson-Subryan
Dionne Searcey is part of a rotating cast of Climate reporters and special guest writers who will answer your burning climate questions.
The convenience of online shopping is hard to beat. But it uses a lot of energy and resources and can lead to more waste.
Transportation needed for online shopping spews greenhouse emissions. Three billion trees are cut down every year to produce packaging for all kinds of things, e-commerce included, according to some estimates. The data centers needed to ... | By Dionne Searcey Read more ...
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R.F.K. Jr.’s Environmental Colleagues Urge Him to Drop Presidential Bid - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · Nearly 50 leaders and activists who worked with Mr. Kennedy at an environmental nonprofit group will run ads calling on him to “Honor our planet, drop out.”
As an independent candidate for the White House, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims he would be the “best environment president in American history,” drawing on his past as a crusading lawyer who went after polluters in New York.
But dozens of Mr. Kennedy’s former colleagues at the Natural Resources Defense Council are calling on him to withdraw from the race, in full-page advertisements sponsored by the group’s political arm that are expected to appear in newspapers in six swing states on Sunday.
Separately, a dozen ... | By Lisa Friedman Read more ...
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Scotland Made Big Climate Pledges. Now They’re 'Out of Reach.’ - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · Despite significant progress, Scotland was falling short on cutting vehicle emissions, switching to heat pumps and even restoring peatland, the government said.
Climate promises are hard to keep. Scotland is the latest, perhaps most surprising example.
Scotland, an early industrial power and coal-burning behemoth, was also an early adopter of an ambitious and legally binding government target to slow down climate change. It had promised to pare back its emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases by 75 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.
This week, its Net Zero minister, Màiri McAllan, said that goal was now “out of reach.” She said Scotland, which operates ... | By Somini Sengupta Read more ...
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Three Places Changing Quickly to Fight Climate Change - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Paris is becoming a city of bikes. Across China, people are snapping up $5,000 electric cars. On Earth Day, a look at a few bright spots for emission reductions.
Glaciers are shrinking, coral reefs are in crisis and last year was the hottest on record. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, have passed a dangerous new threshold as people continue to burn fossil fuels. Is anyplace making progress on climate change?
The short answer is: It’s complicated, but yes.
In South America, one country has pivoted in less than a decade to generating almost all its electricity from a diverse mix of renewables. In China, an electric car that costs ... | By Delger Erdenesanaa Read more ...
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Your most pressing climate questions - New York Times - Climate Section (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Subscriber-only Newsletter
Climate Forward
Introducing Ask NYT Climate, where we’ll explore how climate intersects with your everyday life.
I’m the new editor of the Climate Forward newsletter.
Are traffic circles better for the environment than four-way stops? Will the oceans be too hot for fish to survive? Is green hydrogen a thing?
Over the past few years, we here at the Climate desk have received hundreds of smart, often highly specific, questions from our readers about what they can do in their daily lives to affect climate change. To answer some of these questions, this week we’ve launched “Ask NYT Climate,” which is dedicated to exploring how ... | By Ryan McCarthy Read more ...
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VOX -Environment:
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Climate change is disrupting our sense of home - VOX -Environment (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Climate change is personal. It is not abstract. The warming climate impacts our economies, influences our politics and culture, threatens the food we eat and the water we drink; it even affects our love lives.
As climate change accelerates and extreme heat and climate disasters displace more people around the world, the crisis is increasingly disrupting our fundamental sense of where we belong and what we consider home.
We saw that last summer, in Maui, Hawaii, when the deadliest wildfire in the US in more than a century leveled the historic town of Lahaina, killed more than 100 people, and displaced thousands of residents from their homes.
In the immediate wake of ... Read more ...
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Washington Post - Climate and Environment:
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Biden limits oil drilling across 13 million acres of Alaskan Arctic - Washington Post - Climate and Environment (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · Future oil and gas drilling will be limited across more than 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, the nation’s largest expanse of public land, under a sweeping Biden administration plan aimed at protecting sensitive ecosystems and wildlife.
The Interior Department’s final rule represents one of President Biden’s most significant steps to curb fossil fuel development on federal lands. It could help the president’s reelection campaign court young voters, a key Democratic constituency, after many youth climate activists criticized the administration’s approval of a massive drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope last year.
In a separate move, Interior ... Read more ...
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California has so much solar power it’s throwing it away - Washington Post - Climate and Environment (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · In sunny California, solar panels are everywhere. They sit in dry, desert landscapes in the Central Valley and are scattered over rooftops in Los Angeles’s urban center. By last count, the state had nearly 47 gigawatts of solar power installed - enough to power 13.9 million homes and provide over a quarter of the Golden State’s electricity.
But now, the state and its grid operator are grappling with a strange reality: There is so much solar on the grid that, on sunny spring days when there’s not as much demand, electricity prices go negative. Gigawatts of solar are “curtailed” - essentially, thrown away.
In response, California has cut back incentives for rooftop solar ... Read more ...
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Chinese province of Guangdong hit by historic floods - Washington Post - Climate and Environment (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Heavy rains continued to batter southern China on Monday, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes as rescuers raced to evacuate those trapped by flooding and locate at least 11 missing residents.
The historic levels of rain across Guangdong province have come earlier than the region’s usual flood season, between May and June, prompting concerns about the effects of climate change on the country.
Extreme weather events have become more frequent and severe in China, testing the top-down and increasingly centralized leadership under Xi Jinping that may be weakening local governments’ responses to such disasters.
The floods also threaten the country’s ... Read more ...
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Earth’s record hot streak might be a sign of a new climate era - Washington Post - Climate and Environment (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · The heat fell upon Mali’s capital like a thick, smothering blanket - chasing people from the streets, stifling them inside their homes. For nearly a week at the beginning of April, the temperature in Bamako hovered above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The cost of ice spiked to ten times its normal price, an overtaxed electrical grid sputtered and shut down.
With much of the majority-Muslim country fasting for the holy month of Ramadan, dehydration and heat stroke became epidemic. As their body temperatures climbed, people’s blood pressure lowered. Their vision went fuzzy, their kidneys and livers malfunctioned, their brains began to swell. At the city’s main hospital, doctors ... Read more ...
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Has the U.S. really conserved a third of its waters? Here’s the math. - Washington Post - Climate and Environment (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · Almost everyone loves the ocean. But not everyone agrees on what it means to protect it.
The United States is conserving approximately one-third of the country’s ocean areas, according to an early analysis released Friday by the Biden administration - suggesting the president is meeting a key environmental goal laid out at the beginning of his term.
But others say that’s not the case.
Some of those areas still allow for commercial fishing, advocates say, and fall short of protections needed to save marine ecosystems facing dire threats.
“It’s padding the numbers,” said Brad Sewell, oceans director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The ... Read more ...
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In photos: Heavy rains cause massive flooding in China’s Guangdong province - Washington Post - Climate and Environment (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Heavy rains continued to batter southern China on Monday, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes as rescuers raced to evacuate those trapped by flooding and locate at least 11 missing residents.
The historical levels of rain across Guangdong province have come earlier than the region’s usual flood season, between May and June, prompting concerns about the effects of climate change on the country.
April 22 | Qingyuan, Guangdong province
The region has been pummeled by heavy rain since Thursday, triggering landslides that buried buildings and floods covering villages and cities.
April 22 | Qingyuan, Guangdong province
Residents row a boat on ... Read more ...
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Nearly 2 in 5 Americans breathe unhealthy air. Why it’s getting worse. - Washington Post - Climate and Environment (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · A rising number of Americans - nearly 2 in 5 - has been living with unhealthy levels of air pollution, while the United States experienced a record number of days between 2020 and 2022 with very unhealthy or hazardous air, according to a new report.
More than 90 million people are living in places where the air quality is worse than a new U.S. standard, the American Lung Association reported Wednesday in its annual State of the Air assessment, which detailed a significant increase based on the stricter national particle pollution standard.
The total includes 72 million people who would not have been counted under the looser federal standard - reflecting the dramatic ... Read more ...
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Nine practices from Native American culture that could help the environment - Washington Post - Climate and Environment (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the world has experienced profound ecological changes. Wildlife populations have decreased by 69 percent, the result of habitat loss caused by rapid industrialization and changing temperatures. 2023 was the hottest year on record.
Certain ancient practices could mitigate the deleterious effects of global warming. From building seaside gardens to water management in desert terrain, these time-honored practices work with the natural world’s rhythms. Some might even hold the key to a more resilient future and a means of building security for both Indigenous communities and other groups disproportionately impacted by climate change.
Jim ... Read more ...
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Scientists unlocked solar patterns that could help understand space weather - Washington Post - Climate and Environment (Apr 21) |
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Apr 21 · The sun is more than a heat lamp for Earth. It is constantly spitting streams of solar particles our way and, sometimes, powerful pockets of solar material that can jolt our planet. Now, scientists are unlocking another puzzle piece on what may drive extreme solar activity, which could bombard Earth and disrupt our technology.
The missing piece could be linked to unusual patterns of high energy bursting from the sun’s surface, according to recent research.
We’re used to hearing about the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, which we protect ourselves against with sunscreen. The sun also emits much more powerful gamma rays, which are the most energetic waves on an electromagnetic ... Read more ...
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These 150-foot-high sails could help solve shipping’s climate problem - Washington Post - Climate and Environment (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · To cut costs and carbon emissions, cargo ships are putting a new spin on an ancient technology: the sail.
These aren’t the sailboats of yore. Modern sails look more like airplane wings, smokestacks or balloons, and they use artificial intelligence to catch the wind with little help from mariners who long ago forgot the art of hoisting a mainsail.
Sails can reduce an existing ship’s fuel consumption - and greenhouse emissions - by something like 10 or 20 percent, according to maritime experts, making them an attractive option for ship owners looking to cut costs or comply with environmental regulations.
Ships burn some of the world’s dirtiest fuels and generate ... Read more ...
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