Highlights

The World Health Organization has cut its recommended limits for air pollution and urged nations to tackle dirty air and save millions of lives.

In the first update for 16 years, the guideline limit for the most damaging pollution – tiny particles from burning fossil fuels – has been halved. The new limit for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), mainly produced by diesel engines, is now 75% lower.

The stringent new limits reflect the large body of evidence produced in recent years of the deadly harm caused to people by much lower levels of pollution than previously thought. Air pollution kills at least 7 million people a year, the WHO said, while a recent study estimated 8.7 million early deaths a year from coal, oil and gas burning – 20% of all deaths.

Pollution cuts an average of two years from the lives of the global population, and up to six years in highly polluted nations such as India, making it a bigger killer than smoking, car crashes or HIV/Aids.

Scientists stressed that even the new limits should not be considered safe, as there appears to be no level at which pollutants stop causing damage. They said reducing pollution would boost health even in nations with relatively clean air. A 2019 review concluded that air pollution may be damaging every organ in the body, causing heart and lung disease, diabetes and dementia and reducing intelligence.

Air pollution is the biggest environmental threat to human health and is a public health emergency, according to the WHO, costing trillions of dollars a year. More than 90% of the global population already breathes levels of pollution above the WHO’s 2005 guideline for tiny particles. Cutting air pollution brings huge and cost-effective health benefits and reduces the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis...

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If it looks like a penguin and swims like a penguin – but it’s actually a robot – then it must be the latest advance in marine sensory equipment.

The Quadroin is an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV): a 3D-printed self-propelled machine designed to mimic a penguin in order to measure the properties of oceanic eddies.

It was developed by Burkard Baschek while head of Germany’s Institute of Coastal Ocean Dynamics at the Helmholtz Centre Hereon in Geesthacht after he watched more than $20,000 of his equipment sink to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Eddies are small ocean currents that other research methods have struggled to capture. They influence all the animals and plants in the seas as well as the Earth’s climate, driving roughly 50% of all phytoplankton production. The base of the marine food chain, phytoplankton and other marine plants such as kelp and algal plankton also produce up to 70% of atmospheric oxygen.

“Every fourth breath each human takes depends on those small ocean eddies,” says Baschek, who is now director of the German Oceanographic Museum in the northern port of Stralsund.

Despite their significance, eddies are poorly understood within the scientific community because they are small; some are just 10 metres across, and they have an average lifespan of 12 hours, posing a huge challenge for ocean observations. Few detailed measurements even exist.

Baschek first developed an array of about 20 sensors attached to a rope, to be towed behind a ship to measure key oceanographic variables in the eddies – such as temperature, salinity, pressure, chlorophyll and oxygen. But the rope would catch on rocks, fishing nets or containers – sending all the data to the...

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"As people ventured out from their pandemic cocoons this year, they gobbled up more electricity than they did before COVID-19 shut the world down. But there still isn’t enough clean energy to meet rising demand, so coal is making a comeback. Global electricity demand climbed 5 percent above pre-pandemic levels in the first six months of 2021, according to an analysis published today by London think tank Ember. Electricity grids turned to more coal to meet that demand, and power sector carbon pollution rose 5 percent compared to the first half of 2019.

Catapulting emissions in 2021 should send alarm bells across the world. We are not building back better, we are building back badly,” Dave Jones, global program lead at Ember, said in a statement today. “The electricity transition is happening but with little urgency: emissions are going in the wrong direction.”

China drove 90 percent of the rise in electricity demand and most of the uptick in coal. While China is already the biggest carbon emitter in the world, that’s been mitigated by the fact that its per capita emissions are less than half that of the US, which is currently the second biggest climate polluter. But China’s per capita electricity demand is also rising rapidly, Ember’s report shows. That highlights how important it will be for the planet for China to get its emissions in check.

None of the 63 countries Ember analyzed, which account for 87 percent of the global electricity production, saw a “green recovery” in the first half of 2021. Ember’s criteria for “green recovery” included lower power sector emissions and higher electricity demand, a sign that more electricity was being generated by clean energy sources like solar and wind. Some countries like the US had slightly cleaner power sectors compared to 2019 as electricity demand stayed relatively flat, but their emissions are expected to rise again with demand.

Renewable energy did have a growth spurt in the early part of 2021. Together, wind and solar generated more than a tenth of..."

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Small, cheap electric cars are finally coming, people! This is the Volkswagen ID. Life Concept and it teases VW's sub-£20,000 compact EV that will arrive in 2025 along with siblings from Skoda and Cupra. Yes, we wish it was coming sooner too, but it's encouraging to see car makers are turning their attention to the type of EV we need most right now: affordable ones. Full video on the ID. Life coming to our channel very soon. In the meantime, what are your thoughts on this boxy boi? ...

⚡[BTS] Soaking up the SUN 🌤️ are we boys?! 😉

It's Day 3 at #FullyChargedOUTSIDE and the weather couldn't have been better!

Here's a lovely Behind-The-Scenes shot of the #FullyCharged Production Team, looking for a bird's eye view up on the roof! It's safe to say they've been busy this weekend! 🎬📸

If you spot any of us wearing our Crew shirts please don't hesitate to stop us and say hi! 👋👕 ...

⚡️Aaaaannd.. WE'RE OFF!

The first day of an ELECTRIFYING weekend at #FullyChargedOUTSIDE has BEGUN🔋Who's excited?! ...

Motoring out of Montauk Harbor aboard a research vessel, Sean Barrett waves hello to a commercial fishing boat, yelling “What up, Jay! Any slipper snails in there?”

It is a crisp, sunny day – the kind that brings tourists to Montauk, a small fishing village at the end of Long Island, New York. Although the town is better-known as a resort destination, it is the state’s largest commercial fishing port, only one of two major ports that are still in operation.

More than 10 years ago, Barrett, 46, created Dock to Dish, the nation’s first restaurant-supported fishery – essentially an alternative model for selling seafood sustainably where members pay a fee for a share of a local catch.

A commercial fishing dock in Montauk, New York. Montauk is the state’s largest commercial fishing port.
A commercial fishing dock in Montauk, New York. Montauk is the state’s largest commercial fishing port. Photograph: Desiree Rios/The Guardian
More recently he has been focusing on the bottom of the ocean food chain and a different kind of marine life: kelp. Earlier this year, he founded the Montauk Seaweed Supply Co and today the Guardian is accompanying him as he travels out to look at native seaweeds at nearby Fort Pond.

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In his new venture, Barrett has been mindful of the Indigenous uses of seaweed as a fertilizer, and devised a kelp-based soil amendment that home gardeners and golf courses can use on their plants rather than chemical-laden fertilizers. Describing kelp as the “ocean’s first regenerative crop”, Barrett believes that by localizing seaweed production in New York he can revive the stymied maritime industry.

“Seafood import rates in the US are around 90%. Seaweed is more than 94%. We try to bring it all back to being more local,” said Barrett. He adds that most seafood and seaweed products go through upwards of 15 purveyors, and that he is trying “to get that chain of custody down to three hands: a farmer, the company and a consumer”.

But there’s just one catch: it is illegal to farm seaweed in New York state, despite activists’ best efforts...

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For the first time ever, there’s an official water shortage at the largest water reservoir in the US. Today, the US Bureau of Reclamation declared a water shortage at Hoover Dam’s Lake Mead, which 25 million people across the Western US and Mexico rely on for water. It’s the first time this kind of declaration had been made on the Colorado River, the main source of water for Lake Mead, CNN and E&E News report.

The declaration will trigger mandatory cuts to water use starting January 1, 2022. California, Arizona, and Nevada all tap water from Lake Mead. Based on federal guidelines for shortages brokered in 2019, Arizona will lose 18 percent of its annual apportionment of water from Lake Mead, and Nevada will lose seven percent of their annual allotment. Mexico, which also gets water from the watershed, will lose five percent of its share. California won’t face cuts just yet, because it has stronger water rights under complex water sharing agreements...

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#climatechange #greennews #climatecrisis #water #drought #watersource #hooverdam ...

A fine day's shooting complete ✅ Tune into this week's news ep for a recap of the biggest stories of the week, as well as a very exclusive insight into what to expect from Fully Charged Outside. GET YOUR TICKETS ASAP IF YOU HAVEN'T YET - they're going quick!! ...