Elektro Dumpster
Credit: eMiningAG

While electric vehicles are quickly proliferating throughout the world, most electric engines are still relegated to smaller vehicles. The serious work, some argue, is still done by gas guzzling diesel engines. But then there’s the Elekto Dumper—the world’s largest EV—which flouts the rule that EVs can’t handle serious work.

The truck is used to haul lime and marlstone, which contains clay and silt, from the sides of mountains in Switzerland. Then, the material is transported directly to a cement factory. But here’s the really impressive piece of engineering—this heavy dump truck never needs to be charged.

Here’s how it works: The dump truck, itself, weighs 45 tons and ascends a hill at a 13 percent grade, in one scenario. On the way back down, it’s more than twice as heavy, carrying 65 tons of ore. To rectify that scenario, the truck’s “regenerative braking system” actually recaptures the energy created by going downhill, refilling the battery’s charge for the next time the truck travels uphill.

The […]

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Trump and his White racist base

Another week of shaking our heads and wondering how much longer we can survive him. Yet again, Donald Trump overwhelmed practically everything with the force of his obscene personality, running his mouth and his thumbs even while he was failing to run the country in any sort of conventional sense. He doesn’t actually do anything, but he dominates everything. Living in America today is like being trapped in a room with him — no doors, no windows, no exits, only Trump and the sound of Trump and the hideous image of Trump, all day, every day, for day after day after day.

I was trying to think how to describe what it feels like to live in this country today when I came across a big profile of Neil Young published in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine. The author, David Samuels, was commiserating with Young about the state of music in the age of Spotify and Apple and the digitization of everything comprised of […]

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Climate change and its impacts are emerging faster than scientists previously thought.
Credit: AFP

Recently, the U.K. Met Office announced a revision to the Hadley Center historical analysis of sea surface temperatures (SST), suggesting that the oceans have warmed about 0.1 degree Celsius more than previously thought. The need for revision arises from the long-recognized problem that in the past sea surface temperatures were measured using a variety of error-prone methods such as using open buckets, lamb’s wool–wrapped thermometers, and canvas bags. It was not until the 1990s that oceanographers developed a network of consistent and reliable measurement buoys.

Then, to develop a consistent picture of long-term trends, techniques had to be developed to compensate for the errors in the older measurements and reconcile them with the newer ones. The Hadley Centre has led this effort, and the new data set—dubbed HadSST4—is a welcome advance in our understanding of global climate change.

But that’s where the good news ends. Because the oceans cover three fifths of the globe, […]

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The gulf has reached its weakest point in 1,600 years. Scientists disagree on whether climate change or natural cycles account for the slowdown.

The Gulf Stream, the warm current that brings the east coast of Florida the mixed blessings of abundant swordfish, mild winters and stronger hurricanes, may be weakening because of climate change.

Visible from the air as a ribbon of cobalt blue water a few miles off the coast, the Gulf Stream forms part of a clockwise system of currents that transports warm water from the tropics up the east coast and across the Atlantic to northwestern Europe. In the frigid climate near Greenland, the water cools, sinks and flows south again, rolling through the deep ocean toward the tropics.

This marine circulatory system has reached its weakest point in 1,600 years, recent studies show, having lost about 15 percent of its strength since the mid-20th century. Scientists disagree on whether climate change or natural cycles account for the slowdown. But a consensus has emerged that climate change will lead to a slower Gulf Stream system in the future, as melting ice sheets in Greenland disrupt the system with discharges of cold fresh water.

A weaker Gulf Stream would mean higher […]

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Rock formations in the Grand Staircase-Escalante national monument.
Credit: Alamy

A new US government plan had cleared the way for coal mining and oil and gas drilling on land stripped from Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante monument by the Trump administration two years ago.

The plan, released by the Bureau of Land Management on Friday, would also open more lands to cattle grazing and recreation and acknowledges there could be “adverse effects” on land and resources in the monument.

Trump drastically shrank the southern Utah monument in 2017, as well as the nearby Bears Ears national monument, in what represented the largest elimination of public lands protections in US history. Some 800,000 acres were removed from the Grand Staircase.

The move was widely condemned by conservation and paleontology groups, who have filed ongoing lawsuits challenging Trump’s authority to downsize the monument.

They say the new BLM plan lacks adequate protections for the land and reiterated their concern that the years spent creating the plan were a waste of taxpayer resources because […]

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