Recent News (Since March 25)
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China is all in on green tech. The U.S. and Europe fear unfair competition. - Mar 29, 2024 Washington Post - Climate and Environment |
| CHENGDU, China - A decade ago, Tongwei Group was a maker of fish food and livestock feed. Today, the company, based in this famously overcast corner of southwest China, is the world’s largest producer of solar cells, the components of panels that turn sunlight into electricity. At its $2.8 billion facility on the outskirts of Chengdu, robotic arms stacked the delicate cells on autonomous carts that zipped between production stages. Productivity has gone up 161 percent - and the number of workers down by 62 percent - thanks to 5G equipment from homegrown technology giant Huawei, the company says. Tongwei now has even grander ambitions: It is rapidly expanding and upgrading six production facilities and, by the end of this year, aims to churn out 130 gigawatts’ worth of cells annually - four times the total solar capacity installed in the United States in 2023. China - through solar companies like this - will be without doubt the “main force leading the global ... |
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The Anxiety of Watching Risk Takers Clash Over Life-or-Death Decisions - Mar 29, 2024 New York Times - Climate Section |
| On “Arctic Ascent With Alex Honnold,” big-wall climbers set out to make history. Their tense conversations give a peek inside the interpersonal dynamics of those who regularly risk death. Spoilers follow. About halfway through the new National Geographic three-part docuseries “Arctic Ascent With Alex Honnold,” a vibe shift starts to creep in. Honnold is one of the greatest living big-wall climbers, whose fame ballooned after his historic ascent of El Capitan, a 3,000-foot climb in Yosemite National Park that was chronicled in the 2018 Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo.” Here, he is outnumbered by his five adventure-mates as they cross the Renland ice cap, a vast sheet of ice in Greenland, the first known time it has been traversed by foot. They are in the thick of a harsh 100-mile, six-week trek to Ingmikortilaq, an untouched sea wall that measures nearly 4,000 feet - about the height of three Empire State Buildings. Honnold and two of the team ... |
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'Garbage Lasagna’: Dumps Are a Big Driver of Warming, Study Says - Mar 28, 2024 New York Times - Climate Section |
| Decades of buried trash is releasing methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, at higher rates than previously estimated, the researchers said. They’re vast expanses that can be as big as towns: open landfills where household waste ends up, whether it’s vegetable scraps or old appliances. These landfills also belch methane, a powerful, planet-warming gas, on average at almost three times the rate reported to federal regulators, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. The study measured methane emissions at about 20 percent of about 1,200 large, operating landfills in the United States. It adds to a growing body of evidence that landfills are a significant driver of climate change, said Riley Duren, founder of the public-private partnership Carbon Mapper, who took part in the study. “We’ve largely been in the dark, as a society, about actual emissions from landfills,” said Mr. Duren, a former NASA engineer and scientist. “This study ... |
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A data scientist’s case for 'cautious optimism’ about climate change - Mar 28, 2024 Yale Climate Connections - Arts |
| Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Yale Climate Connections Against the regular drumbeat of negative news on climate and the environment, a positive note can be both startling and therapeutic. To keep pressing forward, we need to know that progress has been - and still can be - made. That’s the motivation behind “Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet” by Hannah Ritchie, a senior researcher in the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development and deputy editor and lead researcher for the influential website, Our World in Data. In this undertaking, Hannah Ritchie was inspired by another researcher, Hans Rosling, whose data visualizations have awed viewers of his TED talks and instructional videos. Dramatic progress has been made over the last century, the data shows; human beings are less vulnerable now than in the past - even to natural ... |
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A First Step Toward a Global Price on Carbon - Mar 28, 2024 New York Times - Climate Section |
| Subscriber-only Newsletter Climate Forward A tax on ship emissions could have an impact on almost everything we buy It didn’t make many headlines, but last week, at a meeting of the International Maritime Organization, something potentially world-changing happened. The United Nations agency, which regulates the shipping industry, essentially committed to creating the world’s first global carbon price. “I’m very confident that there is going to be an economic pricing mechanism by this time next year,” Arsenio Dominguez, the Secretary General of the maritime organization, said. “What form it is going to have and what the name is going to be, I don’t know.” The proposal would require shipping companies to pay a fee for every ton of carbon they emit by burning fuel. In other words, it’s a tax. That could raise a significant amount of money and lead to sweeping changes in the shipping industry. It would also be a first step toward the lofty ... |
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A growing number of homeowners face repeat flooding - Mar 28, 2024 Yale Climate Connections - Policy |
| Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Yale Climate Connections As sea levels rise and storms become more extreme, a growing number of homeowners are struggling with flooding - not just once, but time and time again. Weber: “People are just faced over and over with damaging floods, and then having to put their lives back together each time.” Anna Weber is with the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council. An analysis by her group found that as of 2022, almost 45,000 U.S. properties are what the National Flood Insurance Program considers “severe repetitive loss properties,” which means they’ve experienced multiple severe floods. That’s about a 20% increase from just four years earlier. And many of these homes are likely to flood again. Weber: “Concerningly, the number of these properties that have had mitigation actions taken to reduce their risk - for example, homes can be ... |
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A Word on Congestion Pricing - Mar 28, 2024 Legal Planet |
| Yesterday, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved the city’s long-planned and hotly debated congestion pricing program, the first of its kind in the US. The program will involve a $15 toll for vehicles entering midtown or lower Manhattan, with discounts for some qualifying drivers and credits for bridge and tunnel tolls so drivers aren’t double-charged. It is expected to raise about $1 billion annually for transit and transportation investments. The plan is already being challenged in court by the expected mix of outer-borough and neighboring state representatives who call the plan an unfair tax on commuters and right-wing groups that oppose regulation and transit in equal measure. It is a monumental step, regardless of the outcome of these cases. While no California city is quite like New York, as I wrote all the way back in 2019, the New York program certainly merits California policymakers’ attention. Accurately accounting for the impact of ... |
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AI already uses as much energy as a small country. It’s only the beginning. - Mar 28, 2024 VOX -Environment |
| The energy needed to support data storage is expected to double by 2026. You can do something to stop it. In January, the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued its forecast for global energy use over the next two years. Included for the first time were projections for electricity consumption associated with data centers, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence. The IEA estimates that, added together, this usage represented almost 2 percent of global energy demand in 2022 - and that demand for these uses could double by 2026, which would make it roughly equal to the amount of electricity used by the entire country of Japan. We live in the digital age, where many of the processes that guide our lives are hidden from us inside computer code. We are watched by machines behind the scenes that bill us when we cross toll bridges, guide us across the internet, and deliver us music we didn’t even know we wanted. All of this takes material to build and run - ... |
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Amazon bets $150 billion on data centers required for AI boom - Mar 28, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Technology |
| Amazon.com Inc. plans to spend almost $150 billion in the coming 15 years on data centers, giving the cloud-computing giant the firepower to handle an expected explosion in demand for artificial intelligence applications and other digital services. The spending spree is a show of force as the company looks to maintain its grip on the cloud services market, where it holds about twice the share of No. 2 player Microsoft Corp. Sales growth at Amazon Web Services slowed to a record low last year as business customers cut costs and delayed modernization projects. Now spending is starting to pick up again, and Amazon is keen to secure land and electricity for its power-hungry facilities. "We're expanding capacity quite significantly," said Kevin Miller, an AWS vice president who oversees the company's data centers. "I think that just gives us the ability to get closer to customers." Over the past two years, according to a Bloomberg tally, Amazon has committed to ... |
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Ancient isolation's impact on modern ecology: How deep biogeographic divides drive divergent evolutionary paths - Mar 28, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Earth |
| A new study led by Michigan State University researcher Peter Williams sheds light on the profound influence of deep geographic isolation on the evolution of mammals. Published in Nature Communications, the research reveals how long-lasting separation between continents has shaped distinct mammal communities around the globe. "Today's ecology was not inevitable. If there were different isolating factors long ago, we might have vastly different ecosystems today," said Peter Williams, the lead author of the study. Williams is a research associate in the Integrative Biology department and a postdoctoral researcher in MSU's Ecology, Evolution and Behavior program, or EEB. While environmental factors like climate and vegetation are well-known drivers of biodiversity, the new study highlights the crucial role that isolation played for mammals. "Think tree-dwelling mammals," Williams said. "Despite similar climates, you'll find koalas in Australia and squirrels in ... |
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Athens chokes in clouds of Sahara dust - Mar 28, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Earth |
| Athenians are choking in clouds of thick dust blown in from the Sahara along with unseasonably warm weather, weather forecasters and doctors warned on Thursday. The haze covering the Greek capital comes from southerly winds that blow dust from North Africa across the eastern Mediterranean from March to April, the head of the Greek meteorological service Theodoros Kolydas said on X, formerly Twitter. "A typical sandstorm with a range of 200 kilometers (about 120 miles) carries 20 to 30 million metric tons of dust and sometimes as much as 100 million," he wrote. The city regularly experiences such sandstorms but the current one is accompanied by unusually high spring temperatures, heightening the choking effect. Wednesday saw the highest March temperature in central Athens since 2009 -- 25.3 degrees Celsius (77.5 Fahrenheit). Further south on the island of Crete, the temperature reached 32 Celsius. The Greek Pulmonologists' Union advised ... |
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Atmospheric observations in China show rise in emissions of a potent greenhouse gas - Mar 28, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Earth |
| For example, measured over a 100-year period, the GWP of methane is about 28 times that of carbon dioxide (CO2), and the GWP of sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is 24,300 times that of CO2, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report. Used primarily in high-voltage electrical switchgear in electric power grids, SF6 is one of the most potent greenhouse gases on Earth. In the 21st century, atmospheric concentrations of SF6 have risen sharply along with global electric power demand, threatening the world's efforts to stabilize the climate. This heightened demand for electric power is particularly pronounced in China, which has dominated the expansion of the global power industry in the past decade. Quantifying China's contribution to global SF6 emissions—and pinpointing its sources in the country—could lead that nation to implement new measures to reduce them, and thereby reduce, if not eliminate, an impediment to the ... |
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Atmospheric observations in China show rise in emissions of a potent greenhouse gas - Mar 28, 2024 MIT - Research |
| 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"/> d="M32.441,59.972a2.177,2.177,0,0,0-2.374-1.644c-1.955,0-3.073,1.37-3.073,3.7s1.117,3.7,2.933,3.7a2.319,2.319,0,0,0,2.514-2.055h2.793c-.279,2.6-2.374,4.109-5.308,4.109-3.492,0-5.727-2.328-5.727-5.89S26.435,56,29.927,56c2.793,0,4.749,1.507,5.168,3.835H32.441Z" transform="translate(9.042 -56)" fill="#333"/> d="M36.731,65.2l-.7,2.328H33.1L37.29,56.3h3.352l3.771,11.231H41.341l-.7-2.328Zm2.1-6.438-1.4,4.383h2.654Z" transform="translate(12.572 -55.889)" fill="#333"/> ... |
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Attaching seaweed spores to used scallop shells could restore UK's coastal kelp forests - Mar 28, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Biology |
| Unlike many other restoration techniques, this method is cheap and easy to carry out. There's no need for expensive, labor-intensive dive teams to install kelp onto the seabed. Once gravel or shells have been seeded with kelp in aquariums, teams can simply drop them over the side of a boat where they sink, allowing the kelp to attach to the seabed where it grows to maturity. This is as effective as hand-deployment by divers and far more economical. Our team of marine scientists is working with the Fishmongers' Company's Charitable Trust and the Kelp Conservation Initiative to develop this "green gravel" approach. First pioneered in Norway, green gravel techniques have previously been tested on wave-exposed shores along the north-east coast of the UK. Now, in the lab, we are trialing waste scallop shells from the seafood industry and different types of stone from around the UK, easily sourced from hardware stores, as the basis for growing four types of native ... |
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Better math adds up to trillions in climate-related savings: Statisticians curb uncertainty in climate models - Mar 28, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Earth |
| A new study greatly reduces uncertainty in climate change predictions, a move economists say could save the world trillions in adaptations for a hotter future. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, considers dozens of climate models from different countries that differ in the magnitude of global warming they predict to occur by the end of the century. Warming in these models is caused by emissions of carbon dioxide, or CO2, in the atmosphere. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, which creates a kind of blanket in the atmosphere, trapping heat from Earth's surface and preventing it from radiating into space. "All of the models predict warming when CO2 is doubled. But their predictions vary greatly from each other, from 1.3 to 3 degrees Celsius. And that is a problem," said King-Fai Li, the study's first author and UC Riverside assistant professor of environmental science and statistics. The 2015 Paris Agreement aims to keep future global warming to ... |
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Biden promised to install thousands of EV charging stations. Only 7 have been built. - Mar 28, 2024 Washington Post - Climate and Environment |
| President Biden has long vowed to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations in the United States by 2030. Those stations, the White House said, would help Americans feel confident purchasing and driving electric cars, and help the country cut carbon pollution. But now, more than two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to help build out those stations, only 7 EV charging stations are operational across four states. And as the Biden administration rolls out its new rules for emissions from cars and trucks - which will require a lot more electric cars and hybrids on the road - the sluggish build-out could slow the transition to electric cars. “I think a lot of people who are watching this are getting concerned about the timeline,” said Alexander Laska, deputy director for transportation and innovation at the center-left think tank Third Way. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which Biden signed in November 2021, included $7.5 billion for EV ... |
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Bifunctional catalyst enables high-performance batteries for sustainable energy storage - Mar 28, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Biology |
| They successfully designed and synthesized an efficient tetraphenylporphyrin (tpp) modified heterophase rhodium-copper alloy metallene (RhCu M-tpp). This bifunctional catalyst exhibits remarkable capabilities in both the electrocatalytic nitrate reduction reaction (NO3RR) and ethanol oxidation reaction (EOR) in a neutral medium, overcoming the monofunctional limitations of traditional metal-based solid catalysts and providing a valuable reference for the design of sustainable energy storage in the future. "This study highlights the significance of molecule-metal relay catalysis to efficient NH3 electrosynthesis in NO3RR and offers a multifunctional battery prototype that shows the benefits of metal-based hybrid electrochemical systems on high-performance, sustainable energy storage and conversion," said Professor Fan Zhanxi, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at CityU, who led the study, highlighting the significance of the findings. Elaborating on ... |
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Building energy efficiency: Enhancing HVAC fault detection with transformer and transfer learning - Mar 28, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Technology |
| A study published in Energy Storage and Saving by researchers from Xi'an Jiaotong University introduces a novel approach to FDD in HVAC systems. This research leverages a modified transformer model and adapter-based transfer learning to enhance the generalizability of FDD models across various HVAC systems. The team developed a transformer model enhanced with an encoder and two decoders, enabling simultaneous identification of multiple fault types and severities. This innovation is complemented by an adapter-based transfer learning strategy, allowing the model to adapt efficiently across various HVAC systems, even with limited data. Two designed transfer learning scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed HVAC FDD transfer learning framework, compared with the popular fine-tuning method. By integrating an efficient transfer learning technique, the model can be seamlessly transferred from one comprehensive dataset to another with less available ... |
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Cancellation of UN climate weeks removes platform for worst-hit communities - Mar 28, 2024 Climate Change News - Science |
| Comment: The UNFCCC has said it will not hold regional climate weeks in 2024 due to a funding shortfall – which means less inclusion for developing-country voices A woman of the Turkana tribe waits with plastic containers to get water from a well, amid the worst drought in East Africa's history, February 17, 2023. (Photo: Simone Boccaccio / SOPA Images/Sipa USA) If the world’s most vulnerable are not at the table, then UN climate talks are no longer fit for purpose. This week, the UN climate change body (UNFCCC) confirmed that this year’s Regional Climate Weeks will be cancelled until further notice due to lack of funding. The update comes shortly after UNFCCC chief Simon Stiell made an urgent plea at the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial last week to plug the body’s funding gap, stating that it is facing “severe financial challenges” – putting a rising workload at risk due to “governments’ failure to provide enough money”. The suspension ... |
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