Science

There’s a Messaging Battle Right Now Over America’s Energy Future

Published

3 years ago

March 19, 2022

There’s a Messaging Battle Right Now Over America’s Energy Future

Local weather scientists, oil executives, progressives and conservatives all agree on one factor today: The vitality transition is upon us.

The uninhibited burning of fossil fuels for greater than a century has already warmed the planet considerably, and cleaner and extra sustainable sources of energy are urgently wanted with the intention to keep away from additional catastrophic adjustments to the atmosphere.

However whilst longtime adversaries use the identical terminology, calling in unison for an “vitality transition,” they’re usually speaking about starkly totally different situations.

In line with the scientific consensus, the vitality transition requires a fast phasing out of fossil fuels and the rapid scaling up of cleaner vitality sources like wind, photo voltaic and nuclear.

However many within the oil and fuel enterprise say the vitality transition merely means a continued use of fossil fuels, with a larger reliance on pure fuel slightly than coal, and a hope that new applied sciences reminiscent of carbon seize and sequestration can include or cut back the quantity of greenhouse gasses they produce.

“The time period vitality transition is interpreted a method by the local weather hawks, and in a very totally different means by these within the oil and fuel business,” stated Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Yale Program on Local weather Change Communication. “It’s a very ambiguous time period. Like, what does that even imply?”

The phrase has turn into what is thought in linguistics circles as an “floating signifier,” Dr. Leiserowitz stated. He known as it “a clean time period you could fill with your personal most popular definition.”

Efforts to maneuver the world away from fossil fuels have been continuing in sluggish movement for years, as nations and companies advance scattershot efforts to cut back emissions. However the transformation is reaching an inflection level at the moment, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompting local weather advocates and the oil and fuel business to advance dueling narratives about what the vitality transition is and the way it needs to be carried out.

Local weather researchers level out that there’s little room for ambiguity. With growing urgency, a sequence of main scientific reviews has underlined the necessity to section out fossil fuels and the damaging results of planet warming emissions.

Final 12 months, a landmark report from the Worldwide Vitality Company stated nations all over the world would want to instantly cease approving new coal-fired energy crops and new oil and fuel fields and swiftly section out gasoline powered autos to keep away from the worst results of local weather change.

And final month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change, a physique of specialists convened by the United Nations, stated the variety of folks struggling irreparable loss or dislocation due to excessive climate would soar with out a fast shift away from fossil fuels.

These in favor of a quick pivot to scrub vitality contend that the warfare in Ukraine, which has put a highlight on Europe’s heavy reliance on Russian oil and fuel, has solely pushed house the pressing have to transition away from fossil fuels.

“There’s a well-understood path that all of us have to observe right here,” stated Mark Brownstein, senior vp of vitality on the Environmental Protection Fund, a nonprofit group that advocates for swift motion to handle local weather change. “It’s a basic shift away from manufacturing and use of oil and fuel and towards renewable sources.”

Most of the people can also be broadly supportive of a decided transfer away from fossil fuels, with 69 p.c of People saying that creating sources of fresh vitality needs to be a excessive precedence for leaders in Washington, and the identical share supporting a transition of the U.S. economic system to one hundred pc clear vitality by 2050, in line with current polling by the Pew Analysis Heart. On the similar time, although, simply 31 p.c of these polled thought the USA ought to section out fossil fuels totally.

“Public assist for quickly accelerating the transition to scrub vitality is pushed largely by the view that burning fossil gasoline is dangerous for peoples’ well being and the planet’s well being, and that transitioning to scrub vitality will produce extra jobs and strengthen our economic system greater than continued reliance on fossil fuels,” Edward Maibach, director of the George Mason College’s Heart for Local weather Change Communication, stated in an electronic mail. “Public notion is nicely aligned with the views of well being specialists and economists on these factors.”

Oil and fuel executives, nevertheless, have a really totally different view of how the vitality transition ought to play out.

At CERAWeek, a serious vitality business convention in Houston final week, there have been greater than 100 panel discussions and shows concerning the “vitality transition,” and the time period was used to explain applications articulating a broad vary of visions from nearly eliminating using coal, fuel and oil, to utilizing all types of vitality, together with fossil fuels, for the foreseeable future, however capturing the emissions which are damaging the planet.

“All vitality sources might be wanted to assist a profitable transition,” Amin Nasser, chief government of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil firm, stated on the convention. “Our business should play its half, too.”

Mr. Nasser lamented the dearth of a cohesive intergovernmental plan for an vitality transition and stated that politicians have been discouraging oil and fuel manufacturing with out allocating ample sources to develop renewable vitality sources that would rapidly exchange fossil fuels. Mr. Nasser didn’t point out that oil firms have lobbied to weaken and block laws that will deal with local weather change, reminiscent of President Biden’s Construct Again Higher invoice, which might dedicate $550 billion in tax incentives to scrub vitality.

“We don’t actually have a transition plan,” he stated. “We have now a chaotic transition plan.”

Fossil gasoline executives cited the warfare in Ukraine as proof that their business stays indispensable. Many main oil and fuel firms have pledged to ramp up manufacturing within the quick time period in an effort to stabilize world vitality markets, whilst they speak up their half within the vitality transition.

Darren Woods, the chief government of Exxon Mobil, stated in a speech that his firm was growing oil manufacturing whereas on the similar time utilizing its know-how to assist deal with the problem of “lowering greenhouse fuel emissions and supporting the transition to a web zero future.” Exxon is amongst a number of large oil and fuel firms to put money into efforts to seize and retailer carbon, and to provide vitality with hydrogen, which is derived from fossil fuels however produces fewer greenhouse fuel emissions.

And in an interview in Washington this week, Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Vitality Alliance, which represents oil and fuel firms, dismissed the concept the “vitality transition” meant a major drop in using fossil fuels. She famous that the Vitality Info Company final 12 months predicted that demand for oil and fuel will proceed to rise steadily by way of 2050.

“We will discuss this idealistic supposed future the place there’s no oil, pure fuel and coal,” Ms. Sgamma stated. “However that’s not the truth.”

She argued that whereas renewable vitality sources like wind and photo voltaic are getting cheaper, they’ve been tough to scale and are unreliable.

“So if we’re going to speak a couple of transition, let’s discover one thing that we will transition to, as a result of proper now we don’t have a know-how that may present all of our wants 24-7. Flat out we don’t,” she stated. “So simply realistically, we’re going to be right here by way of 2050 and a few years after.”

Critics of the oil and fuel business view their insistence on the enduring worth of fossil fuels as a stall tactic at finest, and misleading at worst.

“It is a cowl for ‘We don’t need an actual transition,’” stated David Victor, a local weather coverage knowledgeable on the College of California, San Diego.

Murky terminology additionally leaves the door open for greenwashing.

“Any firm, even an oil firm, can say, ‘Oh, we’re behind the vitality transition,’” Dr. Leiserowitz stated, pointing to examples reminiscent of Exxon’s advertising of its algae biofuels and BP’s try to rebrand itself “Past Petroleum.”

“That’s a intelligent means of tapping into this broader narrative of transitioning,” he stated.

But even when the time period means various things to totally different constituents, the truth that fierce adversaries share a typical language could possibly be a helpful improvement.

Teenie Matlock, a professor of cognitive science on the College of California Merced who had studied the semantics of local weather change, stated that having a shared set of phrases was an vital step in efforts to search out widespread trigger, even when not everybody agreed on the particulars immediately.

“With the phrase ‘transition’ and the best way it’s getting used, it opens the window for a number of stakeholders,” she stated. “It invitations everybody to participate in a dialogue.”

Dr. Leiserowitz agreed, including that the truth that the oil and fuel business was acknowledging the necessity for change in any respect was a serious breakthrough.

“The optimistic aspect is that it’s a versatile sufficient time period that it will get all people shifting in the identical course, and it can’t be underestimated how vital that’s,” he stated. “Simply utilizing the time period ‘vitality transition’ signifies that we’re going from the place we’re at the moment. So that you’ve already established the elemental course of progress, and that’s large.”

Semantics alone are unlikely to dictate the tempo at which fossil fuels are changed with cleaner vitality sources. Economics will decide simply how a lot the world “transitions” to scrub vitality and leaves fossil gasoline behind, stated John Podesta, a former senior counselor to President Barack Obama and founding father of the Heart for American Progress, a left-leaning suppose tank.

Will fossil gasoline crops that use know-how to seize and retailer harmful carbon dioxide emissions be aggressive with wind and photo voltaic together with battery storage? Will paying to fill the tank of a gas-powered automotive nonetheless be the only option when electrical automobile charging stations are extra plentiful?

“We’ll let {the marketplace} resolve that,” Mr. Podesta stated. “I’m going to make my wager on renewables plus storage, however you realize, different folks make totally different bets.”

Science

These Corals Are Made for Walking

Published

19 minutes ago

January 22, 2025

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Corals come in a wide array of shapes, sizes and colors, and they build sprawling reefs that serve as refuges for vast amounts of biodiversity in the ocean. But they are not known for being fleet of foot.

This is because out of the more than 6,000 species of coral known to science, most are colonial organisms — individual animals that make their homes next to and on top of one another. And as adults, these corals are immobile.

But there’s another, lesser-known and understudied kind of coral that’s completely solitary. And some of these animals, known as mushroom corals, can walk.

“They’re very little,” said Brett Lewis, a marine ecologist and microscopist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. “And they are adorable.”

Using time-lapse cameras and an aquarium that blocked out all other light, Mr. Lewis recently put inch-long mushroom corals through an experiment.

One side of the aquarium had a sliver of white light, like you would find in shallow coastal habitats. The other had a small beam of blue light, like you would find in slightly deeper areas of the ocean. In each of three trials, the mushroom corals showed a strong preference for the blue light, inching their way toward it, Mr. Lewis reported Wednesday in the journal PLoS One.

As for how a mushroom coral actually moves, Mr. Lewis’s research revealed that the mechanics are surprisingly similar to the way one of coral’s closest cousins, the jellyfish, gets around.

“Jellyfish can move through water by twisting and contracting muscles in and around the edges of that bell shape as it pulses,” he said.

With bodies shaped similarly to the bell of a jellyfish, Mr. Lewis said, the mushroom corals spend a long time inflating the tissues on the outermost edge of their bodies before releasing them quickly. “And that allows the coral to kind of pop themselves forward, hopping across the substrate,” he said.

To be clear, while a mushroom coral can move, it takes its sweet time about it. The corals appear rather spry in the time-lapse footage. But in real time, it can take several hours for a mushroom coral to move just a few fractions of an inch. In the study, a series of “periodic pulses” moved a mushroom coral 220 millimeters over the course of one to two hours.

“I watched this thing for a very long time, thinking it was going to pop,” Mr. Lewis laughed. “I was like, ‘Christ almighty, this is taking a long time to happen.’”

While the idea of roving corals was first proposed in 1992 and then documented for the first time in 1995, the scientists who initially described the behavior didn’t have the best resolution videography at their disposal. This meant that scientists couldn’t fully investigate the biomechanics necessary for a coral to skedaddle. But now, Mr. Lewis and his team have shined a light on this little-known corner of marine biology.

The study “provides much more detail in the mechanism and behavior of motion,” said Bert Hoeksema, a coral taxonomist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands who was not involved in the new research.

There are many reasons a mushroom coral might want to relocate. The animals frequently begin their lives living among colonial corals. But these habitats tend to be crowded and bombarded by waves. Later in life, it behooves the mushroom corals to migrate to deeper but calmer waters, where they can establish themselves on a sandy bottom with others of their kind. This also assists the animals in reproduction.

Migration “may help them to escape unfavorable situations, such as being buried underneath a layer of sand, being toppled over or being too close to aggressive competitors for space, such as toxic sponges,” Dr. Hoeksema said.

A mushroom coral’s incremental movement may seem inconsequential when considered against the distances traveled by other migrating creatures, such as wildebeest, monarch butterflies or Arctic terns. But such creeping has served the species well for hundreds of millions of years.

“At their scale, they’re so little that this is such a large movement for them,” Mr. Lewis said. “They’re moving their body length in such a short time, with such a simple system. That’s a sprint for them.”

Science

What Trump’s Pledge to Plant the U.S. Flag on Mars Really Means

Published

1 day ago

January 21, 2025

Press Room

What Trump’s Pledge to Plant the U.S. Flag on Mars Really Means

During his Inaugural Address on Monday, President Donald J. Trump again promised to launch American astronauts to Mars.

Seated nearby, Elon Musk, a political benefactor of Mr. Trump who founded SpaceX in the hope that it would one day be able to send colonists to Mars, beamed with enthusiasm and offered two thumbs up. The gargantuan Starship rocket that Mr. Musk’s company is currently developing is meant for that task.

Mr. Trump left a number of specifics unsaid, including what the new initiative would mean for NASA’s existing moon program, when astronauts would get to Mars and what other NASA programs might be cut to pay for it.

What Trump has said about Mars

Mr. Trump has mentioned landing on Mars before. During a campaign rally in Reading, Pa., on Oct. 9, he promised that this would occur during his presidency. “We will lead the world in space and reach Mars before the end of my term,” he said.

He did not specify whether he meant landing American astronauts on Mars by Jan. 20, 2029, his last day in the White House, or whether just sending a prototype of the spacecraft that would take astronauts someday further in the future would suffice.

On Monday, he said that American astronauts would “plant the stars and stripes on the planet Mars,” but left out when.

Separately, Mr. Musk has not been shy in making his own proclamations. In September, he said that SpaceX would launch five Starships to Mars in 2026, albeit with no one aboard, to test their ability to survive re-entry through the thin Martian atmosphere and to arrive on the surface in one piece.

Earth and Mars pass relatively close to each other once every 26 months; the next time they will be in alignment will be in late 2026. If those landers succeeded, the first people would travel at the next opportunity, in 2028, Mr. Musk said.

Mr. Musk’s timeline is thus possible, at least in terms of orbital dynamics. But many other questions remain to be answered.

What happened to the moon?

Mr. Trump did not mention the moon, even though the centerpiece for the space program during his first term was returning astronauts to the moon as part of NASA’s Artemis program. There are already signs that the new administration is planning major changes to Artemis.

One hint involves who is running NASA right now.

During a change of presidential administrations, NASA’s top political appointees typically resign, and a career official, the associate administrator, fills in until a new administrator is confirmed by the Senate. Mr. Trump has nominated Jared Isaacman, a billionaire who has flown two private astronaut missions on SpaceX rockets and who is a close associate of Mr. Musk.

On Monday, Mr. Trump said that Janet Petro, the director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, would serve as acting administrator. In doing that, he bypassed James Free, the third-highest official at NASA.

Mr. Free has been a defender of the current Artemis program.

“Jim Free made it clear that Artemis was perfect and didn’t need to be changed,” said James Muncy, a Republican space policy consultant who was not involved with the NASA transition for Mr. Trump. “Which is disqualifying to a president that wants to change things.”

Crucial parts of the current Artemis program include the Space Launch System, a powerful but expensive NASA rocket, and the Orion capsule where the astronauts would travel between the Earth and the moon.

Many in the space industry expect the incoming Trump administration to cancel S.L.S., and possibly Orion as well.

On Christmas, Mr. Musk wrote on X, “The Artemis architecture is extremely inefficient, as it is a jobs-maximizing program, not a results-maximizing program. Something entirely new is needed.”

The next day, Mr. Musk, who has met repeatedly with Mr. Trump, appeared to call for skipping the moon altogether: “No, we’re going straight to Mars. The Moon is a distraction.”

Mr. Musk downplayed the moon, even though SpaceX holds a $4 billion contract to build a version of Starship to take astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon.

A cancellation of Artemis would also cancel SpaceX’s contract.

“We will see whether or not there is no money for the moon at all in the budget when it comes out,” said Mr. Muncy, who said he would prefer that NASA continue the moon program using commercial alternatives to S.L.S.

Can American astronauts really get to Mars?

Mr. Musk has a long history of offering unrealistic, overly optimistic schedules for his rocket developments. In 2016, he predicted that the first uncrewed SpaceX missions on Mars would launch in 2022, and that astronauts would be headed there this year.

SpaceX has made technological strides, but they remain far short of what is needed to pull off a Mars journey. Some of the most significant hurdles include quick turnarounds between launches and refueling Starships while in orbit.

The life-support system on Mars-bound versions of Mr. Musk’s Starship would also have to work reliably — scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air, recycling water and performing other tasks to keep the ship habitable — for more than a year.

If the astronauts successfully landed on Mars, the return trip would require more yet-to-be-proven technologies.

For one, the Starship would have to be refueled with methane and oxygen.

The technology for extracting those gases from Martian air is still mostly hypothetical. SpaceX could conceivably send additional Starships with the propellants for the return trip, but that would add complexity.

Then there is the question of who would pay for all this. These Mars flights would occur at a time when NASA would be busy with its Artemis moon missions, presumably with SpaceX fulfilling its contractual obligations to build a moon lander.

At least on paper, it thus might make sense for Mr. Musk for the Artemis moon missions to be canceled and for NASA to pay him instead to aim for Mars.

Science

Trump orders federal agencies to recognize only two sexes that are 'not changeable'

Published

1 day ago

January 21, 2025

Press Room

Trump orders federal agencies to recognize only two sexes that are 'not changeable'

President Trump signed executive orders Monday asserting that the U.S. government recognizes only two sexes that are “not changeable,” and reversing Biden administration directives on LGBTQ+ rights.

One of the new orders says that “male” and “female” are defined based on reproductive cells and at the point when a person is conceived, and states that government-issued identification such as passports and visas must reflect that definition. In recent years, the U.S. had begun allowing people to select a third option, X, on passports to indicate an unspecified or other gender identity.

Trump’s directive also calls for federal agencies to eliminate any statements or policies “that promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology,” which it defines as “an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa.”

Federal agencies will enforce “laws governing sex-based rights, protections, opportunities, and accommodations to protect men and women as biologically distinct sexes,” the order states, saying such measures were needed to prevent men from gaining access to “intimate single-sex spaces” for women.

It also directs federal officials to ensure that people it defines as men are not housed in women’s prisons or detention centers. In addition, the executive order calls for the attorney general to block the use of federal funding for medical treatment or procedures for gender transition for prisoners.

Kellan Baker, executive director of the Institute for Health Research & Policy at Whitman-Walker, an organization focused on LGBTQ+ health equity, noted that the order didn’t appear to make any distinction based on whether someone had pursued medical transition or changed their identity documents.

“It seems to be trying to wave a federal policy wand and make transgender people disappear — which is an impossibility,” Baker said.

Baker said the changes in detention policies aren’t immediate and must go through the federal process of rulemaking. But if they came to pass, he said, the move could put transgender people in federal custody, particularly transgender women, in serious danger.

Under a broader order that rolled back dozens of executive orders issued under then-President Biden, Trump also reversed orders on LGBTQ+ rights, including one that directed the leaders of federal agencies to review their rules against sex discrimination to ensure that people received equal treatment under the law, “no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.”

The Trump administration is likely to face challenges over the executive actions. Kevin Jennings, chief executive of the LGBTQ+ civil rights organization Lambda Legal, said in a statement that many of the changes called for in the executive orders would take time to roll out, but “we will vigilantly monitor and be ready to challenge when they take effect.”

“We are exploring every legal avenue to challenge these unlawful and unconstitutional actions,” Jennings said.

During his campaign, Trump attacked “left-wing gender insanity” and hammered then-Vice President Kamala Harris over the idea of providing gender-affirming care to federal inmates. He said he would push to block the use of federal funds for medical care involved in gender transition, including surgical procedures.

Trump also stated that he would seek to terminate healthcare providers from the Medicaid and Medicare programs if they give gender-affirming care to youth, which he refers to as “mutilation” — a move that experts said could cut hospitals and clinics off from critical streams of federal funding.

The executive order issued Monday doesn’t broadly address medical care involved in gender transition beyond the restrictions involving prisoners, although experts said changes in how laws about sex discrimination are interpreted could weaken protections for transgender patients. The Biden administration had previously rolled out federal regulations that provided broad protection against discrimination based on gender identity by federally funded healthcare entities.

The American Medical Assn. has expressed support for improving access to gender-affirming care, calling it “an important means of improving health outcomes for the transgender population” and said it supports both public and private insurance coverage for treatment of gender dysphoria. The American Psychological Assn. has also opposed bans on such care.