More than half the world's food production will be at risk of failure within the next 25 years as a rapidly accelerating water crisis grips the planet, unless urgent action is taken to conserve water resources and end the destruction of the ecosystems on which our fresh water depends, experts have warned in a landmark review. From a report: Half the world's population already faces water scarcity, and that number is set to rise as the climate crisis worsens, according to a report from the Global Commission on the Economics of Water published on Thursday.

Demand for fresh water will outstrip supply by 40% by the end of the decade, because the world's water systems are being put under "unprecedented stress," the report found. The commission found that governments and experts have vastly underestimated the amount of water needed for people to have decent lives. While 50 to 100 litres a day are required for each person's health and hygiene, in fact people require about 4,000 litres a day in order to have adequate nutrition and a dignified life. For most regions, that volume cannot be achieved locally, so people are dependent on trade -- in food, clothing and consumer goods -- to meet their needs.

Some countries benefit more than others from "green water," which is soil moisture that is necessary for food production, as opposed to "blue water" from rivers and lakes. The report found that water moves around the world in "atmospheric rivers" which transport moisture from one region to another.

The University of Toronto is constructing a 14-story building using mass timber, one of the largest and most recent projects to employ this innovative building technology. "Mass timber is an appealing alternative to energy-intensive concrete and steel, which together account for almost 15 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions," reports Knowable Magazine. "Though experts are still debating mass timber's role in fighting climate change, many are betting it's better for the environment than current approaches to construction. It relies on wood, after all, a renewable resource." From the report: Today, the tallest mass timber building is the 25-story Ascent skyscraper in Milwaukee, completed in 2022. As of that year, there were 84 mass timber buildings eight stories or higher either built or under construction worldwide, with another 55 proposed. Seventy percent of the existing and future buildings were in Europe, about 20 percent in North America and the rest in Australia and Asia, according to a report (PDF) from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. When you include smaller buildings, at least 1,700 mass timber buildings had been constructed in the United States alone as of 2023. [...]

In principle, mass timber is like plywood but on a much larger scale: The smaller pieces are layered and glued together under pressure in large specialized presses. Today, beams up to 50 meters long, usually made of what's called glue-laminated timber, or glulam, can replace steel elements. Panels up to 50 centimeters thick, typically cross-laminated timber, or CLT, replace concrete for walls and floors. These wood composites can be surprisingly strong -- stronger than steel by weight. But a mass timber element must be bulkier to achieve that same strength. As a building gets higher, the wooden supports must get thicker; at some point, they simply take up too much space. So for taller mass timber buildings, including the Ascent skyscraper, architects often turn to a combination of wood, steel and concrete.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: There's a valley in rural southwest Utah that's become a hub for renewable energy. Dozens of tall white wind turbines whoosh up in the sky. A sea of solar panels glistens in the distance. But the new kid on the block is mostly hidden underground. From the surface, Fervo Energy's Cape Station looks more or less like an oil derrick, with a thin metal tower rising above the sagebrush steppe. But this $2 billion geothermal project, which broke ground last year, is not drilling for gas. It's drilling for underground heat that CEO Tim Latimer believes holds the key to generating carbon-free power -- lots of it.

"Just these three well pads alone will produce 100 megawatts of electricity. Around-the-clock, 24/7 electricity," he said. Latimer stood overlooking the project, which is currently under construction, on one of the drill rig's metal platforms 40 feet off the ground. This well is one of the 24 Fervo is in the process of completing at Cape Station to harness the Earth's natural heat and generate electricity. This isn't the type of geothermal that's already active in volcanic hot spots like Iceland or The Geysers project in California. It's called an enhanced geothermal system. Cold water goes down into a well that curves like a hockey stick as it reaches more than 13,000 feet underground. Then the water squeezes through cracks in 400-degree rock. The water heats up and returns to the surface through a second well that runs parallel to the first. That creates steam that turns turbines to produce electricity, and the water gets sent back underground in a closed loop.

This horizontal well technique has been pioneered at a $300 million federal research project called Utah FORGE located in this same valley, which has paved the way for private companies to take the tech and run with it. Recent innovations like better drill bits -- made with synthetic diamonds to eat through hard subterranean granite -- have helped Fervo drill its latest well in a quarter of the time that it took just a couple of years ago. That efficiency has meant an 80% drop in drilling costs, Latimer said. Last year, Fervo's pilot project in Nevada used similar techniques to begin sending electricity to a Google data center. And the company's early tests at Cape Station in Utah show the new project can produce power at triple the rate of its Nevada pilot. "This is now a proven tech. That's not a statement you could have made two or three years ago," Latimer said. "Now, it just comes down to how do we get more of these megawatts on the grid so we have a bigger impact?" The report notes that Fervo signed a landmark deal with Southern California Edison, one of the country's largest electric utilities with 15 million customers. "It will send the first 70 megawatts of geothermal juice to the grid in 2026," reports NPR. "By the time the project is fully completed in 2028, this Utah plant will deliver 320 megawatts total -- enough to power 350,000 homes. The project's full output will be 400 megawatts."

The number of sites identified as potentially having been polluted with banned cancer-causing "forever chemicals" in England is on the rise, and the Environment Agency (EA) says it does not have the budget to deal with them. From a report: A former RAF airfield in Cambridgeshire and a fire service college in the Cotswolds have joined a chemicals plant in Lancashire and a fire protection equipment supplier in North Yorkshire on the agency's list of "problem sites" for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). In total, according to a report compiled for the agency, there could be more than 10,000 locations in England contaminated with PFAS -- substances that have been linked to a wide range of diseases including cancers, and which do not break down in the environment, earning them the nickname "forever chemicals." But to date the agency is only taking action on four sites.

[...] In an email sent to Defra in May, the agency says there are "funding pressures this year to take on all the inspection work we have been asked to do" relating to "PFAS and the two new potential site inspection requests we have accepted for AGC and Duxford." "These are the first requests we have had for many years and the very high cost of analysing for PFAS is beginning to get frightening,â the agency wrote. The "ballpark estimate of costs to carry out ... investigations on four PFAS problem sites ... has just come out at between $2.3m-$3.5m. We aren't planning to spend anything like [that], certainly not immediately but it does put the total value of our contaminated land budget of $392k plus $262k from [the chemicals funding stream] into context."

The Earth's natural carbon sinks -- oceans, forests, and soils -- are increasingly struggling to absorb human carbon emissions as global temperatures rise, raising concerns that achieving net-zero targets may become impossible. "In 2023, the hottest year ever recorded, preliminary findings by an international team of researchers show the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed," reports The Guardian. "The final result was that forest, plants and soil -- as a net category -- absorbed almost no carbon." The Guardian reports: The 2023 breakdown of the land carbon sink could be temporary: without the pressures of drought or wildfires, land would return to absorbing carbon again. But it demonstrates the fragility of these ecosystems, with massive implications for the climate crisis. Reaching net zero is impossible without nature. In the absence of technology that can remove atmospheric carbon on a large scale, the Earth's vast forests, grasslands, peat bogs and oceans are the only option for absorbing human carbon pollution, which reached a record 37.4bn tonnes in 2023.

At least 118 countries are relying on the land to meet national climate targets. But rising temperatures, increased extreme weather and droughts are pushing the ecosystems into uncharted territory. The kind of rapid land sink collapse seen in 2023 has not been factored into most climate models. If it continues, it raises the prospect of rapid global heating beyond what those models have predicted. "We're seeing cracks in the resilience of the Earth's systems. We're seeing massive cracks on land -- terrestrial ecosystems are losing their carbon store and carbon uptake capacity, but the oceans are also showing signs of instability," Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told an event at New York Climate Week in September.

"Nature has so far balanced our abuse. This is coming to an end."

NASA's Europa Clipper mission lifted off successfully on Monday, marking the agency's first mission to Jupiter in over a decade. The $5.2 billion spacecraft aims to investigate whether Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, could harbor conditions suitable for life. A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launched from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 12:06 p.m. Eastern time, lifting the Europa Clipper spacecraft into orbit around Earth.

Europa Clipper, NASA's largest-ever interplanetary craft, weighs 12,500 pounds and boasts solar panels spanning 100 feet. Its nine scientific instruments will study Europa's surface and interior in unprecedented detail. After a 1.8 billion-mile journey, the spacecraft will reach Jupiter in April 2030. It will then conduct 49 flybys of Europa over four years, coming within 16 miles of the moon's surface.

Scientists believe Europa's subsurface ocean could contain twice as much water as Earth's oceans. The mission will measure ocean depth, analyze surface compounds, and map Europa's magnetic field to gather clues about its internal composition. Instruments will search for warm spots indicating thin ice, potential cryovolcanoes, and plumes of water vapor. The spacecraft will also attempt to identify carbon-based molecules that could serve as building blocks for life. "Europa is certainly the most likely place for life beyond Earth in our solar system," Robert Pappalardo, Europa Clipper project scientist, told the New York Times.

Bobby Renfro spent $1,200 to buy a gas-powered electricity generator for a community resource hub he set up in a former church near hurricane-struck Asheville, North Carolina. He's spending thousands more on fuel, reports the Associated Press — though he's just one of many. Right now over 500,000 people are without power in Florida, according to the PowerOutage.us project — with more than 9,000 in Georgia, and over 17,000 in North Carolina" Without it, they can't keep medicines cold or power medical equipment or pump well water. They can't recharge their phones or apply for federal disaster aid... Residents who can get their hands on gas and diesel-powered generators are depending on them, but that is not easy. Fuel is expensive and can be a long drive away. Generator fumes pollute and can be deadly. Small home generators are designed to run for hours or days, not weeks and months.

Now, more help is arriving. Renfro received a new power source this week, one that will be cleaner, quieter and free to operate. Volunteers with the nonprofit Footprint Project and a local solar installation company delivered a solar generator with six 245-watt solar panels, a 24-volt battery and an AC power inverter. The panels now rest on a grassy hill outside the community building. Renfro hopes his community can draw some comfort and security, "seeing and knowing that they have a little electricity." The Footprint Project is scaling up its response to this disaster with sustainable mobile infrastructure. It has deployed dozens of larger solar microgrids, solar generators and machines that can pull water from the air to 33 sites so far, along with dozens of smaller portable batteries.

With donations from solar equipment and installation companies as well as equipment purchased through donated funds, the nonprofit is sourcing hundreds more small batteries and dozens of other larger systems and even industrial-scale solar generators known as "Dragon Wings."

To avoid overloading local electric grids, Britain's most productive windfarm "is paid to turn off," reports the Guardian — and across the industry these so-called "constraint payments" amount to billions every year.

"Government officials are hoping to correct the clear inefficiencies in the market by overhauling the market itself." Greg Jackson, the founder of Octopus Energy, told the Guardian: "It's grotesque that energy costs are rising again this winter, whilst we literally pay windfarms these extortionate prices not to generate. Locational pricing would instead mean that local people got cheap power when it's windy. Scotland would have the cheapest power in Europe, instead of among the most expensive, and every region would be cheaper than today. Companies would invest in infrastructure where we need it — not where they get the highest subsidies."

The changes could catalyse an economic osmosis of high energy users — such as datacentres and factories — into areas of the country with low energy prices, creating new job opportunities beyond the south-east. It could also spur the development of new energy projects — particularly rooftop solar — across buildings in urban areas where energy demand is high. This rebalancing of the energy market could save the UK nearly £49bn in accumulated network costs by 2040, according to a study commissioned by the energy regulator from FTI Consulting.

But others fear the changes could come at a deeper cost to Britain's climate goals — and bill payers too. The clean energy companies preparing to spend billions on building new wind and solar farms are concerned that a redrawing of the market boundaries could radically change the economics of new renewable energy projects — which would ultimately raise the costs, which would be passed on to consumers, or see the projects scrapped altogether... With stiff competition in the international markets for investment in clean energy, Renewable UK [the industry's trade group] fears that companies and their investors will simply choose to build new clean energy projects elsewhere.
"The debate has driven deep rifts across the industry," the article concludes, "between modernisers who believe the new price signals would give rise to a new, rational market and those who fear the changes risk unravelling Britain's low-carbon agenda...

"The government is expected to make a decision on how to proceed in the coming months, but the fierce debate between warring factions of the energy industry is likely to continue for far longer."

Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo for sharing the news.

Zambia has the largest man-made lake in the world, reports the Associated Press — but a severe drought has left the lake's 128-meter-high (420-feet) dam wall "almost completely exposed". This leaves Kariba dam without enough water to run most of its hydroelectric turbines — meaning millions of people in Zambia now face "a climate-induced energy crisis..." The water level is so low that only one of the six turbines on Zambia's side of the dam is able to operate, cutting generation to less than 10% of normal output. Zambia relies on the dam for more than 80% of its national electricity supply, and the result is Zambians have barely a few hours of power a day at the best of times. Often, areas are going without electricity for days... The power crisis is a bigger blow to the economy and the battle against poverty than the lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Zambia Association of Manufacturers president Ashu Sagar.

Africa contributes the least to global warming but is the most vulnerable continent to extreme weather events and climate change as poor countries can't meet the high financials costs of adapting. This year's drought in southern Africa is the worst in decades and has parched crops and left millions hungry, causing Zambia and others to already declare national disasters and ask for aid...

Zambia is not alone in that hydroelectric power makes up over 80% of the energy mix in Mozambique, Malawi, Uganda, Ethiopia and Congo, even as experts warn it will become more unreliable. "Extreme weather patterns, including prolonged droughts, make it clear that overreliance on hydro is no longer sustainable," said Carlos Lopes, a professor at the Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
While the lake's water level normally rises six meters after it rains, "It moved by less than 30 centimeters after the last rainy season barely materialized, authorities said...

"Experts say there's also no guarantee those rains will come and it's dangerous to rely on a changing climate given Zambia has had drought-induced power problems before, and the trend is they are getting worse."

Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched its Starship rocket on its fifth test flight. But more importantly, CNBC points out, SpaceX "made a dramatic first catch of the rocket's more than 20-story tall booster."

Watch the footage here. It's pretty exciting... The achievement marks a major milestone toward SpaceX's goal of making Starship a fully reusable rocket system... The rocket's "Super Heavy" booster returned to land on the arms of the company's launch tower nearly seven minutes after launch.

"Are you kidding me?" SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot said on the company's webcast. "What we just saw, that looked like magic," Huot added...

Starship separated and continued on to space, traveling halfway around the Earth before reentering the atmosphere and splashing down in the Indian Ocean as intended to complete the test. There were no people on board the fifth Starship flight. The company's leadership has said SpaceX expects to fly hundreds of Starship missions before the rocket launches with any crew...

With the booster catch, SpaceX has surpassed the fourth test flight's milestones... The company sees the ambitious catch approach as critical to its goal of making the rocket fully reusable. "SpaceX engineers have spent years preparing and months testing for the booster catch attempt, with technicians pouring tens of thousands of hours into building the infrastructure to maximize our chances for success," the company wrote on its website.

NASA confirmed that it's working with international partners and standards organizations to create a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) for future lunar exploration. This time standard will account for relativity and be scalable for other celestial bodies, supporting long-term missions like Artemis and commercial space activities. From the report: The lunar time will be determined by a weighted average of atomic clocks at the Moon, similar to how scientists calculate Earth's globally recognized Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Exactly where at the Moon is still to be determined, since current analysis indicates that atomic clocks placed at the Moon's surface will appear to 'tick' faster by microseconds per day. A microsecond is one millionth of a second. NASA and its partners are currently researching which mathematical models will be best for establishing a lunar time.

To put these numbers into perspective, a hummingbird's wings flap about 50 times per second. Each flap is about .02 seconds, or 20,000 microseconds. So, while 56 microseconds may seem miniscule, when discussing distances in space, tiny bits of time add up. "For something traveling at the speed of light, 56 microseconds is enough time to travel the distance of approximately 168 football fields," said Cheryl Gramling, lead on lunar position, navigation, timing, and standards at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "If someone is orbiting the Moon, an observer on Earth who isn't compensating for the effects of relativity over a day would think that the orbiting astronaut is approximately 168 football fields away from where the astronaut really is."

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt urged prioritizing AI infrastructure over climate goals at a Washington AI summit this week. Schmidt, who led Google until 2011, argued that AI's rapid growth will outpace environmental mitigation efforts. "We're not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we're not organized to do it," Schmidt told attendees, addressing concerns about AI's surging energy demands.

Data centers powering AI are projected to consume 35 gigawatts annually by 2030, up from 17 gigawatts in 2023, according to McKinsey. Schmidt, now heading AI drone company White Stork, suggested AI could ultimately solve climate issues, stating, "I'd rather bet on AI solving the problem than constraining it."

In a rare disclosure, the U.S. Space Force announced that its secretive X-37B spaceplane will execute a series of maneuvers before returning back to Earth. SpaceNews reports: The reusable spacecraft, which has been in orbit since December 28, 2023, will perform aerobraking maneuvers to alter its trajectory around Earth, the Space Force said Oct. 10. This technique involves making multiple passes through the planet's upper atmosphere, using atmospheric drag to modify the vehicle's orbit while conserving fuel. These maneuvers also are intended to showcase responsible space operations, the Space Force said. The aerobraking enables the spaceplane to change orbits and comply with space debris mitigation rules by safely discarding the service module.

The X-37B, manufactured by Boeing, is jointly operated by the U.S. Space Force and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office. Since its launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the spaceplane has been conducting radiation effect experiments and testing space domain awareness technologies in a highly elliptical orbit. [...] After completing its aerobraking maneuvers, the X-37B will resume its testing and experimentation objectives. Once these are accomplished, the vehicle will de-orbit and return to Earth, utilizing its autonomous landing system to touch down horizontally like a conventional aircraft. The Space Force has not disclosed the expected duration of the current mission.

At Tesla's "We, Robot" event at Warner Bros. Studios tonight, Elon Musk unveiled the Tesla Cybercab, Robovan, and an updated version of the Optimus robot. Slashdot is at the event capturing photos and getting demos of everything announced. You can follow along on X. Below is a summary of each of the offerings.

Tesla Cybercab: The Tesla Cybercab is a futuristic, fully autonomous robotaxi designed without a steering wheel or pedals, positioned to revolutionize mass transit with extremely low operating costs. It features a sleek design with upward-opening butterfly doors and a compact cabin that seats two passengers. Musk said the Cybercab uses inductive charging instead of a traditional plug-in. "Something we're also doing is and it's really high time we did this is inductive charging. So the robotaxi has no plug it just goes over the inductive charger and charges so yeah, it's kind of how it should be." The vehicle is expected to cost under $30,000. Regulatory approval will be needed before it can go into production, which is projected to begin by 2026 or 2027. Tesla Robovan: The Tesla Robovan is a dustbuster-shaped electric passenger van featuring sliding glass doors, a bright interior, and carriage-style seating for up to 20 passengers. "One of the things we want to do and we've seen this with the CyberTruck is we want to change the look of the roads the future should look like the future," said Musk. Musk also claimed that autonomy will "turn parking lots into parks," as fewer cars will be needed and they won't sit idle for most of the day. Pricing and release details were not disclosed. Tesla Optimus: The updated Tesla Optimus robot is a humanoid designed to handle everyday tasks, such as retrieving packages or serving drinks. Optimus walked on stage and interacted with attendees, though its current capabilities are still limited. Elon Musk envisions the robot as a transformative product, with plans to produce millions of units at a price of around $20,000. "It'll be able to do anything you want. So it can be a teacher, babysit your kids, it can walk your dog, mow your lawn, get the groceries, just be your friend, serve drinks. Whatever you can think of, it will do." Optimus is expected to start performing useful tasks by the end of the year, with broader availability projected by the end of next year. In closing, Musk said: "I think this will be the biggest product ever of any kind. Because I think everyone of the 8 billion people of Earth, I think everyone's going to want their Optimus buddy." Developing...

Any breach of what climate scientists agree is the safer limit on global warming would result in "irreversible consequences" for the planet, said a major academic study published on Wednesday. From a eport: Even temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius before bringing temperatures back down -- a scenario known as an "overshoot" -- could cause sea level rises and other disastrous repercussions that might last millenia. This "does away with the notion that overshoot delivers a similar climate outcome" to a future where more was done earlier to curb global warming, said Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, who led the study co-authored by 30 scientists.

The findings, three years in the making, are urgent, as the goal of capping global temperature rises at 1.5C above pre-industrial levels is slipping out of reach. Emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases must nearly halve by 2030 if the world is to reach 1.5C -- the more ambitious target enshrined in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Wikipedia's "Timeline of the Far Future" is one of my favorite webpages from the internet's pre-slop era. A Londoner named Nick Webb created it on the morning of December 22, 2010. "Certain events in the future of the universe can be predicted with a comfortable level of accuracy," he wrote at the top of the page. He then proposed a chronological list of 33 such events, beginning with the joining of Asia and Australia 40 million years from now. He noted that around this same time, Mars's moon Phobos would complete its slow death spiral into the red planet's surface. A community of 1,533 editors have since expanded the timeline to 160 events, including the heat death of the universe. I like to imagine these people on laptops in living rooms and cafes across the world, compiling obscure bits of speculative science into a secular Book of Revelation.

Like the best sci-fi world building, the Timeline of the Far Future can give you a key bump of the sublime. It reminds you that even the sturdiest-seeming features of our world are ephemeral, that in 1,100 years, Earth's axis will point to a new North Star. In 250,000 years, an undersea volcano will pop up in the Pacific, adding an extra island to Hawaii. In the 1 million years that the Great Pyramid will take to erode, the sun will travel only about 1/200th of its orbit around the Milky Way, but in doing so, it will move into a new field of stars. Our current constellations will go all wobbly in the sky and then vanish.

Some aspects of the timeline are more certain than others. We know that most animals will look different 10 million years from now. We know that the continents will slowly drift together to form a new Pangaea. Africa will slam into Eurasia, sealing off the Mediterranean basin and raising a new Himalaya-like range across France, Italy, and Spain. In 400 million years, Saturn will have lost its rings. Earth will have replenished its fossil fuels. Our planet will also likely have sustained at least one mass-extinction-triggering impact, unless its inhabitants have learned to divert asteroids.

The Hera spacecraft, launched by the European Space Agency on Monday, is on a mission to study the aftermath of NASA's 2022 test that successfully knocked the Dimorphos asteroid off course by intentionally crashing a probe into it. It's scheduled to arrive in December 2026. The BBC reports: The Hera craft launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 10:52 local time (15:52BST) on Monday. [...] The Hera mission, which is run by the European Space Agency, is a follow-on from Nasa's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) project. Dimorphos is a small moon 160m-wide that orbits an asteroid close to Earth called Didymos in something called a binary asteroid system. In 2022 Nasa said it successfully changed Dimorphos's course by crashing a probe into it. It altered the rock's path by a few meters, according to Nasa's scientists. The asteroid was not on course to hit Earth, but it was a test to see whether space agencies could do it when there is genuine risk. When it arrives in two years, the Hera craft will look at the size and depth of the impact crater created on Dimorphos. Two cube-shaped probes will also study the make-up of the asteroid and its mass.

This week the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed charges over a "scheme to commit fraud" in carbon markets, which they say fraudulently netted one company "tens of millions of dollars" worth of credits — which led to "securing an investment of over $100 million."

MarketWatch reports: Ken Newcombe had spent years building a program to distribute more environmentally friendly cookstoves for free to rural communities in Africa and Southeast Asia. The benefit for his company, C-Quest Capital, would be the carbon credits it would receive in exchange for reducing the amount of fuel people burned in order to cook food — credits the company could then sell for a profit to big oil companies like BP.

But when Newcombe tried to ramp up the program, federal prosecutors said in an indictment made public Wednesday, he quickly realized that the stoves wouldn't deliver the emissions savings he had promised investors. Rather than admit his mistake, he and his partners cooked the books instead, prosecutors said... That allowed them to obtain carbon credits worth tens of millions of dollars that they didn't deserve, prosecutors said. On the basis of the fraudulently gained credits, prosecutors said, C-Quest was able to secure $250 million in funding from an outside investor.

"The alleged actions of the defendants and their co-conspirators risked undermining the integrity of [the global market for carbon credits], which is an important part of the fight against climate change," said Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
From announced by the U.S. Attorney's Office: U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said... "The alleged actions of the defendants and their co-conspirators risked undermining the integrity of that market, which is an important part of the fight against climate change. Protecting the sanctity and integrity of the financial markets continues to be a cornerstone initiative for this Office, and we will continue to be vigilant in rooting out fraud in the market for carbon credits...."

While most carbon credits are created through, and trade in compliance markets, there is also a voluntary carbon market. Voluntary markets revolve around companies and entities that voluntarily set goals to reduce or offset their carbon emissions, often to align with goals from employees or shareholders. In voluntary markets, the credits are issued by non-governmental organizations, using standards for measuring emission reductions that they develop based on input from market participants, rather than on mandates from governments. The non-governmental organizations issue voluntary carbon credits to project developers that run projects that reduce emissions or remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

CQC was a for-profit company that ran projects to generate carbon credits — including a type of credit known as a voluntary carbon unit ("VCU") — by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. CQC profited by selling VCUs it obtained, often to companies seeking to offset the impact of greenhouse gases they emit in the course of operating their businesses.
The company itself was not charged due to "voluntary and timely self-disclosure of misconduct," according to the announcement, along with "full and proactive cooperation, timely and appropriate remediation, and agreement to cancel or void certain voluntary carbon units.

The Washington Post on scientists who "discovered that bacteria commonly found in wastewater can break down plastic to turn it into a food source, a finding that researchers hope could be a promising answer to combat one of Earth's major pollution problems." In a study published Thursday in Environmental Science and Technology, scientists laid out their examination of Comamonas testosteroni, a bacteria that grows on polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, a plastic commonly found in single-use food packaging and water bottles. PET makes up about 12 percent of global solid waste and 90 million tons of the plastic produced each year... Unlike most other bacteria, which thrive on sugar, C. testosteroni has a more refined palate, including chemically complex materials from plants and plastics that take longer to decompose.

The researchers are the first to demonstrate not only that this bacteria can break down plastic, but they also illuminate exactly how they do it. Through six meticulous steps, involving complex imaging and gene editing techniques, the authors found that the bacteria first physically break down plastic by chewing it into smaller pieces. Then, they release enzymes — components of a cell that speed up chemical reactions — to chemically break down the plastic into a carbon-rich food source known as terephthalate...

The bacteria take a few months to break down chunks of plastic, according to Rebecca Wilkes [a lead author on the study and postdoctoral researcher at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory]. As a result, if the bacteria are going to be efficient tools, a lot of optimization needs to take place to speed up the rate at which they decompose pollutants. One approach is to promote bacterial growth by providing them with an additional food source, such as a chemical known as acetate.
A senior author on the study (and associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northwestern University) tells the Washington Post that "The machinery in environmental microbes is still a largely untapped potential for uncovering sustainable solutions we can exploit."

Days after a hurricane struck America's southeast, Florida's state's fire marshall "confirmed 16 lithium-ion battery fires related to storm surge," according to local news reports. "Officials said six of those fires are associated with electric vehicles and they are working with fire departments statewide to gather more data." (Earlier this year America's federal transportation safety agency estimated that after a 2022 hurricane "about 36 EVs caught on fire. In several instances, the fire erupted while the impacted EVs were being towed on their flatbed trailers.")

But Tuesday, when over 1 million Americans were without electricity, the Atlantic pointed out the other side of the story. "EV owners are using their cars to keep the lights on." When Hurricane Helene knocked out the power in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Friday, Dustin Baker, like many other people across the Southeast, turned to a backup power source. His just happened to be an electric pickup truck. Over the weekend, Baker ran extension cords from the back of his Ford F-150 Lightning, using the truck's battery to keep his refrigerator and freezer running. It worked so well that Baker became an energy Good Samaritan. "I ran another extension cord to my neighbor so they could run two refrigerators they have," he told me.

Americans in hurricane territory have long kept diesel-powered generators as a way of life, but electric cars are a leap forward. An EV, at its most fundamental level, is just a big battery on wheels that can be used to power anything, not only the car itself. Some EVs pack enough juice to power a whole home for several days, or a few appliances for even longer. In the aftermath of Helene, as millions of Americans were left without power, many EV owners did just that. A vet clinic that had lost power used an electric F-150 to keep its medicines cold and continue seeing patients during the blackout. One Tesla Cybertruck owner used his car to power his home after his entire neighborhood lost power.
One Louisiana man just ran cords straight from the outlets in the bed of his Tesla Cybertruck, according to the article. "We were able to run my internet router and TV, [plus] lamps, refrigerator, a window AC unit, and fans, as well as several phone, watch, and laptop chargers." Over the course of about 24 hours, he said, all of this activity ran his Cybertruck battery down from 99 percent to 80 percent...

Bidirectional charging may prove to be the secret weapon that sells electrification to the South, which has generally remained far behind the West and the Northeast in electric-vehicle purchases. If EVs become widely seen as the best option for blackouts, they could entice not just the climate conscious but also the suburban dads in hurricane country with a core belief in prepping for anything. It will take a lot to overcome the widespread distrust of EVs and anxiety about a new technology, but our loathing of power outages just might do the trick.
The article notes that Tesla has confirmed all its electric vehicles will support bidirectional charging by 2025.