Lifeboat Foundation

Editor’s note, 6/28/21, 3:35 PM: The article was updated to clarify that Natrium features a sodium‐cooled fast reactor and not a type of molten salt reactor, as previously reported.

A nuclear power startup founded by Bill Gates has announced plans to build a new kind of nuclear reactor at a retiring coal plant in Wyoming.

This reactor will be the first real-world demonstration of the startup’s technology, which could help power the world — without warming the climate.

But the global effort to fight climate change is also causing problems. Europe’s wind farms haven’t seen a good breeze in months, and droughts in China and South America have dried up power generation from hydro dams. Meanwhile, surging prices for carbon pollution credits in Europe have made fossil alternatives even more expensive, and Chinese grid operators have come under mounting political pressure to help the country meet its carbon emissions targets by burning less coal.

The energy crisis could imperil political support for climate policies, just as the COP26 climate summit approaches in Glasgow in November. But there are steps governments can take to prevent energy market turmoil leading to sky-high electric bills and breakdowns in the global supply chain.

“What we’re seeing is an unfortunate set of circumstances during a period of transition where we haven’t fully moved from one system to another,” says James Henderson, director of the Energy Transition Research Initiative at Oxford University. “During that period, market risks are enhanced. It’s impossible to envision a world where there won’t be more volatility.”

Disaster sciences, digital twins & artificial intelligence — craig fugate, chief emergency management officer, one concern.

Mr. Craig Fugate is the former Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, and former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA — an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security, whose primary purpose is to coordinate the response to disasters that have occurred in the United States and that overwhelm the resources of local and state authorities.)

Continue reading “Craig Fugate, Chief Emergency Management Officer, One Concern — Disaster Science, Digital Twins, AI” »

From ecosystem development to talent, much effort is still required for practical implementation of edge AI.

By Pushkar Apte and Tom Salmon

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have made this technology important for many industries, including finance, energy, healthcare, and microelectronics. AI is driving a multi-trillion-dollar global market while helping to solve some tough societal problems such as tracking the current pandemic and predicting the severity of climate-driven events like hurricanes and wildfires.

Thu, Sep 23 at 10 AM PDT.

The Ivors Academy Trust presents the David Ferguson Lecture with Brian Eno, Professor Brian Cox, Dr Tamsin Edwards and Hannah Peel.

It has never been more urgent to reflect on the music industry’s impact on the climate.

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Researchers recently found that a few years back, they “slept” through a hurricane. On analyzing weather satellite data from 2,014 scientists discovered evidence of a hurricane from space that pushed plasma toward Earth’s upper atmosphere. Though these events are invisible to the eye, the evidence reveals that they’re not uncommon. Understanding more about them could help to protect satellite and communications systems from disturbance and preserve radar and GPS output for life below on the planet’s surface.

Satellites in orbit around the planet gather immense amounts of data on environmental and climate activity. A recent publication in Nature Communications explains how the first hurricane from space was discovered through analysis of data gathered back in August 2014.

The research team looked at recently released files containing measurements taken by four satellites in the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. From their analysis, the scientists created a 3D image that showed the hurricane from space forming features similar to what we’re familiar with in Earth’s lower atmosphere. A press release in Science Daily describes it as a gigantic spiral of plasma, with its arms swirling counterclockwise above the North Pole.

By studying the topography and mineral composition of a portion of the Arabia Terra region in northern Mars, scientists recently found evidence for thousands of “super eruptions,” which are the most violent volcanic explosions known.

Not much is known about the vortex beams’ properties at the moment, but scientists plan to learn more by crashing them into other particles.

These brightly colored robotic boats seem to have a death wish.

The brightly-colored robotic boats made by Saildrone seem to have a death wish.

Saildrone makes autonomous ocean vessels to study the environment. This summer, the Silicon Valley startup sent five of its vessels directly into the path of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean. While airplanes can fly through hurricanes, the screaming winds kick up such huge waves that attempting to sail boats right into them is something best to be avoided.

Continue reading “These boat drones are designed to sail directly into the eye of a hurricane” »