#Coal Oil  Industry
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plethoraworldatlas · 8 months ago
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A large majority of the global population, including people who live in oil, gas, and coal producing countries, supports a fast transition to clean energy and a phaseout of fossil fuels, a poll released Thursday showed.
Across 77 countries, 72% of those surveyed supported a quick fossil fuel phaseout, while an even higher percentage, 80%, supported stronger climate action in general, according to the poll, called Peoples' Climate Vote and conducted for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with the University of Oxford and GeoPoll.
"There can be no doubt that citizens across the world are saying to their leaders, you have to act and, above all, have to act faster," UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner toldThe Guardian. "This is an issue that almost everyone, everywhere, can agree on."
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arolesbianism · 9 months ago
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Ive been waiting for ages in oni for my future industrial block to be vacuumed out so I decided to doodle some furry women while I waited (it’s still not done)
#keese draws#oxygen not included#olivia broussard#jackie stern#trying to hold strong and main tag doodles even if I don’t like some of them#anyways I definitely made my industrial brick Way too big for the things I currently plan on using it for#the main reason I made it so big is that I have two minor volcanoes in it that I may or may not unplug at some point to experiment#I’ve never used magma before so I think it’d be a good thing to try to get comfortable doing#even if I doubt it’ll work out in my case since I imagine having the volcano in the sauna itself could cause problems#mainly that I can only fit so many steam turbines so overheating could still be a problem#I’m hoping that it’ll be balanced out by me not currently having too much stuff in there but idk#in the future once I start digging through my second planet I might use that sauna for natural gas generators#I’d have to adjust some stuff but I think that could be a decent use of my time#especially given that currently I’m relying on a hydrogen vent and coal generators for power#which tbf I am on like cycle 200 smth so that should suffice for a while but eventually I’m going to run out of coal#I’ve been ranchinh sage hatches and pips but I just don’t have the space or resources to farm enough of both to keep up with the coal demand#the main problem with the pips is that almost everywhere is just too cold for arbor trees#and I’m currently using my warmer spaces for bristle berries#now I do have a cool steam vent which I could in theory try to use to warm up a large area for pip farms#but that would be tricky to balance well and I think I’d be better off just trying to work towards space travel and getting access to oil#maybe I can go for slicksters in the meantime? I do have a lot of carbon dioxide sitting around#anyways uhhh doomed toxic yuri on the mind happy pride month or smth idk#the real take I need from everyone is if gravitas goes rainbow for pride month of not
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iabgunner · 1 year ago
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I LOVE FOSSIL FUELS‼️
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is-the-owl-video-cute · 2 years ago
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Even if it's not viable I think it's still pretty neat that we could at least figure out how particular species would be domesticated
We could’ve probably domesticated most species really it would just be a matter of Why and Where the resources were coming from. You couldn’t just go online and bulk buy a bunch of frozen mice and rats for your captive breeding carnivore domestication project back in the day.
If you want to get incredibly technical, yes, if we dedicated a few thousand years we probably could still start a new domestication, but with the way the world is going I really don’t see humanity surviving that far into the future.
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sergeant-macho-nacho · 1 month ago
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One Anti 2nd Amendment argument that comes up a lot is someone sarcastically asking if we should let people have nuclear weapons
Whats more likely is an absolute on being able to own nuclear material would lead to invention of more types of nuclear generators/reactors
Nuclear energy is safe and renewable please dont ever forget that millions of people have died in wars over oil
Imagine an Electric train or passenger plane that only needs to be refueled every 30 years
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reasonsforhope · 20 days ago
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"The man who has called climate change a “hoax” also can be expected to wreak havoc on federal agencies central to understanding, and combating, climate change. But plenty of climate action would be very difficult for a second Trump administration to unravel, and the 47th president won’t be able to stop the inevitable economy-wide shift from fossil fuels to renewables. 
“This is bad for the climate, full stop,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at the Columbia Business School. “That said, this will be yet another wall that never gets built. Fundamental market forces are at play.”
A core irony of climate change is that markets incentivized the wide-scale burning of fossil fuels beginning in the Industrial Revolution, creating the mess humanity is mired in, and now those markets are driving a renewables revolution that will help fix it. Coal, oil, and gas are commodities whose prices fluctuate. As natural resources that humans pull from the ground, there’s really no improving on them — engineers can’t engineer new versions of coal. 
By contrast, solar panels, wind turbines, and appliances like induction stoves only get better — more efficient and cheaper — with time. Energy experts believe solar power, the price of which fell 90 percent between 2010 and 2020, will continue to proliferate across the landscape. (Last year, the United States added three times as much solar capacity as natural gas.) Heat pumps now outsell gas furnaces in the U.S., due in part to government incentives. Last year, Maine announced it had reached its goal of installing 100,000 heat pumps two years ahead of schedule, in part thanks to state rebates. So if the Trump administration cut off the funding for heat pumps that the IRA provides, states could pick up the slack. 
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Local utilities are also finding novel ways to use heat pumps. Over in Massachusetts, for example, the utility Eversource Energy is experimenting with “networked geothermal,” in which the homes within a given neighborhood tap into water pumped from underground. Heat pumps use that water to heat or cool a space, which is vastly more efficient than burning natural gas. Eversource and two dozen other utilities, representing about half of the country’s natural gas customers, have formed a coalition to deploy more networked geothermal systems.
Beyond being more efficient, green tech is simply cheaper to adopt. Consider Texas, which long ago divorced its electrical grid from the national grid so it could skirt federal regulation. The Lone Star State is the nation’s biggest oil and gas producer, but it gets 40 percent of its total energy from carbon-free sources. “Texas has the most solar and wind of any state, not because Republicans in Texas love renewables, but because it’s the cheapest form of electricity there,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, a climate research nonprofit. The next top three states for producing wind power — Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas — are red, too.
State regulators are also pressuring utilities to slash emissions, further driving the adoption of wind and solar power. As part of California’s goal of decarbonizing its power by 2045, the state increased battery storage by 757 percent between 2019 and 2023. Even electric cars and electric school buses can provide backup power for the grid. That allows utilities to load up on bountiful solar energy during the day, then drain those batteries at night — essential for weaning off fossil fuel power plants. Trump could slap tariffs on imported solar panels and thereby increase their price, but that would likely boost domestic manufacturing of those panels, helping the fledgling photovoltaic manufacturing industry in red states like Georgia and Texas.
The irony of Biden’s signature climate bill is states that overwhelmingly support Trump are some of the largest recipients of its funding. That means tampering with the IRA could land a Trump administration in political peril even with Republican control of the Senate, if not Congress. In addition to providing incentives to households (last year alone, 3.4 million American families claimed more than $8 billion in tax credits for home energy improvements), the legislation has so far resulted in $150 billion of new investment in the green economy since it was passed in 2022, boosting the manufacturing of technologies like batteries and solar panels. According to Atlas Public Policy, a research group, that could eventually create 160,000 jobs. “Something like 66 percent of all of the spending in the IRA has gone to red states,” Hausfather said. “There certainly is a contingency in the Republican party now that’s going to support keeping some of those subsidies around.”
Before Biden’s climate legislation passed, much more progress was happening at a state and local level. New York, for instance, set a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 40 percent by 2030, and 85 percent by 2050. Colorado, too, is aiming to slash emissions by at least 90 percent by 2050. The automaker Stellantis has signed an agreement with the state of California promising to meet the state’s zero-emissions vehicle mandate even if a judicial or federal action overturns it. It then sells those same cars in other states. 
“State governments are going to be the clearest counterbalance to the direction that Donald Trump will take the country on environmental policy,” said Thad Kousser, co-director of the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research at the University of California, San Diego. “California and the states that ally with it are going to try to adhere to tighter standards if the Trump administration lowers national standards.”
[Note: One of the obscure but great things about how emissions regulations/markets work in the US is that automakers generally all follow California's emissions standards, and those standards are substantially higher than federal standards. Source]
Last week, 62 percent of Washington state voters soundly rejected a ballot initiative seeking to repeal a landmark law that raised funds to fight climate change. “Donald Trump’s going to learn something that our opponents in our initiative battle learned: Once people have a benefit, you can’t take it away,” Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a press call Friday. “He is going to lose in his efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, because governors, mayors of both parties, are going to say, ‘This belongs to me, and you’re not going to get your grubby hands on it.’”
Even without federal funding, states regularly embark on their own large-scale projects to adapt to climate change. California voters, for instance, just overwhelmingly approved a $10 billion bond to fund water, climate, and wildfire prevention projects. “That will be an example,” said Saharnaz Mirzazad, executive director of the U.S. branch of ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability. “You can use that on a state level or local level to have [more of] these types of bonds. You can help build some infrastructure that is more resilient.”
Urban areas, too, have been major drivers of climate action: In 2021, 130 U.S. cities signed a U.N.-backed pledge to accelerate their decarbonization. “Having an unsupportive federal government, to say the least, will be not helpful,” said David Miller, managing director at the Centre for Urban Climate Policy and Economy at C40, a global network of mayors fighting climate change. “It doesn’t mean at all that climate action will stop. It won’t, and we’ve already seen that twice in recent U.S. history, when Republican administrations pulled out of international agreements. Cities step to the fore.”
And not in isolation, because mayors talk: Cities share information about how to write legislation, such as laws that reduce carbon emissions in buildings and ensure that new developments are connected to public transportation. They transform their food systems to grow more crops locally, providing jobs and reducing emissions associated with shipping produce from afar. “If anything,” Miller said, “having to push against an administration, like that we imagine is coming, will redouble the efforts to push at the local level.” 
Federal funding — like how the U.S. Forest Service has been handing out $1.5 billion for planting trees in urban areas, made possible by the IRA — might dry up for many local projects, but city governments, community groups, and philanthropies will still be there. “You picture a web, and we’re taking scissors or a machete or something, and chopping one part of that web out,” said Elizabeth Sawin, the director of the Multisolving Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes climate solutions. “There’s this resilience of having all these layers of partners.”
All told, climate progress has been unfolding on so many fronts for so many years — often without enough support from the federal government — that it will persist regardless of who occupies the White House. “This too shall pass, and hopefully we will be in a more favorable policy environment in four years,” Hausfather said. “In the meantime, we’ll have to keep trying to make clean energy cheap and hope that it wins on its merits.”"
-via Grist, November 11, 2024. A timely reminder.
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head-post · 1 year ago
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Oil industry thoroughly prepares for the climate summit
The war in Ukraine triggered surges in oil prices, with oil giants’ profits soaring even as governments promised a greener era, Politico reported.
Profits are soaring, marking a record year in the United States. Revenues are so high that the industry is ready to commit billions of dollars in incentives that US President Joe Biden is proposing for wind farms, battery minerals and carbon-carrying pipelines.
On November 30, Dubai’s Expo City, a showcase for the United Arab Emirates’ oil wealth, will host the next climate summit to prove that oil and gas producers are thriving, not shrinking, in an age of ambitious green programmes. Kevin Book, managing director at the consulting firm ClearView Energy, commented:
The death of the oil industry has been greatly overstated. The realities of demand and the limitations of alternatives haven’t changed.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency reported last month that “the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era” may be approaching, with demand for oil, natural gas and coal expected to peak by the end of this decade.
Read more HERE
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IEA Anticipates Tony Seba's 'Crazy' Prediction to Happen Within 12 months
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neyatimes · 2 years ago
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COP28 in Dubai: Inside the push to greenwash the next climate summit
CNN  —  The optics of a major oil-producing country organizing the world’s most important climate conference, and appointing an oil company CEO to lead it, are not lost on anyone – including, it seems, the hosts: the United Arab Emirates. The country has embarked on a major PR campaign to boost its green credentials ahead of the COP28 UN climate summit in Dubai later this year, prompting heavy…
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teaboot · 3 months ago
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Thank you for actually mentioning the fishing nets! I've seen so many people, not just tumblr users but professional Youtubers with big followings, bring this up, gesture vaguely in the direction of that misquoted 100 corporations paper, and then never mention where the plastic waste is actually coming from.
the top three industries in pollution are Fuel and Energy. Second is Food and Agriculture. Third is Fashion.
Even as bad as general plastics are- single-use packaging, containers, grocery bags, all of it- it barely scratches the surface on oil, coal, industrialized farming, and fast fashion.
That fishing nets are for- (dramatic pause)- food and agriculture
Yall have heard of the pacific garbage patch? That floating island literally twice the size of Texas made of discarded plastics? It's not all water bottles and plastic straws. In fact, IT IS MOSTLY FISHING NET.
BUT, as I've said before, a company can make a profit off selling you a metal straw and a reusable bottle and marketing itself as eco-concious and cute. There's not a lot anyone can sell you to make you feel like you're doing your part against discarded agricultural equipment.
You wanna change the world? Invent a $25 trinket made of old usee fishing nets and pay a Kardashian to wear it on TV.
And find a way to visibly infuse the properties of REAL OCEAN GARBAGE into its design or function, because otherwise every two-dollar contracted sweatshop from China to Pakistan will be pumping out brand-new fishing net hair scrunchies for half the price from now till the sun implodes, and the surplus waste from every single one will end up right there with that real stuff in the middle of the ocean.
Easily authenticated non-reproduceable upcycled fish net fashion accessories. They're the future
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plethoraworldatlas · 8 months ago
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Scientists on Thursday released an analysis showing the likely role of climate change in creating the deadly heatwave that hit areas including Mexico and the U.S. south in late May and early June.
Record-breaking heat caused by a heat dome, which engulfed areas from Nevada to Honduras, was hotter and more likely to occur due to the climate crisis, with five-day maximum daytime temperatures 35 times more likely than in pre-industrial times and nighttime temperatures 200 times more likely, scientists at World Weather Attribution (WWA) found.
At least 35 died of related illness in just one week in early June in Mexico, and the total death toll may have been much higher. The scientists emphasized that the extreme weather causing the death and suffering was brought about by fossil fuel emissions.
"Unsurprisingly, heatwaves are getting deadlier," Friederike Otto, a co-author of the study and climate scientist at Imperial College London, toldThe Guardian. "We've known about the dangers of climate change at least since the 1970s. But thanks to spineless politicians, who give in to fossil-fuel lobbying again and again, the world continues to burn huge amounts of oil, gas, and coal."
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i-miss-breathing · 11 months ago
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DPxDC prompt idea
So everyone believes Danny is some ancient being, and in this one, he IS.
In a time travel incident with clockwork he got stuck in like the beginning of time, clockwork got idk captured or something and wasn’t able to, or didn’t want to, get him out of the past before it happened, and Danny has been trying to find a natural portal for millennia to see what happened to clockwork, and to get back to his time. But they either don’t stay open long enough or he does go into one and appears in the past infinite realms, aligning with the time he’s in instead of the time he’s from.
He becomes a master at fitting in, learning all the languages keeping up with the fashion trends, both as Danny and as phantom.
He meets all the immortal heroes in this time, he avoids himself in the time periods he already time travelled to, and he just continues to be a hero throughout all of it. Knowing after the first 10 years he’s immortal as he hasn’t changed at all, he knows he’ll see his family and friends again one day, the thought playing in his head like a mantra for like 10,000 years, he sees a little bit of history everywhere, becoming a nomad, traveling from place to place, doing odd jobs for whatever currency his newest home uses, staying in inns or with whoever’s kind enough to let him, he’s in a constant state of mourning and keeping his need to protect fed and trying to keep his morale up, refusing to break
he does things like watching the Industrial Revolution and pushing oil and coal instead of the newly discovered substance ectoplasm, as ectoplasm is radioactive and they don’t have a way to make it safe, and they also don’t have any access to solar power yet and he wouldn’t know where to start. Sam was going to kill him.
He sabotages nazis in ww2, he frees prisoners in concentration camps, and he meets Wonder Woman, who has apparently heard stories about him.
He doesn’t do anything to change any major event, as much as it hurts, because clockwork isn’t here to guide him on what’s going to lead to something better or worse, and if he changes something too much he may never meet his friends again.
He’s finally in the 21st century.
He can see his friends again.
But…
He’s future Danny sent to the past by future clockwork, present Danny still has present clockwork, who is probably aware of what’s going to happen but isn’t going to say anything, future clockwork is nowhere to be seen, and Danny is finally in the 21st century. But he’s not their Danny.
Several more years of traveling, contemplating, saving people, reminding himself that his friends are so close and yet refusing to see them. His memory never changes, he barely forgot anything in 10,000 years, he still remembers their last conversation as if they’d just had it, but he also remembers all the friends he’d made in that time without them. He knows even if he doesn’t go back, he’ll be ok.
He can feel the portal open. He knows what’s happening. He almost wants to stop it just so that present him, past him, doesn’t experience this eternity. He doesn’t.
He leaves Illinois, he sees the debut of Superman, he sees the creation of the justice league
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kcinpa · 7 months ago
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As mentioned in my other Project 2025 post, I've been looking for a shortish summary of the environmental impacts. This article covers the parts related to NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). NOAA encompasses the National Weather Service (NWS). The American public gets weather forecasts and severe weather warnings for free - I mean, we pay taxes to support NWS work and they give us the results for free. Your weather app, your local TV weather forecast is all based on NWS data.
Well, Project 2025 doesn't want it to be free anymore. No they want you to pay commercial companies for the privilege of knowing about approaching tornadoes.
The gist of the linked article is that Project 2025's goals around NOAA are:
Protect the profits of the fossil fuel industry by eliminating the ability of NOAA to research and report on the climate crisis and by restricting the permitting of wind farms.
Protect the profit of commercial weather services by eliminating features that Americans get now from the National Weather Service and making Americans reliant on for-profit forecasts.
Protect the profit of commercial fishermen by eliminating offices that oversee protected areas and weakening rules around causing harm to the environment and endangered animals.
Sounds fabulous. Add to that Trump's plans to repeal all of Joe Biden's massive climate programs (seriously, Biden passed the largest climate change law in history, through a 50-50 Senate btw) and Trump's promise to open up more federal lands (including ANWR) to oil and gas drilling, and even freaking coal mining.
Yeah if you care about the climate crisis, or like knowing the weather forecast, vote Democrat.
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dandelionsresilience · 9 months ago
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Good News - May 22-28
Like these weekly compilations? Support me on Ko-fi or $Kaybarr1735! Also, if you tip me on Ko-fi or CashApp (and give me some way to contact you if it doesn’t automatically), at the end of the month I'll send you a link to all of the articles I found but didn't use each week - almost double the content!
1. Scientists Invent Healthier More Sustainable Chocolate
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“The new chocolate recipe from researchers at ETH Zurich uses more materials from the cocoa pod that are usually discarded, including more of the pulp as well as the inner lining of the husk, known as the endocarp. […] The resulting chocolate also [was “deliciously sweet” and] had 20% more fibre and 30 percent less saturated fat than average European dark chocolate[, and] it could enable cocoa farmers [to] earn more from their crops.”
2. Vermont Is Coming for Big Oil, Making It Pay for Decades of Climate Pollution
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“Legislators in Montpelier are on the brink of enacting the "Climate Superfund Act," modeled after the federal Superfund law, that seeks to make oil, gas and coal companies pay for damages linked to historical greenhouse gas emissions. […] Companies would be held liable for the costs associated with […] floods and heat waves, along with losses to biodiversity, safety, economic development and anything else the treasurer deems reasonable[, that were caused by their emissions].”
3. Important bird habitat now protected in the Rocky Mountain Trench
“Grassland-reliant species in the Rocky Mountain Trench now have more protected habitat thanks to a new [270-hectare] conservation area near Cranbrook. […] About one-third of the Skookumchuck Prairie Conservation Area is forested[…,] Most of the site is a dry grassland[…, and] Three hectares of wetlands add to the landscape diversity and offer crucial benefits to wildlife and water systems in the area. This conservation gem also provides habitat for endangered American badger and excellent winter range for elk, mule deer and white-tailed deer.”
4. Lemur Week marked by 70th breeding success
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“A wildlife park has celebrated its 70th lemur breeding success ahead of a week raising money to help save the endangered primates. […] The park's open-air Madagascar exhibit is home to 31 free-roaming lemurs and was officially opened in 2008. […] Females are only sexually receptive for just one or two days a year, leaving a small window of opportunity for males to father offspring. […] The two playful siblings, one female and one male, were born to father Bernard and mother Hira.”
5. Innovative material for sustainable building
“Researchers introduce a polymer-based material with unique properties. This material allows sunlight to enter, maintains a more comfortable indoor climate without additional energy, and cleans itself like a lotus leaf. The new development could replace glass components in walls and roofs in the future.”
6. Isle of Wight eagles don't pose threat to lambs as feared
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“While there had previously been fears that the eagles would feed on livestock, such as lambs, the project has found no evidence of this. [… “W]hite-tailed eagles effectively steal meals from other predatory birds[, which is] a really important ecological role that had been lost within the landscape and is being restored.” [… The birds’] population was boosted by a chick last year – the first time the species has bred in England in 240 years.”
7. Breakthrough discovery uses engineered surfaces to shed heat
“Cheng's team has found a way to lower the starting point of the [Leidenfrost] effect by producing a surface covered with micropillars. […] The discovery has great potential in heat transfer applications such as the cooling of industrial machines and surface fouling cleaning for heat exchangers. It also could help prevent damage and even disaster to nuclear machinery.”
8. New malaria vaccine delivered for the first time
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“A total of 43,000 doses arrived by air today from UNICEF, and another 120,000 are scheduled to show up in the coming days. […] They're the first vaccines designed to work against a human parasite. […] Across four African countries, these trials showed a 75% reduction in malaria cases in the year following vaccination of young children. […] The Serum Institute of India, who will be manufacturing the new vaccine, says a hundred million doses will likely be available to countries by the middle of next year.”
9. Urban gardening may improve human health: Microbial exposure boosts immune system
“"One month of urban indoor gardening boosted the diversity of bacteria on the skin of the subjects and was associated with higher levels of anti-inflammatory cytokines in the blood. The group studied used a growing medium with high microbial diversity emulating the forest soil," [… whereas] the control group used a microbially poor peat-based medium. [… N]o changes in the blood or the skin microbiota were seen. […] “This is the first time we can demonstrate that meaningful and natural human activity can increase the diversity of the microbiota of healthy adults and, at the same time, contribute to the regulation of the immune system."”
10. Cities Are Switching to Electric Vehicles Faster Than Individuals
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“[M]ost large cities have adopted some kind of climate goal, and some of them are buying EVs for their municipal fleets at a faster rate than the general public. And that progress could speed up as more EVs enter the market and as cities get educated about grant funding and tax incentives that were passed over the last four years.”
May 15-21 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)
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reasonsforhope · 7 months ago
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"It is 70 years since AT&T’s Bell Labs unveiled a new technology for turning sunlight into power. The phone company hoped it could replace the batteries that run equipment in out-of-the-way places. It also realised that powering devices with light alone showed how science could make the future seem wonderful; hence a press event at which sunshine kept a toy Ferris wheel spinning round and round.
Today solar power is long past the toy phase. Panels now occupy an area around half that of Wales, and this year they will provide the world with about 6% of its electricity—which is almost three times as much electrical energy as America consumed back in 1954. Yet this historic growth is only the second-most-remarkable thing about the rise of solar power. The most remarkable is that it is nowhere near over.
To call solar power’s rise exponential is not hyperbole, but a statement of fact. Installed solar capacity doubles roughly every three years, and so grows ten-fold each decade. Such sustained growth is seldom seen in anything that matters. That makes it hard for people to get their heads round what is going on. When it was a tenth of its current size ten years ago, solar power was still seen as marginal even by experts who knew how fast it had grown. The next ten-fold increase will be equivalent to multiplying the world’s entire fleet of nuclear reactors by eight in less than the time it typically takes to build just a single one of them.
Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. Much of the world—including Africa, where 600m people still cannot light their homes—will begin to feel energy-rich. That feeling will be a new and transformational one for humankind.
To grasp that this is not some environmentalist fever dream, consider solar economics. As the cumulative production of a manufactured good increases, costs go down. As costs go down, demand goes up. As demand goes up, production increases—and costs go down further. This cannot go on for ever; production, demand or both always become constrained. In earlier energy transitions—from wood to coal, coal to oil or oil to gas—the efficiency of extraction grew, but it was eventually offset by the cost of finding ever more fuel.
As our essay this week explains, solar power faces no such constraint. The resources needed to produce solar cells and plant them on solar farms are silicon-rich sand, sunny places and human ingenuity, all three of which are abundant. Making cells also takes energy, but solar power is fast making that abundant, too. As for demand, it is both huge and elastic—if you make electricity cheaper, people will find uses for it. The result is that, in contrast to earlier energy sources, solar power has routinely become cheaper and will continue to do so.
Other constraints do exist. Given people’s proclivity for living outside daylight hours, solar power needs to be complemented with storage and supplemented by other technologies. Heavy industry and aviation and freight have been hard to electrify. Fortunately, these problems may be solved as batteries and fuels created by electrolysis gradually become cheaper...
The aim should be for the virtuous circle of solar-power production to turn as fast as possible. That is because it offers the prize of cheaper energy. The benefits start with a boost to productivity. Anything that people use energy for today will cost less—and that includes pretty much everything. Then come the things cheap energy will make possible. People who could never afford to will start lighting their houses or driving a car. Cheap energy can purify water, and even desalinate it. It can drive the hungry machinery of artificial intelligence. It can make billions of homes and offices more bearable in summers that will, for decades to come, be getting hotter.
But it is the things that nobody has yet thought of that will be most consequential. In its radical abundance, cheaper energy will free the imagination, setting tiny Ferris wheels of the mind spinning with excitement and new possibilities.
This week marks the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. The Sun rising to its highest point in the sky will in decades to come shine down on a world where nobody need go without the blessings of electricity and where the access to energy invigorates all those it touches."
-via The Economist, June 20, 2024
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voxslays · 2 months ago
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Warnings: Persephone! Reader and Hades! Satan, songfic, will make more sense if you’ve listened to the song or seen the play.
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You had just arrived back in the wrath ring, at your husband’s side, after six months of being on earth. You weren’t happy to be back. The smell of sulfur and coal infected your nose, and the red landscape was an eyesore as usual. The souls under Satan’s control were chanting something about keeping their heads low, something you didn’t understand. “In the coldest time of year, why is it so hot down here?” You complained, looking up at your dragon-like husband. “Hotter than a crucible.” You huffed looking down, crossing your arms. “It ain’t right, and it ain’t natural.”
Satan looks down at you with a smirk, his dragon-like wings rustling behind him "Lover, you were gone so long~” You roll your eyes at him. “Lover, I was lonesome.” He strokes your cheek with his large red, calloused hands. “So I built a foundry, in the ground beneath your feet." You stare at him in disbelief, your arms still crossed as you look up at the large dragon man. "Here, I fashioned things of steel, oil drums and automobiles.” Satan lets go of your hands, his orange eyes burning with desire. “Then I kept that furnace fed with the fossils of the dead.” He summons his powers and lights a flame in the palm of his scaly red hand.
He throws the flame into a nearby pit, causing the ground to rumble and shake. He laughs, a deep rumbling sound that echoes through the ring. "Lover, when you feel that fire, think of it as my desire~” He sings lowly. “Think of it as my desire for you!” Satan growls. You quickly storm out of the courtroom and into the streets, only to be met with the bright reds and oranges of the metropolis your ‘husband’ created. In the far distance, you can hear someone singing a sweet melody ‘la, la, la, la, la, la~’ they sang. You stomp on the ground angrily. “In the darkest time of year, why is it so bright down here?” You can feel Satan walk out after you, his giant footsteps shaking the earth beneath his feet. “Brighter than a carnival~” You turn around to face the man. “It ain't right, and it ain't natural!”
Satan steps closer, towering over you with a knowing grin. "Lover, you were gone so long.” He gently grabs your hand. “Lover, I was lonesome." Satan gestures around with a clawed hand "So I laid a power grid, in the ground on which you stand. And wasn't it electrifying when I made the neon shine?" His muscular arms wrap around your waist possessively. He pulls you flush against his hard chest, his hot breath fanning over your face. "Silver screen, cathode ray, brighter than the light of day~" His orange eyes bore into yours intensely. "Lover, when you see that glare, think of it as my despair.” You glare at him angrily. Really? Was he really doing this!? “Think of it as my despair for you!"
All you can hear is the sound of machinery and screams…and your husband's deep voice. But you refused to give into his antics. “Every year, it's getting worse! Wrath Ring, hell on Earth!” You shout, trying to talk some sense into your delusional husband. “Did you think I'd be impressed with this neon necropolis?” He laughs, a deep rumbling sound that makes the ground tremble slightly. “Lover, what have you become?” You cry. “Coal cars and oil drums, warehouse walls and factory floors~” You gesture to the industrial factories and dirty smoke clouding the air of the used-to-be western country. “I don’t know you anymore…”
Satan’s expression turns cold, letting out a menacing growl. “And in the meantime up above,” You look up at the bright orange-red sky, and slowly raise your hands. “The harvest dies and people starve.” You turn back to face your husband. “Oceans rise and overflow. It ain't right and it ain't natural.” You point your finger into his chest. He takes a menacing step forward, his dragon-like features becoming more pronounced. "Lover, everything I do…I do it for the love of you. If you don't even want my love, I'll give it to someone who does." His voice drips with venomous sarcasm. 
He snarls, his sharp teeth glinting in the dim light of the factory. "Someone grateful for her fate, someone who appreciates the comforts of a gilded cage and doesn't try to fly away the moment Mother Nature calls.” He roughly grabs your arm, tugging you into his toned red chest. He looks down at you, his orange eyes glinting with an unnatural light. “Someone who could love these walls that hold her close and keep her safe, and think of them as my embrace.”
“Think of them as my embrace to you.”
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