Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: climatology – Page 83

Creating a battery that can withstand repeated cycles of heating and cooling is no small feat. Temperature fluctuations cause the battery to expand and contract, and the researchers had to identify resilient materials that could tolerate these changes. “What we’ve seen before is a lot of active research to make sure you do not have to go through that thermal cycle,” says Vince Sprenkle, a strategic advisor in energy storage at PNNL and a co-author of the new paper. “We’re saying, ‘We want to go through it, and we want to be able to survive and use that as a key feature.’”

The result is a rechargeable battery made from relatively inexpensive materials that can store energy for extended periods. “It’s a great example of a promising long-duration energy-storage technology,” says Aurora Edington, policy director of the electricity industry association GridWise Alliance, who was not involved with this research. “I think we need to support those efforts and see how far we can take them to commercialization.”

The technology could be particularly useful in a place such as Alaska, where near-constant summer sunlight coincides with relatively low rates of energy use. A battery that can store energy for months could allow abundant summer solar power to fulfill winter electricity needs. “What is so attractive about the freeze-thaw battery is that seasonal shifting capability,” says Rob Roys, chief innovation officer at Launch Alaska, a nonprofit organization that works to accelerate the deployment of climate technologies in the state. Roys hopes to pilot the PNNL battery in a remote part of his state.

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That’s 25 times faster, at 80 percent the cost of conventional means.

Combating climate change and biodiversity loss is a complicated matter, causing prolonged and perhaps tedious conversations. But what if there was a cooler way to achieve all that?

Enter Australian start-up AirSeed Technology and their swarms of seed-firing drones that are planting 40,000 trees a day to fight deforestation. The company and its incredible technology were featured Wednesday on * Euro Green News*. drone that can plant 40,000 trees a day could be essential in fighting deforestation.

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“The Earth has entered a radically new era, understood by scientists as the Anthropocene: a time when humanity reckons with massive geologic and biospheric forces we, as anthropos, have set in motion. The agency of Nature and the reality of humanity as a collective geologic force is becoming understood differently, even within the Western paradigm. It is a new world our children will inherit, for if humanity is to survive, we must come into new realizations of our place within the planetary life-support systems. To lay a path for future generations through the evolutionary steps that humanity must now take to learn to live in balance with the planet, science must come to balance with Spirit.” ―Oberon Zell, GaeaGenesis.

#OberonZell #GaeaGenesis #GaiaHypothesis #SyntellectHypothesis #GlobalMind #theosophy #consciousness

In the early 1970s, celebrated philosopher and mystic Oberon Zell was the first to propose the radical idea that the biosphere of Earth was a single living superorganism. His initial article on the subject electrified the emerging modern movement of Earth-based spirituality, generating volumes of correspondence, lecture tours, and further articles in various journals and books.

The excitement was the result of a simple yet profound idea. Imagine for a moment that Earth is alive. Not just teeming with living things, but a living, vital organism encompassing the whole of the planet. This is how Oberon Zell imagines it in GaeaGenesis 0, but it is more than imagination or mere metaphor. GaeaGenesis is the first work to fully integrate the mythological, spiritual, biological, and social history of what has become known as the Gaea Thesis. It builds upon this history by exploring the profound implications of the thesis, which is as significant to our understanding of the world and our place in it as the heliocentric theory of the solar system and Darwin’s theory of evolution once were.

GaeaGenesis culminates five decades of work developing Zell’s thesis, building on his own original ideas as well as those of renowned scientists, philosophers and spiritualists who preceded him. The works of mythologist Joseph Campbell are referenced, as are the studies of psychologist Carl Jung, whose concept of a “Collective Unconscious” ushered in a new understanding of a human-based Global Mind. In addition, GaeaGenesis draws upon the work of Nobel Prize-winner Al Gore to illustrate the emerging realization that climate change affects a vast web of interdependent ecosystems.

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The sun is moving into the hyperactive phase of its roughly 11-year cycle when sunspots, solar flares and all other sorts of tumultuous heliocentric happenings become more common. Case in point: A vortex of fire as tall as 10 Earths stacked on top of each other could be seen doing a quick dance on the sun’s surface late Tuesday.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory caught an eruption from the sun that swirled like a tornado as it produced a bright coronal mass ejection, or CME. Astronomer Tony Phillips clipped the below footage for Spaceweather.com.

CMEs are blasts of charged plasma that often accompany solar flares. When they’re directed at Earth, they can produce bright auroras when they collide with our magnetosphere. This particular CME that started with the rare solar twister was not directed at Earth.

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Researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed the capability to use recycled glass in 3D printing, opening doors to a more environmentally sustainable way of building and construction.

Glass is one material that can be 100% recycled with no reduction in quality, yet it is one of the least recycled waste types. Glass is made up of silicon dioxide, or silica, which is a major component of sand, and therefore it offers significant untapped potential to be recycled into other products.

At the same time, due to growing populations, urbanization and , the world is facing a shortage of sand, with calling it one of the greatest sustainability challenges of the 21st century.

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Gaining clarity about the factors that contributed to a runaway greenhouse state on Venus, Earth’s closest planetary neighbor, can also help improve models of what could one day happen to Earth’s climate.

“Ultimately, my motivation in studying Venus is to better understand the Earth,” Kane said.

Reference: “Atmospheric dynamics of a near tidally locked Earth-sized planet” by Stephen R. Kane, 22 April 2022, Nature Astronomy.

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Trust in science is rising worldwide, according to a 3M-backed survey released Tuesday, and more people expect it to solve the world’s problems.

But the fifth annual 3M State of Science Index also showed many are worried that misinformation could lead to more , greater societal divisions and lack of action on climate change.

“It’s really good to see that trust in is high, and that’s true in America and around the world, but misinformation threatens scientific credibility,” Jayshree Seth, 3M’s corporate scientist and chief science advocate, said in an interview. “It’s not simply a matter of communicating facts, data and evidence. We need to build that relationship with the public.”

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The official start of Atlantic Hurricane Season is less than six weeks away, and forecasters will be getting an essential upgrade just in time for the season to begin.

New technology from the University of Wisconsin will help with preparation of more detailed forecasts and provide more reliable information to meteorologists and emergency planners, which should ultimately result in better, safer outcomes for public safety.

The Advanced Dvorak Technique (ADT) is a satellite-based method for determining tropical cyclone intensity. Planned upgrades include the use of full-resolution images from weather satellites, better identification of the location of each storm’s eye and the ability to better analyze hurricanes occurring outside tropical regions.

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Please welcome a second posting here at 21st Century Tech Blog, from Katie Brenneman. Katie’s previous contribution looked at how individuals can practice sustainability to mitigate the threat of climate change. Her many interests include writing on lifestyle, mental health, and sustainability. You can follow her on Twitter.

In this contribution, Katie has chosen a timely topic: the increasing consumer interest in electric vehicles (EVs). The recent stratospheric rise in gasoline and diesel prices because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made EVs far more attractive. That plus more announcements about new EV models, i.e., The Ford Lightning (an EV version of the F-150) may prove to be the moment when North Americans begin a rapid move away from fossil-fuel-powered vehicles?

As fuel prices continue to rise around the world, many consumers are taking another look at EVs as a potential solution for their transportation needs. This follows historical trends that show whenever there is a spike in gas and diesel costs it is accompanied by an increase in EV sales. Online searches for EVs continue to double with many in the renewable energy sector wondering if this is the watershed moment that will finally move us to take zero-emission actions seriously.

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