Lifeboat Foundation

Cost-slashing innovations are underway in the electric power sector and could give electricity the lead over fossil-based combustion fuels in the world’s energy supply by mid-century. When combined with a global carbon price, these developments can catalyze emission reductions to reach the Paris climate targets, while reducing the need for controversial negative emissions, a new study finds.

“Today, 80 percent of all energy demands for industry, mobility or heating buildings is met by burning—mostly fossil—fuels directly, and only 20 percent by electricity. Our research finds that relation can be pretty much reversed by 2050, making the easy-to-decarbonise electricity the mainstay of global energy supply,” says Gunnar Luderer, author of the new study and researcher the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “For the longest time, fossil fuels were cheap and accessible, whilst electricity was the precious and pricier source of energy. Renewable electricity generation—especially from solar photovoltaics—has become cheaper at breath-taking speed, a pace that most climate models have so far underestimated. Over the last decade alone prices for solar electricity fell by 80 percent, and further cost reductions are expected in the future. This development has the potential to fundamentally revolutionize energy systems.

Because global warming and its associated risks are here to stay.

Global warming is causing many physical risks such as droughts, wildfires, and floods. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global warming is essentially irreversible, which means these dangers will keep coming up. Luckily, some countries have started planning ahead.

The Busan Metropolitan City of the Republic of Korea, the UN-Habitat, and OCEANIX have joined forces to build the world’s first prototype sustainable floating city in order to get ahead of physical risks.

Continue reading “The UN Is Engineering a Floating City. To Withstand a Category 5 Hurricane?” »

New ways to measure the top supercomputers’ smarts in the AI field include searching for dark energy, predicting hurricanes, and finding new materials for energy storage.

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Soot is one of the world’s worst contributors to climate change. Its impact is similar to global methane emissions and is second only to carbon dioxide in its destructive potential. This is because soot particles absorb solar radiation, which heats the surrounding atmosphere, resulting in warmer global temperatures. Soot also causes several other environmental and health problems including making us more susceptible to respiratory viruses.

Soot only persists in the atmosphere for a few weeks, suggesting that if these emissions could be stopped then the air could rapidly clear. This has recently been demonstrated during recent lockdowns, with some major cities reporting clear skies after industrial emissions stopped.

But soot is also part of our future. Soot can be converted into the useful carbon black product through thermal treatment to remove any harmful components. Carbon blacks are critical ingredients in batteries, tires and paint. If these carbons are made small enough they can even be made to fluoresce and have been used for tagging biological molecules, in catalysts and even in solar cells.

As the world becoming aware of the environment’s brittleness, more diversified and complex ways have been devised to modify it as a weapon of warfare. Now a new class of weapons more disastrous than nuclear warfare is on the horizon. For altering the environment, weather and climate modification technologies, are the methods that may be used to convert climate and weather systems into weapons of war. It refers to Operation Popeye, which aimed to extend the monsoon season in Southeast Asia.

Captain Orville had cautioned that “if an enemy nation solves the problem of weather control and gets into the position of controlling large-scale weather patterns before we can, the effects might be even more devastating than nuclear conflict”. In this article, we have discussed in-depth Weather Modification Technology in Warfare, and how this method of modern warfare can be used to destroy any country economically, Tactically, Strategically, and Covertly.

Demand for residences that produce as much energy as they consume is being spurred by climate concerns, consumer appetite and more affordable solar technology.

With the world’s population estimated to reach 9.8 billion by 2050, scientists are looking at new ways to overcome inevitable food shortages linked to climate change.

Volcanic eruptions contributed to the collapse of dynasties in China in the last 2,000 years by temporarily cooling the climate and affecting agriculture, according to a news release by Rutgers University.

In a study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, scientists reconstructed the magnitude of 156 explosive volcanic eruptions from 1 A.D. to 1915 by examining elevated sulfate levels in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. They also analyzed historical documents from China on 68 dynasties and examined warfare there between 850 and 1911.

Scientists found that smaller volcanic “shocks” to the climate may cause dynasties to collapse when political and socioeconomic stress is already high. Larger shocks may lead to collapses without substantial pre-existing stress. Other factors include poor leadership, administrative corruption and demographic pressures.

NVIDIA plans to build the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer dedicated to predicting climate change, named Earth-2.

The earth is warming. The past seven years are on track to be the seven warmest on record. The emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of average warming since the period 1850–1900.

What we’re experiencing is very different from the global average. We experience extreme weather — historic droughts, unprecedented heatwaves, intense hurricanes, violent storms and catastrophic floods. Climate disasters are the new norm.

Continue reading “NVIDIA to Build Earth-2 Supercomputer to See Our Future” »