Sat.Jun 19, 2021 - Fri.Jun 25, 2021

article thumbnail

Amid Troubles for Fossil Fuels, Has the Era of ‘Peak Oil’ Arrived?

Yale E360

For years, analysts have predicted that rising world oil consumption would peak and start declining in the coming decades. But with a recent string of setbacks for big oil companies and the rapid advance of electric vehicles, some now say that “peak oil” is already here. Read more on E360 ?.

article thumbnail

Drought, The Everything Disaster

Circle of Blue

When water stops flowing, painful days are at hand. Lake Shasta was low enough on March 8, 2021 that a boat ramp at Bridge Bay did not reach the water. Today, the largest reservoir in California is just 40 percent full. Photo © Brett Walton/Circle of Blue. By Brett Walton, Circle of Blue – June 24, 2021. It develops in stages, a story that builds upon itself.

2011 328
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Undercutting Climate Goals, Biden Administration Greenlights Oil Drilling in Alaska

Union of Concerned Scientists

Common sense says that you cannot approve massive oil drilling projects if you want to swiftly reach net-zero emissions.

article thumbnail

Facing Up to Reality

Legal Planet

The western U.S. is staring climate change in the face. Most of the West is experiencing “severe” or “exceptional” drought. We could be heading into the worst drought period in centuries. Major dam reservoirs are down to record low levels. The region is also in the grips of a record-breaking heatwave. We can expect another bad wildfire season , maybe not as bad as last year but still bad.

article thumbnail

Implementing D.E.J.I. Strategies in Energy, Environment, and Transportation

Speaker: Antoine M. Thompson, Executive Director of the Greater Washington Region Clean Cities Coalition

Diversity, Equity, Justice, and Inclusion (DEJI) policies, programs, and initiatives are critically important as we move forward with public and private sector climate and sustainability goals and plans. Underserved and socially, economically, and racially disadvantaged communities bear the burden of pollution, higher energy costs, limited resources, and limited investments in the clean energy and transportation sectors.

article thumbnail

Yellowstone and Warming: An Iconic Park Faces Startling Changes

Yale E360

A new report details global warming’s impact on Yellowstone Park, changes that have begun to fundamentally alter its famed ecosystem and threaten everything from its forests to Old Faithful geyser. Such troubling shifts are occurring in national parks across the U.S. West. Read more on E360 ?.

330
330
article thumbnail

What’s Up With Water – June 21, 2021

Circle of Blue

Transcript. Welcome to “What’s Up With Water,” your need-to-know news of the world’s water from Circle of Blue. I’m Eileen Wray-McCann. In the Middle East and North Africa, leaders of Arab countries have taken steps on a controversial dam project in the Nile basin. Al Jazeera reports that the Arab League has called on the UN Security Council to intervene in a long-running regional dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dam.

2021 246

More Trending

article thumbnail

Supreme Court Finds California Labor Access Regulation Works Unconstitutional Taking of Private Property

Legal Planet

photo credit: Reason.com. In a closely-watched property rights decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today held unconstitutional a longstanding California regulation allowing labor unions intermittent access to agricultural workplaces for labor organizing purposes. Reversing a decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, a 6-3 Supreme Court majority ruled that the challenged regulation triggers a per se , compensable government “taking” of private property under the Fifth Amendment t

article thumbnail

EVs Cost 40 Percent Less to Maintain Than Conventional Cars, Energy Department Report Says

Yale E360

Maintenance costs for a light-duty, battery-powered car are around 40 percent less per mile than for a gas-powered car, according to a recent report from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. Read more on E360 ?.

270
270
article thumbnail

HotSpots H2O: Longstanding Drought in Iran Begets Farmer Protests, Power Outages, and Widespread Water Rationing

Circle of Blue

Shahdad Desert, Iran. Photo © Mostafa Farzan. Christian Thorsberg, Circle of Blue. Lack of water is one of Iran’s biggest environmental and social risks. On the outskirts of Tehran, and in the country’s rural expanses, the signs of such stress are abundantly visible: brittle plains, cracked ground, sinkholes, sandy plateaus. . A decades-long drought in one of the warming world’s most arid regions, heightened by what many consider to be governmental mismanagement, has set the stage for a severe,

2020 242
article thumbnail

Keystone Cancellation Is a Hard-Won Victory for a Social Movement That Must Keep Pushing for More

Union of Concerned Scientists

When TC Energy announced that it was cancelling its planned Keystone XL pipeline on June 9, management didn’t congratulate or even credit the tens of thousands of activists who’d battled against it for more than a decade. Instead, the death blow to the near 1200 mile pipeline came when Joe Biden, on the first day […].

237
237
article thumbnail

Shaping a Resilient Future: Climate Impact on Vulnerable Populations

Speaker: Laurie Schoeman Director, Climate & Sustainability, Capital

As households and communities across the nation face challenges such as hurricanes, wildfires, drought, extreme heat and cold, and thawing permafrost and flooding, we are increasingly searching for ways to mitigate and prevent climate impacts. During this event, national climate and housing expert Laurie Schoeman will discuss topics including: The two paths for climate action: decarbonization and adaptation.

article thumbnail

Katherine Johnson memoir: Her incredible life as a NASA mathematician

New Scientist

The Hollywood movie Hidden Figures made a star of Katherine Johnson, the pioneering NASA mathematician whose talents played a key part in putting the first US astronaut into orbit.

145
145
article thumbnail

Florida Keys Faces Tough Choices for Coping With Rising Seas

Yale E360

Long famed for its spectacular fishing, sprawling coral reefs and literary residents such as Ernest Hemingway, the Florida Keys is now acknowledging a previously unthinkable reality: it faces being overwhelmed by the rising seas and not every home can be saved. Read more on E360 ?.

240
240
article thumbnail

Federal Water Tap, June 21: Klamath Dam Removal Takes Another Step Forward

Circle of Blue

The Rundown. The administrative preparations for the country’s largest dam removal clear another hurdle. The EPA delays the effective date of the Lead and Copper Rule revisions. A House subcommittee approves bills related to household water debt and PFAS contamination. Federal energy regulators will undertake a new environmental assessment of the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline.

article thumbnail

Election Protection: Congress may have failed to act For the People, but they can still prevent election subversion

Union of Concerned Scientists

The fact that the outcome of yesterday’s vote was expected made it no less tragic, when along purely partisan lines, the US Senate failed to consider much needed voting rights protections in the For the People Act (FTPA). Criticisms of the bill ranged from thoughtful to conspiratorial. Senator Murkowski (R-AK) had at least read the bill, […].

231
231
article thumbnail

Sustainability at Retail

Sustainability impacts every nation, company, and person around the world. So much so that, in 2015, the United Nations (UN) issued a call for action by all countries to work toward sustainable development. In response to this and as part of a global Sustainability at Retail initiative, Shop! worked collaboratively with its global affiliates to address these critical issues in this white paper.

article thumbnail

Huge Oort Cloud object has been spotted entering the solar system

Physics World

Astronomers sifting through data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) have spotted a large Oort Cloud object approaching the outer regions of the solar system. The discovery has caused ripples of excitement within the planetary science community because of the object’s unusually large size – initial estimates suggest it may be as big as 130–160 km across, substantially bigger than some of the largest comets.

2014 145
article thumbnail

New Paper Argues for Managed Retreat from Flood-Prone Areas

Yale E360

A new paper argues that adapting to climate change over the long term will require managed retreat from areas that are prone to floods or other hazards. While managed retreat has long been viewed as a solution of last resort, authors say that it can be an economically efficient means of coping with climate change. Read more on E360 ?.

article thumbnail

New Climate Research From a Year-Long Arctic Expedition Raises an Ozone Alarm in the High North

Inside Climate News

Warming of the surface of the Arctic is matched by a colder polar vortex high in the atmosphere, which is speeding the breakdown of the Earth’s shield against ultraviolet rays. By Bob Berwyn After sampling the atmosphere above the Arctic for more than a year during the MOSAiC research voyage , climate scientists say the ozone layer, Earth’s protection against intense ultraviolet radiation, is at risk, despite the progress made in protecting atmospheric ozone by the 1987 Montreal Protocol , the g

Ozone 145
article thumbnail

Using Science for Equitable Policies: A framework for climate scientists

Union of Concerned Scientists

Climate science is having its moment. With the recent administration changes, climate change is getting attention at the national level through much-needed bold and ambitious federal policy developments. “We must listen to science — and act,” the Biden administration wrote in an Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, signed by […].

article thumbnail

Caution needed when testing Einstein’s general relativity using gravitational waves

Physics World

Physicists should be wary of data from gravitational-wave observatories that appear to contradict Einstein’s general theory of relativity. That is the message from researchers in the UK, who have analysed how errors accumulate when combining the results from multiple black-hole mergers. They say that current gravitational-wave catalogues contain nearly enough events to potentially generate errors large enough to be confused with signals for alternative theories of gravity.

Radiation 145
article thumbnail

The Delusion of Infinite Economic Growth

Scientific American

Even “sustainable” technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines face unbreachable physical limits and exact grave environmental costs. -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com.

article thumbnail

A dog’s life: James A Serpell and his investigation into the origin story of mankind’s best friend

Frontiers

By Colm Gorey, Frontiers science writer/Prof James Serpell, University of Pennsylvania. Prof James A Serpell, University of Pennsylvania. Image: University of Pennsylvania. Two distinctly different stories have been created to explain how fearsome, wild wolves were first domesticated by humans, according to Prof James A Serpell of the University of Pennsylvania.

Waste 130
article thumbnail

As Dangerous Heat Becomes Norm in Pacific Northwest, Will Oregon Pass Needed Climate Bills?

Union of Concerned Scientists

Four groups will be hit especially hard by the historic heat wave.

article thumbnail

Electrons ‘surf’ on Alfvén waves in plasma-chamber experiments

Physics World

For the first time, experiments have clearly shown how powerful Alfvén waves in the Earth’s magnetosphere transfer their energy to electrons that then cause intense episodes of the Northern and Southern Lights. The work was done in the US by James Schroeder at Wheaton College in Illinois and colleagues at the University of Iowa, University of California, Los Angeles and the Space Science Institute.

article thumbnail

A Possible Link between 'Oumuamua and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena

Scientific American

If some UAP turn out to be extraterrestrial technology, they could be dropping sensors for a subsequent craft to tune into. What if ‘Oumuamua is such a craft? -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com.

article thumbnail

US Electric Vehicle Sales up 329% in May 2021

Environmental Leader

The principle of mutually beneficial cooperation and partnership between technologies is alive and well as electric vehicle (EV) sales and corresponding EV charge infrastructure spur each other on. The post US Electric Vehicle Sales up 329% in May 2021 appeared first on Environment + Energy Leader.

article thumbnail

California Takes Big Step Towards Clean Electricity, But Not Without Stumbling

Union of Concerned Scientists

Today, the Commission voted to approve a decision requiring the purchase of a massive amount of new clean energy resources in order to bolster grid reliability.

article thumbnail

Alien astronomers on hundreds of nearby exoplanets could have spotted life on Earth

Physics World

Over the past 25 years astronomers have observed thousands exoplanets – planets that orbit stars other than the Sun. So, it stands to reason that alien astronomers on exoplanets may have observed Earth. Now, Lisa Kaltenegger , director of Cornell University’s Carl Sagan Institute, and astrophysicist Jackie Faherty , a senior scientist at the American Museum of Natural History have created a catalogue of nearly 2000 nearby stars from which an observer on an exoplanet could spot Earth using the tr

article thumbnail

The Delusion of Infinite Economic Growth

Scientific American

Even “sustainable” technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines face unbreachable physical limits and exact grave environmental costs. -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com.

article thumbnail

How Sustainability Is Catalyzing Innovation Part 1 of 2: The Urgent Need

Environmental Leader

This two-part series highlights the urgent needs driving innovation in sustainability in part one, and leaders leading – examples of companies innovating for sustainability – in part two. If necessity is the mother of invention, we would expect sustainability to spawn a new era of innovation. While many organizations across. Read more ».

article thumbnail

GPS cyberattack falsely placed UK warship near Russian naval base

New Scientist

An international vessel-tracking system appears to show UK destroyer HMS Defender travel to within a few kilometres of a Russian naval base even though a web cam feed shows it was docked at Odessa, Ukraine

122
122
article thumbnail

Nanoscale clock hints at universal limits to measuring time

Physics World

Imagine the sound of a ticking clock. How much time passes between each tick? For a good clock, the answer should be one second, to some precision. If we want to make the clock more precise, the laws of thermodynamics dictate that we must put in more work – and the amount of waste heat dissipated to the surroundings must increase to compensate for the more highly-ordered ticks.

Waste 140
article thumbnail

Maybe the Aliens Really Are Here

Scientific American

But if so, it’s probably in the form of robotic probes; something both UFO enthusiasts and SETI scientists should be able to agree on. -- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com.

137
137
article thumbnail

Adidas CEO: 70% Of Consumers Prefer To Buy Sustainable Products

Environmental Leader

In its annual general meeting earlier this year, Adidas CEO Kasper Rorsted told shareholders based on a recent company survey, “70% of all consumers say that they consider sustainability a significant buying argument,“ and added, “If we succeed in sustainability – or when – we also succeed as a business.”. Read more ». The post Adidas CEO: 70% Of Consumers Prefer To Buy Sustainable Products appeared first on Environment + Energy Leader.

article thumbnail

We finally know when the first stars in the universe switched on

New Scientist

The most detailed observations of some of the most distant galaxies we have ever seen have revealed the timing of cosmic dawn, when the first stars began to shine

126
126