“The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today launched the Energy Savings Hub — an online one-stop shop for American families and consumers to access the savings tools that President Biden’s Investing in America agenda has made available to drastically cut energy costs. The new website—Energy.gov/Save—puts President Biden’s clean energy tax credits and forthcoming rebates right at… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Climate Change
Rare-earth mining
Rare-earth mining. “Shuang-Liang Liu et al. have compiled a dataset of 146 mining projects targeting rare-earth elements, which serve as “critical raw materials in many low-carbon technologies.” The dataset lists each project’s name, company, location, status, deposit type, estimated tonnage of deposits, element composition, and other details sourced from “company annual reports and public presentations,… Continue Reading
New Research Sparks Concerns That Ocean Circulation Will Collapse
Yale Environment 360: “Scientists have long feared that warming could cause a breakdown of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic. But new research finds the real risk lies in Antarctica’s waters, where melting could disrupt currents in the next few decades, with profound impacts on global climate. It is being hailed as a sea change… Continue Reading
Plastic Recylcing is a Scam
Plastic Recycling is an Actual Scam | Climate Town / YouTube Plastic Legislation to get involved with: Depending on where you live, there’s a lot you can do. NCSL Overview: https://www.ncsl.org/research/environ… Earth Day Plastic Action: https://www.earthday.org/act-on-plast… Cleveland Preemptive Ban: https://www.cleveland.com/open/2019/0… Nat Geo breakdown: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/en… CIF: https://www.clf.org/blog/the-truth-ab… WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/articles/plastic-… NRDC: https://www.nrdc.org/stories/single-u… Follow Climate Town on Instagram:… Continue Reading
Two new scientific papers break down how the rich are destroying Earth
Salon: “As the climate crisis becomes more acute — exemplified in interminable wildfire “seasons”, intense drought and extreme weather — it’s becoming clear that saving the planet will involve more than politely asking consumers to recycle their yogurt cups. Indeed, many of climate change’s effects are largely spurred by resource hoarding and inequality via the… Continue Reading
America needs clean electricity. These states show how to do it.
Washington Post: “If humans escape climate scientists’ gloomiest projections, if we buy ourselves time to adapt to higher seas and fiercer heat waves, we will likely use more electricity than we do now, and we will make it without emitting greenhouse gases. Today, the United States is running a natural experiment in electricity generation, with… Continue Reading
Primer – Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law
The Alan Turing Institute and the Council of Europe: Primer – Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law: “…It is a remarkable fact that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven technologies over the last two decades have placed contemporary society at a pivot-point in deciding what shape the future of… Continue Reading
Groundwater Gold Rush
Bloomberg [no paywall]: “Banks, pension funds and insurers have been turning California’s scarce water into enormous profits, leaving people with less to drink…Some of the world’s largest investment banks, pension funds and insurers, including Manulife Financial Corp.’s John Hancock unit, TIAA and UBS, have been depleting California’s groundwater to grow high-value nuts, leaving less drinking… Continue Reading
Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community
ODNI, February 2023: Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community: “During the coming year, the United States and its allies will confront a complex and pivotal international security environment dominated by two critical strategic challenges that intersect with each other and existing trends to intensify their national security implications. First, great powers, rising regional… Continue Reading
Visualizing California’s Wildflowers
Center on Data Innovation – “The Wall Street Journal has created a visualization tracking wildflower observations in southern California from 1876 to 2023 [subscription req’d – right click on photo to open in new window w no text]: The visualization shows poppies as orange dots, suncups as yellow dots, lupins as blue dots, pincushions as… Continue Reading
A gobal approach for natural history museum collections
Popular Science – Is there a way to keep track of all the items held in natural history museums? By Charlotte Hu: “Natural history museums offer amazing portals into worlds miles away from our own, and into eras from the distant past. Comprised of fossils, minerals, preserved specimens, and much more, some collections are of… Continue Reading
Geographic information systems: a use case for journalists
DataJournalism.com: “…Speak with a few GIS professionals and a common theme will emerge: they struggle to explain to their loved ones exactly what it is they do. Many of us understand superficially that GIS has something to do with ‘mapping’ and ‘geography’, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. Similar to how tools… Continue Reading
