Will Mining the Moon and Asteroids Be Worth the Trouble?
Kevin Hurler
Fri, September 8, 2023 

The new era of space exploration is opening entirely new possibilities, including the tantalizing prospect of mining for resources on the Moon and asteroids. Sounds exciting—and potentially very profitable—but the reality of the situation is that space mining is completely uncharted territory. Plenty of prospecting needs to be done first to determine if these resources are even economically worth being harvested in the first place.

In the next decade, NASA and its collaborators are turning their gaze back to the Moon. The agency is looking to land astronauts there in 2025 as part of the ongoing Artemis program; this would be the first time an astronaut has landed on the Moon since the final Apollo mission in 1972

Conceptual image of a future asteroid mining mission. 

Indeed, space is packed with resources that humans will need to survive while exploring and working in the dark void, and for our economies to flourish. The Moon hosts large reservoirs of water ice, which could be mined and used to make drinkable water, oxygen gas for settlements, or rocket fuel for launches off the lunar surface. There’s also helium-3, rare earth elements (REEs), and even the dusty regolith to consider. Asteroids too are concentrated sources of valuable elements like platinum, which could be harvested, shipped back to Earth, and sold to industries. At the same time, both public and private space sectors view living in space as a viable opportunity to advance humanity.

The plans for space mining are, for the time being, painted in broad strokes, as space agencies and companies began laying the initial groundwork. Mining the Moon or asteroids for resources could be a huge shortcut in advancing plans for long-term habitability in space since the cost to launch anything from Earth’s surface remains incredibly high.

Before any ground is broken, however, companies and government agencies will need to run an analysis of the costs associated with mining the various resources to determine if it’s economically viable to process these materials directly in space, or to transport those materials back to Earth. They may very well decide that it’s simply not worth it, at least for the time being. Harvesting these resources in the harsh environment of space could very well be a logistical nightmare that requires decades of proof-of-concept. Even so, there are decades of research and innovation that points to just how possible space mining may be, and it all began years ago with the planning for the Apollo missions.

Mining materials directly where we need it

“The very first meeting in which resources from the Moon were discussed seriously, not just at a science fiction level, was in November of 1962,” Angel Abbud-Madrid, director of the Space Resources Program at Colorado School of Mines, told Gizmodo on a phone call. NASA was planning for Apollo at the time, and realizing that its astronauts will need a steady supply of oxygen, the space agency considered extracting it directly from the lunar surface, he explained. “It didn’t happen because we were there for just a couple of days, or a couple of hours, but the realization that you need the resources in-situ (i.e. directly at the site itself) has been around that long because of the extremely high cost, and high energy to launch anything from Earth,” said Abbud-Madrid.

For NASA, the word “mining” doesn’t quite capture the full picture of harvesting and using resources in space, so the agency instead uses the all-encompassing phrase, “in-situ resource utilization,” or ISRU. This umbrella term not only describes the process of mining the lunar surface for materials and resources, but also the use of those raw materials to produce new products

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Conceptual image of an Artemis Moon mission.

Take, for example, ice. Lunar geologists have good reason to believe that reservoirs of water are ice tucked within soil in the Moon’s permanently shadowed regions. Those reservoirs are what NASA’s ill-fated Lunar Flashlight was set to map out. In a not too distant future, astronauts on the Moon could mine those reservoirs and melt the ice to top off their drinkable water supply. That water could also be chemically split on the Moon into oxygen and hydrogen, which could supply habitats and bases with breathable air or be used to synthesize rocket fuel and propellant.

“ISRU could mean mining something and bringing it back to Earth,” Ben Bussey, chief scientist at commercial lunar lander provider Intutive Machines, told Gizmodo during a phone chat. “But it could also mean things like building infrastructure that then makes it easier to do things on the Moon.”

Astronauts could also take ISRU one step further and strip metal out of the lunar soil to build infrastructure like habitats or launch equipment. Jerry Sanders, ISRU system capability lead at NASA’s Johnston Space Center, says lunar soil contains aluminum, iron, titanium, and silicon, and that those metals could then be processed out of the regolith, forged into purer forms, and used for construction. Regolith could also be a good source of oxygen, as the element is trapped within the soil’s silicate minerals.

“All the regolith has somewhere around 42% to 44% oxygen by mass,” Sanders explained during a phone call. “So when we talk about processing the regolith, you get a lot of oxygen.”

NASA is laying the groundwork

While astronauts aren’t going to be setting foot on the Moon until Artemis 3 launches in 2025, NASA already has early plans for ISRU operations. Sanders said that the Lunar Trailblazer satellite will continue the hunt for water ice on the Moon’s surface using an infrared spectrometer from orbit. Since infrared light is absorbed by water, scientists can use readings from the probe to potentially identify the size and distribution of these reservoirs of ice, much like Lunar Flashlight was supposed to do.

Meanwhile, NASA’s VIPER—Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover—mission will drill into the lunar surface to find and analyze water ice directly. Lunar Trailblazer and VIPER are scheduled to launch in early and late 2024, respectively. Once this initial prospecting work is done, in a few decades, ISRU operations will be much larger.

“That far out in the future, you will be looking at large scale operations. You will have machines that will be drilling, that will be excavating, and that will be transporting material to a certain plant,” Abbud-Madrid said. “Everybody is going to need power, communication, and transport, so you’re going to have all of that infrastructure there.”

While NASA is planning its own missions to explore the possibilities for ISRU, the agency is also trying to set an example that private space companies can follow. NASA has outsourced its work to private space contractors before—rockets from SpaceX deliver agency payloads to orbit and new spacesuits for the Artemis program are being designed by Axiom Space, for example. In those cases, NASA had developed some sort of engineering framework or jumping off point for space companies to follow, but ISRU is terra incognita, and Sanders says that the private space industry needs to determine if mining on the Moon is even logistically possible before companies jump on board
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Conceptual image of lunar habitat. Image: ESA/Foster + Partners

“Public-private partnerships and commercial involvement is becoming more and more important to succeeding and implementing [NASA’s] objectives,” Sanders said. “Before we can fully commercialize [ISRU], we need to basically help raise the whole technology portfolio such that NASA and the commercial industry feel comfortable enough to take on the job without going bankrupt.”

The prospect of mining asteroids

While the Moon’s surface could be a major source for water, oxygen, and more common metals like aluminum and iron, asteroids could be a source of precious elements. Platinum and nickel, for example, are concentrated in the core of metallic asteroids. As Abbud-Madrid explained, as an asteroid grows, its gravity increases, pulling these denser elements into it. Once mined, those metals could be shipped back to Earth to be sold to various industries. With that in mind, asteroids seem like a no-brainer for mining opportunities, but NASA doesn’t currently have any immediate plans to target them.

“We are currently focusing mostly on the Moon because it has the nearest term return on investment,” Sanders said.

Even though the public sector is focusing on the Moon, some private space companies are forgoing it in favor of asteroids. AstroForge is a California-based asteroid mining company that raised $13 million in funding in May 2022. The company has reportedly planned a method of mining asteroids anywhere from 66 to 4,920 feet (20 to 1,500 meters) in diameter by breaking them apart in space and collecting material, as opposed to landing on the rock and mining it directly.


Artist’s impression of metal-rich asteroid Psyche.

“Platinum-group metals are used across the board—they reduce vehicle emissions, they’re used in chemotherapy drugs, and every electronic device you have has a number of these elements,” AstroForge co-founder Matt Gialich told Gizmodo during a phone interview in May 2022. “The real dream here for us is to go and utilize deep space for resources.”

In January, AstroForge announced its two flights set for 2023. In April, AstroForge was expected to launch a spacecraft into orbit with a pre-loaded sample to serve as an asteroid simulant to demonstrate the company’s in-orbit extraction technology in a collaboration with OrbAstro. A spokesperson from AstroForge told Gizmodo in an email that the mission, called Brokkr-1, was “successfully launched, is alive, and is in a healthy state.” Another mission is currently scheduled for October 2023 which will see the company partner with OrbAstro, Intuitive Machines, and Dawn Aerospace to observe an asteroid target in deep space.

Is mining the moon and asteroids worth it?

So, will it all be worth it in the end? In short, probably—but there are a number of factors to consider.

Though the Moon boasts resources that can enable extended habitation, and asteroids teem with metals that are highly valued here on Earth, a space mining industry cannot thrive without a market for these commodities. A nation that is willing to purchase the oxygen processed from lunar regolith for its settlement on the Moon, for example, will drive the demand to mine more lunar regolith. At the same time, companies and agencies interested in space mining need to do a basic cost-benefit analysis of the resources they’re interested in. If they’re too difficult to obtain and too difficult to get to a customer, then the business case to mine those resources gets weaker.

“How things like prospecting and validation of a resource occurs on Earth, there’s a standard process to that. You need to find something, you need to find out if it is economically viable to extract it and use it,” Bussey said. “You can have a great source of something, but it could be too hard to get. I think that the same thing will be true on the Moon.”

Using lunar soil for rocket fuel and selling platinum harvested from an asteroid are fantastical images that feel too far-fetched to ever be feasible, but space mining—even on a small scale—is almost certain to happen in our lifetime.

Assuming that space miners decide a resource is economically viable enough, and that customers are willing to pay for it, the space mining industry can establish itself and expand. That expansion could fuel a completely secondary economy. The industry will need power, mining equipment, shipping logistics, and staff, all of which could be provided by other companies that are looking for their slice of the pie—the same way people tried to cash in on the California Gold Rush.

“Just like mining on Earth in the 1800s when people came to the west to look for gold and silver, there was also all this extraction,” Abbud-Marin said. “People sold shovels and picks and axes and made money out of the miners. Same thing there.”

Using lunar soil for rocket fuel and selling platinum harvested from an asteroid are fantastical images that feel too far-fetched to ever be feasible, but space mining—even on a small scale—is almost certain to happen in our lifetime. The science points to plenty of resources in our cosmic backyard that have strong financial incentives behind them, but the economics of space mining, for now, are yet to be fleshed out. Even still, civilizations have been living off the land since the dawn of humanity, and as we return to long-term space habitation and exploration, living off of the Moon and asteroids represents the next frontier.

Images: NASA

Gizmodo

 

NASA completes last OSIRIS-REx test before asteroid sample delivery

Reports and Proceedings

NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER

 

IMAGE: A TRAINING MODEL OF THE SAMPLE RETURN CAPSULE IS SEEN IS SEEN DURING A DROP TEST IN PREPARATION FOR THE RETRIEVAL OF THE SAMPLE RETURN CAPSULE FROM NASA'S OSIRIS-REX MISSION, WEDNESDAY, AUG. 30, 2023, AT THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE'S UTAH TEST AND TRAINING RANGE. THE SAMPLE WAS COLLECTED FROM ASTEROID BENNU IN OCTOBER 2020 BY NASA’S OSIRIS-REX SPACECRAFT AND WILL RETURN TO EARTH ON SEPTEMBER 24TH, LANDING UNDER PARACHUTE AT THE UTAH TEST AND TRAINING RANGE. view more 

CREDIT: CREDITS: NASA/KEEGAN BARBER

A team led by NASA in Utah’s West Desert is in the final stages of preparing for the arrival of the first U.S. asteroid sample – slated to land on Earth in September.

A mockup of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer) sample capsule was dropped Wednesday from an aircraft and landed at the drop zone at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range in the desert outside Salt Lake City. This was part of the mission’s final major test prior to arrival of the actual capsule on Sept. 24 with its sample of asteroid Bennu, collected in space almost three years ago.

 

“We are now mere weeks away from receiving a piece of solar system history on Earth, and this successful drop test ensures we’re ready,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “Pristine material from asteroid Bennu will help shed light on the formation of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, and perhaps even on how life on Earth began.”

 

This drop test follows a series of earlier rehearsals – capsule recovery, spacecraft engineering operations, and sample curation procedures – conducted earlier this spring and summer.

 

Now, with less than four weeks until the spacecraft’s arrival, the OSIRIS-REx team is nearing the end of rehearsals and ready for the actual delivery.

"I am immensely proud of the efforts our team has poured into this endeavor,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “Just as our meticulous planning and rehearsal prepared us to collect a sample from Bennu, we have honed our skills for sample recovery.”

 

The capsule is carrying an estimated 8.8 ounces of rocky material collected from the surface of the asteroid Bennu in 2020. Researchers will study the sample in the coming years to learn about how our planet and solar system formed, as well as the origin of organics that may have led to life on Earth.

 

The capsule will enter Earth’s atmosphere at 10:42 a.m. EDT (8:42 a.m. MDT), traveling about 27,650 mph. NASA’s live coverage of the capsule landing starts at 10 a.m. EDT (8 a.m. MDT), and will air on NASA TV, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

 

“We are now in the final leg of this seven-year journey, and it feels very much like the last few miles of a marathon, with a confluence of emotions like pride and joy coexisting with a determined focus to complete the race well,” said Rich Burns, project manager for OSIRIS-REx at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

 

Once located and packaged for travel, the capsule will be flown to a temporary clean room on the military range, where it will undergo initial processing and disassembly in preparation for its journey by aircraft to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where the sample will be documented, cared for, and distributed for analysis to scientists worldwide.

 

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering, and the safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, Tucson, is the principal investigator. The university leads the science team and the mission's science observation planning and data processing. Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft and provides flight operations. Goddard and KinetX Aerospace are responsible for navigating the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Curation for OSIRIS-REx, including processing the sample when it arrives on Earth, will take place at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. International partnerships on this mission include the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter instrument from CSA (the Canadian Space Agency) and asteroid sample science collaboration with JAXA’s (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) Hayabusa2 mission. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

 

To learn more about the asteroid sample recovery mission visit:

 

https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex

China to change its neutral stance to more pro-Ukrainian on G-20 summit eve – Bloomberg

Ukrainska Pravda
Thu, September 7, 2023 

Chinese representatives participating in the negotiations on the final communiqué of the G20 summit have changed their neutral position on the war in Ukraine to a more pro-Ukrainian one.

Source: Bloomberg, citing a senior French official on condition of anonymity

Quote: "China’s past neutral position had effectively benefited Moscow. However, Beijing takes a softer line compared to last year," the official says.

This is important given the position of Western countries, which called on China to put pressure on Russia to end the war, Bloomberg writes.

The French official said that all G-20 countries have agreed on a common approach regarding the war in Ukraine.

At the same time, India, which hosts this year's G-20 summit, still refuses to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Bloomberg emphasises.

Background:

• The summit in New Delhi will be held on 9-10 September.

• Ukraine was not included in the countries invited to the G20 summit.

• The Russian dictator Vladimir Putin will not be at the summit either; instead, the Russian Federation will be represented by Sergey Lavrov, the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Extreme rainfall in Hong Kong, Brazil and Greece leaves dozens dead after flash flooding

Warmer global temperatures increase the amount of moisture the Earth's atmosphere holds, often resulting in more extreme rainfall events.

David Knowles
·Senior Editor
Updated Fri, September 8, 2023 

A worker works by a whirlpool as flood waters is drained on a road in Hong Kong on September 8, 2023. (Photo by Bertha WANG / AFP) (Photo by BERTHA WANG/AFP via Getty Images)

Unprecedented flooding from extreme rainfall events on multiple continents around the world has left dozens dead and displaced thousands since the start of September.

The extraordinary scenes of devastation from extreme rainfall have become commonplace this summer, with record-setting downpours hammering places like Vermont, India, China, Spain, South America and Japan with alarming frequency.

Here’s a rundown of the most recent rainfall disasters:
Hong Kong sets record for most rain in a single hour

A shopping mall is partially submerged after record breaking rainfall on September 8, 2023 in Hong Kong, China. (Photo by Sawayasu Tsuji/Getty Images)

One month after extreme rains associated with Typhoon Doksuri killed more than 80 people in Northern China, an historic deluge hit the southern part of the country, dumping a record-setting 6.2 inches of rain in an hour, killing at least two people and injuring over 140, Fox Weather reported.


The rains transformed city streets into raging rivers, damaging cars and storefronts and shuttering the stock market on Friday, Bloomberg reported.

A view of cars partially submerged in flood water following heavy rains, in Hong Kong, China, September 8, 2023. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu

“This would have been virtually impossible had it not been for climate change,” Lam Chiu-ying, a former director of the Hong Kong Observatory, told the South China Morning Post on Friday. “We have to be prepared for what used to be extreme but what could become normal.”

Brazil pummeled

Houses are seen in a flooded area after an extratropical cyclone hit southern cities, in Lajeado, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil September 6, 2023. REUTERS/Diego Vara

At least 39 people were killed this week when an extratropical cyclone unloaded several inches of rain across the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. More than 6,000 people have been displaced in the torrential downpours.

“The city went into upheaval, people began to climb onto the roofs of houses. On Tuesday, we ran out of Internet and telephone service, and it was even more desperate. Even today, it is difficult to walk the streets, there is a lot of destruction,” Júlio Saldanha, a resident of the southern city of Estrela, told Brazil Reports.

Aerial view of debris caused by floods in the aftermath of the tropical cyclone on September 7, 2023 in Muçum, Brazil. (Photo by Marcelo Oliveira/Getty Images)

Firefighters and military police are taking part in rescue efforts, with helicopters being used to pluck people off of the roofs of flooded homes, Euronews reported.

"There are still people missing. The death toll might climb higher," Mayor Mateus Trojan of Muçum told Radio Gaucha. "The town of Muçum as we knew it no longer exists."
Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria feel Daniel’s wrath

Buildings surrounded by floodwater following Storm Daniel in the village of Kastro, in Trikala region, Greece, on Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023. Photographer: Konstantinos Tsakalidis/Bloomberg

At least 16 people were killed this week after extreme rainfall produced by Storm Daniel pummeled Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, the raging flood waters leveling buildings and bridges in many locations.

As of Thursday, rescuers had saved approximately 800 people trapped by the flooding, CNN reported.

With the storm stalled over Greece, the city of Zagora set a new record, receiving 21 inches of rain in 10 hours.

Damaged cars are pilled up on a flooded road after a rainstorm in Volos, central Greece, Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Thodoris Nikolaou)

Earlier this summer, Greece had experienced drought conditions that helped spark raging wildfires. Now, the country faces a different calamity, but one that Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also attributes to rising global temperatures.

“I am afraid that the careless summers, as we knew them ... will cease to exist and from now on the coming summers are likely to be ever more difficult,” he said, according to the International Travel & Health Insurance Journal.
How climate change is increasing extreme rainfall events

Vehicles are scattered during floods after heavy rains in Istanbul, Turkey, early Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. (Sercan Ozkurnazli/Dia Images via AP)

As global temperatures continue to rise in tandem with the burning of fossil fuels, the amount of moisture held by the Earth’s atmosphere also rises. Studies have shown that for every degree Celsius of warming, the atmosphere holds 7% more moisture.

“When it rains, it’s increasingly likely to pour, just because of basic thermodynamics, and when it’s not raining, when it’s sunny and hot — and, of course, increasingly hot due to climate change — it’s going to be easier to evaporate that water back into the atmosphere, leading to more arid conditions during that period, more rapidly intensifying droughts,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain told Yahoo News earlier this year.
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This Year’s Burning Man Turned Into a Giant Revival for Prehistoric Dinosaur Shrimp

Caroline Delbert
Thu, September 7, 2023 

This Year's Burning Man Had Lots of Sea Monkeysjordieasy - Getty Images

LOOKS LIKE A TINY TRILOBITE

This year’s surprisingly wet Burning Man festival in Nevada trapped thousands of festival-goers after a flood made the area impassible. In this wet, “diet Woodstock” nightmare, the exceptionally heavy rains have also reactivated some local fauna, so-called “dinosaur shrimp” and “fairy shrimp.” To understand dinosaur shrimp and fairy shrimp, we need a little lesson in extremophile organisms and drought tolerance.

Burning Man is held in the remote Black Rock City, which isn’t really a city at all; it’s the term for the temporary settlement built each year for Burning Man, which lasts a week when attendees are not trapped by a flood. The site is in the Black Rock Desert, hundreds of miles from Reno and gated by the tiny, nearby towns of Empire and Gerlach and the ghost town of Sulphur. The region was known for natural resources, but the remaining gypsum mine in Empire closed several years ago.

Fun fact: One of the only cities in this portion of the state, Winnemucca, is famous for its appearance in “I’ve Been Everywhere” by Johnny Cash.

More than 80 percent of the land area of Nevada is under protection by the federal government, the highest percentage of any U.S. state. (The large, western U.S. states have far higher percentages than the rest of the nation.) Nevada also experiences some of the most severe drought conditions in the country, which is worsening as climate change intensifies extreme weather. But don’t think that the inhospitable conditions means nothing lives there


This year’s Burning Man was inundated with rain and mud. picture alliance - Getty Images

Dinosaur shrimp, also known as tadpole shrimp, are freshwater crustaceans that look like miniature horseshoe crabs. They’re part of the family Triopsidae, which includes the genera Triops and Lepidurus, with up to 12 species. The largest species, the longtail tadpole shrimp, can grow to over three inches long. They eat living and dead plant and animal matter. And these animals can lay dormant for “decades or longer,” surviving in what Montana’s online field guide calls “intermittent or temporary wetlands.”

Dinosaur shrimp are drag swimmers, a term that includes humans doing breaststroke. They must propel themselves forward then “drag” their propeller back to the starting position. In the breaststroke, or frog kick, you must pull your legs up into position before kicking them back. World-class breaststrokers even move their hands forward above the water to reduce drag. Dinosaur shrimp don’t have this option, so their locomotion is a bit like three steps forward, one step back.

The media is making much of the dinosaur shrimp’s third eye. These shrimp have two compound eyes, like those of a spider, and then one sunken, primitive eye known as a “pit eye.” These are one of the simplest forms of what we identify as an eye at all, joining other similar recesses on animals like pit vipers. (Maybe because of pop culture, it’s easy to think these are named for being found in pits!)

It’s hard to imagine a more temporary wetland than the site of Burning Man, which is in a desert. In 2013, two portions of the Black Rock Desert received just 7.19 and 4.84 inches of rain for the year. Phoenix, the second driest major U.S. city, receives about 7 inches of precipitation a year. Las Vegas is the driest with just 4.2 inches. The Black Rock Desert is also home to a popular site for land speed records, a place called the playa or alkali flats. This flat region is where Burning Man is held.

Thousands of years ago, the entire area was covered by a prehistoric lake. This is key to today’s dinosaur shrimp, because it means the ecosystem still has remnants of when it was a sedimentary lakebed. That includes dormant lifeforms that are reactivated when there is enough rain in the region. Today’s desert is more like those freeze-dried capsules that puff up into dinosaur sponges in your bathroom sink. The closely-related fairy shrimp are also known as brine shrimp or sea monkeys, the tiny aquatic pets you can purchase as a powder and activate with water

A brine shrimp, also known as a fairy shrimp or "sea monkey."Nora Peevy - Getty Images

Dinosaur shrimp aren’t even the only surprising water creature in the area. The area known as the “Great Basin,” because of its history as that giant prehistoric lake, is home to 100 unique species of mollusks known as springsnails that live in the handful of local springs. The endangered desert dace, a tiny fish, can survive in water up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But nothing else matches the extremophiles, animals like the dinosaur shrimp and fairy shrimp, that can lay dormant for decades. This year, the massive rainfall and subsequent areas of standing water that lingered throughout the Burning Man area were enough to activate them.

Did you know? The plant version of this phenomenon is called a xerophyte, or “dry plant,” which can use several strategies to withstand the desert heat. One type of xerophyte can go dormant during the dry season and reemerge during the wet season. Plants may be less noticeable in the context of the Burning Man festival floods, but these may also be triggered into development by the heavy rain.

One risk with climate change is that extreme weather will grow not just more severe but also more erratic, meaning plants and animals that are adapted for a typical monthlong wet season may emerge into a heavy rainfall that is followed by a drought. (If you’re a gardener, you know that an early thaw followed by a frost can kill many burgeoning plants that are “tricked” into developing too early.) Without enough time to complete their expected mating or seeding cycle, even highly adaptable desert extremophiles may not survive.

For those captivated by the dinosaur shrimp, the National Park Service offers an anatomically correct crochet pattern, complete with both the regular (compound) and pit eyes.

America is experiencing a ‘great dechurching.’ What’s happening to all the church buildings?

Jennifer Graham
Wed, September 6, 2023 

Michelle Budge, Deseret News

When the congregation of Community Covenant Church decided to close its doors forever, only about 12-15 people were attending services regularly. The decision to close wasn’t an easy one — the church, in the suburbs of Boston, had been founded in 1907 by working class Swedish immigrants who had faithfully given their time and money to the church for decades.

The actual closing, however, was difficult in an unexpected way.

In order to maximize the value of the property, the church sought a change in zoning from residential to commercial. The change was denied, in part because of opposition from people who said they didn’t want the character of the neighborhood to change.

Church member Mary Overholt knocked on doors, trying to get support for the rezoning. One man told her he loved looking out from his house at a church. But he and others who liked having a church in the neighborhood weren’t motivated enough to join it.

This paradox is playing out as churches close across the world. Like the man Overholt spoke to, people like the idea of churches; they appreciate their beauty, the community meeting space that some provide, and their charitable work and donations. Many don’t want churches razed or turned into nightclubs or hotels, as is happening in some cities in Europe.

But with notable exceptions — Utah, for example — people aren’t going to church like they did a generation or two ago. And as congregations dwindle and their church buildings close, their towns are left with the problem of what’s going to be in that space — as their pastors wonder what to do with church furniture and supplies, like kneelers and collection plates.

There aren’t just social problems caused by the “great dechurching” but physical ones, as well.

“What do you do with the choir robes? What do you do with hymnals? What do you do with extra Bibles?” asked Ryan Burge, a social scientist who studies the decline of religion and is also an American Baptist pastor leading his own small congregation in Illinois through what is likely its final months.

“We have 125 place settings for church dinners that used to happen in the 1970s and ‘80s; we haven’t used them in 30 years. What do you do with them?”

Burge’s research on the declining levels of religious participation provides the basis for the new book “The Great Dechurching” by Jim Davis and Michael Graham. While the book starkly describes trends that have led to the existence of what Burge ruefully calls “hospice pastors,” the authors remain hopeful that church attendance can yet rebound.

Until then, there are plenty of churches for sale

Ryan P. Burge, a political scientist, researcher and pastor, sits in his church in Mount Vernon, Illinois. | Nicole Fields Photography

Who are the ‘dechurched’?

In “The Great Dechurching,” Graham and Davis say that America is seeing in real-time “the largest and fastest religious shift in U.S. history,” with some 40 million people — 1 in 6 Americans — having stopped going to church in the past 30 years. “That’s a lot of people who have changed their rhythms and habits,” Graham said in an interview.

The losses in church going, Graham and Davis point out, are greater in number than the people who came to faith during the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening and all the Billy Graham crusades combined.

In Orlando, where Graham lives, 42% of residents have stopped attending church within the past 25 years. “That’s a lot of people who have changed their rhythms and habits,” he said in an interview.

Graham, the program director for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics, defines the “dechurched” as people who used to go to church at least once a month and now go less than once per year. So these people aren’t even going to church on Christmas and Easter, he noted.

“In sociology of religion, there are three ‘B’s that are important — that’s belief, behavior and belonging,” said Graham, a former pastor. “A lot of what’s been written over the past few decades is more about belief and behavior, but affiliation and attendance is more about belonging. All three of those things mutually influence each other in complex ways, but we are looking at belonging as the primary lens.”

The decline in church attendance matters, “even if you’re a total atheist and have been unchurched your entire life and don’t care about these things. There’s still a significant impact here when you’re talking about this many people.”

Forty percent of the social safety net in America “is downstream from houses of worship,” he said. The loss of the sense of belonging, many sociologists believe, is contributing to the rising numbers of Americans who say they are lonely.

People in dwindling congregations can still sustain relationships as a church grows smaller, but it becomes harder to maintain the church facilities with diminished contributions, and even to keep providing services to the community.

Burge, author of the 2021 book “The Nones,” which is about the growing number of Americans who don’t identify with any religious group, has said, “The future, if you’re a church, is not looking rosy for you.”

Related

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Who will miss you?

As Burge’s own congregation shrank (one recent Sunday, just six people were at the worship service), one member asked what seemed like a pivotal question: Who, outside the congregation itself, would miss the church if it closed?

With no clear answer to that question, the church set out to create a ministry that would make it invaluable to the community, and began providing brown-bag meals for local school children. The program was successful, but eventually became too much for the small congregation to handle. They recently turned it over to another group.

Similarly, the members of Covenant Community Church in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, tried to keep up programs such as a living nativity during the Christmas season, even partnering with another church. But Overholt says that although, at the end, the church was “super small and, to be honest, run by volunteers who were a little bit tired and getting a little bit burned out,” they’d seen God answer prayers. “We didn’t have a huge impact on the community, but we did the little that we could,” she said.

Although some so-called megachurches (churches with 2,000 or more members) are continuing to see growth, “half of all churches have fewer than 65 people in their weekly worship service,” LifeWay Research reported in 2020.

Many of those people are sitting in sanctuaries built to hold 200 people — and for this type of real estate, it’s not a seller’s market, as the pastor of a closing church can quickly find out.

Many older church buildings don’t meet current building standards, and a new owner would have to significantly upgrade them to, for example, be ADA compliant. A new congregation trying to make a go of it often can’t afford the cost of the building, let alone the improvements required, Burge said. (And there are still churches being formed in the age of dechurching. In 2019, the latest year for which LifeWay has data on church openings and closings, about 3,000 new Protestant churches opened while 4,500 closed.)

Anticipating what seems inevitable, Burge tried to sell his congregation’s property, which has 16,000 square feet and sits on 9 acres on a “prime highway” in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. The best offer was $150,000.

However, Burge found a solution that worked for his congregation and community. The church gave its building to a local Christian school, and the church and school will share the facility until the church closes for good — probably sometime in the next year, he said.

‘The remains of the church’

Most church buildings and real estate will ultimately find a new purpose, although it might not be one that sits well with the community or with people of faith. Fortune magazine reported earlier this year on the repurposing of grand churches in Europe, and the uneasiness some people have with formerly sacred spaces turning into breweries and climbing walls.

In many cases, elements of the church are being preserved, as at a former Catholic church in Brussels that is now home to a climbing club. (Catholic churches must be “deconsecrated” before they can be used for another purpose, which must be approved by a bishop.) The co-founder of the club spoke to a reporter about feeling “the presence of the remains of the church,” which seems apt, since something both real and intangible seems lost when a church closes.

Browsing the website usedpews.org, billed as a “Craiglist for churches,” you can get a sense of how the “great dechurching” will upend the businesses that have long supplied houses of worship: “Free blue pews. Wrapped in plastic, ready to go.” A baptismal heater. A mahogany communion table.

Some of the churches selling supplies, of course, are doing so because they are remodeling, a visible sign of their hope. Community Covenant Church was once in that space; anticipating growth, the congregation built an addition in 2007.

Cultural headwinds

Burge now counsels churches to set goals that are not about growth, saying that faith groups are “facing more headwinds than we ever have before.”

Some churches face these headwinds by joining forces, like two congregations in Memphis that merged earlier this year. Others are opening their buildings for other purposes, like a United Church of Christ congregation in Newton, Massachusetts, that shares its space with arts and music organizations, a pediatric occupational therapy clinic, and a Jewish congregation.

Related

• Perspective: We’re watching ‘post-Christian America’ unfold in real time

Davis and Graham, however, remain optimistic, pointing out that millions of Americans who have stopped going to church are what they call the “casually dechurched” — people who didn’t have any great falling out with God or their religious tradition, but who simply stopped going to services out of inertia, or a change in life circumstances, like a move or divorce.

“The good news, and the reason we’re incredibly hopeful, is that over half the people who have left houses of worship are willing to return right now,” Graham said, “and the reasons they’d be willing to return is just as basic as why they left. They just want to be treated well, on an individual basis, and they want to have a good relationship with the church as an institution.”

A sacred task?

Of course, there are other factors at play, particularly when an individual church is already on life support. Churches like Burge’s or Overholt’s, where a congregation is largely comprised of senior citizens, may have a hard time attracting young families. Some people may choose megachurches with contemporary music instead of pipe organs. And as Burge points out, small churches often close simply because so many members have died over time.

While there still may be heartbreak involved, sometimes closing a church can be a calling when it is undertaken with much consideration and prayer, Overholt said.

After years of trying to maintain Covenant Community Church, by trying to merge with a larger church and even reducing the pastor’s hours, some in the congregation came to believe that growth wasn’t its calling — that closing might be what God was asking the church to do.

In a letter published in the local newspaper, Overholt wrote, “Our culture values success, and even churches compete to provide a ‘product’ that will attract the most ‘customers.’ So, for many the closure of a church might be considered a failure.

“But it is never a failure to listen and get direction from the Spirit and to lay down your own desires for the good of others. In this case, the funds from the proceeds of the sale of the building will go to plant new Covenant churches. The church sensed God smiling on them in their decision,” she wrote.

As of this week, the church is still for sale.

How NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory will search exoplanets for signs of alien life
Robert Lea

SPACE.COM
Fri, September 8, 2023

An illustration shows the Habitable Worlds Telescope in orbit around Earth with its starshade unfolded

Planning is well underway for NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), which will scour the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system for telltale signs of alien life.

This week, a workshop was held at the California Institute for Technology (Caltech) at which scientists and engineers discussed the state of technology that could be employed by the HWO, one of NASA’s next big telescope projects after the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

The hunt for signs of life in the atmospheres of planets outside the solar system orbiting distant stars — exoplanets — is akin to hunting for a needle in a cosmic haystack. After all, NASA estimates there are several billion Earth-size planets sitting in the habitable zones of their stars, which regions with the right temperatures to allow liquid water to exist. And that's in the Milky Way alone.

Yet, scientists at least have a good idea of what they should be hunting for as well as knowledge of signs that would potentially indicate life.

"We want to probe the atmospheres of these exoplanets to look for oxygen, methane, water vapor, and other chemicals that could signal the presence of life," NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program chief technologist, Nick Siegler, said in a statement. "We aren't going to see little green men but rather spectral signatures of these key chemicals, or what we call biosignatures."

Related: NASA’s exoplanet hunter TESS spots warm Jupiter with longest known year

The HWO was first proposed as a top priority by the Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics 2020 (Astro2020), a roadmap of goals for the astronomy community to take on over the coming decade. This is because, in addition to hunting for signs of life outside the solar system and helping astronomers understand entire planetary systems, the observatory will also play a major role in astrophysics investigations.

Though the mission is set to launch in the late 2030s or early 2040s, advancing technologies the telescope will use now could help prevent cost overruns later down the line, according to Dmitry Mawet, member of the HWO Technical Assessment Group (TAG).

An illustration shows the Habitable Worlds Telescope in orbit around Earth and (inset) the kind of exoplanet the project will investigate for telltale signs of life. (Image credit: (Main) NASA/Robert Lea (Inset) NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle)


Throwing shade at distant stars

To perform deep investigations of exoplanet atmospheres in order to hunt for signs of life, the HWO will tap into its ability to block out the glares of stars those exoplanets orbit.

Blocking strong light coming from these stars will allow fainter bits of starlight, reflecting off the atmospheres of orbiting planets around these stars, to be seen. Chemical elements and compounds absorb and emit light at unique wavelengths characteristic to their compositions, meaning light exposed to a planet's atmosphere carries fingerprints of elements it is made of.

Scientists take this light and, using a process called spectroscopy, search for these fingerprints. Such chemical fingerprints could include biosignatures indicating chemical compounds exhaled or inhaled by living things.

There are two main ways that the HWO could potentially block out excess starlight. On one hand, it could utilize a large external light block called a starshade, which would unfurl from the HWO after its launch into a massive sunflower-shaped umbrella.

Or alternatively, it could use an internal starshade called a coronagraph, similar to instruments scientists use to block out light from the sun’s bright photosphere to study its nebulous outer atmosphere, or corona. Siegler added that currently, NASA has decided to focus the HWO around coronagraph technology used on several other telescopes, including the JWST and forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman Telescope.

An illustration shows an Earth-like world in the habitable zone of its star, a prime target for NASA’s Habitable Worlds Telescope A planet that looks like Earth but with yellowish shades and a distant star are seen in space. (Image credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle)


Located on the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Kea, the W. M. Keck Observatory is already using a coronagraph invented by Mawet in conjunction with the Keck Planet Imager and Characterizer (KPIC) to study exoplanets. The coronagraph lets the KPIC picture thermal emissions from young and hot gas-giant exoplanets, allowing scientists to investigate how these planets and their planetary systems evolve.

Earth-like planets that the HWO will set its sights on can emit light around 10 billion times fainter than that of their stars, meaning a coronagraph for the future space telescope would need to push starlight well past its current limits.

"As we get closer and closer to this required level of starlight suppression, the challenges become exponentially harder," Mawet added.
Suppressing starlight with a shapeshifting mirror

One of the ideas put forward at the Caltech meeting to enhance suppression of light from a distant star is to put a mirror within a coronagraph that can be deformed to control light rays.

Employing thousands of actuators to drive the shape of the mirror as well as push and pull on its reflective surfaces could stop stray light from making its way to the final image, thus preventing unwanted "blobs" of residual starlight. A deformable "active" mirror of this type is the kind set to be used by the Nancy Grace Roman Space telescope, in fact, an observatory set to launch no later than 2027. Roman should let astronomers see gas giants around a billion times fainter than their stars as well as debris around stars left over from the births of planets.

This will be a vital stepping stone towards more powerful technology that will be needed by the HWO, bridging a gap in coronagraph masks and active mirrors too great to cover in a single proverbial bound.

"We need to be able to deform the mirrors to a picometer-level of precision," Mawet explained. "We will need to suppress the starlight by another factor of roughly 100 compared to Roman’s coronagraph."

During the Caltech session, scientists also addressed the best type of mirror to use for the HWO and what it should be coated with, as well as other potential instruments for the telescope.

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As planning for the HWO continues in earnest, astronomers are also at work selecting Earth-like exoplanet targets for the future telescope to train its gaze on. This hunt will include the use of the Caltech-operated Keck Planet Finder (KPF) at the Keck Observatory, which has been specially designed to look for Earth-like planets in the habitable zones of small red stars.

"The workshop helped guide us in figuring out where the gaps are in our technology and where we need to do more development in the coming decade," Mawet concluded.

The vast bog that helps fight climate change

Kevin Keane - BBC Scotland's environment correspondent

Thu, September 7, 2023 

To the untrained eye it looks like a vast expanse of empty moorland, but the Flow Country holds a secret.

Beneath the surface it contains more than double the carbon of all UK forests combined.

The huge area in the far north of Scotland acts as a giant sink, soaking up and storing carbon from the atmosphere.

It is a critical process in the fight against climate change.

In recognition of its global significance a team has been bidding to make it the planet's first peatland with world heritage status.

Assessors for Unesco have visited the 187,000 hectare (469,500 acres) site to see if it qualifies and a verdict is expected around the middle of next year.

Globally, the sites already on the list include Australia's Great Barrier Reef and Egypt's Historic Cairo.

About 400 small pool systems provide an important wildlife habitat

Volunteers use long extendable poles to probe the peat for depth measurements

Scotland's Flow Country stretches across Caithness and Sutherland but its intricate network of about 400 pool systems are only fully appreciated close up or from higher ground.

It is special because it contains the most extensive blanket bog system in the world.

It is called a blanket bog because the peat, which holds water, extends across both the hills and the glens.

Because it is so wet, plants do not decompose and release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere.

Instead species like sphagnum moss fall below the water line forming the peat in layers which grow at a rate of about 1mm per year.
'Keep it in the ground'

The peatland has been building up for about 9,000 years and each metre of depth represents about a millennium.

In some places it is many metres from the surface to the bedrock.

But it has to be kept in good condition to prevent it from drying out which would release the carbon.

Prof Roxane Anderson describes the ecosystem as "globally important".

She says: "The best thing we can do for this very big stock of carbon is keep it in the ground."

A visitor centre was opened in 2015 so people can experience the flows

World heritage status is an internationally-recognised designation given to places of cultural, historical or scientific significance.

The idea of applying was first discussed back in 1988 but the serious work did not begin until 2010.

A formal bid was submitted by the UK government in February.

A designation would offer no further protection to the land, three-quarters of which is already covered by statutory designations like Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

The rest is protected through policy.

steven andrews

About 400 million tonnes of carbon is estimated to be contained within the flows.

Dr Steven Andrews, who has been leading the bid, says becoming the first peatland to be inscribed on the world heritage list would demonstrate how important such landscapes are.

"There are a number of opportunities we hope would arrive whether it be through restoration works, for training opportunities around that, for branding of produce."

He hopes it will encourage more tourists but added: "A peatland like the flow country can't be appreciated by just driving through it.

"You need to stop and you need to spend time. That's the way that you'll see the bird species, start to pick out the different sphagnum mosses and all the amazing biodiversity that's out there."

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle

BLACKSNAKE

Feds leave future of Dakota Access pipeline's controversial river crossing unclear in draft review
JACK DURA
Updated Fri, September 8, 2023 

 In this October 2016, file photo, construction continues on the Dakota Access Pipeline. Federal officials on Friday, Sept. 8, 2023, released a draft environmental review of the Dakota Access oil pipeline without a recommendation from five options for the future of the line's controversial river crossing in North Dakota, proposals which include an extensive reroute miles upstream. 

(Tom Stromme/The Bismarck Tribune via AP, File) 

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Federal officials on Friday released a draft environmental review of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, but said they're waiting for more input before deciding the future of the line’s controversial river crossing in North Dakota.

The draft was released over three years after a federal judge ordered the environmental review and revoked the permit for the Missouri River crossing, upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's reservation. The tribe is concerned a pipeline oil spill could contaminate its water supply.

North Dakota officials support a decision that ultimately allows the pipeline to continue operating as it has. The tribe is calling for a new review and a pipeline shutdown.

The environmental review is key for whether the federal government reissues the permit. The pipeline has been operating since 2017, including during the environmental review.

The draft environmental impact statement, which is dated in June but was made public Friday, noted that the Corps “has not selected a preferred alternative," but will make a decision in its final review, after considering input from the public and other agencies.

The draft details five options for the pipeline, including denying the easement for the crossing and removing or abandoning a 7,500-foot (2,286-meter) segment. Officials could also approve the easement with measures for “increased operational safety,” or grant the same easement with no changes.

A fifth option is a 111-mile (179-kilometer) reroute of the pipeline to north of Bismarck, over 38 miles upstream from the current crossing. The reroute would require new permits from federal, state and local authorities and regulators, which could take at least two years. The exact path of such a reroute is unknown, according to the draft.

“We are seeking public input on the environmental analysis of each alternative, and that input combined with the environmental analysis will help us to make an informed decision among the alternatives,” Corps Omaha District spokesman Steve Wolf told The Associated Press.

A comment period will end Nov. 13. Public meetings are scheduled Nov. 1-2 in Bismarck.

A final environmental impact statement will follow the public input and environmental analysis, and a formal decision will be made, Wolf said.

Republican U.S. Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota told the AP a final alternative is expected to come out in fall 2024. He said he hopes for a decision that allows the pipeline to continue operating.

“Clearly they should go ahead and approve it without any additional modifications. The safety measures are in place,” Hoeven said.

Tribal Chairwoman Janet Alkire on Friday said the draft review should be “invalidated” and the Corps should “start from scratch" on a new review, with the pipeline shut down. The tribe is furious, she said.

“The pipeline is an imminent threat to the Missouri River, sensitive habitat and sacred burial sites along the riverbank," Alkire said. "The oil company’s emergency response plans are inadequate, its safety track record is horrendous, and there’s been a stunning lack of transparency with Standing Rock throughout the environmental review process, including inaccurate characterizations of tribal consultation."

She also called on the public to submit comments supporting a new review and a shutdown of the pipeline.

North Dakota's governor-led, three-member Industrial Commission on Thursday heard of the draft's pending release. Republican Gov. Doug Burgum on Thursday called the selection of no preferred alternative “unusual if not unprecedented.”

Burgum in a statement Friday added his support for granting the easement as it was previously issued, citing the pipeline as a safe operation and better than rail.

Hoeven said an Army official had notified him that the Corps wouldn't make a recommendation in the draft, but the agency will do more consultation in addition to the public input. The senator said he emphasized that the Corps consult with the state and the oil-rich Three Affiliated Tribes, whose reservation shares geography with North Dakota's oil patch.

State and federal officials and the pipeline's company say the line is safe. It moves oil from western North Dakota to Illinois. Leaders in North Dakota’s oil industry and state government consider the pipeline to be crucial infrastructure, with far less oil now transported by rail.

The pipeline is moving about 600,000 to 650,000 barrels of oil per day. Its capacity is 750,000 barrels per day. North Dakota produces about 1.1 million barrels of oil per day.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year refused to take up an appeal of the tribe’s lawsuit over the pipeline. The tribe first filed the lawsuit in 2016. Thousands of people gathered and camped near the pipeline's river crossing for protests that lasted months and sparked hundreds of arrests in 2016 and 2017. More than 830 criminal cases resulted from the protests.

CO2 pipeline project denied key permit in South Dakota; another seeks second chance in North Dakota

JACK DURA and STEVE KARNOWSKI
Wed, September 6, 2023

A sign reading "No CO2, no eminent domain" stands along a rural road east of Bismarck, N.D., on Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023. The sign is in opposition to Summit Carbon Solutions' proposed $5.5 billion, 2,000-mile pipeline network to carry carbon dioxide emissions from dozens of ethanol plants in five states to central North Dakota for permanent storage deep underground. 

(AP Photo/Jack Dura) 

South Dakota regulators on Wednesday denied a construction permit for a carbon dioxide pipeline project, one month after a North Dakota panel did the same to a similar project by another company.

Navigator CO2 Ventures wants to build a 1,300-mile (2,092 kilometers) pipeline network across Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota, to carry planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions from more than 20 industrial plants to be buried over a mile underground in Illinois.

The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to deny Navigator's application for its Heartland Greenway pipeline. Chair Kristie Fiegen cited myriad reasons in her motion to deny, including the company's lack of promptness and several objections to commission staff questions as well as struggles to notify landowners of routes and meetings. She detailed concerns related to safety, community growth, landowners and emergency responders, among other issues.

The proposed South Dakota route encompassed 112 miles (180 kilometers) and would serve three ethanol plants. The panel’s decision came after evidentiary hearing sessions in July and August.

Navigator expressed disappointment that the permit was denied, and was weighing its options going forward.

"Our commitment to environmental stewardship and safety remains unwavering, and we will continue to pursue our permitting processes in the other regions we operate in,” the company said in a statement.

The decision comes just days before the South Dakota panel is set to begin an evidentiary hearing Monday for a separate CO2 pipeline project, proposed by Summit Carbon Solutions, with a final decision expected by Nov. 15.

Brian Jorde, an attorney for South Dakota landowners opposed to the Navigator and Summit projects, expressed hope that Navigator might now drop the South Dakota leg of the project, given that most of the plants it would serve are in Iowa and other states.

Similar projects are proposed around the country as industries try to reduce their carbon footprints. Supporters say carbon capture will combat climate change. Governments and companies are making big investments in it. But opponents say the technology isn’t proven at scale and could require huge investments at the expense of alternative energy sources such as solar and wind power.

Landowners across the Midwest have opposed such pipeline projects, fearing their land will be taken and that the pipelines could break, spewing hazardous carbon dioxide into the air.

Other states continue to weigh Summit's project, which would encompass a 2,000-mile network from 30-some ethanol plants throughout Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota to an underground storage site in North Dakota.

The Iowa Utilities Board began its evidentiary hearing for Summit last month. It's expected to last several weeks.

North Dakota's Public Service Commission last month denied Summit a siting permit. The company subsequently asked the panel to reconsider. The regulators have a work session set for Friday to discuss the request. A decision will come after the meeting.

Summit this week withdrew its applications to Oliver County for two permits related to construction of injection wells for its underground CO2 storage site in central North Dakota.

The company's move came after the county's planning and zoning board voted last week to forward a denial recommendation to the county commission. The board had cited a lack of information from Summit, safety concerns and no financial or economic benefit to the county or residents, Oliver County Auditor Jaden Schmidt said.

Summit spokesperson Sabrina Ahmed Zenor said the company would work to address Oliver County's questions and concerns and that it was confident of securing the necessary permits from the county.