U.K. fracking protest.
Credit: AshleyCooper/Barcrift Media
A new NASA study is one final nail in the coffin of the myth that natural gas is a climate solution, or a “bridge” from the dirtiest fossil fuels to low-carbon fuels like solar and wind.
NASA found that most of the huge rise in global methane emissions in the past decade is in fact from the fossil fuel industry–and that this rise is “substantially larger” than previously thought. And that means natural gas is, as many earlier studies have found, not a climate solution. (emphasis added)
Natural gas is mostly methane, a potent greenhouse gas. And methane emissions are responsible for about a quarter of the human-caused global warming we’re suffering today.
So scientists have been scrambling to figure out why methane emissions have been soaring in recent years after leveling off around the year 2000. The total methane in the air has been rising by 25 teragrams (27.5 million U.S. tons) a year, which NASA helpfully explains is the weight of some 5 million elephants.
Scientists are developing ways to store solar heat directly, bypassing costly electricity-generating panels like these.
Credit: Rolfo Brenner /EyeEm
Solar energy is clean, abundant, and irritatingly inconvenient: It doesn’t work at night or on cloudy days. You can convert sunshine into electricity and store it in a battery, but that’s complicated and expensive. And much of the time, what you really want isn’t electricity but heat for tasks like cooking or warming homes.
What you want, in other words, is a way to bottle the heat of the noonday sun and then uncork it on demand. That sounds almost impossible, but some very determined scientists have found a way to make it happen — and they’re convinced the technology could be transformative.
A team led by Dr. Dhandapani Venkataraman, a chemist at the University of Massachusetts, reported last month on a new polymer that is stunningly effective at absorbing and releasing heat. Dubbed AzoPMA, the plastic-like material could be the key to the development of a high-efficiency “thermal battery” that could […]
The Trump administration has waived part of the punishment for five megabanks whose affiliates were convicted and fined for manipulating global interest rates. One of the Trump administration waivers was granted to Deutsche Bank — which is owed at least $130 million by President Donald Trump and his business empire, and has also been fined for its role in a Russian money laundering scheme.
The waivers were issued in a little-noticed announcement published in the Federal Register during the Christmas holiday week. They come less than two years after then-candidate Trump promised “I’m not going to let Wall Street get away with murder.”
Under laws designed to protect retirement savings, financial firms whose affiliates have been convicted of violating securities statutes are effectively barred from the lucrative business of managing those savings. However, that punishment can be avoided if the firms manage to secure a special exemption from the U.S. Department of Labor, allowing them to keep their status as “qualified professional asset managers.”
In late 2016, the Obama administration extended temporary one-year waivers to five banks — Citigroup, JPMorgan, Barclays, UBS and Deutsche Bank. Late last month, the Trump […]
In 2000, Donald Trump was broke. His casino projects were bankrupt, his credit was shot, his business pretty much out of business. He could still pretend to be Donald Trump, big time real estate guy, but the truth was there was nothing left of him but a name.
And then, just like that, Trump was back in the game, selling New York real estate at ridiculous prices and planting his gold-plated letters wherever he went. Trump likes to pretend that this was the tale of a brilliant comeback and realizing the value of his own name. In truth his licensing deals never amounted to more than peanuts and his involvements outside real estate cost far more than they made. The influx of money came from a simple change in tactics—Trump made it clear that he was willing to look the other way when money came in from shady, overseas deals.
The laws regulating US real estate deals are scant, experts say. Provisions against terrorism financing in the Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of the September […]
Terns, terns, terns, and a few other kinds of birds on Tern Island. Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument
Credit: Lieutenant Elizabeth Crapo, NOAA Corps
The global seabird population may have fallen by almost 70 per cent since 1950, a 2015 study suggests. The study, published in PLOS ONE, analyzed data on 162 species, representing 19 per cent of the global seabird population. Every single continent and every coastline of every single continent is represented in the study according to the authors. Jeremy Hance of The Guardian writes:
Every day for sixty million years, seabirds have performed mind-boggling acts of derring-do: circumnavigating the globe without rest, diving more than 200 meters in treacherous seas for a bite of lunch, braving the most unpredictable weather on the planet as if it were just another Tuesday and finding their way home in waters with few, if any, landmarks.
Now, deteriorating environmental conditions worldwide maybe more than these evolutionary marvels can handle in their day to day struggle to survive.
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
