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Goodbye E-cars: BMW Wants to Mass-Produce Hydrogen Cars

July 25, 2022



Goodbye e-cars: BMW wants to mass-produce hydrogen cars.

BMW is advancing the series production of hydrogen cars.

Oliver Zipse, CEO announced to handelsblatt:

Hydrogen as an energy carrier will play an important role in many regions of the world.

To this end, the BMW Group is launching “the everyday testing of near-series vehicles with a hydrogen fuel cell drive on European roads,” according to a statement from the company. The first small series of BMW hydrogen cars is to be presented before the end of 2022.

Series production: BMW plans hydrogen as an important powertrain pillar
“The upper end of our X family, which enjoys great popularity with our customers, is particularly suitable here,” says Zipse. Overall, the energy crisis is driving hydrogen propulsion enormously.

“I can well imagine that we will also see the fuel cell in series production in the new class in the future,” explains CEO Zipse.

BMW has been working on fuel cell technology together with the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota since 2013. Just recently, a Chinese automaker announced the first mass production of hydrogen cars. In Germany, researchers at the Aerospace Center announced a hydrogen car at a low price.

Goodbye electric car: BMW wants to produce hydrogen cars in series

Klaus Fröhlich, Board Member for Development at BMW AG, explained:

We are convinced that different alternative drive systems will coexist in the future, as there is no single solution that covers all the mobility requirements of customers worldwide.

“The hydrogen fuel cell drive can become a fourth pillar in our drive portfolio in the long term.”

BMW expert: Hydrogen drive with “chicken-and-egg problem”

With the first road tests of BMW hydrogen cars, it is now becoming concrete. But before series production starts, there are still some hurdles to overcome.

Axel Rücker, Program Manager Hydrogen Fuel Cell at the BMW Group, explains:

We have a chicken-and-egg problem with hydrogen propulsion.

“As long as the network of hydrogen filling stations is so thin, the low demand from customers will not enable profitable series production of fuel cell cars. And as long as there are hardly any hydrogen cars on the roads, operators will be reluctant to expand their refuelling network.”

READ the latest news shaping the hydrogen market at Hydrogen Central

Tschüss E-Auto: BMW will Wasserstoffautos in Serie produzieren, München, July 20, 2022

Famine and disease may have driven ancient Europeans’ lactose tolerance

Widespread milk consumption might not have been the force behind an ability to digest dairy

 
Some people like drinking milk more than others, but it helps to be lactose tolerant. This genetic trait spread among ancient Europeans not because they drank a lot of milk but as a result of recurring famines and disease outbreaks, a new study suggests.
NATHAN DUMLAO/UNSPLASH

By Bruce Bower

Ancient Europeans may have evolved an ability to digest milk thanks to periodic famines and disease outbreaks.

Europeans avidly tapped into milk drinking starting around 9,000 years ago, when dairying groups first reached the continent’s southeastern corner, researchers report July 27 in Nature. Yet it took several thousand years before large numbers of Europeans evolved a gene for digesting lactose, the sugar in milk, the investigators say.

These discoveries — based on animal fat residue samples from hundreds of archaeological sites and a trove of DNA data — undermine an influential idea that milk use dramatically increased as the product’s nutritional and health benefits drove the evolution of lactose tolerance, say biogeochemist Richard Evershed of the University of Bristol in England and colleagues.

Milk drinkers who can’t digest lactose experience diarrhea, gas, bloating and intestinal cramps. Those uncomfortable reactions were too mild to move the evolutionary needle toward lactose tolerance on their own, Evershed’s group says. But during periodic famines and infectious disease outbreaks, lactose-induced diarrhea became fatal for severely malnourished individuals in farming communities, the scientists suggest. Those recurring threats hotwired the evolution of lactose tolerance, they contend.

Evershed’s report “comprehensively rules out” widespread milk consumption as the evolutionary force behind lactose tolerance, says bioarchaeologist Oliver Craig of the University of York in England. Further research needs to clarify the scale and extent of famines or infectious disease episodes that may have influenced how ancient Europeans digested milk, adds Craig, who did not participate in the new study. Investigators must also keep in mind that cheese and other low-lactose dairy products date to as early as around 7,400 years ago in Europe (SN: 12/12/12). If these foods were widely available, it’s unclear why lactose intolerant Europeans would not have survived times of famine or disease, Craig says.

Evershed’s team mapped estimated frequencies of milk use across Europe from around 9,000 to 500 years ago by analyzing previously published data from animal fat residues extracted from more than 13,000 pottery fragments at about 550 archaeological sites.

At the beginning of that time span, migrating farmers introduced dairying to southeastern Europe’s Balkan Peninsula, where residents embraced regular milk drinking, the investigators say. Milk use then fluctuated over time in different parts of the continent. After about 7,500 years ago, relatively heavy milk use characterized western France, northern Europe and the British Isles. Dairying occurred less often in central Europe.

Evershed’s team also tracked the emergence and spread of the main gene responsible for lactose tolerance using published ancient DNA data from nearly 1,800 Europeans and Asians. The earliest European evidence of a gene variant in adults responsible for boosting the activity of lactase, an enzyme that confers tolerance by chemically breaking down lactose, dates to about 6,650 years ago, the researchers say. But this trait, known as lactase persistence, did not become common in Europe until around 3,000 years ago, they find.

Before that time, increasing levels of lactase persistence tended to align with population busts linked to famines in particular regions, the researchers report. Between 8,000 and 4,000 years ago, excavated farming sites across Europe display signs of periodic population declines that were influenced by severe food shortages, the researchers say (SN: 10/1/13).

Estimates of settlement density, a measure of how closely together people lived, also tended to decline at times of increasing lactase persistence. The spread of animal-borne infections such as salmonella lowered settlement densities as residents unable to digest lactose suffered an excess of deaths, the scientists suspect. In those periods of malnourishment and illness, lactase persistence boosted access to badly needed nutrients in milk, Evershed’s group speculates.

But archaeologist Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna is not convinced the famine and disease theory holds up. Diarrhea causes death more often in malnourished children, he says, so he questions whether it would have led to enough adult fatalities to trigger the evolution of milk tolerance. No current proposal explains how lactase persistence spread, he says.

In other parts of the world, and for equally mysterious reasons, regular milk consumption doesn’t necessarily stimulate the spread of lactose tolerance. For instance, lactose tolerance rarely occurs among milk-drinking Central Asian herders but biological signs of lactose tolerance often appear in East African Hadza hunter-gatherers, who don’t drink milk.

Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org

CITATIONS

R. Evershed et al. Dairying, diseases and the evolution of lactase persistence in Europe. Nature. Published July 27, 2022. doi: 10.1038/s41586-022-05010-7.

L. Ségurel and C. Bon. On the evolution of lactase persistence in humans. Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. Vol. 18, August 2017, p. 297. doi: 10.1146/annurev-genom-091416-035340.


Bruce Bower has written about the behavioral sciences for Science News since 1984. He writes about psychology, anthropology, archaeology and mental health issues.

Humans may not be able to handle as much heat as scientists thought

If true, millions more people could be at risk of dangerous temperatures sooner than expected

Misting fans offer some relief from an intense heat wave in Baghdad on July 20.
AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES


By Carolyn Gramling

More than 2,000 people dead from extreme heat and wildfires raging in Portugal and Spain. High temperature records shattered from England to Japan. Overnights that fail to cool.

Brutal heat waves are quickly becoming the hallmark of the summer of 2022.

And even as climate change continues to crank up the temperature, scientists are working fast to understand the limits of humans’ resilience to heat extremes. Recent research suggests that heat stress tolerance in people may be lower than previously thought. If true, millions more people could be at risk of succumbing to dangerous temperatures sooner than expected.

“Bodies are capable of acclimating over a period of time” to temperature changes, says Vivek Shandas, an environmental planning and climate adaptation researcher at Portland State University in Oregon. Over geologic time, there have been many climate shifts that humans have weathered, Shandas says. “[But] we’re in a time when these shifts are happening much more quickly.”

Just halfway through 2022, heat waves have already ravaged many countries. The heat arrived early in southern Asia: In March, Wardha, India, saw a high of 45° Celsius (113° Fahrenheit); in Nawabshah, Pakistan, recorded temperatures rose to 49.5° C (121.1° F).

Extreme heat alerts blared across Europe beginning in June and continuing through July, the rising temperatures exacerbating drought and sparking wildfires. The United Kingdom shattered its hottest-ever record July 19 when temperatures reached 40.3° C in the English village of Coningsby. The heat fueled fires in France, forcing thousands to evacuate from their homes.

And the litany goes on: June brought Japan its worst heat wave since record-keeping began in 1875, leading to the country’s highest-ever recorded temperature of 40.2° C. China’s coastal megacities, from Shanghai to Chengdu, were hammered by heat waves in July as temperatures in the region also rose above 40° C. And in the United States, a series of heat waves gripped the Midwest, the South and the West in June and July. Temperatures soared to 42° C in North Platte, Neb., and to 45.6° C in Phoenix.

The current global rate of warming on Earth is unprecedented (SN: 7/24/19). And scientists have long predicted that human-caused climate change will increase the occurrence of heat waves. Globally, humans’ exposure to extreme heat tripled from 1983 to 2016, particularly in South Asia.

The heat already is taking an increasing toll on human health. It can cause heat cramps, heat exhaustion and heat stroke, which is often fatal. Dehydration can lead to kidney and heart disease. Extreme heat can even change how we behave, increasing aggression and decreasing our ability to focus (SN: 8/18/21).

Hot zones

On July 13, multiple heat waves seared much of Europe, Asia and North Africa, smashing temperature records. China’s Shanghai Xujiahui Observatory recorded its highest-ever temperature of 40.9° C in almost 150 years of record-keeping. Tunis, Tunisia, reached a 40-year record of 48° C. And the scorching heat fueled fires in Portugal, Spain and France.

Surface air temperature in the Eastern Hemisphere on July 13, 2022

JOSHUA STEVENS/NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY
SOURCE: GEOS-5 DATA FROM THE GLOBAL MODELING AND ASSIMILATION OFFICE/NASA GSFC, VIIRS DAY-NIGHT BAND DATA FROM THE SUOMI NATIONAL POLAR-ORBITING PARTNERSHIP.

Staying cool

The human body has various ways to shed excess heat and keep the core of the body at an optimal temperature of about 37° C (98.6° F). The heart pumps faster, speeding up blood flow that carries heat to the skin (SN: 4/3/18). Air passing over the skin can wick away some of that heat. Evaporative cooling — sweating — also helps.

But there’s a limit to how much heat humans can endure. In 2010, scientists estimated that theoretical heat stress limit to be at a “wet bulb” temperature of 35° C. Wet bulb temperatures depend on a combination of humidity and “dry bulb” air temperature measured by a thermometer. Those variables mean a place could hit a wet bulb temperature of 35° C in different ways — for instance, if the air is that temperature and there’s 100 percent humidity, or if the air temperature is 46° C and there’s 50 percent humidity. The difference is due to evaporative cooling.

When water evaporates from the skin or another surface, it steals away energy in the form of heat, briefly cooling that surface. That means that in drier regions, the wet bulb temperature — where that ephemeral cooling effect happens readily — will be lower than the actual air temperature. In humid regions, however, wet and dry bulb temperatures are similar, because the air is so moist it’s difficult for sweat to evaporate quickly.

So when thinking about heat stress on the body, scientists use wet bulb temperatures because they are a measure of how much cooling through evaporation is possible in a given climate, says Daniel Vecellio, a climate scientist at Penn State.

“Both hot/dry and warm/humid environments can be equally dangerous,” Vecellio says — and this is where the body’s different cooling strategies come into play. In hot, dry areas, where the outside temperature may be much hotter than skin temperature, human bodies rely entirely on sweating to cool down, he says. In warm, humid areas, where the air temperature may actually be cooler than skin temperatures (but the humidity makes it seem warmer than it is), the body can’t sweat as efficiently. Instead, the cooler air passing over the skin can draw away the heat.
How hot is too hot?

Given the complexity of the body’s cooling system, and the diversity of human bodies, there isn’t really a one-size-fits-all threshold temperature for heat stress for everybody. “No one’s body runs at 100 percent efficiency,” Vecellio says. Different body sizes, the ability to sweat, age and acclimation to a regional climate all have a role.

Still, for the last decade, that theoretical wet bulb 35° C number has been considered to be the point beyond which humans can no longer regulate their bodies’ temperatures. But recent laboratory-based research by Vecellio and his colleagues suggests that a general, real-world threshold for human heat stress is much lower, even for young and healthy adults.

The researchers tracked heat stress in two dozen subjects ranging in age from 18 to 34, under a variety of controlled climates. In the series of experiments, the team varied humidity and temperature conditions within an environmental chamber, sometimes holding temperature constant while varying the humidity, and sometimes vice versa.

The subjects exerted themselves within the chamber just enough to simulate minimal outdoor activity, walking on a treadmill or pedaling slowly on a bike with no resistance. During these experiments, which lasted for 1.5 to two hours, the researchers measured the subjects’ skin temperatures using wireless probes and assessed their core temperatures using a small telemetry pill that the subjects swallowed.

In warm and humid conditions, the subjects in the study were unable to tolerate heat stress at wet bulb temperatures closer to 30° or 31° C, the team estimates. In hot and dry conditions, that wet bulb temperature was even lower, ranging from 25° to 28° C, the researchers reported in the February Journal of Applied Physiology. For context, in a very dry environment at about 10 percent humidity, a wet bulb temperature of 25° C would correspond to an air temperature of about 50° C (122° F).

These results suggest that there is much more work to be done to understand what humans can endure under real-world heat and humidity conditions, but that the threshold may be much lower than thought, Vecellio says. The 2010 study’s theoretical finding of 35° C may still be “the upper limit,” he adds. “We’re showing the floor.”

And that’s for young, healthy adults doing minimal activity. Thresholds for heat stress are expected to be lower for outdoor workers required to exert themselves, or for the elderly or children. Assessing laboratory limits for more at-risk people is the subject of ongoing work for Vecellio and his colleagues.

A worker wipes away sweat in Toulouse, France, on July 13. An intense heat wave swept across Europe in mid-July, engulfing Spain, Portugal, France, England and other countries.

VALENTINE CHAPUIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

If the human body’s tolerance for heat stress is generally lower than scientists have realized, that could mean millions more people will be at risk from the deadliest heat sooner than scientists have realized. As of 2020, there were few reports of wet bulb temperatures around the world reaching 35° C, but climate simulations project that limit could be regularly exceeded in parts of South Asia and the Middle East by the middle of the century.

Some of the deadliest heat waves in the last two decades were at lower wet bulb temperatures: Neither the 2003 European heat wave, which caused an estimated 30,000 deaths, nor the 2010 Russian heat wave, which killed over 55,000 people, exceeded wet bulb temperatures of 28° C.
Protecting people

How best to inform the public about heat risk is “the part that I find to be tricky,” says Shandas, who wasn’t involved in Vecellio’s research. Shandas developed the scientific protocol for the National Integrated Heat Health Information System’s Urban Heat Island mapping campaign in the United States.

It’s very useful to have this physiological data from a controlled, precise study, Shandas says, because it allows us to better understand the science behind humans’ heat stress tolerance. But physiological and environmental variability still make it difficult to know how best to apply these findings to public health messaging, such as extreme heat warnings, he says. “There are so many microconsiderations that show up when we’re talking about a body’s ability to manage [its] internal temperature.”

One of those considerations is the ability of the body to quickly acclimate to a temperature extreme. Regions that aren’t used to extreme heat may experience greater mortality, even at lower temperatures, simply because people there aren’t used to the heat. The 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest wasn’t just extremely hot — it was extremely hot for that part of the world at that time of year, which makes it more difficult for the body to adapt, Shandas says (SN: 6/29/21).

Heat that arrives unusually early and right on the heels of a cool period can also be more deadly, says Larry Kalkstein, a climatologist at the University of Miami and the chief heat science advisor for the Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center. “Often early season heat waves in May and June are more dangerous than those in August and September.”

Rising heat

In the 1960s, the average time between the earliest and latest heat waves that might occur in a year was just about 22 days. By the 2010s, the average heat wave season had lengthened to almost 70 days.

Change in the duration of annual U.S. heat wave season, 1960s–2010s

E. OTWELL
SOURCE: NOAA, EPA

One way to improve communities’ resilience to the heat may be to treat heat waves like other natural disasters — including give them names and severity rankings (SN: 8/14/20). As developed by an international coalition known as the Extreme Heat Resilience Alliance, those rankings form the basis for a new type of heat wave warning that explicitly considers the factors that impact heat stress, such as wet bulb temperature and acclimation, rather than just temperature extremes.

The rankings also consider factors such as cloud cover, wind and how hot the temperatures are overnight. “If it’s relatively cool overnight, there’s not as much negative health outcome,” says Kalkstein, who created the system. But overnight temperatures aren’t getting as low as they used to in many places. In the United States, for example, the average minimum temperatures at nighttime are now about 0.8° C warmer than they were during the first half of the 20th century, according to the country’s Fourth National Climate Assessment, released in 2018 (SN: 11/28/18).

By naming heat waves like hurricanes, officials hope to increase citizens’ awareness of the dangers of extreme heat. Heat wave rankings could also help cities tailor their interventions to the severity of the event. Six cities are currently testing the system’s effectiveness: four in the United States and in Athens, Greece, and Seville, Spain. On July 24, with temperatures heading toward 42° C, Seville became the first city in the world to officially name a heat wave, sounding the alarm for Heat Wave Zoe.

As 2022 continues to smash temperature records around the globe, such warnings may come not a moment too soon.

CITATIONS

D.J. Vecellio et al. Utility of the heat index in defining the upper limits of thermal balance during light physical activity. International Journal of Biometeorology. Published online July 1, 2022. doi:10.1007/s00484-022-02316-z.

D.J. Vecellio et al. Evaluating the 35° C wet-bulb temperature adaptability threshold for young, healthy subjects (PSU HEAT Project). Journal of Applied Physiology. Vol. 132, February 2022, p. 340. doi:10.1152/japplphysiol.00738.2021.

C. Tuholske et al. Global urban population exposure to extreme heat. Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. Published online October 4, 2021. doi:10.7927/fq7g-ny13.

A.M. Vicedo-Cabrera et al. The burden of heat-related mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate change. Nature Climate Change. Published online May 31, 2021. doi:10.1038/s41558-021-01058-x.

C. Raymond, T. Matthews and R.M. Horton. The emergence of heat and humidity too severe for human tolerance. Science Advances. Published online May 8, 2020. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaw1838.

J.S. Hoffman, V. Shandas and N. Pendleton. The effects of historical housing policies on resident exposure to intra-urban heat: A study of 108 U.S. urban areas. Climate. Published online January 13, 2020. doi:10.3390/cli8010012.

S.C. Sherwood and M. Huber. An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 107, May 3, 2010, p. 9552. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0913352107.

Carolyn Gramling is the earth & climate writer. She has bachelor’s degrees in geology and European history and a Ph.D. in marine geochemistry from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Ancient DNA links an East Asian Homo sapiens woman to early Americans

An unusual hominid fossil from southwestern China is finally giving up its secrets

DNA from this approximately 14,000-year-old partial skull (shown from multiple angles) found in southwestern China pegs the find as a member of a Homo sapiens population with genetic ties to Native Americans.
X. ZHANG ET AL/CURRENT BIOLOGY 2022

By Bruce Bower

JULY 25, 2022

A previously undetected Homo sapiens population inhabited what’s now southwestern China around 14,000 years ago and contributed to the ancestry of ancient Americans.

This far-ranging Asian group’s evolutionary identity has been revealed thanks to ancient DNA extracted from a skullcap previously excavated at Mengzi Ren, or MZR, a site in southwestern China’s Red Deer Cave, researchers report July 14 in Current Biology.

The finding offers a rare opportunity to narrow down where the ancestors of ancient Americans came from in East Asia’s vast expanse.

Geneticist Bing Su of China’s Kunming Institute of Zoology and colleagues recovered nearly all the fossil individual’s mitochondrial DNA, typically inherited from the mother, and roughly 3.3 percent of the nuclear DNA, which is inherited from both parents.

Hominid fossils unearthed at Red Deer Cave in 1989 look like those of people today in some ways but in others resemble Asian Neandertals and Homo erectus (SN: 12/18/19). That unusual skeletal mix inspired a debate about whether the Chinese fossils represent H. sapiens or had different origins (SN: 12/17/15).

The new genetic analyses and comparisons with present-day and ancient people peg the MZR individual’s DNA as that of a female H. sapiens from southern East Asia. Much like East Asians today, the ancient female’s ancestry included small contributions from Denisovans and Neandertals.

Su’s group found that the MZR woman carried genetic ties to ancient people in the Americas who date to as early as about 12,000 years ago. Some ancient southern East Asians traveled up China’s eastern coast, possibly by way of Japan, and crossed a land bridge to North America, the scientists suspect.

How Is Climate Change Affecting Floods?

Like other extreme weather disasters, flooding involves a number of competing factors that may affect its frequency intensity.

Flooding on Forest Park Parkway in St. Louis after heavy rains on Tuesday morning.

Credit...KMOX St. Louis

By Elena Shao
July 26, 2022

Floods can surge all year round, in every region of the world. But discerning the relationship between any given flood and climate change is no small feat, experts say, made difficult by limited historical records, particularly for the most extreme floods, which occur infrequently.

It can be tempting to attribute all floods and other extreme events to the forces of warming planet. But weather is not climate, even though weather can be affected by climate. For example, scientists are confident that climate change makes unusually hot days more common. They’re not as sure that climate change is making tornadoes more severe.

Floods fall somewhere along the confidence spectrum between heat waves (“yes, clearly”) and tornadoes (“we don’t know yet”), said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at University of California, Los Angeles. “I’d say, ‘yes, probably, but…’”

Flooding, like other disasters, involves a number of competing factors that may affect its frequency and intensity in opposing ways. Climate change, which is worsening extreme rainfall in many storms, is an increasingly important part of the mix.

What causes floods

Northeast Entrance Road in Yellowstone National Park after historic flooding. Credit...Samuel Wilson-Pool/Getty Images

Several main ingredients contribute to flood development: precipitation, snowmelt, topography and how wet the soil is. Depending on the type of the flood, some factors may matter more than others.

For example, a river flood, also known as a fluvial flood, occurs when a river, stream or lake overflows with water, often following heavy rainfall or quickly melting snow. A coastal flood occurs when land areas near the coast are inundated by water, often following a severe storm that collides with high tides.

Flooding can also happen in areas with no nearby bodies of water. Flash floods, in particular, can develop anywhere that experiences intense rainfall over a short period of time.

How floods are measured

Many metrics are used to measure floods, including stage height (the height of the water in a river relative to a specific point) and flow rate (how much water passes by a specific location over a particular time period).

Read More About Extreme Heat

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Europe’s Heat Wave: The record-setting heat that roasted London showed how ill-prepared northern European cities are for extreme weather driven by global warming.

Safety Tips: Here is some advice on staying hydrated, keeping cool and taking care of your pets during a heat wave.

To describe the severity of a flood, though, experts will often use the more simple term “a 100-year flood,” to describe a flood that has a 1 percent chance of striking in any given year, considered an extreme and rare occurrence. The term is just a description of likelihood, though, not a promise. A region can have two 100-year floods within a few years.

Have floods increased in past decades?

Residents assessed the flooding outside of their home in Far Rockaway, Queens, in October 2021.

Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Not exactly. Climate change has undoubtedly intensified heavy precipitation events, but, unexpectedly, there has been no corresponding increase in flood events.

When it comes to river floods, climate change is likely exacerbating the frequency and intensity of the extreme flood events, but decreasing the number of moderate floods, researchers found in a 2021 study published in Nature.

As the climate warms, higher rates of evaporation cause soils to dry out more rapidly. For those moderate and more commonplace floods, the initial conditions of soil moisture is important, since drier soils may be able to absorb most of the rainfall.

With larger flood events, that initial soil moisture matters less “because there’s so much water that the soil wouldn’t be able to absorb all of it, anyway,” said Manuela Brunner, a hydrologist at the University of Freiburg in Germany and the lead author of the 2021 study. Any additional water added past the point where the soil is fully saturated will run off and contribute to flood development, Dr. Brunner said.

Looking to the future

Scientists are confident some types of flooding will increase in the “business as usual” scenario where humans continue warming the planet with greenhouse gas emissions at the current rate.

First, coastal flooding will continue to increase as sea levels rise. Melting glaciers and ice sheets add volume to the ocea
Second, flash flooding will continue to increase as there are more extreme precipitation events. Warmer temperatures increase evaporation, putting more moisture into the atmosphere that then gets released as rain or snowfall.

Researchers also expect that, as the climate warms, flash floods will get “flashier,” meaning that the timing of the floods will get shorter while the magnitude gets higher. Flashier floods can be more dangerous and destructive.

Flash floods may also increasingly follow catastrophic wildfires in a deadly cascade of climate disasters. That’s because wildfires destroy forests and other vegetation, which in turn weakens the soil and makes it less permeable.

If heavy rains occur on land damaged by a fire, the water “does not get absorbed by the land surface as effectively as it once did,” said Andrew Hoell, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Physical Sciences Lab.

Though it may be counterintuitive to see the two extremes, too much fire and too much water, in the same region, the sight will most likely become more common, particularly in the American West.

Emergency workers in Windsor, New South Wales, Australia, on Monday, where flooding brought by heavy rains forced 50,000 people from their homes.

Credit...Bianca De Marchi/EPA, via Shutterstock


Are different areas experiencing flooding?

In a recent paper published in Nature, researchers found that in the future, flash floods may be more common father north, in Northern Rockies and Northern Plains states.

This poses a risk for flood mitigation efforts, as local governments may not be aware of the future flash flood risk, said Zhi Li, lead author of the 2022 study.

The pattern is driven by more rapidly melting snow, and snow that melts earlier in the year, Dr. Li said. Regions at higher latitudes may experience more “rain-on-snow” floods like those that surged through Yellowstone in June.

Airlines Banking On Capturing Carbon From The Air


ByZachary Shahan
CleanTechnica
Published 2 days ago


In the EU, airlines are under pressure to cut carbon emissions or pay for the emissions they create. They are also under some pressure from consumers who are concerned about flying because of the enormous amount of pollution flying creates. Clearly, large airplanes are not going electric anytime soon, and we’re just inching our way toward small airplanes going electric. So, what to do?

What several airlines as well as Airbus have decided to do is bet on Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS). Air Canada, Air France-KLM, easyJet, International Airlines Group, LATAM Airlines Group, Lufthansa Group, and Virgin Atlantic — have all signed Letters of Intent (LoI) “to explore opportunities for a future supply of carbon removal credits from direct air carbon capture technology.”

Naturally, the plan is not to capture CO2 right after it’s emitted — that’s certainly too hard. The idea is to simply capture and store as much CO2 as their planes emit.


DACCS is far from proven for such a tall task, but this is the option that airlines and Airbus have settled on as their preferred solution for net zero emissions — or at least one of their preferred solutions. Airbus notes that DACCS complements the development and use of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF).

Unfortunately, reality as it is, DACCS isn’t a solution for today, this year, or even next year. The hope is to be buying “verified and durable carbon removal credits” in 2025 at the earliest. “The carbon removal credits will be issued by Airbus’ partner 1PointFive – a subsidiary of Occidental’s Low Carbon Ventures business and the global deployment partner of direct air capture company Carbon Engineering. Airbus’ partnership with 1PointFive includes the pre-purchase of 400,000 tonnes of carbon removal credits to be delivered over four years.” We’ll see. (Recommended reading: A Case Study Into A Technology That Should Be Set Aside Until 2050, Carbon Engineering’s Air-To-Fuel Fig Leaf.)

I’m not sold on direct air carbon capture and storage, but I also don’t know what the best solution would be otherwise. Furthermore, it does seem that we need to find more solutions to taking the CO2 out of the air, and this could potentially help Carbon Engineering to mature.

The following are some quotes from some executives with vested interests in this pathway. Scroll through and see what they have to say.

Airbus Executive Vice President of Communications and Corporate Affairs Julie Kitcher: “We are already seeing strong interest from airlines to explore affordable and scalable carbon removals. These first letters of intent mark a concrete step towards the use of this promising technology for both Airbus’ own decarbonisation plan and the aviation sector’s ambition to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

1PointFive President Michael Avery: “We’re excited to partner with Airbus. Carbon removal credits from direct air capture offer a practical, near-term and lower cost pathway that enables the aviation industry to advance its decarbonisation goals.”

Air Canada Senior Director of Environmental Affairs Teresa Ehman: “Air Canada is proud to support the early adoption of direct air capture and storage as we and the aviation industry move forward on the path to decarbonisation. While we are in the early days of a long journey and much remains to be done, this technology is one of the many important levers that will be needed, along with many others, including sustainable aviation fuel and increasingly efficient and new technology aircraft, to decarbonise the aviation industry.”

Air France–KLM VP Sustainability Fatima da Gloria de Sousa: “Sustainability is an integral part of the Air France-KLM Group’s strategy. While we activate all levers already at our disposal to reduce our carbon footprint — including fleet renewal, SAF incorporation and eco-piloting — we are also active partners in research and innovation, advancing knowledge on emerging technology in order to improve its price and efficiency. In addition to CO2 capture and storage, the technology opens up very interesting perspectives for the production of synthetic sustainable aviation fuel. The letter of intent we are signing with Airbus today embodies the collaborative approach the aviation industry has initiated to find effective solutions that meet the challenge of our environmental transition. Only together can we address the climate emergency.”

easyJet Director of Sustainability Jane Ashton: “Direct air capture is a nascent technology with a huge potential, so we are very pleased to be part of this important initiative. We believe that carbon removal solutions will be an essential element of our pathway to net zero, complementing other components and helping us to neutralise any residual emissions in the future. Ultimately, our ambition is to achieve zero carbon emission flying, and we are working with partners across the industry, including Airbus, on several dedicated projects to accelerate the development of future zero carbon emission aircraft technology.”


IAG Head of Sustainability Jonathon Counsell: “Our industry’s transition will require a variety of solutions, including new aircraft, sustainable aviation fuels and emerging technologies. Carbon removal will play an important role in enabling our sector to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

LATAM Airlines Group Corporate Affairs and Sustainability Director Juan José Tohá: “DACCS represents an innovative way not only to remove net carbon from the atmosphere, but it also has the potential to play a part in the development of synthetic sustainable aviation fuels. There is no silver bullet for decarbonising the industry and we will rely on a combination of measures to reach our net-zero ambitions, including greater efficiencies, sustainable aviation fuels and new technologies, supported by the conservation of strategic ecosystems and quality offsets.”

Lufthansa Group Head of Corporate Responsibility Caroline Drischel: “Achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is key for the Lufthansa Group. This involves billion euro investments in continuous fleet modernisation and our strong commitment to Sustainable Aviation Fuels. In addition we are exploring new technologies, like advanced and safe carbon capture and storage processes.”

Virgin Atlantic Vice President of Corporate Development Holly Boyd-Boland: “Reducing Virgin Atlantic’s carbon footprint is our number one climate action priority. Alongside our fleet transformation programme, fuel-efficient operations and supporting the commercial scalability of sustainable aviation fuels, the removal of CO2 directly from the atmosphere through innovative carbon capture and storage technologies becomes a powerful tool in reaching our target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. We look forward to partnering with Airbus and 1PointFive to accelerate the development of Direct Air Carbon Capture and Permanent Storage solutions alongside our industry peers.”

That’s an extensive list of PR statements on this nascent technology. Hopefully it provides further insight into how these companies are thinking about DACCS.

Roboticists discover alternative physics

by Holly Evart, Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science

Latent embeddings from a framework colored by physical state variables. 

Credit: Boyuan Chen/Columbia Engineering

Energy, mass, velocity. These three variables make up Einstein's iconic equation E=MC2. But how did Einstein know about these concepts in the first place? A precursor step to understanding physics is identifying relevant variables. Without the concept of energy, mass, and velocity, not even Einstein could discover relativity. But can such variables be discovered automatically? Doing so could greatly accelerate scientific discovery.

This is the question that researchers at Columbia Engineering posed to a new AI program. The program was designed to observe physical phenomena through a video camera, then try to search for the minimal set of fundamental variables that fully describe the observed dynamics. The study was published on July 25 in Nature Computational Science.

The researchers began by feeding the system raw video footage of phenomena for which they already knew the answer. For example, they fed a video of a swinging double pendulum known to have exactly four "state variables"—the angle and angular velocity of each of the two arms. After a few hours of analysis, the AI produced the answer: 4.7.

The image shows a chaotic swing stick dynamical system in motion. The work aims at identifying and extracting the minimum number of state variables needed to describe such system from high dimensional video footage directly. Credit: Yinuo Qin/Columbia Engineering

"We thought this answer was close enough," said Hod Lipson, director of the Creative Machines Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, where the work was primarily done. "Especially since all the AI had access to was raw video footage, without any knowledge of physics or geometry. But we wanted to know what the variables actually were, not just their number."

The researchers then proceeded to visualize the actual variables that the program identified. Extracting the variables themselves was not easy, since the program cannot describe them in any intuitive way that would be understandable to humans. After some probing, it appeared that two of the variables the program chose loosely corresponded to the angles of the arms, but the other two remain a mystery.

"We tried correlating the other variables with anything and everything we could think of: angular and linear velocities, kinetic and potential energy, and various combinations of known quantities," explained Boyuan Chen Ph.D., now an assistant professor at Duke University, who led the work. "But nothing seemed to match perfectly." The team was confident that the AI had found a valid set of four variables, since it was making good predictions, "but we don't yet understand the mathematical language it is speaking," he explained.

After validating a number of other physical systems with known solutions, the researchers fed videos of systems for which they did not know the explicit answer. The first videos featured an "air dancer" undulating in front of a local used car lot. After a few hours of analysis, the program returned eight variables. A video of a lava lamp also produced eight variables. They then fed a video clip of flames from a holiday fireplace loop, and the program returned 24 variables.

A particularly interesting question was whether the set of variable was unique for every system, or whether a different set was produced each time the program was restarted.

"I always wondered, if we ever met an intelligent alien race, would they have discovered the same physics laws as we have, or might they describe the universe in a different way?" said Lipson. "Perhaps some phenomena seem enigmatically complex because we are trying to understand them using the wrong set of variables. In the experiments, the number of variables was the same each time the AI restarted, but the specific variables were different each time. So yes, there are alternative ways to describe the universe and it is quite possible that our choices aren't perfect."

The researchers believe that this sort of AI can help scientists uncover complex phenomena for which theoretical understanding is not keeping pace with the deluge of data—areas ranging from biology to cosmology. "While we used video data in this work, any kind of array data source could be used—radar arrays, or DNA arrays, for example," explained Kuang Huang, Ph.D., who co-authored the paper.

The work is part of Lipson and Fu Foundation Professor of Mathematics Qiang Du's decades-long interest in creating algorithms that can distill data into scientific laws. Past software systems, such as Lipson and Michael Schmidt's Eureqa software, could distill freeform physical laws from experimental data, but only if the variables were identified in advance. But what if the variables are yet unknown?

Lipson, who is also the James and Sally Scapa Professor of Innovation, argues that scientists may be misinterpreting or failing to understand many phenomena simply because they don't have a good set of variables to describe the phenomena.

"For millennia, people knew about objects moving quickly or slowly, but it was only when the notion of velocity and acceleration was formally quantified that Newton could discover his famous law of motion F=MA," Lipson noted. Variables describing temperature and pressure needed to be identified before laws of thermodynamics could be formalized, and so on for every corner of the scientific world. The variables are a precursor to any theory.

"What other laws are we missing simply because we don't have the variables?" asked Du, who co-led the work.

The paper was also co-authored by Sunand Raghupathi and Ishaan Chandratreya, who helped collect the data for the experiments.Astronomers discover dozens of new variable stars

More information: Boyuan Chen et al, Automated discovery of fundamental variables hidden in experimental data, Nature Computational Science (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s43588-022-00281-6

Journal information: Nature Computational Science 

Provided by Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science 

Default causes alarm for the largest shipping company in the Philippines

 July 26, 202

The financial situation at the largest shipping company in the Philippines has been brought into focus after a sister firm defaulted on a $4m debt to banks last week.

Chelsea Logistics & Infrastructure Holdings is the shipping part of the sprawling Udenna Group, run by local tycoon oil trader Dennis Uy. Shipping brands controlled by Chelsea Logistics include OSV and tanker specialist Chelsea Shipping Corp, Trans-Asia Shipping Lines, Starlite Ferries, TASLI Services, SuperCat Fast Ferry Corporation, and Worklink Services.

A unit of Uy’s holding company was served with a default notice last week over a real estate development he is carrying out at Clark airport. The default has sparked concern about the scale of the debts at the group. Latest data from the end of 2020 show the group, which is also involved in casinos and telecommunications, had debts of $4.6bn, a figure that doubled in the space of three years.

The group stressed yesterday that it has resolved last week’s default issue.

All eyes on Chornomorsk for signs of grain movement out of the Black Sea

 July 26, 2022

 EU NEIGHBOURS east

Those involved in the global transport of grain are watching the port of Chornomorsk, southwest of Odesa, closely today, looking for signs of shipments resuming across the Black Sea.

The port is located on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea at the Sukhyi estuary, some 30 km from Odesa. It is the fourth largest port in the country, capable of handling ships up to 239 m in length with a maximum draught of 13.1 m.

All Ukrainian sea ports have been closed since Russia invaded on February 24, however preparations are now underway to get last year’s harvest moving following a deal signed in Istanbul last Friday between Russia and Ukraine to establish a safe corridor to the Bosporus.

“We believe that over the next 24 hours we will be ready to work to resume exports from our ports. We are talking about the port of Chornomorsk. It will be the first, then there will be Odesa, then the port of Pivdeny,” deputy infrastructure minister Yuriy Vaskov told a news conference on Monday, saying that a first shipment could be made this week.

“In the next two weeks, we will be technically ready to carry out grain exports from all Ukrainian ports,” Vaskov said.

The United Nations (UN) is heavily involved in the operation to move the much needed grain out of the war-torn country.

The first ships may move from the country’s Black Sea ports within a few days, said deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq. Details of the procedures will soon be published by a joint coordination centre in Istanbul that is liaising with the shipping industry, said Haq.

Data from shipping analytics platform Sea/ shows there are currently 10 bulk carriers marooned at the port of Chornomorsk including the Emmakris III (pictured via satellite today below) with no indications that any other ships are making their way there at the moment.

At issue remains the safety of the region, strewn with mines, and insurers’ willingness to cover ships making voyages in the high risk Black Sea. Confirmed mine clearances and trial voyages are deemed as necessary before insurers take on the risk.

Crewing issues to move out ships that have been trapped at these ports could be resolved soon. There are some 85 foreign cargo vessels sitting at Ukrainian ports, mainly abandoned with crew repatriated. To resolve the manpower shortage, Ukrainian politicians are expected to allow local seafarers to return to working on ships, having previously been forced to sign up for military service in the ongoing six-month conflict.

“While there remain some concerns around implementation, and there are a range of scenarios around how quickly exports may ramp-up, the deal [signed between Ukraine and Russia last Friday] should facilitate some increase in shipments from Ukraine, helping to free up storage space (already largely full with last year’s crops) ahead of this year’s wheat and corn harvests which are due in the coming months,” Clarksons noted in its most recent weekly report.

PMA and ILWU reach tentative agreement on health benefits, negotiations continue on other issues

 July 27, 2022

 Port of Los Angeles

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) have reached a tentative agreement on terms for health benefits, subject to agreement on the other issues in the negotiations. The parties have agreed not to discuss the terms of this tentative agreement as negotiations continue.

In a joint statement, the two sides said: “Maintenance of health benefits is an important part of the contract being negotiated between employers represented by the PMA and workers represented by the ILWU.”

The contract being negotiated covers more than 22,000 longshore workers at 29 US west coast ports.

The previous agreement expired on July 1. On that day, the two sides issued a statement saying that cargo would keep moving and normal operations at the ports would continue until a new agreement is achieved.