Recent News (Since April 21)
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Car giants vie for EV crown at Beijing's Auto China show - Apr 25, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Technology |
| Chinese car giants locked in a cut-throat price war descended on the capital for the start of the Auto China show Thursday, vying to draw consumers and headlines in the world's biggest electric vehicle market and abroad. China's EV sector has exploded in recent years, and firms are now engaged in a no-holds-barred battle to offer customers the coolest accessories at the lowest prices. EV makers from China have made inroads into markets from Europe to Southeast Asia and Tesla's Elon Musk described them in January as "the most competitive car companies in the world". Beijing's Auto China show, which lasts until May 4, sees dozens of firms square off in a bid to draw customers at one of the country's biggest car shows. Thursday saw crowds surge into the convention complex hosting the event, which takes place every other year but had not been held since 2019 because of the pandemic. Several of the Chinese automotive world's top stars addressed ... |
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Energy Dept. Aims to Speed Up Permits for Power Lines - Apr 25, 2024 New York Times - Climate Section |
| The Biden administration has expressed growing alarm that efforts to fight climate change could falter unless the electric grids are quickly expanded. Reporting from Washington The Biden administration on Thursday finalized a rule meant to speed up federal permits for major transmission lines, part of a broader push to expand America’s electric grids. Administration officials are increasingly worried that their plans to fight climate change could falter unless the nation can quickly add vast amounts of grid capacity to handle more wind and solar power and to better tolerate extreme weather. The pace of construction for high-voltage power lines has sharply slowed since 2013, and building new lines can take a decade or more because of permitting delays and local opposition. The Energy Department is trying to use the limited tools at its disposal to pour roughly $20 billion into grid upgrades and to streamline approvals for new lines. But experts say a ... |
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New Biden Climate Rules Could Shutter Remaining American Coal Plants - Apr 25, 2024 New York Times - Climate Section |
| Limiting power plant pollution is the last major climate rule expected from President Biden. Donald J. Trump has already vowed to “cancel” it if re-elected. The Biden administration on Thursday placed the final cornerstone of its plan to tackle climate change: a regulation that would force the nation’s coal-fired power plants to virtually eliminate the planet-warming pollution that they release into the air or shut down. The regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency requires coal plants in the United States to reduce 90 percent of their greenhouse pollution by 2039, one year earlier than the agency had initially proposed. The compressed timeline was welcomed by climate activists but condemned by coal executives who said the new standards would be impossible to meet. The E.P.A. also imposed three additional regulations on coal-burning power plants, including stricter limits on emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin linked to developmental damage in ... |
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New rules will slash air, water and climate pollution from U.S. power plants - Apr 25, 2024 Washington Post - Climate and Environment |
| The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday finalized an ambitious set of rules aimed at slashing air pollution, water pollution and planet-warming emissions spewing from the nation’s power plants. If fully implemented, the rules will have enormous consequences for U.S. climate goals, the air Americans breathe and the ways they get their electricity. The power sector ranks as the nation’s second-largest contributor to climate change, and it is a major source of toxic air pollutants tied to health problems. Before the restrictions take effect, however, they will have to survive near-certain legal challenges from Republican attorneys general, who have been emboldened by the Supreme Court’s skepticism of expansive environmental regulations. Another wild card is the November election, which could hand the White House back to former president Donald Trump, who has pledged to scrap dozens of President Biden’s green policies if he returns to office. One of ... |
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Tesla driver in Seattle-area crash that killed motorcyclist told police he was using Autopilot - Apr 25, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Technology |
| A Tesla that may have been operating on the company's Autopilot driving system hit and killed a motorcyclist near Seattle, raising questions about whether a recent recall went far enough to ensure Tesla drivers using Autopilot pay attention to the road. After the crash Friday in a suburban area about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of the city, the driver of a 2022 Tesla Model S told a Washington State Patrol trooper that he was using Autopilot and looked at his cellphone while the Tesla was moving. "The next thing he knew there was a bang and the vehicle lurched forward as it accelerated and collided with the motorcycle in front of him," the trooper wrote in a probable-cause document. The 56-year-old driver was arrested for investigation of vehicular homicide "based on the admitted inattention to driving, while on Autopilot mode, and the distraction of the cell phone while moving forward, putting trust in the machine to drive for him," the affidavit said. |
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'Basic peer pressure’: The plan to turn out millions of pro-climate voters in the 2024 U.S. election - Apr 24, 2024 Yale Climate Connections - Policy |
| Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter. Yale Climate Connections With the November election fast approaching, political campaigns across the country are targeting that most coveted of groups: “likely voters.” Once identified, most campaigns inundate them with mailers, phone calls, and advertisements. But the Environmental Voter Project flips conventional campaign wisdom. The nonprofit goes after those with voting records so dismal they’re written off by other campaigns. The Environmental Voter Project’s founder and director Nathaniel Stinnett believes there’s gold in those “unlikely voter” rolls, and his organization has been mining them since 2015 to great success. According to a report the group published last year, the Environmental Voter Project has transformed nearly 1.5 million unlikely voters into consistent voters who have one thing in common: “climate change and the environment” tops their list of ... |
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'Diverse' Agriculture Benefits People and the Environment at the Same Time - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| Rotating crops, conserving soil nutrients and deploying other strategies to "diversify" agriculture all at the same time can yield major benefits for the environment and people alike -- including increased crop yields and improved food security for entire communities. That's the take-home message of a landmark new study, including researchers from more than 15 nations and data from 2,655 farms on five continents. The team published its findings April 4 in the journal Science. "This is evidence that this can actually work -- we can imagine agricultural systems that are more diverse and serve people and nature at the same time," said Zia Mehrabi, a co-author of the new study and assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. The study comes as farms across much of the world are increasingly growing just one type of crop or raising a single kind of animal -- a transition to "monoculture" agriculture that may bring with it a ... |
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'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines - Apr 24, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Earth |
| Extreme heat scorched the Philippines on Wednesday, forcing schools in some areas to suspend in-person classes and prompting warnings for people to limit the amount of time spent outdoors. The months of March, April and May are typically the hottest and driest in the archipelago nation, but conditions this year have been exacerbated by the El Niño weather phenomenon. "It's so hot you can't breathe," said Erlin Tumaron, 60, who works at a seaside resort in Cavite province, south of Manila, where the heat index reached 47 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday. "It's surprising our pools are still empty. You would expect people to come and take a swim, but it seems they're reluctant to leave their homes because of the heat." The heat index was expected to reach the "danger" level of 42C (108F) or higher in at least 30 cities and municipalities on Wednesday, the state weather forecaster said. The heat index measures what a temperature ... |
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'Sunny Day Flooding' Increases Fecal Contamination of Coastal Waters - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| A new study finds that "sunny day flooding," which occurs during high tides, increases the levels of fecal bacteria in coastal waters. While the elevated bacteria levels in the coastal waters tend to dissipate quickly, the findings suggest policymakers and public health officials should be aware of potential risks associated with tidal flooding. "Historically we see the highest levels of fecal bacteria contamination in coastal waterways after it rains, because the rain washes contaminants into the waterways," says Natalie Nelson, corresponding author of a paper on the study and an associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering at North Carolina State University. "Due to sea level rise, we're seeing an increase in flooding in coastal areas at high tide -- even when there isn't any rainfall. We wanted to see whether sunny day floods were associated with increases in fecal bacteria contamination in waterways." For the study, researchers collected water ... |
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'Tug of War' Tactic Enhances Chemical Separations for Critical Materials - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| Lanthanide elements are important for clean energy and other applications. To use them, industry must separate mixed lanthanide sources into individual elements using costly, time-consuming, and waste-generating procedures. An efficient new method can be tailored to select specific lanthanides. The technique combines two substances that do not mix and that prefer different types of lanthanides. The process would allow for smaller equipment, less use of chemicals, and less waste production. The metals called lanthanides have valuable properties for clean energy technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines and for many other applications. These elements include several critical materials. In nature, lanthanides are often found mixed together. Industry must separate them to take advantage of their individual properties. But conventional approaches to this separation are time consuming and costly and generate waste. Scientists have developed an efficient new ... |
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38 Trillion Dollars in Damages Each Year: World Economy Already Committed to Income Reduction of 19 % Due to Climate Change - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| Even if CO2 emissions were to be drastically cut down starting today, the world economy is already committed to an income reduction of 19 % until 2050 due to climate change, a new study published in Nature finds. These damages are six times larger than the mitigation costs needed to limit global warming to two degrees. Based on empirical data from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) assessed future impacts of changing climatic conditions on economic growth and their persistence. "Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, with South Asia and Africa being most strongly affected. These are caused by the impact of climate change on various aspects that are relevant for economic growth such as agricultural yields, labour productivity or infrastructure," says PIK scientist and first author of the study Maximilian Kotz. ... |
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A Natural Touch for Coastal Defense - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| Common "hard" coastal defenses, like concrete sea walls, might struggle to keep up with increasing climate risks. A new study shows that combining them with nature-based solutions could, in some contexts, create defenses which are better able to adapt. Researchers reviewed 304 academic articleson the performance of coastal defenses around the world, including: natural environments; soft measures (which support or enrich nature); hard measures (such as concrete sea walls); and hybrids of the aforementioned. Soft and hybrid measures turned out to be more cost-effective than hard measures, and hybrid measures provided the highest hazard reduction overall in low-risk areas. Although their comparative performance during extreme events that pose a high risk is not clear due to lack of data, these results still support the careful inclusion of nature-based solutions to help protect, support and enrich coastal communities. Japan's dramatic natural coastline, with iconic views of ... |
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A New Estimate of U.S. Soil Organic Carbon to Improve Earth System Models - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| Soil contains about twice as much carbon as the atmosphere and plants combined. It is a major carbon sink, capable of absorbing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it releases. Management of soil carbon is key in efforts to mitigate climate change, in addition to being vital to soil health and agricultural productivity. Measuring soil carbon, however, is a painstaking, expensive process. Samples must be dug from the ground and sent to a lab for analysis, making upscaling measurements on a large spatial scale challenging. Now environmental scientists have combined field-level data with machine-learning techniques to estimate soil organic carbon at the U.S. continental scale. The Journal of Geophysical Research -- Biogeosciences published the new soil organic carbon estimate, which improves the overall estimate for the United States and gives new insights into the effects of environmental variables on soil organic carbon. "There is growing recognition ... |
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A Simple Way to Harvest More 'Blue Energy' from Waves - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| As any surfer will tell you, waves pack a powerful punch. Now, we are one step closer to capturing the energy behind the ocean's constant ebb and flow with an improved "blue energy" harvesting device. Researchers report in ACS Energy Letters that simply repositioning the electrode -- from the center of a see-sawing liquid-filled tube to the end where the water crashes with the most force -- dramatically increased the amount of wave energy that could be harvested. The tube-shaped wave-energy harvesting device improved upon by the researchers is called a liquid-solid triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG). The TENG converts mechanical energy into electricity as water sloshes back and forth against the inside of the tube. One reason these devices aren't yet practical for large-scale applications is their low energy output. Guozhang Dai, Kai Yin, Junliang Yan and colleagues aimed to increase a liquid-solid TENG's energy harvesting ability by optimizing the location of the ... |
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A Smarter City Skyline for Flood Safety - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| A city's skyline -- the distinctive shapes and arrangements of its buildings -- impacts the safety of its population during floods. When the streets flood, pedestrians can be swept under the current and injured or killed. With climate change and rising urbanization, the likelihood and severity of urban flooding are increasing. Not all city blocks are created equal. In Physics of Fluids, an AIP Publishing journal, researchers from Beijing Normal University, Beijing Hydrological Center, and the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research investigated how city design contributes to pedestrian safety during flooding. "Climate change leads to an increasing trend of extreme precipitation events in terms of frequency and intensity," said author Zhong-Fan Zhu. "Rapid urbanization alters the hydrological properties of the underlying surface in urban areas. For example, previous forestland, wetland, and agricultural land have been paved to construct ... |
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Africa's megacities threatened by heat, floods, disease - action needed to start greening, adapt to climate change - Apr 24, 2024 PHYS.ORG - Earth |
| African megacities like Lagos, Nigeria (with 21 million residents) and Cairo, Egypt (with 10 million residents) are experiencing significant temperature increases due to the urban heat island effect and climate change. Meelan Thondoo is a medical anthropologist and environmental epidemiologist who researches the health impacts of climate change in cities of fast-developing countries. She explains what cities in Africa are doing to mitigate climate change, and what further steps they need to take to protect their populations. What health effects of climate change do African cities experience? Currently, 3.3 billion to 3.6 billion people globally live in cities that are highly vulnerable to climate change. Floods pose one of the highest acute risks for climate-related death. It's predicted that they will cause 8.5 million deaths by 2050. Droughts, indirectly linked to extreme heat, are also one of the highest causes of mortality worldwide. They may cause ... |
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AI Weather Forecasts Captured Ciaran's Destructive Path - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| Artificial intelligence (AI) can quickly and accurately predict the path and intensity of major storms, a new study has demonstrated. Professor Andrew Charlton-Perez, who led the study, said: "AI is transforming weather forecasting before our eyes. Two years ago, modern machine learning techniques were rarely being applied to make weather forecasts. Now we have multiple models that can produce 10-day global forecasts in minutes. "There is a great deal we can learn about AI weather forecasts by stress-testing them on extreme events like Storm Ciarán. We can identify their strengths and weaknesses and guide the development of even better AI forecasting technology to help protect people and property. This is an exciting and important time for weather forecasting." Promise and pitfalls To understand the effectiveness of AI-based weather models, scientists from the University of Reading compared AI and physics-based forecasts of Storm Ciarán -- ... |
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AI Writing, Illustration Emits Hundreds of Times Less Carbon Than Humans, Study Finds - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| With the evolution of artificial intelligence comes discussion of the technology's environmental impact. A new study has found that for the tasks of writing and illustrating, AI emits hundreds of times less carbon than humans performing the same tasks. That does not mean, however, that AI can or should replace human writers and illustrators, the study's authors argue. Andrew Torrance, Paul E. Wilson Distinguished Professor of Law at KU, is co-author of a study that compared established systems such as ChatGPT, Bloom AI, DALL-E2 and others completing writing and illustrating to that of humans. Like cryptocurrency, AI has been subject to debate about the amount of energy it uses and its contributions to climate change. Human emissions and environmental impact have long been studied, but comparisons between the two have been scant. The authors conducted a comparison and found that AI systems emit between 130 and 1,500 times less CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) per ... |
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Ants in Colorado Are on the Move Due to Climate Change - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| Over the past 60 years, climate change has forced certain ant species, unable to tolerate higher temperatures, out of their original habitats in Gregory Canyon near Boulder, Colorado, according to a new research published April 9 in the journal Ecology. The resulting biodiversity change could potentially alter local ecosystems, according to first author Anna Paraskevopoulos, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder. Like all insects, ants are ectothermic, meaning their body temperature, metabolism and other bodily functions depend on the environment's temperature. As a result, ants are sensitive to temperature fluctuations, making them a good marker to study the impact climate change has on ecosystems. More than six decades ago, CU Boulder entomologist Robert Gregg and his student John Browne surveyed the ant populations in Gregory Canyon. After reading their study, Paraskevopoulos and her ... |
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Are Universities Connected to Local Sustainability? A New Study Suggests Yes...and No. - Apr 24, 2024 Science Daily - Earth and Climate |
| A new study finds that universities scoring strongly on measures of sustainability are associated with innovation and economic growth in their surrounding communities. However, the study did not find similar connections between university sustainability performance and environmental sustainability in their home communities. "Society is facing a slew of global challenges, and we wanted to assess the extent to which higher education is contributing to the sort of transformative change needed to address these challenges," says Christopher Galik, co-author of the study and a professor of public administration at North Carolina State University. "For this study, we started at the local level, exploring whether there was any association between university sustainability performance and sustainability in their surrounding communities." To explore the issue, researchers looked at data from 105 metropolitan areas in the United States, which are collectively home to 427 ... |
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