The World Bank is urging stepped-up efforts to meet world carbon reduction goals after looking at what it says would be the catastrophic consequences if average world temperatures rise more than 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. In what World Bank President Jim Yong Kim acknowledged was a “doomsday…
An ambitious plan to provide 15% of Europe’s power needs from solar plants in North Africa has run into trouble. The Desertec initiative hoped to deliver electricity from a network of renewable energy sources to Europe via cables under the sea. But in recent weeks, two big industrial backers have pulled out. And the Spanish…
For years, scientists and engineers have been juggling various combinations of acids, steam, bacteria, catalysts and the digestive juices of microorganisms to convert agricultural waste and even household garbage into motor fuel. So far, such alternative fuels have not moved beyond small pilot plants, despite federal incentives to encourage companies to develop them. But that…
Obama wants to invest in science and technology, but a divided Congress and looming budget cuts could make it difficult to keep his promises.
From Andrew Revkin’s Dot Earth blog at the New York Times: President Obama’s first long discussion of human-driven global warming in recent memory came near the end of a recent news conference. The president actually said quite a bit. Among other things, he offered a sobering reality check in the face of a big, and…
BP PLC has agreed to plead guilty to felony charges and pay $4.5 billion in penalties, including $1.26 billion in criminal fines, stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers in 2010 and unleashed the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The energy company will plead guilty to 11 felony counts of…
The highly influential environment activist Bill McKibben is proposing a fossil energy divestment campaign, on the model of the international anti-apartheid dis-investment campaign that successfully brought pressure on South Africa’s white-only regime. McKibben was among the organizers who brought the planned Keystone pipeline to a standstill last year, and he has been the leading figure…
The search for the Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider at Cern has taken years of research and cost billions. It is a prime example of big money being spent on fundamental research into scientific principles, that critics say provides no answers to the problems the world faces today. In these austere times and…
Using the power of the sun and ultrathin films of iron oxide (commonly known as rust), Technion-Israel Institute of Technology researchers have found a novel way to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The breakthrough, published this week in Nature Materials could lead to less expensive, more efficient ways to store solar energy in…
Climate change, population growth and competing demands for land and resources are putting great pressure on the world’s food systems. Smallholder farmers in the developing world, who produce much of the food for the poorest people, are threatened by devastating droughts and floods, food price spikes, and persistent poverty. Scientific advances have greatly alleviated hunger…