It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, November 04, 2021
Global carbon emissions rebound close to pre-Covid levels
Global carbon emissions in 2021 are set to rebound close to pre-Covid levels, according to the Global Carbon Project.
Fossil carbon emissions dropped by 5.4% in 2020 amid Covid lockdowns, but the new report projects an increase of 4.9% this year (4.1% to 5.7%) to 36.4 billion tonnes.
Emissions from coal and gas use are set to grow more in 2021 than they fell in 2020, but emissions from oil use remain below 2019 levels.
For major emitters, the 2021 emissions appear to return to pre-COVID trends of decreasing CO2 emissions for the United States and European Union and increasing CO2 emissions for India. For China, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has sparked further growth in CO2 emissions, pushed by the power and industry sectors.
The research team – including the University of Exeter, the University of East Anglia (UEA), CICERO and Stanford University – say a further rise in emissions in 2022 cannot be ruled out if road transport and aviation return to pre-pandemic levels and coal use is stable.
The findings come as world leaders meet at COP26 in Glasgow to address the climate crisis and try to agree on a plan of action going forward.
"The rapid rebound in emissions as economies recover from the pandemic reinforces the need for immediate global action on climate change," said Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, of Exeter's Global Systems Institute, who led the study.
"The rebound in global fossil CO2 emissions in 2021 reflects a return towards the pre-Covid fossil-based economy.Investments in the green economy in post-Covid recovery plans of some countries have been insufficient so far, on their own, to avoid a substantial return close to pre-Covid emissions."
Prof Corinne Le Quéré, Royal Society Research Professor at UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, contributed to this year’s analysis. She said: “It will take some time to see the full effect of the Covid-related disruptions on global CO2 emissions. A lot of progress has been made in decarbonising global energy since the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, plus renewables is the only energy source that continued to grow during the pandemic. New investments and strong climate policy now need to support the green economy much more systematically and push fossil fuels out of the equation.”
The report – the 16th annual Global Carbon Budget – produced the following analysis on major emitters (the figures below exclude international transport, particularly aviation):
China: Emissions are projected to rise 4% compared to 2020, reaching 5.5% above 2019 – a total of 11.1 billion tonnes CO2, 31% of global emissions.
USA: Emissions are projected to rise 7.6% compared to 2020, reaching 3.7% below 2019 – a total of 5.1 billion tonnes CO2, 14% of global emissions.
EU27: Emissions are projected to rise 7.6% compared to 2020, reaching 4.2% below 2019 – a total of 2.8 billion tonnes CO2, 7% of global emissions.
India: Emissions are projected to rise 12.6% compared to 2020, reaching 4.4% above 2019 – a total of 2.7 billion tonnes CO2, 7% of global emissions.
For the rest of the world taken as a whole, fossil CO2 emissions remain below 2019 levels.
Over the past decade, global CO2 net emissions from land-use change were 4.1 billion tonnes, with 14.1 billion tonnes CO2 emitted by deforestation and other land-use changes, and 9.9 billion tonnes CO2 removed by regrowth of forests and soil recovery.
Removals by forests and soils have grown in the last two decades while emissions by deforestation and other land-use changes remained relatively stable, suggesting a recent decline in net emissions from land-use change, although with a large attached uncertainty.
When combining CO2 emissions from fossil sources and net land-use change, total emissions have remained relatively constant in the last decade, averaging 39.7 billion tonnes CO2.
Based on the findings, atmospheric CO2 concentration is projected to increase by 2.0 parts per million (ppm) in 2021 to reach 415 ppm averaged over the year, a lower growth compared to recent years due to La Niña conditions in 2021.
To have a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, 1.7°C and 2°C, the researchers estimate the remaining "carbon budget" has now shrunk to 420 billion tonnes, 770 billion tonnes and 1,270 billion tonnes respectively – equivalent to 11, 20 and 32 years at 2021 emissions levels.
"Reaching net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 entails cutting global CO2 emissions by about 1.4 billion tonnes each year on average," said Friedlingstein.
"Emissions fell by 1.9 billion tonnes in 2020 – so, to achieve net zero by 2050, we must cut emissions every year by an amount comparable to that seen during Covid.
"This highlights the scale of the action that is now required, and hence the importance of the COP26 discussions."
The Global Carbon Budget annual update builds on established methodologies in a fully transparent manner. The 2021 edition is published as a preprint and is undergoing an open review in the journal Earth System Science Data.
JOURNAL
Earth System Science Data
METHOD OF RESEARCH
Data/statistical analysis
SUBJECT OF RESEARCH
Not applicable
ARTICLE TITLE
Global CO2 emissions rebound to pre-COVID-19 levels
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
3-Nov-2021
Disclaimer: AAAS an
Urgent need to address mental health effects of climate change, says report
Offers recommendations for building resilience and taking action by individuals, communities
With a large majority of Americans concerned about climate change and an increasing number expressing alarm and distress, it is past time to address this burgeoning public health crisis at the individual, community and societal levels, according to a report from the American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica.
“Our climate is changing at an unprecedented and alarming rate with profound impacts on human life,” said the report, entitled, “Mental Health and Our Changing Climate: Impacts, Inequities, and Responses.” “Climate change-fueled acute disaster events are causing deleterious impacts on human health. Longer term climate change leads to temperature-related illness and mortality, spread of vector-borne disease, respiratory issues and allergic response, compromised fetal and child development, and threats to water and food supply and safety — among other impacts.”
The effects of climate change on humans, however, go beyond physical health.
“Climate change is one of the most crucial issues facing our nation and the world today, and it is already taking a huge toll on the mental health of people around the globe,” said APA CEO Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD. “Psychology, as the science of behavior, will be pivotal to making the wholesale changes that are imperative to slow – and, we hope, stop – its advance.”
The report, an update to a 2017 report also issued by APA and ecoAmerica, is intended to inform and empower health and medical professionals, community and elected leaders and the public to pursue solutions to climate change that will support mental health and well-being. This is particularly important as world leaders proceed with climate negotiations at COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Over three-quarters of Americans report that they are concerned about climate change, and about 25% say they are “alarmed,” nearly double the percentage who reported feeling alarm in 2017, according to the latest report.
The most immediate effects on mental health can be seen in the aftermath of increasing disaster events fueled by climate change, such as hurricanes, wildfires and floods. These effects can include trauma and shock, post-traumatic stress disorder, feelings of abandonment, and anxiety and depression that can lead to suicidal ideation and risky behavior. At the community level, these disasters can strain social relationships, reduce social cohesion and increase interpersonal violence and child abuse.
In the long term, climate change has equally profound mental health impacts. Rising temperatures can fuel mood and anxiety disorders, schizophrenia and vascular dementia, and can increase emergency room usage and suicide rates, according to the report. Changes in the local environment can cause grief, disorientation and poor work performance, as well as harm to interpersonal relationships and self-esteem. People displaced by climate change events, such wildfires or droughts, can experience loss of personal identity, among other more severe impacts. Ultimately, mass migrations spurred by long-term climate change can lead to intergroup hostilities, political conflicts, terrorism and even war.
Concern about climate change coupled with worry about the future can lead to fear, anger, feelings of powerlessness, exhaustion, stress and sadness, often referred to as “eco-anxiety” or “climate anxiety.” Studies indicate this anxiety is more prevalent among young people; it has been linked to increases in substance use and suicidal ideation.
The destructive effects of climate change are likely to fall disproportionately on communities that are already disadvantaged by historic and current social, economic and political oppression. For example, discriminatory housing policies, such as redlining and racially restrictive covenants, mean that people of color are significantly more likely to live in areas prone to risk. Indigenous people, children, older adults, women, people with disabilities or existing mental health conditions, and outdoor workers are additional groups that may be more prone to mental health difficulties from a changing climate. These impacts can include PTSD, behavioral problems, cognitive deficits, reduced memory, poorer academic performance and lower IQ, higher exposure to violence and crime, and higher rates of incarceration.
“Like climate change itself, these mental health implications and the related inequities cannot be ignored,” said Meighen Speiser, executive director of ecoAmerica. “We need to surface and address them immediately, and we can. America and Americans have the will and wherewithal to protect our climate and our future.”
The report offers a series of constructive solutions that can be applied by individuals and whole communities to help mitigate the mental health impacts of climate change. Key among them is encouraging resilience, or the ability of a person or a community to function, survive and even thrive in the face of adversity. Strategies include fostering a sense of optimism, bolstering social connections, and incorporating personal items that can preserve or strengthen mental health into emergency preparedness plans (e.g., religious items, toys for small children, favorite foods), among many additional recommendations.
Communities should also involve mental health professionals in expanding or strengthening plans for mental health care and support in response to local and regional disasters, according to the report. Mental health professionals can help with plans to increase social cohesion in the community, such as social programs and infrastructure planning to increase communal parks and other green spaces. The report likewise recommends that members from the community, including from a diversity of backgrounds, cultures, and abilities, be included in resiliency planning to account for varying needs.
And while efforts to boost resilience are necessary to protect physical and mental health in the face of climate change, the report also emphasizes the need to address the root of the problem by enacting policies to mitigate climate change at all levels of governance. National and local policymakers, businesses and nonprofits, mental health and other professionals and individuals can all help to bring forth these policies while also advancing climate resilience and action. The report outlines these opportunities and provides related tools and resources.
The report was written by Susan Clayton, PhD, Whitmore-Williams professor of psychology, College of Wooster; Christie Manning, PhD, director of sustainability and assistant professor of environmental studies, Macalester College; Meighen Speiser, executive director, ecoAmerica; and Nicole Hill, ecoAmerica.
Doomsday Clock now 100 seconds from midnight
by Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain
While the Doomsday Clock is perilously close to midnight, it is not as close as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently suggested in his COP26 opening remarks
"Humanity has long since run down the clock on climate change," Johnson said. "It's one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock and we need to act now."
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is in complete agreement with the sentiment that "we need to act now," but would like to clarify that the Doomsday Clock, which it created in 1947, is currently set at 100 seconds to midnight.
The Clock, a powerful symbol for how close humanity is to self-annihilation, is set by the Bulletin's Science and Security Board once a year. The board members weigh dangers posed by climate change, nuclear risk and disruptive technologies in determining the time. The board will announce the time in January 2022 and commemorate the Clock's 75th anniversary with an upcoming book.
As one of the most recognizable symbols in the past 100 years, the Doomsday Clock sits at the crossroads of science and art. It has permeated not only the media landscape, but culture itself. The anniversary book chronicles the Doomsday Clock's references in novels by writers such as Stephen King and Piers Anthony, comic books (Watchmen, StormWatch), movies (Justice League), music (The Who, The Clash, Smashing Pumpkins) and numerous art exhibitions.
Editor’s note: Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and University of Chicago scientists who helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock two years later, using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet. The Doomsday Clock is set every year by the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board in consultation with its Board of Sponsors, which includes 13 Nobel laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies in other domains.
To: Leaders and citizens of the world
Re: This is your COVID wake-up call: It is 100 seconds to midnight
Date: January 27, 2021
Humanity continues to suffer as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads around the world. In 2020 alone, this novel disease killed 1.7 million people and sickened at least 70 million more. The pandemic revealed just how unprepared and unwilling countries and the international system are to handle global emergencies properly. In this time of genuine crisis, governments too often abdicated responsibility, ignored scientific advice, did not cooperate or communicate effectively, and consequently failed to protect the health and welfare of their citizens.
As a result, many hundreds of thousands of human beings died needlessly.
Though lethal on a massive scale, this particular pandemic is not an existential threat. Its consequences are grave and will be lasting. But COVID-19 will not obliterate civilization, and we expect the disease to recede eventually. Still, the pandemic serves as a historic wake-up call, a vivid illustration that national governments and international organizations are unprepared to manage nuclear weapons and climate change, which currently pose existential threats to humanity, or the other dangers—including more virulent pandemics and next-generation warfare—that could threaten civilization in the near future.
Accelerating nuclear programs in multiple countries moved the world into less stable and manageable territory last year. Development of hypersonic glide vehicles, ballistic missile defenses, and weapons-delivery systems that can flexibly use conventional or nuclear warheads may raise the probability of miscalculation in times of tension. Events like the deadly assault earlier this month on the US Capitol renewed legitimate concerns about national leaders who have sole control of the use of nuclear weapons. Nuclear nations, however, have ignored or undermined practical and available diplomatic and security tools for managing nuclear risks. By our estimation, the potential for the world to stumble into nuclear war—an ever-present danger over the last 75 years—increased in 2020. An extremely dangerous global failure to address existential threats—what we called “the new abnormal” in 2019—tightened its grip in the nuclear realm in the past year, increasing the likelihood of catastrophe.
Governments have also failed to sufficiently address climate change. A pandemic-related economic slowdown temporarily reduced the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. But over the coming decade fossil fuel use needs to decline precipitously if the worst effects of climate change are to be avoided. Instead, fossil fuel development and production are projected to increase. Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations hit a record high in 2020, one of the two warmest years on record. The massive wildfires and catastrophic cyclones of 2020 are illustrations of the major devastation that will only increase if governments do not significantly and quickly amplify their efforts to bring greenhouse gas emissions essentially to zero.
As we noted in our last Doomsday Clock statement, the existential threats of nuclear weapons and climate change have intensified in recent years because of a threat multiplier: the continuing corruption of the information ecosphere on which democracy and public decision-making depend. Here, again, the COVID-19 pandemic is a wake-up call. False and misleading information disseminated over the internet—including misrepresentation of COVID-19’s seriousness, promotion of false cures, and politicization of low-cost protective measures such as face masks—created social chaos in many countries and led to unnecessary death. This wanton disregard for science and the large-scale embrace of conspiratorial nonsense—often driven by political figures and partisan media—undermined the ability of responsible national and global leaders to protect the security of their citizens. False conspiracy theories about a “stolen” presidential election led to rioting that resulted in the death of five people and the first hostile occupation of the US Capitol since 1814.
In 2020, online lying literally killed.
Considered by themselves, these negative events in the nuclear, climate change, and disinformation arenas might justify moving the clock closer to midnight. But amid the gloom, we see some positive developments. The election of a US president who acknowledges climate change as a profound threat and supports international cooperation and science-based policy puts the world on a better footing to address global problems. For example, the United States has already announced it is rejoining the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Biden administration has offered to extend the New START arms control agreement with Russia for five years. In the context of a post-pandemic return to relative stability, more such demonstrations of renewed interest in and respect for science and multilateral cooperation could create the basis for a safer and saner world.
Because these developments have not yet yielded substantive progress toward a safer world, they are not sufficient to move the Clock away from midnight. But they are positive and do weigh against the profound dangers of institutional decay, science denialism, aggressive nuclear postures, and disinformation campaigns discussed in our 2020 statement. The members of the Science and Security Board therefore set the Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to civilization-ending apocalypse and the same time we set in 2020. It is deeply unfortunate that the global response to the pandemic over the past year has explicitly validated many of the concerns we have voiced for decades.
We continue to believe that human beings can manage the dangers posed by modern technology, even in times of crisis. But if humanity is to avoid an existential catastrophe—one that would dwarf anything it has yet seen—national leaders must do a far better job of countering disinformation, heeding science, and cooperating to diminish global risks. Citizens around the world can and should organize and demand—through public protests, at ballot boxes, and in other creative ways—that their governments reorder their priorities and cooperate domestically and internationally to reduce the risk of nuclear war, climate change, and other global disasters, including pandemic disease. We have experienced the consequences of inaction. It is time to respond.
A dark nuclear landscape, with glimmers of hope
In the past year, countries with nuclear weapons continued to spend vast sums on nuclear modernization programs, even as they allowed proven risk-reduction achievements in arms control and diplomacy to wither or die. Nuclear weapons and weapons-delivery platforms capable of carrying either nuclear or conventional warheads continued to proliferate, while destabilizing “advances” in the space and cyber realms, in hypersonic missiles, and in missile defenses continued. Governments in the United States, Russia, and other countries appear to consider nuclear weapons more-and-more usable, increasing the risks of their actual use. There continues to be an extraordinary disregard for the potential of an accidental nuclear war, even as well-documented examples of frighteningly close calls have emerged.
US and Russian nuclear modernization efforts continued to accelerate, and North Korea, China, India, and Pakistan pursued “improved” and larger nuclear forces. Some of these modernization programs are beginning to field weapons with dangerous enhancements, like Russia’s nuclear-tipped Avangard hypersonic glide vehicles, which are being installed on new SS-29 (Sarmat) missiles designed to replace 1980s-era intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Russia continues to field battalions of intermediate-range, ground-launched, nuclear-armed missiles—missiles previously banned by the now-defunct Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, from which the United States withdrew in 2019. China, which has historically relied on a small and constrained nuclear arsenal, is expanding its capabilities and deploying multiple, independently retargetable warheads on some of its ICBMs and will likely add more in the coming year.
In December 2018, Russia’s Strategic Rocket Forces tested the Avangard system, which included a hypersonic glide vehicle carried on a UR-100NUTTH/SS-19 missile. (Russian Defense Ministry video via russianforces.org)
The heightened interest that the United States and Russia have shown in hypersonic weapons, as demonstrated by a number of tests in 2020, is deeply worrisome. The hypersonics arms race has already led to calls for space-based interceptors to destroy them in flight. This militarization of space is dangerously destabilizing and increases the risk of escalation and accidental conflict.
Several countries are developing weapons-delivery platforms that can carry either nuclear or conventional warheads, introducing greater risks of miscalculation in a crisis or conventional conflict. Some may view this ambiguity as a deterrent to war, but it is not hard to imagine how mistaking a conventionally armed cruise missile for a nuclear-armed missile could complicate decision-making in the fog of crisis or war, potentially leading to preemptive strikes. The potential to stumble into nuclear war—ever present—has grown.
Meanwhile, developments in Northeast Asia, the Middle East, and South Asia further add to nuclear risks.
North Korea continues to develop its missile and nuclear programs. It revealed a new and larger long-range missile (Hwasong-16) in October 2020 at a military parade, but in the absence of flight testing, it’s not clear whether the new missile will add major capabilities to North Korea’s arsenal. There were no high level meetings between North Korea and the United States in 2020, leaving the future of US negotiations with North Korea in doubt.
The Hwasong-16 in the parade of the 75th anniversary of the Worker’s Party of Korea in October 2020. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
South Asia remains a potential nuclear hot spot, as both India and Pakistan continue to enlarge their arsenals and increase the sophistication and ranges of their weapons, with Indian ballistic missiles now able to reach Chinese targets. The relatively recent movement of nuclear competition among these countries to sea-based platforms, including submarines, raises the risk—already high—that conventional skirmishes could escalate to the nuclear level.
The continued effort by Iran to enhance its nuclear capabilities is another serious concern. But a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy landscape is the Biden administration’s stated desire to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In response to the 2018 US withdrawal, Iran deliberately walked back its commitments under the agreement. Stockpiles of low-enriched uranium have increased, enrichment levels have risen, and new, improved centrifuges have been installed. These actions have reduced the amount of time it would take Iran to put together a nuclear weapon from one year to several months. At the same time, Iran continues to comply with many of the agreement’s requirements, and many of the actions it has taken can easily be reversed. However, Iran’s willingness to remain in the agreement is not a given.
To keep nuclear modernization programs from becoming a full-scale nuclear arms race, it will be essential that New START, a treaty that limits US and Russian strategic weapon deployments, be extended for five more years, buying time for a follow-on agreement to be considered, negotiated, and put into force. Russian President Vladimir Putin and new US President Joe Biden agreed to do that on January 26 and now the action is in the Duma’s hands.
Other arms control efforts—including the nuclear test ban treaty and negotiations to stop producing fissile materials for weapons—have unraveled or are stalled. Previous cooperation on fissile material control and nuclear proliferation among the United States, Russia, and China has lapsed, and there are no serious efforts aimed at limiting risky developments in cyberweapons, space weapons, missile defenses, and hypersonic missiles.
The tenth review of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was postponed in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rescheduled for this year, the review conference will provide an opportunity for nuclear weapons countries to demonstrate the practical steps they have taken or will commit to take to reduce the risks of nuclear weapons use and scale back their reliance on nuclear weapons.
Just a few days ago, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force after 50 countries completed ratification. This treaty was developed by countries that do not have nuclear weapons, with the intention of bringing pressure on the nuclear weapons states to move more forcefully toward nuclear disarmament. The treaty brings much-needed attention to the risks posed by nuclear weapons, especially the enormous humanitarian impacts of the use of nuclear weapons. We hope that the treaty will lead to concrete actions by all states to address the challenges of disarmament and proliferation, including collective security and verification. We call on all states to collaborate and compromise to achieve real disarmament results.
Climate change action after the pandemic
Last year was to have marked a climate change milestone: The parties to the Paris Agreement were expected to increase their pledges to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are disrupting Earth’s climate. The initial pledges made in 2015 to reduce emissions over this decade were markedly inadequate and meant only to begin an iterative process towards the goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, relative to pre-industrial levels. Countries had been expected to raise their pledges at the 2020 meeting, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, the meeting was postponed until this year.
The delay may help. Few countries have been paying much attention to climate action during the pandemic. In 2020, countries whose emissions amounted to barely one-quarter of the global total had submitted improved emissions pledges, and countries responsible for another quarter of global emissions—including Australia, Japan, the United States, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil and New Zealand—simply announced pledges that were effectively identical to or even weaker than their existing commitments. Although the United States formally withdrew from the Paris Agreement late last year, the new administration has begun the process of rejoining and expressed its intention to submit an improved pledge and to provide additional financial support for climate actions in poor countries. As the pandemic recedes, more countries may step up their pledges over the course of the coming year.
As the COVID-19 pandemic deepened in the early months of 2020, carbon dioxide emissions dropped by an estimated 17 percent compared to the previous year’s. Emissions have largely bounced back, however, as the world’s fossil fuel-dependent economies have begun to recover, and the year’s total emissions were estimated at only four-to-seven percent lower than last year’s. Of course, cutting emissions temporarily via disease-induced economic recession is neither desirable nor sustainable. And, as with other economic crises, further recovery will raise energy demand and thus emissions—unless we take deliberate policy steps to reduce fossil-fuel use and accelerate the adoption of alternatives.
Fortunately, renewable energy has been resilient in the turbulent pandemic energy environment. Renewable deployment has slowed, but by less than other sources, and investment remains high. In the US, coal is projected to provide less electricity than renewables for the first time ever, owing to a decline in electricity demand and coal’s inability to compete given the low price of natural gas and near-zero operating costs of renewables. Globally, demand for fossil-based power has declined, while demand for renewable power has risen.
These developments need to be sustained into the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, but are not nearly enough to halt warming. Global greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere have hit a record high, and 2020 was essentially tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record. Until global carbon dioxide emissions are reduced nearly to zero, the burden of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to mount, and the world will continue to warm. The climate is still heading in the wrong direction.
In 2020, the impacts of continuing climate change were underscored in extreme and damaging ways. Portions of North America and Australia suffered massive wildfires, and a clear signal of human-caused climate change was evident in the frequency of powerful tropical cyclones and the heavier rainfall they produced. Meanwhile, evidence mounted that sea level rise is accelerating, and the effects of the oceans growing warmer and more acidic because of carbon dioxide absorption were clear in many marine ecosystems, as was most dramatically illustrated by the ongoing destruction of coral reefs.
The Orroral Valley Fire viewed from Tuggeranon, a suburb of Canberra, Australia, on the evening of January 28, 2020. (Photo credit: Nick-D / Wikimedia Commons)
In the long term, the answers to two questions related to the pandemic will have important climate change ramifications:
First, to what extent will economic stimulus spending aimed at ending the coronavirus economic slowdown be directed toward efficient green infrastructure and low-carbon industries? Such support will inevitably compete with aid requests from fossil fuel companies and other carbon-intensive industries that are also facing pandemic-related pressures
In the COVID-19 case, a lot of “brown” (fossil-based) stimulus is in the works. The trillions of dollars in stimulus programs that countries have launched are not particularly green. In aggregate, the G20 countries had committed approximately $240 billion to stimulus spending that supports fossil fuel energy by the end of 2020, versus $160 billion for clean energy. Likewise, the support packages for developing countries from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund do not favor low-carbon investments. And while China has made strong commitments to the decarbonization of its domestic economy, its Belt and Road Initiative appears poised to fill the niche increasingly being abandoned by developed country finance sectors, pouring investment into fossil-fuel infrastructure around the world.
At present, national plans for fossil fuel development and production are anything but encouraging; they project global growth in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel use of roughly two percent per year over this coming critical decade, whereas emissions would need to decline precipitously if the temperature commitments of the Paris Agreement were to be met. If these plans are indeed pursued, fossil fuel production in 2030 would be around 50 percent higher than is consistent with meeting even the least ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement.
A second question: How will the pandemic affect the ability of the international political system to manage global climate change? Like climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic is a global problem that calls for a global solution. How successfully the leaders of the world’s nations coordinate their responses to the pandemic affects (or, will affect) their faith and commitment to multilateralism generally. They could become more confident in the value of effective global cooperation and robust international institutions, or they could emerge more mistrustful of multilateralism and discard their remaining commitments to invest in already declining and over-stretched institutions of global cooperation. A positive experience could lead to effective collaborations addressing climate change, the threat of nuclear war, and global challenges yet to emerge.
The COVID-19 infodemic and other disruptive threats
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the planet in many extraordinary and negative ways, one of which involves the internet-driven spread of false or misleading information. As the pandemic emerged, it spawned what the World Health Organization has called a “massive ‘infodemic’—an over-abundance of information … that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.” The COVID-19 infodemic includes deliberate attempts (sometimes by national leaders) to disseminate misinformation and disinformation that harms physical and mental health; threatens public health gains; damages economies; and makes it much more difficult for the nations of the world to stop the pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying infodemic have become intertwined with critical uncertainties regarding science, technology, and crisis communications.
First, not all of the science relevant to ending the pandemic was known at its outset. Alas, many loud voices regarded the evolution of scientific knowledge about COVID-19 as reason to ignore and disparage scientific advice about controlling the pandemic.
Also, as new science-based treatments and interventions were developed and tested, experts needed to learn how to maximize their beneficial effects and deliver them to the public. This learning process introduced uncertainty into pandemic discourse around the world.
And finally, governmental communications about COVID-19 included inconsistent and contradictory narratives emerging from political leaders and institutions that should have been cooperating and coordinating.
As these three uncertainties played out last year, the public’s response to the coronavirus emergency fractured along ideological lines, with partisanship often replacing science as the justification for public health measures. Unfortunately, the internet-fueled undercutting of rational discourse and policy making is not specific to COVID-19. Efforts to deal with the existential threats of nuclear war and climate change have been similarly undermined.
Social media, search engines, always-on mobile computing technologies, and other technology applications have exploited human cognitive propensities to be misled and enraged and to react impulsively, exacerbating political and ideological differences. Established institutions that have traditionally provided a trusted center that supports societal stability—government agencies, especially those related to public health and climate change, journalism, the judiciary, education—are under attack precisely because they have provided stability.
At the very least, the widespread dysfunction in today’s information ecosystem is a threat multiplier that vastly complicates society’s ability to address major challenges. Pandemic responses in some countries, including the United States, have provided graphic demonstrations that such concerns are not merely theoretical. Disinformation has led leaders and citizens alike to reject scientific advice about limiting the spread of COVID-19, with tragic results.
One of many “mythbuster” videos and graphics that the WHO has produced in an effort to combat pandemic mis- and disinformation: Spraying and introducing bleach into your body WON'T protect you. (Source: World Health Organization)
Unchecked internet disinformation could have even more drastic consequences in a nuclear crisis, perhaps leading to a nuclear war that ends world civilization. Disinformation efforts across communications systems are at this moment undermining responses to climate change in many countries. The need for deep thinking and careful, effective action to counter the effects of internet-enabled disinformation has never been clearer.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage. SARS-CoV-2 took advantage of both physiological and societal vulnerabilities and continues to nimbly skirt poorly mustered defenses. Recent mutations have created variants of the virus that are more infectious and sicken children, who were previously thought to be less prone to infection.
Scientists around the world have mobilized to create COVID-19 treatments and vaccines, and their work is showing promise in reducing the severity of and eventually suppressing the pandemic. But public officials who have dismissed the value of science during the pandemic now face populations hesitant to take COVID-19 vaccines. Those same public figures also failed to iron out the manufacturing, distribution, and other logistical details needed for efficient immunization programs.
As this pandemic subsides, leaders around the world must come together to create the institutions and surveillance regimes that can identify disease outbreaks and quash them before they become pandemics, quickly develop vaccines and therapeutics for new diseases, and rapidly promulgate preventive measures for public health.
Rapidly advancing biological research and development have produced, and will continue to produce, disruptive technologies that could increase biological risk. In the risk-increasing category are biotechnology applications that could, for example, create super-soldiers or produce biological weapons. Many countries and corporations are investing in the biological sciences as they recognize the immense opportunities to establish and grow bioeconomies. These bio-investment programs raise the new possibility that nations may conduct biological weapons research and development under the guise of building effective responses for naturally occurring pandemics.
Bad actors have surely taken notice of the gaps in national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most nations were unable to meet needs for personal protective equipment, to provide enough hospital beds to treat everyone who became seriously ill with the disease, or to manage international supply chains well enough to deliver medicines and equipment when and where they were most needed. International security requires speedy action to reduce those vulnerabilities. An improved global public health effort to prevent, detect, respond to, and recover from natural pandemics would, as a salutary side-effect, better prepare the world to respond to biological accidents and attacks.
This is your wake-up call
When the world finally emerges from the worst pandemic in a century, everyone will rightly celebrate. It might be tempting to mark the COVID-19 experience as a one-off, a dismal anomaly to be forgotten. We, too, wish the world could return to normal in short order.
But the pandemic is not a unique departure from a secure reality. It is a harbinger, an unmistakable signal that much worse will come if leaders and institutions do not enact wide-ranging reforms to forestall and minimize future pandemics, to restore the primacy of science-based policies, and to reduce the possibility of nuclear war and the impacts of climate change.
We set the Doomsday Clock at 100 seconds to midnight—the closest it has ever been—because the existential risks confronting humanity today call for quick and comprehensive action across the 21st century’s complex threat spectrum. Here are some practical steps that world leaders can and should initiate in 2021 to protect humanity from major global threats that have the potential to end civilization: The US and Russian presidents should, upon extension of New START, launch follow-on talks for more ambitious and comprehensive limits of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Now that the United States has announced it will rejoin the Paris climate agreement, it should accelerate its commitment to decarbonization and put policies in place that make the attainment of the commitment feasible. Now that the United States has rejoined the World Health Organization, it should work through the WHO and other international institutions to reduce biological risks of all kinds. Also, national leaders and international organizations can prepare for biological events before they occur by more carefully monitoring animal-human interactions and improving international disease surveillance and reporting efforts; increasing world capacity to produce and quickly distribute medical supplies; and expanding hospital capacity. US President Joe Biden can show leadership by reducing US reliance on nuclear weapons via limits on their roles, missions, and platforms, and by decreasing budgets accordingly. The United States should declare its commitment to no-first-use of nuclear weapons and persuade allies and rivals to agree that no-first-use is a step toward security and stability. President Biden should banish the fear that a single person would have the power to end civilization by eliminating his own and future US presidents’ sole authority to launch nuclear weapons. He should work to persuade other countries with nuclear weapons to put in place similar barriers. Russia can rejoin the NATO-Russia Council and open serious discussions on risk reduction and on avoiding escalation dangers. North Korea can agree to codify and allow verification of its moratorium on nuclear tests and long-range missile tests. Iran and the United States can jointly return to full compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and Iran can agree to new, broader talks about Middle East security and constraints on its missile and other military activities. The United States and Russia can renew cooperation on fissile material and nuclear security to make sure that terrorists cannot acquire the means to build a nuclear weapon. Banks and other sources of capital can implement policies that limit investment in fossil fuel projects, as indeed some already have done, and redirect it to climate-friendly investments. China can reorient its Belt and Road Initiative, so it sets an example for other investors by pursuing sustainable development pathways rather than supporting fossil fuel-intensive development. All nations can commit to stronger decarbonization goals under the Paris Agreement and implement policies directed toward the realization of these goals. Those policies should address not merely long-term goals but near-term emission reductions and investments in longer-term structural changes. Meanwhile, the world’s wealthier countries should enhance their commitments under the Paris Agreement to provide financial support and technology cooperation required by developing countries to undertake strong climate action. Leaders in governments and the private sector can emphasize COVID-recovery investments that strongly favor climate mitigation and adaptation objectives across all economic sectors and address the full range of potential greenhouse gas emission reductions. This includes capital investments in urban development, agriculture, transport, heavy industry, buildings and appliances, and electric power. The new US administration can fill leadership positions for science-based agencies on the basis of scientific expertise and credentials; prohibit interference with the production or dissemination of executive branch scientific reports; use the best possible science to inform policy considerations; allow government scientists to engage with the public about their work; and provide funding to restore and strengthen international scientific cooperation. National leaders and international organizations can create more effective regimes for monitoring biological research and development efforts, so potential benefits can be maximized, and possible negative consequences minimized or eliminated. Governments, major communications technology firms, academic experts, and responsible media organizations can cooperate to find practical and ethical ways to combat internet-enabled misinformation and disinformation.
Having now killed more than two million human beings, COVID-19 is an unmistakable global wake-up call. The message is simple and chilling: Next time could be far worse. Given the pandemic experience, no one can reasonably say he or she was not warned. It remains 100 seconds to midnight, the most dangerous situation that humanity has ever faced. It is time for all to take the actions needed to—quite literally—save the world.
About the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists At our core, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is a media organization, publishing a free-access website and a bimonthly magazine. But we are much more. The Bulletin’s website, iconic Doomsday Clock, and regular events equip the public, policymakers, and scientists with the information needed to reduce manmade threats to our existence. The Bulletin focuses on three main areas: nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive technologies. What connects these topics is a driving belief that because humans created them, we can control them. The Bulletin is an independent, nonprofit 501 (c) (3) organization. We gather the most informed and influential voices tracking man-made threats and bring their innovative thinking to a global audience. We apply intellectual rigor to the conversation and do not shrink from alarming truths.
The Bulletin has many audiences: the general public, which will ultimately benefit or suffer from scientific breakthroughs; policymakers, whose duty is to harness those breakthroughs for good; and the scientists themselves, who produce those technological advances and thus bear a special responsibility. Our community is international, with half of our website visitors coming from outside the United States. It is also young. Half are under the age of 35.
Boeing gets OK for satellite grid to provide internet from space
A NASA TV video frame grab shows the SpaceX Falcon 9 fourth Starlink constellation after entry burn, before it separates, after it launched at Cape Canaveral, Florida on January 29, 2020. Boeing has just won approval for its satellite constellation to provide internet services from space.
Boeing on Wednesday gained US authorization for a project to launch satellites that will provide internet services from space.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said in a statement it had approved a license for the aerospace giant "to construct, deploy, and operate a satellite constellation" that will "provide broadband and communications services for residential, commercial, institutional, governmental, and professional users in the United States and globally."
"Advanced satellite broadband services have an important role to play in connecting hard-to-serve communities," said Jessica Rosenworcel, the FCC chairwoman.
The FCC gave the green light for 147 satellites, the vast majority of which will be in low orbit: 132 could be placed at an altitude of about 600 miles (1,000 km), and 15 would be much higher, between about 17,000 and 27,000 miles.
The service will first be available to clients in the United States and then around the world.
"Boeing sees a multi-orbit future for satellite technologies," the aerospace company said in a statement.
"As the demand for satellite communications grows, diversity will be required across orbital regimes and frequencies to satisfy unique customer demands, and we see V-band as helping to provide some of that diversity," Boeing added.
Other satellite constellation projects are already being rolled out by competing companies.
US billionaire Elon Musk, head of the space company SpaceX, has already put more than 1,500 satellites into orbit to create the Starlink network, while Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has a similar project called Kuiper.
A framework to automatically identify wildlife in collaboration with humans
by Ingrid Fadelli , Tech Xplore
In real-world applications, AI models do not stop at one training stage. As data collection progresses over time, there is a continuous cycle of inference, annotation, and model updating. When there are novel and difficult samples, human annotation is inevitable. Credit: Miao et al.
Over the past few decades, computer scientists have developed numerous machine learning tools that can recognize specific objects or animals in images and videos. While some of these techniques have achieved remarkable results on simple animals or items (e.g., cats, dogs, houses), they are typically unable to recognize wildlife and less renowned plants or animals.
Researchers at University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) have recently developed a new wildlife identification approach that performs far better than techniques developed in the past. The approach, presented in a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, was conceived by Zhongqi Miao, who initially started exploring the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) tools could classify wildlife images collected by movement-triggered camera traps. These are cameras that wildlife ecologists and researchers often set up to monitor species inhabiting specific geographic locations and estimate their numbers.
The effective use of AI for identifying species in wildlife images captured by camera traps could significantly simplify the work of ecologists and reduce their workload, preventing them from having to look through hundreds of thousands of images to generate maps of the distribution of species in specific locations. The framework developed by Miao and his colleagues is different from other methods proposed in the past, as it merges machine learning with an approach dubbed 'humans in the loop' to generalize better on real-world tasks.
"An important aspect of our 'humans in the loop innovation' is that it addresses the 'long-tailed distribution problem," Wayne M. Getz, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. "More specifically, in a set of hundreds of thousands of images generated using camera traps deployed in an area over a season, images of common species may appear hundreds or even thousands of times, while those of rare species may appear just a few times. This produces a long-tailed distribution of the frequency of images of different species."
If all species were captured by camera traps with equal frequency, their distribution would be what is known as 'rectangular." On the other hand, if these frequencies are highly imbalanced, the most common frequencies (plotted first down the y-axis) would be far larger than least common frequencies (plotted at the bottom of the graph), resulting in a long-tailed distribution
"If standard AI image recognition software were applied to long-tailed distributional data, then the method would fail miserably when it comes to identifying rare species," Getz explained. "The primary purpose of our study was to find a way to improve the identification of rare species by incorporating humans into the process in an iterative manner."
When trying to apply conventional AI tools in real-world settings, computer scientists can encounter several challenges. As mentioned by Getz, the first is that data collected in the real world often follows a long-tail distribution and current state-of-the-art AI models do not perform as well on this data, compared to data with a rectangular or normal distribution.
"In other words, when applied to data with a long-tailed distribution, large or more frequent categories always lead to much better performance than smaller and rare categories," Miao, lead author of the paper, told TechXplore. "Furthermore, instances of rare categories (especially images of rare animals) are not easy to collect, making it even harder to get around this long-tail distribution issue through data collection."
Another challenge of applying AI in real-world settings is that the problems they are meant to solve are typically open-ended. For instance, wildlife monitoring projects can continue indefinitely and span across long periods of time, during which new camera traps will be set up and a variety of new data will be collected.
In addition, new animal species might suddenly appear in the sites monitored by the cameras due to several possible factors, including unexpected invasions, animal reintroduction projects or recolonizations. All of these changes will be reflected in the data, ultimately impairing the performance of pre-trained machine learning techniques.
"So far, the human contribution to the training of AI has been inevitable," Miao said. "As real-world applications are open-ended, ensuring that AI models learn and adapt to new content requires additional human annotations, especially when we want the models to identify new animal species. Thus, we think there is a loop of AI recognition system of new data collection, human annotation on new data and model update to the novel categories."
In their previous research, the researchers tried to address the factors impairing the performance of AI in real-world settings in several different ways. While the approaches they devised were in some ways promising, their performance was not as good as they had hoped, achieving a classification accuracy below 70 percent when tested on standardized long-tailed datasets.
"It's hard for people to trust an AI model that could only produce ~70 percent accuracy," Miao said. "Overall, we think a deployable AI model should: achieve a balanced performance across imbalanced distribution (long-tailed recognition), be able to adapt to different environments (multi-domain adaptation), be able to recognize novel samples (out-of-distribution detection), and be able to learn from novel samples as fast as possible (few-shot learning, life-long learning, etc.). However, each one these characteristics have proved difficult to realize, and none of them have been fully solved yet, let alone combining them together and coming up with a perfect AI solution."
Instead of using renowned and existing AI tools or trying to develop an 'ideal' method, therefore, Miao and his colleagues decided to create a highly performing tool that relies on a certain amount of input from humans. As so far human annotations on data have proved to be particularly valuable for enhancing the performance of deep learning-based models, they focused their efforts on maximizing their efficiency.
"The goal of our project was to minimize the need for human intervention as much as possible, by applying human annotation solely on difficult images or novel species, while maximizing the recognition performance/accuracy of each model update procedure (i.e., update efficiency)," Miao said.
By combining machine learning techniques with human efforts in an efficient way, the researchers hoped to achieve a system that was better at recognizing animals in real-world wildlife images, overcoming some of the issues they encountered in their past studies. Remarkably, they found that their method could achieve 90 percent accuracy on wildlife image classification tasks, using 1/5 of the annotations that standard AI approaches would require to achieve this accuracy.
"Putting AI techniques into practice has always been significantly challenging, no matter how promising theoretical results are in previous studies on standard datasets," Miao said. "We thus tried to propose an AI recognition framework that can be deployed in the field even when the AI models are not perfect. And our solution is to introduce efficient human efforts back into the recognition system. And in this project, we use wildlife recognition as a practical use case of our framework."
Instead of evaluating AI models using a single dataset, the framework devised by Miao and his colleagues focuses on how efficiently a previously trained model can analyze newly collected datasets containing images of previously unobserved species. Their approach incorporates an active learning technique, which uses a prediction confidence metric to select low-confidence predictions, so that they can be annotated further by humans. When a model identifies animals with high levels of confidence, on the other hand, their framework stores these predictions as pseudo labels.
"Models are then updated according to both human annotations and pseudo labels," Miao explained. "The model is evaluated based on: the overall validation accuracy of each category after the update (i.e., update performance); percentage of high-confidence predictions on validation (i.e., saved human effort for annotation); accuracy of high-confidence predictions; and percentage of novel categories that are detected as low-confidence predictions (i.e., sensitivity to novelty)."
The overall aim of the optimization algorithm used by Miao and his colleagues is to minimize human efforts (i.e., to maximize a model's high-confidence percentage), while maximizing performance and accuracy. Technically speaking, the researchers' framework is a combination of active learning and semi-supervised learning with humans in the loop. All of the codes and data used by Miao and his colleagues are publicly available and can be accessed online.
"We proposed a deployable human-machine recognition framework that is also applicable when the models are not perfectly performing by themselves," Miao said. "With the iterative human-machine updating procedure, the framework can keep updated be deployed when new data are continuously collected. Furthermore, each technical component in this framework can be replaced with more advanced methods in the future to achieve better results."
The experimental setting outlined by Miao and his colleagues is arguably more realistic than those considered in previous works. In fact, instead of focusing on a single cycle of model training, validation and testing, it focuses on numerous cycles or stages, which allows models to better adapt to changes in the data.
"Another unique aspect of our work is that we proposed a synergistic relationship between humans and machines," Miao said." Machines help relieve the burden of humans (e.g., ~80 percent annotation requirements), and humans help annotate novel and challenging samples, which are then used to update the machines, such that the machines are more powerful and more generalized in the future. This is a continuous and long-term relationship."
In the future, the framework introduced by this team of researchers could allow ecologists to monitor animal species in different places more efficiently, reducing the time they spend examining images collected by trap cameras. In addition, their framework could be adapted to tackle other real-world problems that involve the analysis of data with a long-tailed distribution or that continuously changes over time.
"Miao is now working on the problem of trying to identify species from satellite or aerial images which present two challenges compared with camera trap images: the resolution is much lower because cameras are much more distant from the subjects that are capturing and the individual being imaged may be one of many in the overall frame; images generally show only a 1-d projection (i.e., from the top) rather than the 2-d projections (front/back and leftside/rightside) of camera trap data," Getz said.
Miao, Getz ad their colleagues now also plan to deploy and test the framework they created in real-world settings, such as camera trap wildlife monitoring projects in Africa organized by some of their collaborators. Meanwhile, Miao is working on other deep learning tools for the analysis of aerial images and audio recordings, as these could be particularly useful for identifying birds or marine animals. His overall goal is to make deep learning more accessible for ecologists and researchers analyzing wildlife images.
"On a broader scale, we think that the synergistic relationship between humans and machines is an exciting topic and that the goal of AI research should be to develop tools that augment people's abilities (or intelligence), rather than to eliminate the existence of humans (e.g., looking for perfect machines that can handle everything without the need for humans)," Miao added. "It is more like a loop where machines make humans better, and humans make machines more powerful in return, just like in the iterative framework we proposed in the paper. We call this Artificial Augmented Intelligence (A2I or A-square I), where ultimately, people's intelligence is augmented with artificial intelligence and vice versa. In the future, we want to keep exploring the possibilities of A2I."Researchers successfully train computers to identify animals in photos
More information: Zhongqi Miao et al, Iterative human and automated identification of wildlife images, Nature Machine Intelligence (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s42256-021-00393-0
Ziwei Liu et al, Large-scale long-tailed recognition in an open world. arXiv:1904.05160v2 [cs.CV], arxiv.org/abs/1904.05160
Ziwei Liu et al, Open compound domain adaptation. arXiv:1909.03403v2 [cs.CV], arxiv.org/abs/1909.03403
Using ocean plastic waste to power ocean cleanup ships
Proposals for ocean plastic cleanup currently require traveling back to port to unload the plastics and refuel the vessel. Credit: Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
A team of researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Harvard University believes that the plastic amassing in floating islands in the oceans could be used to power the ships that are sent to clean them up. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes how ocean plastics could be converted to ship fuel.
Prior research has shown that millions of tons of plastics enter the ocean each year—some of it is ground into fragments and disperses, and some of it winds up in colossal garbage patches floating in remote parts of the ocean. Because of the danger that such plastics present to ocean life, some environmentalists have begun cleanup operations. Such operations typically involve sending a ship to a garbage patch, collecting as much as the ship will hold and then bringing it back to port for processing. In this new effort, the researchers suggest it would be far more efficient and greener to turn the plastic into fuel for both a processing machine and for uninterrupted operation of the ships.
The researchers note that the plastic in a garbage dump could be converted to a type of oil via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL). In this process, the plastic is heated to 300–550 degrees Celsius at pressures 250 to 300 times that of sea-level conditions. The researchers have calculated that a ship carrying an HTL converter would be capable of producing enough oil to run the HTL converter and the ship's engine. Under their scenario, plastic collection booms would be permanently stationed at multiple sites around a large garbage patch, able to load the plastic it collects onto ships.
The researchers acknowledge that burning the oil produced would release carbon into the atmosphere, but note that the amount emitted would still be less than that emitted by a ship burning conventional oil making trips back and forth to ports. They also note that HTL does produce a small amount of solid waste, which would have to be taken back to port, likely every few months—excess fuel produced by the HTL could be used for these trips.
More information:Elizabeth R. Belden et al, Thermodynamic feasibility of shipboard conversion of marine plastics to blue diesel for self-powered ocean cleanup,Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(2021).DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2107250118
