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In 2024, technologies to combat climate change soared above the clouds in electricity-generating kites, traveled the oceans sequestering carbon, and permeated the earth to power agritech in a new way. If these don’t ring a bell, fret not! We’ve gathered our top 10 climate tech stories of the past y... Read Full article on HadNews.com

Hurricane Milton slammed into the west coast of Florida on October 9, becoming the second powerful hurricane to hit the state in just two weeks. While most people turned to meteorologists for explanations, a vocal minority remained sceptical, proposing that the hurricanes were engineered, that Florida’s weather was being manipulated, or even that it was targeted at Republican voters. These ideas aren’t new. As psychologists, we research the roots of conspiracy theories, and have found they often emerge in the wake of natural disasters. Investigating these theories is especially crucial as extreme weather events are projected to becom...... Read Full article on HadNews

The theme of this year’s NAIDOC Week is “Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud”. The organisers are calling for “a society where the wisdom and contributions of Indigenous peoples are fully valued and respected”. Australia’s Indigenous peoples have gained intimate Knowledges of this continent through long-term observations and holistic thinking. They have connections to their traditional estate, known as Country, spanning thousands of generations. As climate change worsens, Indigenous peoples can offer valuable insights into sustainability and resilience. Governments and others increasingly recognise how Indigenous Knowledges ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Summer is a time for educators and students to recharge. For educators, this opportunity to reflect and regroup often includes planning for how to support students in the next school year. It is becoming increasingly important that this support involves helping students navigate the impacts of the climate crisis. Read more: Advice for teachers on how to use the summer to protect their hearts from burnout Doom and gloom discourses encountered at school and through multimedia exposure risk evoking worry, fear, anxiety and hopelessness. To enhance a growing understanding of complex climate emotions, we ...... Read Full article on HadNews

People living in southern Australia won’t have failed to notice how cold it is. Frosty nights and chilly days have been the weather for many of us since the start of July. As winter continues, we are left wondering how unusual the cold is and whether we can expect several more months of this. Warmer conditions are in the forecast but winter has a long way to go. Further cold snaps could occur. Cold conditions have been in place across southern Australia for the past few days. Temperatures have fallen below zero overnight in many places. Minimum temperatures have been below average across south...... Read Full article on HadNews

More Australians than ever are riding electric bikes – a fact you may have noticed on the streets of our cities and towns. Electric bikes, or e-bikes, are typically equipped with an electric motor and a battery, providing power to help you pedal. Some allow you to boost and lower the amount of pedalling assistance you get. Globally, the transport sector produces about one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. Finding cleaner ways to get around is vital to combating the climate crisis. E-bikes also offer solutions to the problems of traffic congestion, fuel costs and sedentary lifestyles. But is an electric bike right for you? Below, ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Autonomous vehicles have been highly anticipated because of the possibility that they will greatly reduce or perhaps eliminate the collisions that cause more than one million deaths each year. But safety isn’t the only potential benefit self-driving cars can offer: Teams of researchers around the world are showing that autonomous vehicles can also drive more efficiently than humans can. A U.S. Department of Energy program called NEXTCAR (Next-Generation Energy Technologies for Connected and Automated On-Road Vehicles), for example, is betting that a mix of new smart vehicle technologies can boost fuel efficiency by as much as 30 percent.As ...... Read Full article on HadNews

In late April, the Miami-based rail company Brightline Trains broke ground on a project that the company promises will give the United States its first dedicated, high-speed passenger rail service. The 350 kilometer (218 mile) corridor, which the company calls Brightline West, will connect Las Vegas to the the suburbs of Los Angeles. Brightline says it hopes to complete the project in time for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games that will take place in Los Angeles.Brightline has chosen Siemens American Pioneer 220 engines that will run at speeds averaging 165 kilometers per hour, with an advertised top speed of 320 km/h. That average speed still ...... Read Full article on HadNews

Elon Musk appeared to win the battle, and the war. Tesla’s vast Supercharger network had crushed rival automakers, forcing a surrender: Adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard, or lose customers frustrated with a balkanized, often-unreliable Combined Charging Standard (CCS) network. But even as Ford and Rivian began sending free Tesla adapters to its EV owners, Musk seemed to kneecap his acclaimed creation: In late April, the CEO fired all 500 members of his Supercharger team, apparently in a fit of pique. The mass firings came as Musk turns his attention to AI and autonomous vehicles as the future of Tesla’s suddenly dwindling profi...... Read Full article on HadNews

Electric vehicles are often seen as the panacea to cutting emissions – and air pollution – from transport. Is this view correct? Yes – but only once uptake accelerates. Despite the recent boom in EV purchases, they’re still a tiny minority of the cars on the road. We would get more immediate benefit by focusing on electrifying buses, which are a surprisingly large source of air pollution, and finding ways to cut rapidly growing emissions from diesel trucks. While the electricity sector still produces the largest share of emissions in Australia (32.3%), emissions are falling. But emissions from transport (21.1%) are already the third...... Read Full article on HadNews

A consortium of U.S. federal agencies has pooled their funds and wide array of expertise to reinvent the emergency vehicle. The hybrid electric box truck they’ve come up with is carbon neutral. And in the aftermath of a natural disaster like a tornado or wildfire, the vehicle, called H2Rescue, can supply electric power and potable water to survivors while acting as a temperature-controlled command center for rescue personnel.The agencies that funded and developed it from an idea on paper to a functional Class 7 emergency vehicle prototype say they are pleased with the outcome of the project, which is now being used for further research and ...... Read Full article on HadNews

For the second year in a row, over 100 hammerheads have gathered at one of Australia’s busiest beaches, Burleigh Beach in the Gold Coast. Why aren’t we alarmed? Because these are small scalloped hammerheads, not the larger great hammerhead. Even this species is feared far more than it deserves. Plus, these scalloped hammerheads are juveniles between 40 cm and 1 metre. Scalloped hammerheads prefer tropical and temperate oceans. But as the oceans heat up, they’re moving further south – just as we’re seeing in Western Australia, where these timid sharks are now gathering off Perth. These remarkable sharks are one of the few social ...... Read Full article on HadNews

This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore.Wind turbines are becoming a bigger part of the race towards a greener future—but at the same time, the technology is quickly evolving, which raises questions about how emerging turbine prototypes can be tested quickly and efficiently before they’re hooked up to power grids. A study published in February by a research group in Germany in the journalIEEE Open Journal of Power Electronics outlines four ways to test wind turbines to get them on the grid as fast as possible,with the aim of finding any issues earlier on in the testing phase.For decades...... Read Full article on HadNews

Turning garbage into gold sounds like alchemy, not science. But researchers at ETH Zurich have demonstrated an efficient, sustainable method to extract gold nuggets from common electronic waste.The process uses not one, but two waste products. Gold is coaxed from e-waste with a protein amyloid nanofibril (AF) aerogel derived from whey, a by-product of cheese making. The aerogel acts like a gold sponge, and the researchers were able to extract a nearly pure, 22-karat, gold nugget weighing almost half a gram from 20 discarded computer motherboards.“We knew protein sponges have a very high absorption capacity for gold, but our surprise was to f...... Read Full article on HadNews

This article is part of our exclusive IEEE Journal Watch series in partnership with IEEE Xplore.As more electric vehicles hit the roads, the environmental impact of their battery production will also increase. This raises a major question: What type of EV battery will be the most environmentally friendly on a large scale?A study published 1 February in IEEE Access suggests that, after considering five different types of EV battery cells, lithium-sulphur cells will be the most environmentally friendly. The results also suggest that cells that don’t rely on precious and critical metals are fundamental for ensuring sustainable production.The m...... Read Full article on HadNews

Twenty homes scattered across Canada and the northern United States are keeping warm this winter using prototypes of the latest iteration in residential heating systems: cold climate heat pumps. Heat pumps aren’t common in homes at this latitude, because historically they haven’t worked well in subzero temperatures. But heat pump manufacturers say they now have the technology to heat homes just as efficiently in bitter cold as they do in milder winter temperatures.To prove it, eight manufacturers are publicly testing their prototypes in the Cold-Climate Heat Pump Technology Challenge, hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in partner...... Read Full article on HadNews

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has announced it will dispose of 100 Starlink satellites over the next six months, after it discovered a design flaw that may cause them to fail. Rather than risk posing a threat to other spacecraft, SpaceX will “de-orbit” these satellites to burn up in the atmosphere. But atmospheric scientists are increasingly concerned that this sort of apparent fly-tipping by the space sector will cause further climate change down on Earth. One team recently, and unexpectedly, found potential ozone-depleting metals from spacecraft in the stratosphere, the atmospheric layer where the ozone layer is formed. The relative “low ear...... Read Full article on HadNews

In the Lapai Gwari community of Niger state, north central Nigeria, elders predict the weather by observing a large stone in the Chachanga River. The LapanGwagwan stone serves as a tool to determine the frequency of flooding and gauge the severity of rainfall. When the colour of the stone changes to brown, it signifies an imminent heavy downpour, while a grey colour indicates either light or moderate rainfall. This traditional knowledge helps the community to prepare for potential flooding. This is just one example of the indigenous knowledge established in the literature as important in mitigating the effects of climate change. Th...... Read Full article on HadNews

A new comedy project pairing leading comedians with climate scientists presents a novel way to communicate the climate crisis. “If people like me have to get involved, you know we are in deep shit,” says Jo Brand, renowned British comedian and The Great British Bake Off host. Why? Because she has joined the ranks of other notable comedians such as Nish Kumar, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, and Jonathan Pie in Climate Science Translated, a project that translates complex climate science into accessible and funny content to spur millions of people into action. Even though climate change is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, research by the ...... Read Full article on HadNews

American humorist and writer Mark Twain is believed to have once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” I’ve been working as a historian and complexity scientist for the better part of a decade, and I often think about this phrase as I follow different strands of the historical record and notice the same patterns over and over. My background is in ancient history. As a young researcher, I tried to understand why the Roman Empire became so big and what ultimately led to its downfall. Then, during my doctoral studies, I met the evolutionary biologist turned historian Peter Turchin, and that meeting had a profound im...... Read Full article on HadNews