Environmental News

"The 2023 Update incorporates the significant changes to the energy landscape in the past two years, including the post-pandemic economic rebound and the extraordinary growth in some clean energy technologies – but also increased investment in fossil fuels and stubbornly high emissions."

Came from this:

The path to limiting global warming to 1.5 °C has narrowed, but clean energy growth is keeping it open - News - IEA

 

Clever solar desalinization:

Desalination system could produce freshwater | EurekAlert!

 

Cantaloupe recall
Thousands of cantaloupes recalled over salmonella concerns - ABC News
Wouldn't report every one of these, but...
Must be poop on the outside; direct or from poopy hands. Slicing open transfers Salmo to the inside and you eat.
One could wash fresh produce (I do in most cases) but cantaloupes are rough surfaced and maybe washing is inadequate.
So I was thinking - a dilute beach scrub or dip, followed by contact time (as they say in the biz), followed by water rinse?

A coupla cases of possibly poopy melons*, some Petri dishes, and a science fair project awaits.
*can probably get those for free

 

Rare-earth elements are important in renewable energy etc. The are not remarkably rare, about 300 parts per million in most settings, but they are difficult to extract. Places where they are a bit more concentrated get lots of attention.

Preliminary work on how to get bacteria to bioconcentrate them better:
Metal-loving microbes could replace chemical | EurekAlert!

 

U.S. Climate Vulnerability Index

https://map.climatevulnerabilityindex.org/map/cvi_overall/usa?mapBoundaries=Tract&mapFilter=0&reportBoundaries=Tract&geoContext=State

 

Fukushima release of tritiated water

https://www.popsci.com/environment/fukushima-water-releases-tritium/

 

Improved fuel efficiency for long-haul trucking:

A 50 percent more efficient big rig? Meet Super Truck II | Page 2 | Ars OpenForum

 

Effects of large animals on biodiversity:

Large herbivores such as elephants, bison and | EurekAlert!

In several ways earth has been defaunated )during 20 thousand years of human interest). We (some of us) look for a future where large-animal effects contribute to biodiversity by way of seed movement and, well, smashing things. Unclear how that could happen.

 

Physicists probe particle interactions at high energies with Large Hadron Collider and things like that. Those efforts require lotsa electricity and helium for superconducting magnets. Can this be done more cleverly?

Physicists ask: Can we make a particle collid | EurekAlert!

 

My Venn diagram of interests includes space tech and wood. Not much overlap involving those two sets. But, a little:

Wooden satellites? Scientists successfully test the durability of space wood

After measuring degradation of various woods at the Intl Space Stn, LignoSat will be launched in 2024. Yes it will be a packing crate in orbit. Kinda gimmicky. Ligno for lignin, which is approximately wood.

Interesting to notice that most media has misspelled this at LingoSat. So most media reporters don't got wood (so to speak) or they just copy each other's work, mistakes and all.

 

Interesting. I search with Bing because Google is not ... conveniently locally available.

Bing is full of lingosat. This does not exclude possibility that media writers are correcting their stuff, and that Bing has not caught on.

So maybe there is somebody else interested in wood&satellite, and complaining to media instead of goofing around at PriusChat.

Interesting place, this planet you call Earth.

 

"[In] 1916 Bethlehem Steel Corporation of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, bought the facility. The mill's steel was used in the Golden Gate Bridge's girders and the George Washington Bridge's cables, and it was an essential element of military production during World military [stet] I and World War II."

Gone with the wind:

World's largest steel mill to be transformed into a wind turbine plant