Lifeboat Foundation

The U.S.-based facility hopes to capture CO₂, roughly the equivalent of 5 million return flights between London and New York annually.

A U.S. climate tech company has developed a project that could remove millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually.

CarbonCapture Inc. has revealed plans for the largest carbon capture facility in the world in Wyoming, in an exclusive partnership with premier carbon storage company Frontier Carbon Solutions, according to a press release published by Business Wire last week.

The steel structures will be fabricated at Westcon’s shipyard in Florø and then transported to Dommersnes Industrial Area for complete assembly and testing. The complete turbine is then towed to Bokn, where it will be installed.

SeaTwirl has been around for a while now. In July 2015, the company first deployed its prototype named S1 off the coast of Lysekil in Sweden. The S1 is a small, 30-kW test version of its floating turbine technology. Rising 13 meters above the waterline and reaching down 18 meters below, it offers energy-producing companies an attractive test platform for offshore wind power and an alternative to diesel generators in remote areas that are off-grid or prone to power outages. It’s been connected to the grid and tested according to plan since its deployment. S1 has withstood harsh weather conditions, autumn and winter storms reaching hurricane wind speeds.

Continue reading “SeaTwirl to install 1 MW floating vertical-axis wind turbine in Norway” »

Underwater robots that peered under Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier, nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier,” saw that its doom may come sooner than expected with an extreme spike in ice loss. A detailed map of the seafloor surrounding the icy behemoth has revealed that the glacier underwent periods of rapid retreat within the last few centuries, which could be triggered again through melt driven by climate change.

Thwaites Glacier is a massive chunk of ice — around the same size as the state of Florida in the U.S. or the entirety of the United Kingdom — that is slowly melting into the ocean off West Antarctica (opens in new tab). The glacier gets its ominous nickname because of the “spine-chilling” implications of its total liquidation, which could raise global sea levels between 3 and 10 feet (0.9 and 3 meters), researchers said in a statement (opens in new tab). Due to climate change, the enormous frozen mass is retreating twice as fast as it was 30 years ago and is losing around 50 billion tons (45 billion metric tons) of ice annually, according to the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration (opens in new tab).

The Thwaites Glacier extends well below the ocean’s surface and is held in place by jagged points on the seafloor that slow the glacier’s slide into the water. Sections of seafloor that grab hold of a glacier’s underbelly are known as “grounding points,” and play a key role in how quickly a glacier can retreat.

Continue reading “‘Doomsday Glacier’ is teetering even closer to disaster than scientists thought, new seafloor map shows” »

For the first time, volcanologists reveal to IE real-time observations of the deepest parts of a volcanic system.

Scientists from the University of Iceland and the Icelandic Meteorological Office, Reykjavik, have presented unexpected observations of seismic activity and magma movements before and during the 2021 Fagradalsfjall volcanic eruption, according to a pair of papers published in Nature.

The insights could provide a boost in understanding the processes that drove the unusually ‘silent’ eruption and for future monitoring of volcanic activity. This is critical for creating warnings to prevent loss of life and damage to infrastructure. Beboy_ltd.

Continue reading “Slowing of continental shift could be the cause of major volcanic extinction events” »

The new district will create over 4,000 jobs.

Architectural practice URB has been commissioned to engineer the world’s largest Urban Tech District along the Al Jaddaf Creekside in Dubai. “Rising population, urbanization and impacts of climate change are increasing the need for cities to be resilient, liveable and smart. Thus the creation of sustainable cities is no longer a choice, it has become a necessity. This requires planners with experience in designing and delivering sustainable communities,” says URB on its website.

The new construction will join the global transition towards achieving net-zero carbon goals and become home to top-tier entrepreneurs, establishing Dubai as an urban center for innovation and empowering a unique tech ecosystem to unfold in the emirate and across the world. It will also feature several commercial and educational facilities. population, urbanization and impacts of climate change are increasing the need for cities to be resilient, liveable and smart. Thus the creation of sustainable cities is no longer a choice, it has become a necessity. This requires planners with experience in designing and delivering sustainable communities, says URB on its website.

Continue reading “Dubai will be home to the world’s largest net-zero carbon urban tech district” »

Even in the driest climates, though, there is a considerable amount of moisture in the air. The researchers note that even in places like the Sahel desert, relative humidity is still around 20 percent on average. So they set about finding a way to use this untapped water resource to produce hydrogen.

Their device consists of a water harvesting unit that houses a sponge soaked in a water-absorbing liquid that can pull moisture from the air. On either side of this reservoir are electrodes that can be powered by any renewable energy source. When a current runs through the circuit, the water is split via electrolysis into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen atoms, which can then be collected as gas.

The team showed that the device could run efficiently for 12 consecutive days and produced hydrogen with 99 percent purity. What’s more, the device continues to work in relative humidity as low as four percent.

Continue reading “Scientists Just Made Hydrogen Fuel With Nothing But Air and Solar Power” »

Scientists have shed new light on the timing and likely cause of major volcanic events that occurred millions of years ago and caused such climatic and biological upheaval that they drove some of the most devastating extinction events in Earth’s history.

Surprisingly, the new research, published today in Science Advances, suggests a slowing of continental plate movement was the critical event that enabled magma to rise to the Earth’s surface and deliver the devastating knock-on impacts.

Earth’s history has been marked by major volcanic events, called large igneous provinces (LIPs)—the largest of which have caused major increases in atmospheric carbon emissions that warmed Earth’s climate, drove unprecedented changes to ecosystems, and resulted in mass extinctions on land and in the oceans.

Water is the one thing all life on Earth needs, and the cycle of rain to river to ocean to rain is an essential part of what keeps our planet’s climate stable and hospitable. When scientists talk about where to search for signs of life throughout the galaxy, planets with water are always at the top of the list.

A new study published in Science suggests that many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought—as much as half water and half rock. The catch? All that water is probably embedded in the rock, rather than flowing as oceans or rivers on the surface.

“It was a surprise to see evidence for so many water worlds orbiting the most common type of star in the galaxy,” said Rafael Luque, first author on the new paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. “It has enormous consequences for the search for habitable planets.”