Lifeboat Foundation

Tens of thousands of years ago, on the territory of the uninhabited Sahara Desert, gardens flourished, rivers flowed, ancient people cultivated fertile lands. However, we know how it all ended — today in this place is a desert scorched by the blazing sun with an area 38 times the size of Great Britain. However, humanity has a chance to return life to these lands again, and as a bonus to receive free electricity for all inhabitants of the planet.
The installation of wind and solar farms could radically change the climate in this region: more rainfall, which will lead to a revival of vegetation and a drop in temperature. At least that’s what Yang Li, the study’s author and senior researcher at the University of Illinois, says. No mystery! Wind turbines facilitate the diffusion of hot and cool air. This, in turn, will raise the average rainfall by 50%, and solar panels absorb most of the solar energy, preventing it from overheating the earth.
All this will be effective only with the global development of a lifeless desert. The process has already begun. But they tried repeatedly to tame the cruel and hot sun of the Sahara.

#inventions #technology #solar.

Continue reading “Giant solar power plants of the Sahara” »

British engineering company White Motorcycle Concepts (WMC) has unveiled its revolutionary new electric hybrid scooter – the WMC300FR. The new hybrid three-wheeled scooter is designed especially for use as a fully operational first response vehicle that will help bring emergency services into line with new national objectives to combat the effects of climate change and cost reduction.

The electric scooter uses the same patented technology central to its all-electric WMC250EV high-speed demonstrator, with which it intends to break the world electric land speed record over the next 12 months. In the case of First Responder, however, the key objectives are not so much to achieve ultimate speed as to significantly increase range and viability while reducing CO₂ footprint and running costs for emergency service fleets. It can reduce carbon emissions by up to 50% of that of comparable conventional motorcycles and scooters.

Continue reading “WMC unveils new electric hybrid scooter designed for first responders” »

To handle this, people have trained neural networks on regions where we have more complete weather data. Once trained, the system could be fed partial data and infer what the rest was likely to be. For example, the trained system can create a likely weather radar map using things like satellite cloud images and data on lightning strikes.

This is exactly the sort of thing that neural networks do well with: recognizing patterns and inferring correlations.

What drew the Rigetti team’s attention is the fact that neural networks also map well onto quantum processors. In a typical neural network, a layer of “neurons” performs operations before forwarding its results to the next layer. The network “learns” by altering the strength of the connections among units in different layers. On a quantum processor, each qubit can perform the equivalent of an operation. The qubits also share connections among themselves, and the strength of the connection can be adjusted. So, it’s possible to implement and train a neural network on a quantum processor.

Let me back up a moment. I recently concurred with megapundit Steven Pinker that over the last two centuries we have achieved material, moral and intellectual progress, which should give us hope that we can achieve still more. I expected, and have gotten, pushback. Pessimists argue that our progress will prove to be ephemeral; that we will inevitably succumb to our own nastiness and stupidity and destroy ourselves.

Maybe, maybe not. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say that within the next century or two we solve our biggest problems, including tyranny, injustice, poverty, pandemics, climate change and war. Let’s say we create a world in which we can do pretty much anything we choose. Many will pursue pleasure, finding ever more exciting ways to enjoy themselves. Others may seek spiritual enlightenment or devote themselves to artistic expression.

No matter what our descendants choose to do, some will surely keep investigating the universe and everything in it, including us. How long can the quest for knowledge continue? Not long, I argued 25 years ago this month in The End of Science, which contends that particle physics, cosmology, neuroscience and other fields are bumping into fundamental limits. I still think I’m right, but I could be wrong. Below I describe the views of three physicists—Freeman Dyson, Roger Penrose and David Deutsch—who hold that knowledge seeking can continue for a long, long time, and possibly forever, even in the face of the heat death of the universe.

The proposed fiber optic cable could advance climate research and education.

The US National Science Foundation is proposing a fiber optic cable for their Antarctic research station, McMurdo. The cable which could potentially integrate with other research technology, could impact research and overall well-being of McMurdo’s visitors.

A team of researchers with the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, ETH Zurich, has found evidence that indicates that stands of trees can reduce land surface area temperatures in cities up to 12°C. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the group describes how they analyzed satellite imagery for hundreds of cities across Europe and what they learned.

Prior research has suggested that adding green spaces to cities can help reduce high air temperatures during the warm months—cities are typically hotter than surrounding areas due to the huge expanses of asphalt and cement that absorb heat. In this new effort, the researchers looked at possible temperature impacts on land surface areas instead of air temperatures. Such temperatures are not felt as keenly as air temperatures by people in the vicinity because it is below their feet rather than surrounding them.

The work by the team involved analyzing data from satellites equipped with land surface temperature sensors. In all, the researchers poured over data from 293 cities across Europe, comparing land surface temperatures in parts of cities that were covered with trees with similar nearby urban areas that were not covered with trees. For comparison purposes, they did the same for rural settings covered in pastures and farmland.

Deepsea submersible diving could compete with space tourism.

A form of luxury tourism is hitting the deep sea thanks to a small handful of firms providing state-of-the-art private submersibles to high-paying customers.

Continue reading “Could Luxury Submarine Trips Thrive as an Alternative to Space Tourism?” »

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?” »