Linda Kim TOKYO, August 5 -- The Tokyo government switched last week from fossil fuel to biomass energy to supply around 80 percent of electricity in its Shinjuku Ward headquarters, as part of efforts to achieve net zero carbon dioxide emissions in the metropolis by 2050. Thirty million kilowatt hours of renewable energy will be supplied to the Tokyo government's two main buildings and the metropolitan assembly hall, or approximately 80 percent of the complex's maximum annual energy needs, officials said, adding that the switchover took place Thursday. "With the Tokyo government taking the lead, we hope to speed up initiatives (to achieve the zero emission goal) in the private sector," an official in charge of the project said. In June, the Tokyo government called for tenders for energy suppliers, with bid evaluations focused on both cost and environmental aspects. The contract, which was awarded to Hitachi Zosen Corp. for 632 million yen ($5.9 million), will run to September next year. Hitachi Zosen purchases energy produced by waste power generation at incineration plants within and outside Tokyo, supplying the biomass portion to the city government. CO2 is emitted when the plant material used as fuel is burned to produce energy, but this is offset by the absorption of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere via photosynthesis during the plants' growth. As such, the process is considered to result in a net zero carbon footprint. By switching its source of electricity from gas and coal to renewable energy, the Tokyo government has seen a 15 percent increase in costs, the officials said. The remaining 20 percent of electricity is powered by gas supplied by a separate company under a long-term contract, due to the necessity of having multiple power sources in the event of a disaster, they said. In fiscal 2017, power generated by renewable energy sources accounted for around 14 percent of the total used in Tokyo, including private businesses. Tokyo will continue to promote the use of renewables to achieve the goal of raising the ratio to 30 percent by 2030, according to the officials.
0 Comments
LAS VEGAS, July 28 -- Although the insects that invaded Las Vegas this week are technically not locusts, the plague has still spawned terrifying Biblical references on social media. ‘Fear and Locusts in Las Vegas’ may have made a great headline for this article, but the winged loiterers that have flocked to the bright lights in Las Vegas are pallid-winged grasshoppers. Social media have been inundated with videos of the grasshoppers chirping around in the night skies above Las Vegas casinos. In one particularly fascinating clip, they were filmed flying above the Luxor Hotel's pyramid. “It was crazy. We didn’t even want to walk through there. Everybody was going crazy,” tourist Diana Rodriquez told a local TV station. The plague has been dubbed on social media the Great Grasshopper Invasion of 2019, while some people say it looks like something out of the Book of Exodus. According to entomologists, wet weather in the past several months is to blame for the scale of the invasion. "It appears through history that when we have a wet winter or spring, these things build up often down below Laughlin and even into Arizona," said Jeff Knight from the Nevada Department of Agriculture. "We'll have flights about this time of the year, migrations, and they'll move northward." He explained that such migrations are rare but not unprecedented, and that the insects don’t cause any harm to humans. The grasshoppers are expected to be gone in several weeks as they will continue to move to the north. Lora Smith ROTTERDAM, July 27 -- On Friday, more temperature records are falling in parts of Europe as the historic heat wave that brought the hottest weather ever recorded in Paris, London, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany shifts northward. In a few days, the weather system responsible for the heat wave will stretch all the way across the top of the globe. It's what this system, characterized by a strong area of high pressure aloft — often referred to as a heat dome — will do to the Arctic that has some scientists increasingly concerned. First, Norway, Sweden, and Finland will be the focus of unusually high temperatures through the weekend, as a potentially record strong area of high pressure in the mid-levels of the atmosphere sets up over the region, blocking any cold fronts or other storm systems from moving into the area, like a traffic light in the sky. Temperatures in parts of Scandinavia will reach into the 90s or higher, on the heels of an intense heat wave in 2018 that led to an outbreak of damaging wildfires on parts of the region. Bergen, Norway, already set an all-time record high on Friday with a temperature of 91 degrees (32.8 Celsius). So far this year, Arctic sea ice extent has hovered at record lows during the melt season. Weather patterns favorable for increased melt have predominated in this region, and an unusually mild summer has also increased melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Unlike with sea ice melt, runoff from the Greenland Ice Sheet increases sea levels, since it adds new water to the oceans. If the entire ice sheet were to melt, it would raise global average sea levels by 23 feet. Ruth Mottram, a researcher with the Danish Meteorological Institute, tells The Washington Post that as the high-pressure area, also referred to as a "blocking ridge," sets up over Greenland, it could promote a widespread and significant melt event last seen in 2012. During that summer, nearly all of the ice sheet experienced melting, including the highest elevations that rarely exceed 32 degrees. "... Assuming this comes off (and it seems likely) we would expect a very large melt event over the ice sheet," Mottram said via email. "This was a very similar situation to 2012 where melt reached all the way up to Summit station. As you have probably seen the Arctic sea ice is already at record low for the time of year so clearly we may be looking at a situation where both Arctic sea ice and Greenland ice sheet have record losses even over and above 2012 — though we won't know for sure until after the event." Zack Labe, a climate researcher at the University of California at Irvine who focuses on Arctic climate change, said the upcoming Arctic heat wave could have major ramifications and may push sea ice to another record low at the end of the melt season. "This appears to be a very significant event for the Arctic," he said of the upcoming weather pattern. "A massive upper-level ridge will position itself across the North Atlantic and eventually Greenland in the next few days. This negative North Atlantic Oscillation-like pattern will be associated with well above average temperatures in Greenland. In fact, simulations from the MARv3.9 model suggest this may be the largest surface melt event of the summer," Labe said, referring to a computer model projection of surface ice melt in Greenland. "Whether or not we set a new record low this year, the timing and extent of open water on the Pacific side of the Arctic has been unprecedented in our satellite record. This is already having significant impacts to coastal communities in Alaska and marine ecosystems," Labe said. Elsewhere in the Arctic, this summer has been similarly extreme. Alaska had its warmest June on record, and more than 2 million acres have gone up in flames across the state as a result of a long stretch of above-average temperatures. Arcticwide, an unusual spate of wildfires is burning, affecting vast stretches of Siberia as well. Smoke from these fires is circling the globe, tracked via satellite imagery. These fires are a positive feedback in the climate system, since they are emitting greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Lora Smith PARIS, July 24 -- The French capital is going through its driest period in almost 150 years and temperatures across Europe continue to reach extreme levels, leaving scorched fields and farmers frustrated by another spell of bad weather. In the east German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Christa-Maria Wendig is worried these once-rare droughts are becoming common. She plans to give up planting rapeseed in the coming months because of the dry weather and the heatwave stunted her ripening corn crop. 'Our ponds are empty and the meadows withered,' she said. As temperatures keep climbing across Europe this week, peaking on Thursday in Paris and London, the effects of extreme weather are becoming clearer. This summer has already seen raging wildfires in Portugal and Spain, falling water levels on Germany’s Rhine River and irrigation restrictions in France. Day-ahead electricity prices in France hit a five-month high Tuesday. In Paris, temperatures are forecast to hit 42°C. Electricite de France SA plans to halt two nuclear reactors at Golfech this week, as the Garonne river becomes too warm for cooling the plant. The company, which produces about three-quarters of France’s power, has said it will prepare nuclear plants to operate in more severe heatwaves in the coming decades amid a changing climate. In agriculture, the heatwave is having the biggest impact on corn fields, which are in a key growth stage. Yields will drop sharply if beneficial rains don’t arrive soon, said German grains handler Agravis Raiffeisen AG. Winter wheat and barley are already being collected and escaped most of the bad weather. Some farmers in France and Germany may harvest corn early as silage to build up their animal-feed supplies for the winter, rather than collecting the crops as grain to sell on the market, said Laurine Simon, an analyst at consultant Strategie Grains. Forage stocks are already low after last year’s drought, and Paris corn futures are up about 10% since late May. Lora Smith HELSINKI, July 23 -- A new paper published by researchers form the University of Turku in Finland suggests that even though observed changes in the climate are real, the effects of human activity on these changes are insignificant. The team suggests that the idea of man made climate change is a mere miscalculation or skewing the formulas by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Jyrki Kauppinen and Pekka Malmi, from the Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Turku, in their paper published on 29th June 2019 claim to prove that the “GCM-models used in IPCC report AR5 fail to calculate the influences of the low cloud cover changes on the global temperature. That is why those models give a very small natural temperature change leaving a very large change for the contribution of the green house gases in the observed temperature.” Thus, in order to come to the results matching the actual climate change the IPCC has to “use a very large sensitivity to compensate a too small natural component. Further they have to leave out the strong negative feedback due to the clouds in order to magnify the sensitivity.” In addition, Kauppinen and Malmi claim that their paper proves that “the changes in the low cloud cover fraction practically control the global temperature.” The authors argue that the IPCC has used computational results which can not be considered experimental evidence, and site this as the reason for contradictory conclusions. “The IPCC climate sensitivity is about one order of magnitude (i.e. 10 times) too high, because a strong negative feedback of the clouds is missing in climate models. If we pay attention to the fact that only a small part of the increased CO2 concentration is anthropogenic, we have to recognise that the anthropogenic climate change does not exist in practice, write Kauppinen and Malmi. “The major part of the extra CO2 is emitted from oceans, according to Henry‘s law. The low clouds practically control the global average temperature. During the last hundred years the temperature is increased about 0.1℃ because of CO2. The human contribution was about 0.01℃.” The paper has been criticised for not being peer reviewed and other climate scientists have refuted the conclusions reached by Kauppinen and Malmi. Critics have said that in addition to not being peer reviewed, Malmi and Kauppinen fail to provide correct physical explanation, have not linked to- or sited to enough sources to support their claims and although they denounce climate models, they use one themselves to prove their own points. In a previous paper by the same scientists published last December, they discuss the effects of cloud cover and relative humidity on the climate change. In a separate study, Japanese scientists have also suggested a much more important role for low clouds cover caused by an increase in cosmic rays resulting form the weakening of the earths magnetic filed. Prof. Masayuki Hyodo and his team Yusuke Ueno, Tianshui Yang and Shigehiro Katoh from the University of Kobe in Japan in their paper published this month in propose that the “umbrella effect” is the main factor behind climate change. “When galactic cosmic rays increased during the Earth’s last geomagnetic reversal transition 780,000 years ago, the umbrella effect of low-cloud cover led to high atmospheric pressure in Siberia, causing the East Asian winter monsoon to become stronger. This is evidence that galactic cosmic rays influence changes in the Earth’s climate.” “The Intergovernmental IPCC has discussed the impact of cloud cover on climate in their evaluations, but this phenomenon has never been considered in climate predictions due to the insufficient physical understanding of it”, comments Professor Hyodo. “This study provides an opportunity to rethink the impact of clouds on climate. When galactic cosmic rays increase, so do low clouds, and when cosmic rays decrease clouds do as well, so climate warming may be caused by an opposite-umbrella effect. The umbrella effect caused by galactic cosmic rays is important when thinking about current global warming as well as the warm period of the medieval era.” Scientists have suspected that the Earth’s magnetic filed is showing signs of flipping. The magnetic filed is moving erratically out of the Canadian Arctic and towards Siberia so unpredictably that it has taken scientists by surprise so that they need to update the model they released only four years ago. Pete McGee BANGKOK, July 22 -- The section of the Yom River that runs through the Sam Ngam district has run dry following months without rain, local officials said. The river has been reduced into a narrow and shallow waterway in the middle with sand dunes clearly visible along both banks. The remaining water is so shallow that the locals can walk across. Sam Ngam is located in the upper part of the province in an area that has suffered from drought for several months. Lora Smith MIAMI, July 22 -- American crocodiles, once headed toward extinction, are thriving at an unusual spot — the canals surrounding a South Florida nuclear plant. Last week, 73 crocodile hatchlings were rescued by a team of specialists at Florida Power & Light’s Turkey Point nuclear plant and dozens more are expected to emerge soon. Turkey Point’s 168-mile (270 kilometers) of man-made canals serve as the home to several hundred crocodiles, where a team of specialists working for FPL monitors and protects them from hunting and climate change. From January to April, Michael Lloret, an FPL wildlife biologist and crocodile specialist, helps create nests and ponds on berms for crocodiles to nest. Once the hatchlings are reared and left by the mother, the team captures them. They are measured and tagged with microchips to observe their development. Lloret then relocates them to increase survival rates. “We entice crocodiles to come in to the habitats FPL created,” Lloret said. “We clear greenery on the berms so that the crocodiles can nest. Because of rising sea levels wasting nests along the coasts, Turkey Point is important for crocodiles to continue.” The canals are one of three major US habitats for crocodiles, where 25% of the 2,000 American crocodiles live. The FPL team has been credited for moving the classification of crocodiles on the Endangered Species Act to “threatened” from “endangered” in 2007. The team has tagged 7,000 babies since it was established in 1978. Temperature determines the crocodiles’ sex: the hotter it is the more likely males are hatched. Lloret said this year’s hatchlings are male-heavy due to last month being the hottest June on record globally. Because hatchlings released are at the bottom of the food chain, only a small fraction survives to be adults. Lloret said they at least have a fighting chance at Turkey Point, away from humans who hunted them to near-extinction out of greed and fear even though attacks are rare. Only one crocodile attack has ever been recorded in the U.S. - a couple were both bitten while swimming in a South Florida canal in 2014, but both survived. “American crocodiles have a bad reputation when they are just trying to survive,” Lloret said. “They are shy and want nothing to do with us. Humans are too big to be on their menu.” Lora Smith STRASBOURG, July 17 -- Ursula von der Leyen has been elected into the EU's top job by a narrow margin after vowing to address climate change. The 60-year-old former defence minister of Germany secured a majority in the Strasbourg-based assembly by just nine votes during Tuesday's secret ballot to replace Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission. "The trust you placed in me is confidence you placed in Europe. Your confidence in a united and strong Europe, from east to west, from south to north," von der Leyen said in a brief speech following the vote. "It's a big responsibility and my work starts now... Let us work together constructively because the endeavour is a united and strong Europe." The German conservative's nomination gained ground after Europe's liberal bloc announced on Tuesday afternoon that it would back her. "My group will support Ms von der Leyen today," said Dacian Ciolos, head of Renew Europe. "We are looking forward to work intensively with her to move Europe forward. There is a lot of work ahead of us. Let's renew Europe together." That move brought her closer to securing the necessary 374 votes. She ended up scraping through with 383 votes. Her predecessor, Jean-Claude Juncker, had received 422 votes. "Liberals led by Emmanuel Macron's En March! party have swung behind von der Leyen, largely reflecting the Franco-German axis among heads of state in the EU Council that selected her over the parliamentary election process," "Of course, sweeping promises made during her morning address to MEPs helped: parliamentary and electoral reform, no compromise on the rule of law, boosting gender equality and the climate change agenda. "But as senior European People's Party and von der Leyen ally David MacAllister told me: 'She has united France and Germany at the Council level and, while France and Germany are not everything in the EU, nothing happens without them.'" Von der Leyen's victory should avert a summer of institutional infighting. But with such a narrow win, her position will be weakened even before she takes over as the commission's first female leader in November. Von der Leyen had barely two weeks to make her case since European leaders declared her the nominee after a tense three-day summit, casting aside candidates backed by parliament. On Tuesday, she was broadly well received by sceptical MEPs when she tried to reassure them of her environmental credentials and that she would build an inclusive five-year programme. "I will put forward a green deal for Europe in my first 100 days in office. I will put forward the first-ever European climate law which will set the 2050 target in law," she said. Her promise received applause, but Green leaders said it still lacked specifics. The centre-right European People's Party and liberal Renew Europe backed her, as did the majority of Social Democrats - but the Greens and the far-left have said they did not. Pete McGee กรุงเทพฯ 15 กรกฎาคม -- Kaffeeform เป็น บริษัท สตาร์ทอัพของ Julian Lechner จากกรุงเบอร์ลิน โดยพวกเขาใช้กากกาแฟมาทำเปญถ้วยกาแฟที่นำกลับมาใช้ใหม่ได้ ลองชมวิดีโอนี้เพื่อเรียนรู้เพิ่มเติมเกี่ยวกับเรื่องราวเค้าดู เฉพาะสหรัฐอเมริกาสร้างขยะจากถ้วยกาแฟแบบใช้ครั้งเดียว 120,000 ล้านครั้งทุกปีของเสียที่เกิดขึ้นจากการที่คนทั้งโลกบริโภคกาแฟนั้นไม่เพียง แต่สร้างถ้วยที่ไม่ย่อยสลายได้ยังมีกากกาแฟขึ้นอีกมหาศาล ในปี 2009 ในขณะที่ศึกษาการออกแบบผลิตภัณฑ์ Lechner ผู้ก่อตั้งบริษัท Kaffeeform สังเกตว่าเขาและเพื่อนดื่มกาแฟมากแค่ไหนในแต่ละวัน คนทั่วไปในเยอรมนีบริโภคเมล็ดกาแฟมากถึง 14 ปอนด์ต่อปี เกือบ 99% ของถ้วยกาแฟทั้งหมดหันไปที่ถังขยะและแม้แต่ถ้วยกระดาษอาจใช้เวลานานกว่า 20 ปีในการย่อยสลายอย่างเหมาะสม ดังนั้น Lechner จึงวางแผนที่จะนำกากกาแฟมาใช้ซ้ำเพื่อผลิตถ้วยกาแฟที่เป็นมิตรกับสิ่งแวดล้อม ไม่เพียงแค่ Kaffeeform การเริ่มต้นอีกครั้ง Crow Cycle Courier Collective ก็มีส่วนเกี่ยวข้องในภารกิจนี้ในการช่วยโลก The Collective รวบรวมกากกาแฟเกือบ 110 ปอนด์ในแต่ละวันซึ่งจะถูกทำความสะอาดในเวิร์กช็อป Kaffeeform จากนั้นกากะแฟจะถูกส่งไป ทำให้แห้งและผสมผสานกับส่วนประกอบต่างๆเช่น เส้นใยพืชเรซินธรรมชาติและธัญพืชบีชวูด ด้วยความดันสูงและความร้อน พวกเขาจะบีบอัดกากกาแฟ 6 ถ้วยเพื่อทำหนึ่งถ้วยการแฟและจานรอง ผลิตภัณฑ์สำเร็จรูปย่อยสลายได้ 100% และกากกาแฟ 40% ความสำเร็จของ Lechner เริ่มต้นจากมีร้านกาแฟในกรุงเบอร์ลิน 20 แห่งที่ใช้ผลิตภัณฑ์ของเขาพร้อมกับผู้ค้ากว่า 150 รายทั่วยุโรป อนาคตของ บริษัท Lechner จะผลิตภาชนะอย่างอื่นเพื่อขยายสู่การผลิตเฟอร์นิเจอร์และไลฟ์สไตล์ผลิตภัณฑ์จากกากกาแฟต่อไป According to his email communication revealed by Bloomberg, the Elon Musk-led company is “making preparations” to ramp up the production further after reporting record second-quarter car deliveries and production figures earlier this month. “As we continue to ramp up production, please tell your friends and neighbors that we have lots of exciting new positions open, both in Fremont and at Giga,” Guillen wrote to employees.
Tesla car quality is getting better Some media reports have suggested the quality of Tesla cars is getting worse as it’s solely focusing on increasing the car production rate. In March 2018, NBC News reported that Tesla “employees are alleging the electric car maker is tolerating serious quality problems at its Fremont, California assembly plant.” Earlier this year, Consumer Reports also raised questions about the quality of Tesla’s car, saying that “reliability has been a weak spot for Tesla” and “their reliability has not been consistent.” However, Tesla seems to have fixed its reliability issues, based on Guillen’s recent email to employees. While referring to the company’s record second quarter, he says that Tesla “hit new records in all production lines for output and efficiency.” At the same time, Tesla cars’ “quality is also reaching record highs,” he added. Q2 2019 car deliveries record On July 3, Tesla stock jumped by 4.6% after the company reported far better than expected quarterly car deliveries and production figures on July 2 after market close. In the second quarter, the electric carmaker delivered 95,200 car units to its customers, 133.5% higher than its 40,768 car deliveries in the quarter that ended in June 2018. Its second-quarter car deliveries also reflected a solid 51.1% sequential increase. The company plans to deliver 360,000 to 400,000 car units in 2019, out of which it has already delivered 158,219 cars in the first half of the year. Similarly, Tesla’s production in the second quarter jumped up by 63.2% YoY and 12.8% sequentially to 87,048 cars. A nightmare for Tesla bears Since its beginning, Tesla has faced sharp criticism for having execution problems from peers as well as from many Wall Street analysts. While some analysts expressed optimism after the company reported its record second quarter vehicle deliveries earlier this month, bears still remain skeptical about the company’s future growth. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives called these figures “a feather in the cap for Tesla” as “the numbers were above even the bull estimates.” In contrast, some other Wall Street analysts continued to point towards other issues that Tesla might face in the future.
A nightmare for other automakers as well In the last few years, the rising demand for electric vehicles and Tesla’s ability to attract customers have encouraged mainstream automakers to ramp up their electric car development programs. However, these mainstream automakers including General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Toyota, and Honda haven’t been able to replicate the success with electric cars that Tesla has achieved. According to the latest data compiled by insideevs, Tesla has sold about 67,650 units of Model 3 in the US market in the first half of 2019. During the same period, the sales of Toyota’s Prius Prime hybrid, GM’s Chevrolet Bolt EV, Ford Fusion Energi hybrid, and Honda Clarity PHEV hybrid cars stood at 8,605, 8,281, 3,606, and 6,543, respectively. Before the success of Tesla cars in recent years, no mainstream automaker was aggressively trying to move from gasoline cars to electric cars. Automakers’ profitability from gasoline cars tends to be higher as compared to electric vehicles, which justifies their reluctance to shift to electric cars from gasoline cars. In fact, Fiat Chrysler’s former CEO Sergio Marchionne, referring to Fiat Chrysler’s electric 500e said in 2014: “I hope you don’t buy it because every time I sell one it costs me $14,000.” About a year ago, when Tesla managed to produce 7,000 cars in seven days for the very first time, its CEO Elon Musk praised the Tesla team in a tweet. Steven Armstrong, chair of Ford of Europe, apparently trolled Musk on Twitter saying that the Ford team produces 7,000 cars in about four hours. Interestingly, Ford is lagging far behind the competition in the electric car segment. To accelerate its electric car development, Ford is expected to announce its partnership with Volkswagen today. Tesla is consistently expanding market share in the electric car segment, and the signs of its improving production and sales could prove to be a big headache for other automakers going forward. Is the market underestimating Tesla? In July, Tesla stock has gone up by 6.8% as compared to 2.0% and a 2.4% rise in the S&P 500 Index and the NASDAQ Composite Index, respectively. However, TSLA is still down by 28.3% on a YTD basis due to the massive losses it saw in the first half of 2019. Tesla’s Chinese competitor NIO has risen by 34.1% in July. NIO released its second-quarter car delivery figures on July 10. During the quarter, the company’s car sales fell by 10.9% sequentially to 3,553 car units, but still higher than analysts’ estimates. While investors seem to be showing extraordinary confidence in Tesla’s competitors including NIO, they seem to be ignoring the positive developments that took place at Tesla in the last quarter. GM, Ford, Fiat Chrysler, and Toyota are trading with 14.9%, 33.2%, 6.9%, and 9.2% YTD gains, respectively, while Honda has a 0.7% decline. Ford would release its second-quarter results on July 24 while the largest U.S. automaker GM is slated to announce its quarterly results on August 1. Tesla will report its second-quarter results on July 24. Author: Pete McGee PARIS, July 10 -- Air France condemned the French government's plan for a new tax on flights, saying the levy would hurt the airline's ability to invest in less polluting planes and aggravate already high costs of operating in the country. "This new tax would significantly penalise Air France’s competitiveness," the French arm of Air France-KLM said in a statement on Tuesday, estimating the extra costs would reach more than 60 million euros ($67 million) a year. "The company needs to strengthen its investment capacity to more rapidly reduce its environmental footprint, notably as part of its fleet renewal policy." The shares tumbled as much as 5.4%, the most in more than two months. The dispute between Air France-KLM and the government -- its most powerful shareholder -- burst into the open just hours after Transport Minister Elisabeth Borne unveiled a plan to raise 180 million euros ($202 million) annually from taxes of as much as 18 euros a ticket on departures from France. The move is aimed at replenishing state coffers and funding commuter-transport systems like regional trains to fight climate change. There is a "feeling of injustice among our citizens regarding the taxation of airline transport," Borne said at a press conference in Paris. The levies will range from 1.5 euros on domestic and European economy-class tickets to 18 euros on international business-class flights. All airlines will have to contribute, she said. The French government is seeking new ways to raise funds after dropping planned levies on gasoline and diesel in the face of the violent street protests that erupted across the country at the end of last year. Environment groups and some opposition lawmakers have also criticized the state for not taxing kerosene used to fuel aircraft. The planned tax on airline tickets won't apply to passengers in transit, or to flights to Corsica and French overseas territories, Borne said. France will continue to push for a tax on jet fuel at the European level, she added. The French government plans to reduce a tax break on fuel used by truck transporters, a move that will raise 140 million euros annually, Borne said. The government will also gradually reduce a tax break on diesel used by construction companies. "The government decision is all the more incomprehensible as this new air transport tax would reportedly finance competitive modes of transport including road transportation and not the energy transition in the air transport sector," Air France said. The airline added that half of its operations depart from the country and its domestic network lost 180 million euros last year. Author: Lora Smith GENEVA, July 5 -- Global temperatures could rise 1.5° C above industrial levels by as early as 2030 if current trends continue, but trees could help stem this climate crisis. A new analysis finds that adding nearly 1 billion additional hectares of forest could remove two-thirds of the roughly 300 gigatons of carbon humans have added to the atmosphere since the 1800s. “Forests represent one of our biggest natural allies against climate change,” says Laura Duncanson, a carbon storage researcher at the University of Maryland in College Park and NASA who was not involved in the research. Still, she cautions, “this is an admittedly simplified analysis of the carbon restored forests might capture, and we shouldn’t take it as gospel.” The latest report from the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changerecommended adding 1 billion hectares of forests to help limit global warming to 1.5° C by 2050. Ecologists Jean-Francois Bastin and Tom Crowther of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and their co-authors wanted to figure out whether today’s Earth could support that many extra trees, and where they might all go. They analyzed nearly 80,000 satellite photographs for current forest coverage. The team then categorized the planet according to 10 soil and climate characteristics. This identified areas that were more or less suitable for different types of forest. After subtracting existing forests and areas dominated by agriculture or cities, they calculated how much of the planet could sprout trees. Earth could naturally support 0.9 billion hectares of additional forest—an area the size of the United States—without impinging on existing urban or agricultural lands, the researchers report today in Science. Those added trees could sequester 205 gigatons of carbon in the coming decades, roughly five times the amount emitted globally in 2018. “This work captures the magnitude of what forests can do for us,” says ecologist Greg Asner of Arizona State University in Tempe, who was not involved in the research. “They need to play a role if humanity is going to achieve our climate mitigation goals.” Adding forests wouldn’t just sequester carbon. Forests provide a host of added benefits including enhanced biodiversity, improved water quality, and reduced erosion. Estimates of how much forest restoration on this scale would cost vary, but based on prices of about $0.30 a tree, Crowther says it could be roughly $300 billion. Exactly how much carbon future forests could store may not be crystal clear, but Duncanson says NASA has new instruments in space—like the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) aboard the International Space Station—that will use lasers to create high-resolution 3D maps of Earth’s forests from canopy to floor. These data will add much-needed precision to existing estimates of aboveground carbon storage. “With GEDI we can take this paper as a stepping stone and inform it with much more accurate carbon estimates,” Duncanson says. “There have always been large uncertainties on large-scale carbon totals, but we have richer data coming soon.” Source: Science Magazine Brazil - President Jair BolsonaroOSAKA, June 28 -- Retired military officer Bolsonaro entered office in January, with a promise to crack down on crime and ease gun control laws so that ordinary people can defend themselves. The 64-year-old right-wing politician, dubbed "Trump of the Tropics" for his radical comments, has been a vocal supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump. He also expressed skepticism about Chinese investment in Brazil during last year's election campaign, much of which he was forced to sit out after being hospitalized by a life-threatening knife stab to the abdomen in September. Bolsonaro is also known for praising Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship, and for making remarks some have interpreted as racist. Hailing from Sao Paulo, he graduated from military academy and joined a paratrooper brigade. He decided to pursue a political career after being disciplined for advocating a rise in military salaries, in a column he wrote for a local magazine in 1986. He served as a lower-house member for seven consecutive terms from 1991 before being elected president. A Catholic with the middle name Messias, meaning savior, he has called the presidential post his mission from God. BERLIN, June 27 -- A car sharing service for 1,500 electric golf vehicles in the German capital was launched by Volkswagen on Thursday. "With WeShare, we have tailored car sharing to meet the needs of users: easy to use with 100 percent electric operation on green power," said Christian Senger, Volkswagen board member for digital car and services. Initially, WeShare will cover an area of around 150 square km in Berlin's city center and beyond the city's train ring line. Later, the car sharing service will be extended in line with the expansion of the vehicle fleet, according to the car maker. The initial electric golf vehicles would be followed by 500 smaller e-up! vehicles at the beginning of 2020 and Volkswagen's new ID.3 after it is introduced in mid-2020. WeShare will be a "free-floating" system without rental stations and will be operated digitally via an app, Volkswagen announced. Customers seeking to use Volkswagen's service will need to have a smart phone and credit card, be at least 21 years old, have held a driving license for at least one year and be registered in Germany. The German car maker said the fleet of electric vehicles would be recharged on Berlin's public charging network, including at several food retailers like Lidl and Kaufland. Whether Volkswagen's sharing service and app would be integrated in the wider public transport network was not yet known, a Volkswagen spokesperson told Xinhua on Thursday. It would be "up to the city of Berlin" to decide whether or not Volkswagen's offer should be linked with other car-sharing services, added the spokesperson. The German car maker is planning to expand its WeShare service next year, initially to Prague together with Skoda and then to Hamburg. MADRID, June 27 -- Europe's record-breaking heatwave is forecast to intensify further on Thursday with authorities on high alert as temperatures threaten to exceed 40 degrees Celsius in some parts of the continent. The stifling heat prompted traffic restrictions in France, sparked forest fires in Spain, and fanned debate in Germany over public nudity as sweltering residents stripped down. Meteorologists blame a blast of hot air from northern Africa for the heat this week, which has already set new records in Europe for June. According to reports, the high temperatures have already claimed the lives of three people. Exceptional for arriving so early in summer, the heatwave will on Thursday and Friday likely send mercury above 40C in France, Spain and Greece. In Spain, hundreds of firefighters and soldiers, backed by water-dropping aircraft, battled on Wednesday to put out a wind-fuelled forest fire that erupted in Torre del Espanol in the northeastern region of Catalonia. The worst is expected on Friday when 33 of the 50 Spanish provinces face extreme temperatures, which could reach 44C in Girona. "Hell is coming," one Spanish TV weather presenter tweeted. In France, temperatures "unprecedented" for their timing and intensity since detailed surveys started in 1947 were expected to reach at least 39C over two-thirds of the country, said weather service Meteo-France. Health official Jerome Saloman said the effect of the extreme heat was starting to be felt in France, with an increase in weather-related calls to emergency medical services. Some schools were expected to close on Thursday and Friday while several cities - including Paris and Lyon - restricted traffic to limit a build-up of air pollution. French authorities were taking no chances after the August 2003 heatwave was blamed for 15,000 deaths in the country, with television and radio broadcasts issuing warnings. In Greece, where about 100 people died in last year's deadly fires at the Mati coastal resort, hospitals and officials were on red alert with temperatures of 45C. |
Thank you for choosing to make a difference through your donation. We appreciate your support.
This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesCategories
All
Archives
April 2024
|