Interesting Ideas

I remember traveling to Sydney, Australia, a couple of years ago. In nearly every city block there was a green gathering space, usually a fountain, where kids could play and spray and adults could lounge comfortably. Back in the US, I started to admire other city water refuges like artificial ... [continued]

The post Urban Wetlands & Waterways Need Nature-Inspired Solutions appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The bizarre vertical flight pattern has long puzzled experts but new research reveals why it may play a crucial role in the insect’s survival

On a spring evening along the banks of the River Thames, thousands of mayflies can be seen engaging in what may be one of the world’s oldest dances. In the fading light, the males make a steep vertical climb, flip over and float back to Earth – wings and tail outstretched in a skydiving posture so as to drop slowly through the sky.

Mayflies are among the world’s oldest winged insects, emerging roughly 300m years ago – long before dinosaurs walked the Earth. Even the Mesopotamian poem the Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest pieces of literature, makes reference to the short-lived mayfly. Over the epochs, the insect’s basic design has changed very little compared with the fossils of their ancestors.

TAMPA, Fla. – Tampa Electric Company’s (TECO’s) rising utility bills are forcing Tampa families to choose between essentials like food, rent, and medicine and access to power. In response, TECO customers have written letters to the utility’s Board of Directors detailing their personal experiences with increasingly unaffordable energy bills. Sierra Club ... [continued]

The post TECO Customers Issue Letters to Utility’s Board Members Addressing Bill Increases appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders are at opposite ends of the political spectrum. It seems there is only one thing they agree on — artificial intelligence is dangerous. A majority of Americans agree. Quinnipiac University, well known for its polling prowess, summarized the results of a recent poll about AI ... [continued]

The post What Do Steve Bannon & Bernie Sanders Have In Common? Opposition To Artificial Intelligence appeared first on CleanTechnica.

West Dartmoor, Devon: On the moor, every puddle and pool is quivering with whirligig beetles, carving circles and rotating in pairs

A calm, clear morning on Dartmoor and the shallow pools I pass are smooth as glass – scattered wedges of sky reflected between the grass and gorse. I am wandering the western edge of the moor, close to the village of Lydford, best known for its plunging gorge and waterfall. This is a place shaped by rain, from the peat bogs blanketing high ground to the rocky gullies carved by streams.

There are endless puddles and pools, and on this windless day they appear completely flat and still. Only when I look closely, I see that something is agitating the surfaces of the water. Every one of them quivers with life: whirligig beetles.

Washington, D.C. — Today, Sierra Club released a new web tool that shows that every year, approximately 6,500 Americans die prematurely from illnesses linked to coal air pollution. The updated Out of Control: The Deadly Impact of Coal Pollution — 2026 web tool provides county by county, plant by plant, and utility by ... [continued]

The post NEW: Sierra Club Tool Shows Deadly Impact of Coal on Public Health Across the Country appeared first on CleanTechnica.

The Groups are Challenging the State’s Abysmal EPA-Approved Regional Haze Plan CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club, and Earthjustice lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) challenging the agency’s approval of West Virginia’s Regional Haze State Implementation Plan has advanced in the United States Court of Appeals for ... [continued]

The post Conservation Groups Issue Reply to EPA in West Virginia Regional Haze Lawsuit appeared first on CleanTechnica.

In the Sierra Tarahumara, gangs ‘disappear’ those who resist their lucrative illegal tree-felling operations

Decades ago, the children of Rochéachi village in the Sierra Tarahumara – pine-covered mountains of north-west Mexico’s Chihuahua state – would run through the forest by night. In the rainy season, they would collect fireflies whose glimmering light would flicker through the hollows of the pine trees.

“We had peace. We used to walk and play and be together,” says one mother of three, who asked to remain anonymous, about the forest she once knew. “Now, children can’t go out to play. We don’t know what might happen.”

When I wrote in 2021 that small modular reactors were mostly bad policy (peer reviewed version, CleanTechnica version), the argument was not that nuclear fission could not produce useful low-carbon electricity. It was already doing so every day. The United States had about 98 GW of operating nuclear capacity, and ... [continued]

The post Nuclear Scaling Requires Discipline. SMRs Deliver Fragmentation appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Exclusive: 839,000 homes in urban areas face threat of surface-water flooding, with social housing tenants most vulnerable to costs

Eight in 10 of the homes that are at high risk of flooding in England are now in towns and cities, according to analysis by the National Housing Federation (NHF), which said social housing tenants are disproportionately vulnerable to the financial cost.

Research found that 839,000 homes in urban areas are now classed as being at high risk of surface water flooding, a threefold increase since 2018.

Surface ripples known as cat’s paws, caused by turbulence cascade, show where wind is – and were once seen as lucky

On a windy day, the surface of a lake is not a continuous pattern of ripples but instead marked with patches of disturbance, as though a giant cat were patting the water. These surface patterns, known as cat’s paws, are caused by turbulent airflow in the atmosphere.

Wind is caused by changing pressure at different spots on Earth’s surface but does not simply rush in a single mass from one place to another. The chaotic nature of the airflow, with slight differences between adjacent sections, breaks it up and splits out smaller swirls. This continues with large eddies breaking down into smaller ones, which break down further, a process known as turbulence cascade. At the lowest level, we get cat’s paws – which are usually a few metres across and last a few seconds.

Politicians, children and Māori groups gathered in the Wellington banquet hall to see in the flesh the success of efforts to protect country’s national bird

When five kiwi were presented to a crowd of 300 people gathered inside the banquet hall of New Zealand’s parliament, there was an awe-struck intake of breath.

As handlers moved through the group, cradling the whiskery birds, people looked on, spellbound. Some grew teary, and one boy, who noticed a soft brown feather drift to the floor, scooped it up, as his mother urged him to keep it safe.

A KCL study has found that exposure during the first trimester of pregnancy delayed speech development

Babies exposed to higher levels of air pollution in the early stages of pregnancy take longer to learn to speak than those exposed to lower levels in the womb, new research suggests.

A study by researchers from King’s College London found exposure to nitrogen dioxide and fine and ultra-fine particulate matter during the first trimester of pregnancy delayed speech development at 18 months.

An independent study for T&E assesses the near-term cost of e-petrol production for cars. E-fuels have entered the political debate on car CO₂ standards as a decarbonisation alternative to electric vehicles. To establish an up-to-date evidence base that can better inform ongoing policy discussions, T&E commissioned consultancy Ionect to assess the ... [continued]

The post E-fuels in Cars: Unaffordable for Drivers appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Scientists find annual sea surface temperatures across Europe reached highest levels recorded, while deadly wildfires set large parts of continent ablaze

The Nordic heatwave that pushed temperatures above 30C (86F) in the Arctic Circle in July was part of a record-breaking year that saw abnormal heat sear more than 95% of Europe, a report has found.

Parts of Scandinavia were scorched last summer by 21 days of punishingly hot weather that led to “tropical nights” in typically cool countries such as Norway, Sweden and Finland, according to a scientific report campaigners said showed “all the emergency warning lights are flashing red”.

Heatwaves reach 45C across India as unseasonably cold weather affects parts of central Canada

Widespread heavy rain is sweeping over southern China. By Wednesday, rainfall totals are expected to exceed 100mm across many parts of Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi and Hunan provinces, and in some areas as much as 150-200mm.

As a result, the Office of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters and the Ministry of Emergency Management have been holding meetings with meteorological and hydrological departments to emphasise the importance of reinforced patrols and emergency responses to mitigate against the probable flooding that the intense rainfall is expected to bring. In particular, reservoirs with known safety concerns must remain empty during the period, as well as through the coming rainy season.

After her sister died, Victoria Bennett left Cumbria for the remote Scottish archipelago, where she learned to go with the ebb and flow of life

It was during her first winter in Orkney that the nature writer Victoria Bennett experienced the joy of baying into the sea during a storm. “There’s something very physically releasing about howling,” she says. “It’s quite animalistic and powerful.” On a stormy beach, when waves are crashing on the rocks, “you can really let rip”, she says. “The sound just disappears.”

Until that moment, Bennett had been struggling with her decision to move to the remote archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. “I was beginning to feel like I was in a fight against the sea, and against the weather.”

Guangzhou — XPENG (NYSE: XPEV, HKEX: 9868), a leading China-based high-tech company, recently officially released its X-World Technical Report, providing a comprehensive breakdown of the model’s construction and deployment across data, architecture, training, validation, and application. X-World is a controllable, multi-view generative world model designed for autonomous driving. Built on ... [continued]

The post XPENG Releases World Model Technical Report, Powering VLA 2.0 Model R&D And Verification appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Amidst a surge in interest in electric vehicles in Australia, it looks like the charging networks are keeping up. We have high-speed chargers in supermarket carparks and airports along with Level 2 pole-mounted chargers in dense inner-city suburbs. Just walking through the local supermarket carpark gives you a glimpse into ... [continued]

The post Chargers Multiply in Australia appeared first on CleanTechnica.

Annual reports show progress toward net-zero goals NEW YORK — The Sierra Club applauds New York City Comptroller Mark Levine and trustees of three of NYC’s public pension systems for releasing new climate reports showing continued progress toward their net-zero by 2040 goals. The reports from NYCERS, TRS, and BERS affirm the pension systems as ... [continued]

The post Sierra Club Applauds NYC Pensions for Continued Climate Progress, Calls for Stronger Implementation appeared first on CleanTechnica.