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The post Scorched Earth: Death Valley hits 130 degrees appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Temperatures in Death Valley skyrocketed to a blistering 130 degrees on Sunday — possibly the highest mercury reading on Earth since 1913.
If the National Weather Service’s recording is correct, it would also be among the top-three highest temperatures to have ever been measured in Death Valley, as well as the highest temperature ever seen there during the month of August.
The temperature in Death Valley hit 130 degrees at 3:41 p.m. Sunday, the National Weather Service said in a tweet.
Per the climate data in xmACIS2, this is the first time since 1913 that Death Valley has reached 130F. In July 2013, it last reached 129F. If valid, it would be the hottest August temperature at the site by 3F. @NWSVegas pic.twitter.com/gZNBW4NXI4
— NWS WPC (@NWSWPC) August 16, 2020
Death Valley holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded on the planet: 134 degrees in 1913, according to Guinness World Records. That reading has been disputed, however.
Since then, a 129-degree reading was recorded in Death Valley in 2013.
The reading comes amid an epic heat wave that continues to grip most of the southwestern U.S.
Multiple daily heat records were set Saturday. The National Weather Service reported a high of 112 in Woodland Hills, breaking the record of 108 set in 1977, and a high of 92 at UCLA, breaking the record of 90 set in 2003. Downtown Los Angeles hit 98 degrees, tying a record set in 1994.
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]]>The post Earth’s first off-world colonies will be built on soil appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>A Shire on Mars
As the clock wound down on NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Challenge last May, the fate of AI SpaceFactory, a leading firm for multi-planetary architecture, fell in the hands of a lanky industrial robot. After four years and a few elimination rounds, the New York-based team was head-to-head with researchers from Pennsylvania State University, vying for a top prize of $500,000 and a chance to inspire future Martian settlements.
Nearly ten hours into the last day of competition, hundreds watched as AI Spacefactory’s robotic arm dangled a circular skylight over a mud-colored, vase-like structure, lowering it slowly as if placing the roof on a house of cards. For a few seconds, the skylight seemed secure. Observers began to cheer. Then, with little warning, the skylight slipped and fell through an opening in the roof, crashing to the floor with a hollow thud.
Such a mishap would be devastating for a mission on Mars. But AI SpaceFactory’s 3D-printed structure, Marsha, still impressed the NASA judges enough to earn the top prize. The firm now hopes Marsha will serve as a prototype for the first human habitats on the Red Planet.
Designed like an egg, Marsha’s form is both aesthetically svelte and extraterrestrially efficient. “On Mars the exterior air is very thin, just one percent of the Earth’s atmosphere,” explains David Malott, CEO and co-founder of AI SpaceFactory, who oversaw the building’s design. As a result, Marsha would have to be pressurized on the inside to match Earth’s atmosphere; this pressure difference would cause the structure to want to pop like a balloon. The egg shape, says Malott, is meant to help keep the building from exploding.
Inside, Marsha’s amenities wouldn’t be much different from those inside a small townhouse, with a few sciencey exceptions. The habitat features four floors, including a kitchen, exercise room, sleep pods and a garden where astronauts might grow herbs and leafy greens. A wet and dry lab offers space for experimentation, while a docking port on the ground floor provides easy access to a rover. The structure’s outer layer of basalt fiber, to be sourced from Martian regolith or bioplastic recycled from astronaut trash, would be designed to protect inhabitants from cosmic rays and micrometeoroids. Save a rusty dust storm, astronauts may actually forget they’re on the Red Planet.
But not all proposed Martian habitats share Marsha’s sleek design. Some resemble ant hills more than eggs and employ cruder methods than 3D printing to make use of Martian materials.
“Many of the concepts I’ve seen look like mounds of regolith piled on top of habitats,” says Metzger, our planetary science expert from before. For example, inflatable modules would be used as the habitat’s inner core, connected by a series of tubes that would serve as tunnels between main chambers. From above, the product would “look like curvy structures,” says Metzger, “like something out of The Hobbit.”
Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Guelph
Each design method — printing and piling — has its own list of merits and setbacks. While piling regolith may be quicker and less prone to printer error, it would still require humans to ship the inflatable inner habitats, which would come at a cost. Piled regolith would also have to be secured in some way, perhaps through microwaving, compacting, or the addition of polymers. For Edmundson, piling is a temporary solution. “Once we get into the sustainability portion of exploration, we’re going to need to start building our own habitats,” she says.
3D printing offers more of the in-situ experience, but it can be resource intensive. What’s more, 3D printing requires a precise mixture of specific elements, which will have to be as close as possible in composition to the simulated regolith used in experiments on Earth. There’s little margin for error when you’re millions of miles away, and regolith minerality varies depending on its source.
Research with regolith simulants is vital for the safety of future missions, says Edmundson. “That’s part of the reason why I think I have job security. People are going to have to know what the differences are between the planet’s surface itself and the simulants they’re using [on Earth].” Today there are about 10 Martian regolith simulants and a few dozen simulants for the Moon. “But that number is probably going to change pretty quickly,” she adds, “now that we’re planning to go back.”
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]]>The post Earth Day environment activists: Deal with climate like coronavirus crisis appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Environment activists point to the reorder of society and the economy to resolve the coronavirus crisis and say the very same thing can be done to combat international warming.
Even as Americans chafe under task losses and social restrictions, ecologists see a “silver lining” of falling international emissions while drawing comparisons between the pandemic and the “environment crisis,” a campaign that rose Wednesday with the 50 th anniversary of Earth Day.
” Today is Earth Day, which advises us that the environment and ecological emergency is still ongoing,” stated Swedish teenager activist Greta Thunberg. “We require to deal with both the corona pandemic, this crisis, at the same time as we take on the environment and environmental emergency situation due to the fact that we need to be able to deal with 2 crises at the same time.”
The World Meteorological Organization said Wednesday that the pandemic shutdown is anticipated to minimize greenhouse gas emissions this year by 6%, the greatest 1 year decrease given that The second world war and a decline in line with a recommendation from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Environment Change.
” This is roughly the same speed that the IPCC says we need to sustain every year up until 2030 to be on pace to limit international warming to 1.5 C and struck the Paris climate objectives,” tweeted meteorologist and environment activist Eric Holthaus. “This is what ‘far-reaching and extraordinary changes in all aspects of society’ looks like.”
Now that people understand what it takes to plug global emissions, will they be ready to do it again?
” People are willing to endure this momentarily, however individuals are burning out of it already, and it’s only been three weeks,” said Mr. Milloy. “[The activists] would like to take the coronavirus cops state and turn it into the climate authorities state, and I’m simply not sure the public is going to want to go from this cops state into the next one.”
In an unique report released Tuesday, Climate Depot’s Marc Morano warned that climate activists see the coronavirus crisis as a “gown wedding rehearsal for the ‘climate emergency situation.'”
He explained that a lot of the motion’s objectives– minimized flight, driving and making– have actually been attained by lockdowns to slow transmissions of the coronavirus.
” One thing Greta and all the other environment activists know is that their alleged ‘options’ to environment modification require many of the massive growths of governmental power that is taking place under the infection lockdowns,” Mr. Morano said in an email. “They are perplexed regarding why people are not taking their ‘climate emergency situation’ seriously however are taking COVID-19 seriously.”
Climate advocates argue that such a shift should be planned well beforehand to avoid the unexpected upheaval with the pandemic.
” What we require isn’t a fast, unexpected economic downturn to avert a pandemic, it’s degrowth– it’s deserting the concept of growth totally. It’s focusing on life, health, joy above cash,” Mr. Holthaus tweeted. “On a limited world, development was always a harmful illusion anyhow.”
Bill McKibben, creator of the environment group350 org, stated the “clear skies of this spring, and the total reckoning of a deathly pandemic” may have strengthened the general public’s willpower.
Mr. McKibben asked in a Tuesday op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.
The lockdowns might have clarified, but the crisis likewise has actually taken its toll on the environment movement.
Like other political causes, climate change has actually been pushed to the back burner as the world struggles to manage an illness that has actually eliminated more than 183,000 individuals because emerging in December in Wuhan, China.
Instead of worldwide marches, rallies and other public occasions, climate activists celebrated the 50 th anniversary of Earth Day online with livestreams and teleconferences in observance of social distancing rules.
” It’s going to be a lot less noticeable. It’s going to be all online,” said Mr. Milloy. “We have a genuine crisis. We do not have time for the climate hoax. And Earth Day actually now is all about the environment scam.”
‘ Unprecedented wake-up call’
Contrasts to the COVID-19 pandemic were brimming throughout Earth Day occasions. In his declaration, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated the pandemic was an “unprecedented wake-up call” that might end up being a “genuine opportunity to do things right for the future.”
” The effect of the coronavirus is both immediate and dreadful. However there is another, deep emergency: the world’s unfolding environmental crisis,” Mr. Guterres stated. “Climate disturbance is approaching a moment of truth. We should act decisively to protect our planet from both the coronavirus and the existential danger of climate disturbance.”
Many short articles have described “flattening the curve” on environment modification, the same language utilized to explain a strategy to decrease the number of COVID-19 cases.
As Newsweek put it in an April 11 headline: “Scientists point out contamination decrease in calls to ‘flatten the curve’ of environment modification post-coronavirus.”
” Scientists, activists and religious leaders ranging from Pope Francis to filmmaker Spike Lee are highlighting lockdown decreases in air pollution and nature ‘coming alive’ as part of a larger call to permanently alter commercial and financial habits after COVID-19,” the article said.
Some climate advocates have called for investing coronavirus stimulus funding in facilities projects created to prepare society for climate modification, such as building higher sea walls, updating buildings to make them more energy efficient, and changing nonrenewable fuel source plants with green energy.
The author of the Green New Deal resolution, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York City Democrat, said in a now-deleted tweet that “it’s the correct time for a worker-led mass financial investment in green facilities to conserve our world.”
Previous U.N. environment chief Christiana Figueres said last month that the world has an “unbelievable obligation” to “converge the options– at least the monetary options– to coronavirus to the monetary solutions for climate.”
” Due to the fact that what we can not afford to do is to jump out of the frying pan of COVID and into latest thing fire of climate modification,” she stated.
Former Vice President Al Gore and others have looked for to connect the coronavirus and environment change by noting that air pollution can aggravate COVID-19 signs.
” The scientists have warned us about the coronavirus, and they have actually alerted us about the environment crisis, and we have actually seen the threats of waiting far too late to heed the warnings of the medical professionals and scientists on this infection,” Mr. Gore stated recently on HBO’s “Actual time” with Expense Maher.
Now that Americans comprehend what it costs to minimize greenhouse gas emissions, however, the question becomes whether they want to pay.
” There are trade-offs,” said Southern Methodist University economic expert Bernard Weinstein. That’s really the underlying debate going on right now about how and when to open the economy in the U.S.”
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]]>The post This Earth Day, we must stop the fossil fuel money pipeline | Bill McKibben appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>1970 was a simpler time. (February was a simpler time too, but for a moment let’s think outside the pandemic bubble.)
Simpler because our environmental troubles could be easily seen. The air above our cities was filthy, and the water in our lakes and streams was gross. There was nothing subtle about it. In New York City, the environmental lawyer Albert Butzel described a permanently yellow horizon: “I not only saw the pollution, I wiped it off my windowsills.” Or consider the testimony of a city medical examiner: “The person who spent his life in the Adirondacks has nice pink lungs. The city dweller’s are black as coal.” You’ve probably heard of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River catching fire, but here’s how the former New York governor Nelson Rockefeller described the Hudson south of Albany: “One great septic tank that has been rendered nearly useless for water supply, for swimming, or to support the rich fish life that once abounded there.” Everything that people say about the air and water in China and India right now was said of America’s cities then.
It’s no wonder that people mobilized: 20 million Americans took to the streets for the first Earth Day in 1970 – 10% of America’s population at the time, perhaps the single greatest day of political protest in the country’s history. And it worked. Worked politically because Congress quickly passed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and scientifically because those laws had the desired effect. In essence, they stuck enough filters on smokestacks, car exhausts and factory effluent pipes that, before long, the air and water were unmistakably cleaner. The nascent Environmental Protection Agency commissioned a series of photos that showed just how filthy things were. Even for those of us who were alive then, it’s hard to imagine that we tolerated this.
But we should believe it, because now we face even greater challenges that we’re doing next to nothing about. And one reason is you can’t see them.
The carbon dioxide molecule is invisible; at today’s levels you can’t see it or smell it, and it doesn’t do anything to you. Carbon with one oxygen molecule? That’s what kills you in a closed garage if you leave the car running. But two oxygen molecules? All that does is trap heat in the atmosphere. Melt ice caps. Raise seas. Change weather patterns. But slowly enough that most of the time, we don’t quite see it.
And it’s a more complex moment for another reason. You can filter carbon monoxide easily. It’s a trace gas, a tiny percentage of what comes from a power plant. But carbon dioxide is the exact opposite. It’s most of what comes pouring out when you burn coal or gas or oil. There’s no catalytic converter for CO2, which means you have to take down the fossil fuel industry.
That in turn means you have to take on not just the oil companies but also the banks, asset managers and insurance companies that invest in them (and may even own them, in the wake of the current economic crash). You have to take on, that is, the heart of global capital.
And so we are. Stop the Money Pipeline, a coalition of environmental and climate justice groups running from the small and specialized to the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, formed last fall to try to tackle the biggest money on earth. Banks like Chase – the planet’s largest by market capitalization – which has funneled a quarter-trillion dollars to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement of 2015. Insurers like Liberty Mutual, still insuring tar sands projects even as pipeline builders endanger Native communities by trying to build the Keystone XL during a pandemic.
This campaign sounds quixotic, but it seemed to be getting traction until the coronavirus pandemic hit. In January, BlackRock announced that it was going to put climate at the heart of its investment analyses. Liberty Mutual, under similar pressure from activists, began to edge away from coal. And Chase – well, Earth Day would have seen activists engaging in civil disobedience in several thousand bank lobbies across America, sort of like the protest in January that helped launch the campaign (and sent me, among others, off in handcuffs). But we called that off; there’s no way we were going to risk carrying the microbe into jails, where the people already locked inside have little chance of social distancing.
Still, the pandemic may be causing as much trouble for the fossil fuel industry as our campaign hoped to. With the demand for oil cratering, it’s clear that these companies have no future. The divestment campaign that, over a decade, has enlisted $14tn in endowments and portfolios in the climate fight has a new head of steam.
Our job – a more complex one than faced our Earth Day predecessors 50 years ago – is to force the spring. We need to speed the transition to the solar panels and wind turbines that engineers have worked so mightily to improve and are now the cheapest way to generate power. The only thing standing in the way is the political power of the fossil fuel companies, on clear display as Donald Trump does everything in his power to preserve their dominance. That’s hard to overcome. Hard but simple. Just as in 1970, it demands unrelenting pressure from citizens. That pressure is coming. Indigenous nations, frontline communities, faith groups, climate scientists and savvy investors are joining together, and their voices are getting louder. Seven million of us were in the streets last September. That’s not 20 million, but it’s on the way.
We can’t be on the streets right now. So we’ll do what we can on the boulevards of the Internet. Join us for Earth Day Live, three days of digital activism beginning 22 April. We’re in a race, and we’re gaining fast.
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Bill McKibben is an author and Schumann distinguished scholar in environmental studies at Middlebury College, Vermont. His most recent book is Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
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This story originally appeared in The Nation and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story
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