Lifeboat Foundation

Poor value of long-delayed biomass project leads Tory peer to say ‘the Government is backing a dead horse’ in sustainability drive.

When the koala fur trade began during the late 19th century, as many as 10 million koalas are thought to have existed in Australia. Since then, they have declined to a fraction of their historic range and numbers. Between 2000 and 2016, the states of Queensland and New South Wales bulldozed at least 885,000 hectares of forest and bushland that provided habitat for koalas, based on analyses of vegetation loss derived from satellite imagery.

Having previously classified the animal as “Least Concern” on its Red List, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) uplisted the koala to “Vulnerable” in 2016. A report by the WWF in 2017 found a 53% decline per generation in Queensland and a 26% decline in New South Wales.

Estimates of their exact numbers vary considerably, but the Australian government has just published a new detailed analysis, showing the rapid and ongoing decline of koala populations in Eastern Australia. Following the disastrous wildfires of 2019–2020, they have now dipped below 100,000 to approximately 92,000 and are projected to fall by another third in this region during the next decade, possibly reaching 63,000 by 2032.

Urban air pollution exposure is an ongoing critical challenge for humanity today because the majority of us live in cities. A just-published study in The Lancet Planetary Health reports that 2.5 billion live in urban areas where particulate matter levels exceed World Health Organization (WHO) safety guidelines causing more than 1.8 million attributed deaths annually. The study reports that “the global health burden of ambient fine particulate matter is increasing annually” and is associated with mortality from cardiovascular, respiratory, and lung diseases including cancer. And in terms of chronic diseases, particulate matter in the air contributes to asthma, bronchitis and emphysema, and seen as the leading environmental risk humans face today.

What is particulate matter? The Canadian government defines it as airborne particles that can be solid or liquid. Particulate matter comes from natural and human sources. The natural ones can be seen when volcanoes erupt spewing ash and other aerosols high into the atmosphere. But far more dangerous because of the sheer volume, is human-produced particulate matter coming from smokestacks, tailpipes, power plants, recently tilled fields, tires running across asphalt and concrete roads, and other human activities that release fine particles into the wind. The lighter and smaller the particle, the greater the threat. That’s because fine particulate matter is easier to inhale. It’s also easier to enter the pores of leaves in plants, and easier as liquid aerosols to bind to our buildings and bridges and other infrastructure where its acidic nature causes corrosion.

A particle of 2.5 micrometres (equivalent to 0.00009843 inches) or less is a public health threat. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tracks aerosol pollution at this size and on its site notes that particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometres has been declining for two decades. The Lancet study contradicts this finding noting that globally levels of airborne particulate matter have changed very little in twenty years. And where’s the greatest rise? In the cities of Southeast Asia.

Tesla is planning to build its new design center in Beijing later this year, according to a new document released by the Chinese government.

Shortly after announcing Gigafactory Shanghai, Tesla made it clear that it not only wants to tap into China’s incredible capacity in manufacturing, but it also wants to take advantage of the country’s incredible engineering and design talent.

In early 2020, Tesla announced plans to establish a new R&D center and a new design center in China to build “a Chinese-style” electric car.

IBM has just announced a partnership with the Government of Quebec to create the Quebec-IBM Discovery Accelerator in Bromont, Quebec. The accelerator will focus on using quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and High-Performance Computing (HPC) to develop new projects, business/scientific/academia collaborations, and skills-building initiatives in research areas including energy, life sciences (genomics and drug discovery), new materials development, and sustainability. This is the fourth such center that IBM has announced. The three previously announced partnerships are with Cleveland Clinic, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the UK’s Science and Technology Facilities Council Hartree Centre. IBM’s formal mission statement for these Discovery Accelerators is: “Accelerate scientific discovery and societal impact with a convergence of AI, quantum, and hybrid cloud in a community of discovery with research, academic, industry, startup, and government organizations working together.” IBM’s formal mission statement for these Discovery Accelerators is:

“Accelerate scientific discovery and societal impact with a convergence of AI, quantum, and hybrid cloud in a community of discovery with research, academic, industry, startup, and government organizations working together.”

In addition, the company has developed individual mission statements for each of the four Discovery Accelerators:

The endless parade of bad news for Israeli malware merchant NSO Group continues. While it appears someone might be willing to bail out the beleaguered company, it still has to do business as the poster boy for the furtherance of human rights violations around the world. That the Israeli government may have played a significant part in NSO’s sales to known human rights violators may ultimately be mitigating, but for now, NSO is stuck playing defense with each passing news cycle.

Late last month, the New York Times revealed some very interesting things about NSO Group. First, it revealed the company was able to undo its built-in ban on searching US phone numbers… provided it was asked to by a US government agency. The FBI took NSO’s powerful Pegasus malware for a spin in 2019, but under an assumed name: Phantom. With the permission of NSO and the Israeli government, the malware was able to target US numbers, albeit ones linked to dummy phones purchased by the FBI.

The report noted the FBI liked what it saw, but found the zero-click exploit provided by NSO’s bespoke “Phantom” (Pegasus, but able to target US numbers) might pose constitutional problems the agency couldn’t surmount. So, it walked away from NSO. But not before running some attack attempts through US servers — something that was inadvertently exposed by Facebook and WhatsApp in their lawsuit against NSO over the targeting of WhatsApp users. An exhibit declared NSO was using US servers to deliver malware, something that suggested NSO didn’t care about its self-imposed restrictions on US targeting. In reality, it was the FBI and NSO running some tests on local applications of zero-click malware that happened to be caught by Facebook techies.

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CHICAGO, Feb 4 (Reuters) — A study in monkeys pitting the current Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) COVID-19 booster against an Omicron-specific booster showed no significant differences in protection, suggesting an Omicron-specific booster may not be needed, U.S. government researchers reported on Friday.

The study involved monkeys vaccinated with two doses of Moderna’s vaccine who were dosed nine months later with either the conventional Moderna booster or one specifically targeting the Omicron variant.

Continue reading “Omicron-specific booster may not be needed, U.S. monkey study finds” »

New South Wales has again received an overwhelming response from aspiring developers of wind, solar and storage projects, with more than 34GW of proposals for the South-West Renewable Energy Zone, more than 10 times its likely capacity.

The state government, through its newly formed Energy Corporation of NSW, ran a registration of interest process in October and November for the south-west region, one of at least five REZs planned to help replace the ageing coal fleet over the coming decade.

“There were 49 registrations totalling over 34 gigawatts from potential generation and storage projects – thirteen times the intended capacity for the South-West REZ, which will be no less than 2.5 gigawatts,” James Hay, the CEO of Energy Corp, said in a statement on Friday.

Neuralink, the startup cofounded and run by Elon Musk that hopes to implant computer chips in people’s brains, may have misled federal securities regulators about the billionaire entrepreneur’s role at the company.

That’s according to government documents and Fortune interviews with securities lawyers and a half-dozen former employees of the company. The employees mostly spoke anonymously out of concern for violating nondisclosure agreements and possible retaliation from Musk.

The episode involves a 2018 letter in which an attorney representing Neuralink downplayed Musk’s leadership role at the company in a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The attorney’s characterization contradicts former employees’ accounts, which depict Musk as very much in charge. Neuralink and the attorney involved in the filing did not respond to requests for comment. lawyer for Neuralink told the SEC that Musk had “no executive or management role” at the company. Former employees say that’s far from the truth.