Lifeboat Foundation

Turntide’s basic innovation is a software-controlled motor, or switch reluctance motor, that uses precise pulses of energy instead of a constant flow of electricity.

Sometimes the smallest innovations can have the biggest impacts on the world’s efforts to stop global climate change. Arguably, one of the biggest contributors in the fight against climate change to date has been the switch to the humble LED light, which has slashed hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions simply by reducing energy consumption in buildings.

And now firms backed by Robert Downey Jr. and Bill Gates are joining investors like Amazon and iPod inventor Tony Fadell to pour money into a company called Turntide Technologies that believes it has the next great innovation in the world’s efforts to slow global climate change — a better electric motor.

Continue reading “Firms backed by Robert Downey Jr. and Bill Gates have funded an electric motor company that slashes energy consumption” »

Unfounded fears about nuclear technology may be undercutting the fight against climate change.

Nuclear power could be a big help in the fight against climate change. Learn why more environmentalists are starting to endorse it.

Amid population growth and a changing climate, we meet the food producers doing more with less.

Check out VICE News for more: http://vicenews.com.

Continue reading “Visiting the Farm of the Future” »

“Genius Makers” and “Futureproof,” both by experienced technology reporters now at The New York Times, are part of a rapidly growing literature attempting to make sense of the A.I. hurricane we are living through. These are very different kinds of books — Cade Metz’s is mainly reportorial, about how we got here; Kevin Roose’s is a casual-toned but carefully constructed set of guidelines about where individuals and societies should go next. But each valuably suggests a framework for the right questions to ask now about A.I. and its use.

Two new books — “Genius Makers,” by Cade Metz, and “Futureproof,” by Kevin Roose — examine how artificial intelligence will change humanity.

A new type of rock created during large and exceptionally hot volcanic eruptions has been discovered beneath the Pacific Ocean.

An international team of researchers including the University of Leeds unearthed the previously unknown form of basalt after drilling through the Pacific ocean floor.

The discovery suggests that ocean floor eruptions sourced in the Earth’s mantle were even hotter and more voluminous than previously thought. Report co-author is Dr Ivan Savov, of Leeds’ Institute of Geophysics and Tectonics, in the university’s School of Earth and Environment.

1.2 billion pixel panorama of Mars by Curiosity rover at Sol 3060 (March 152021)

🎬 360VR video 8K: 🔎 360VR photo 85K: http://bit.ly/sol3060

Continue reading “Mars 360: 1.2 billion pixel panorama of Mars — Sol 3060 (360video 8K)” »

As artificial intelligence models grow larger and consume more energy, experts have begun to worry about their impact on Earth’s climate.

Circa 2014

Better we rely on death-proof drones than human tornado-chasers.

“The most spectacular result is the presence of strong jets, with speeds of up to 400 meters per second, which are located under the aurorae near the poles,” says Cavalié. These wind speeds, equivalent to about 1450 kilometers an hour, are more than twice the maximum storm speeds reached in Jupiter’s Great Red Spot and over three times the wind speed measured on Earth’s strongest tornadoes.

“Our detection indicates that these jets could behave like a giant vortex with a diameter of up to four times that of Earth, and some 900 kilometers in height,” explains co-author Bilal Benmahi, also of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux. “A vortex of this size would be a unique meteorological beast in our Solar System,” Cavalié adds.