Lab-Grown Meat Is the Fake Climate Food Fix That Just Won't Die
Back in the early aughts, biofuels such as ethanol were looking like a powerful answer to our then-emerging understanding of the climate crisis and our reliance on foreign oil: Using renewable fuels made from plants like corn, experts said, could significantly reduce energy emissions when compared with gasoline. Even better was the future promise of 'advanced biofuels,' which would one day use inedible biomass instead of food.
To environmental lawyer Timothy Searchinger, however, something about diverting land from food into energy just didn't add up. Use one field to grow corn for fuel, he pointed out, and other land will invariably have to be cleared to grow food, house livestock and grow feed for livestock. When those trees are cut down, carbon is released and climate change gets worse.
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The Verge
an hour ago
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How extreme heat disproportionately affects Latino neighborhoods
Scorching hot days tend to hit certain neighborhoods harder than others, a problem that becomes more dangerous during record-breaking heat like swathes of the US experienced over the past week. A new online dashboard shows how Latino neighborhoods are disproportionately affected in California. Developed by University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), the tool helps fill in gaps as the Trump administration takes a sledgehammer to federal climate, race, and ethnicity data resources. 'We want to provide facts, reliable data sources. We don't want this to be something that gets erased from the policy sphere,' says Arturo Vargas Bustamante, faculty research director at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute (LPPI). 'We don't want this to be something that gets erased' The Latino Climate & Health Dashboard includes data on extreme heat and air pollution, as well as asthma rates and other health conditions — issues that are linked to each other. High temperatures can speed up the chemical reactions that create smog. Chronic exposure to fine particle pollution, or soot, can increase the risk of a child developing asthma. Having asthma or another respiratory illness can then make someone more vulnerable to poor air quality and heat stress. Burning fossil fuels — whether in nearby factories, power plants, or internal combustion vehicles — makes all of these problems worse. Latino neighborhoods have to cope with 23 more days of extreme heat a year compared to non-Latino white neighborhoods in California, the dashboard shows. LPPI defined extreme heat as days when temperatures climbed to 90 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. If you've ever heard about a phenomenon called the urban heat island effect, big differences in temperature from neighborhood to neighborhood probably wouldn't come as a surprise. Areas with less greenery and more dark, paved surfaces and waste heat from industrial facilities or vehicles generally tend to trap heat. Around 1 in 10 Americans lives in a place where the built environment makes it feel at least 8 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than it would without that urban sprawl according to one study of 65 cities from last year. And after years of redlining that bolstered segregation and disinvestment in certain neighborhoods in the US, neighborhoods with more residents of color are often hotter than others. The dashboard includes fact sheets by county to show what factors might raise temperatures in certain areas. In Los Angeles County, for example, only four percent of land in majority-Latino neighborhoods is shaded by tree canopy compared to nine percent in non-Latino white neighborhoods. Conversely, impervious surfaces like asphalt and concrete that hold heat span 68 percent of land in Latino neighborhoods compared to 47 percent in majority non-Latino white areas in LA County. For this dashboard, LPPI defines a Latino neighborhood as a census tract where more than 70 percent of residents identify as Latino. It used the same 70 percent threshold to define non-Latino white neighborhoods. Latino neighborhoods in California are also exposed to twice as much air pollution and have twice as many asthma-related ER visits as non-latino white neighborhoods, according to the dashboard. It brings together data from the Census Bureau, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state's environmental health screening tool called CalEnviroScreen, and other publicly-available sources. The Trump administration has taken down the federal counterpart to CalEnviroScreen, called EJScreen, as part of its purge of diversity and equity research. Researchers have been working to track and archive datasets that might be targeted since before President Donald Trump stepped back into office. Efforts to keep these kinds of studies going are just as vital, so that people don't have to rely on outdated information that no longer reflects current conditions on the ground. And other researchers have launched new initiatives to document the Trump administration's environmental rollbacks. The Environmental Defense Fund and other advocacy groups, for instance, launched a mapping tool in April that shows 500 facilities across the US that the Environmental Protection Agency has recently invited to apply for exemptions to air pollution limits. UCLA's dashboard adds to the patchwork of more locally-led research campaigns, although it can't replace the breadth of data that federal agencies have historically collected. 'Of course, we don't have the resources that our federal government has,' Bustamante says. 'But with what we are able to do, I think that one of the main aims is to keep this issue [at the top of] the agenda and provide reliable information that will be useful for community change.' Data like this is a powerful tool for ending the kinds of disparities the dashboard exposes. It can inform efforts to plant trees where they're needed most. Or it can show public health officials and community advocates where they need to check in with people to make sure they can find a safe place to cool down during the next heatwave.
Yahoo
an hour ago
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Nozzle blows off rocket booster during test for NASA's Artemis program (video)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. An upgraded version of one of the solid rocket boosters being used for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) experienced an anomaly during a test June 26. The Demonstration Motor-1 (DM-1) Static Test took place at Northrop Grumman's facility in Promontory, Utah, simulating a launch-duration burn lasting about two minutes. It was the first demonstration of Grumman's Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension (BOLE) upgrade, an enhanced five-segmented motor designed with greater lifting power for later versions of SLS. Shortly after the spokesperson on Grumman's recording marks T+100 seconds into the test, an outburst of flames can be seen erupting form the top of the engine nozzle. A few seconds later, as another spokesperson announces, "activate aft deluge," an even larger burst comes from the rocket's exhaust, blowing nearby debris into the flames and around the test site. "Whoa," one of the test operators said as burn continued, before audibly gasping. Beyond that in-the-moment reaction, though, the anomaly was not acknowledged during the remainder of the test, which seemed to conclude as planned. "While the motor appeared to perform well through the most harsh environments of the test, we observed an anomaly near the end of the two-plus minute burn. As a new design, and the largest segmented solid rocket booster ever built, this test provides us with valuable data to iterate our design for future developments," Jim Kalberer, Grumman's vice president of propulsion systems, said in a statement. SLS, NASA's rocket supporting the agency's Artemis program, was designed on the foundation of legacy systems used during the space shuttle era. SLS's core stage fuel tank is an augmented version of the one used to launch space shuttles, and the same RS-25 engines responsible for launching the space shuttles are launching to space again on SLS missions. The segments from the shuttle's solid rocket boosters are also flying again, too. Northrop Grumman supported Artemis 1, and will support Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 with shuttle-era hardware, before transitioning to newer hardware for Artemis 4 through Artemis 8. The company's BOLE engines aren't slated to be introduced for launch until Artemis 9, on the SLS Block 2. The upgraded BOLE engines include improved, newly-fabricated parts replacing those no longer in production, carbon fiber composite casings and updated propellant efficiencies that increase the booster's performance more than 10 percent compared to the solid rocket engines being used on earlier SLS launches. Thursday's DM-1 BOLE test included more than 700 points of data collection throughout the booster, which produced over 4 million pounds of thrust, according to Northrop Grumman. Whether the BOLE design will ever fly, however, is far from certain. NASA's proposed budget for 2026 calls for the cancelation of the SLS rocket following Artemis 3.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
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Northrop Grumman tests future Artemis booster, but suffers destructive ‘anomaly'
Northrop Grumman saw some fiery drama during a test of a more powerful version of the solid rocket booster that would be used if NASA's Artemis program ever gets to its ninth launch using the beleaguered Space Launch System rocket. During a Thursday live stream by NASA of a static fire of the 156-foot-long Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension (BOLE) solid rocket motor, the end nozzle blew apart, sending debris flying across the camera followed by a black plume of smoke rising up from Northrop's Promontory, Utah test site. 'Whoa,' said one of the test controllers during the stream, just after the 100-second mark of the hot fire. Laying on its side, the booster was burning through the same amount of fuel that it would as if used on a launch. Northrop Grumman officials addressed the nozzle's demise in a press release later Thursday. 'Today's test pushed the boundaries of large solid rocket motor design to meet rigorous performance requirements,' said Jim Kalberer, Northrop Grumman's vice president of propulsion systems. 'While the motor appeared to perform well through the most harsh environments of the test, we observed an anomaly near the end of the two-plus minute burn.' The test is for a booster that wouldn't fly until at least next decade, and only if NASA sticks with SLS as a rocket option for its Artemis missions. 'As a new design, and the largest segmented solid rocket booster ever built, this test provides us with valuable data to iterate our design for future developments,' Kalberer said. Under the current NASA plan, the first eight Artemis launches use an SLS rocket with boosters that produce 3.4 million pounds of thrust each. The pair, combined with the core stage, created 8.8 million pounds of thrust on the Artemis I launch in 2022, which still is the most powerful rocket to ever make it into orbit. The BOLE version would increase thrust to 4 million pounds each, which would push SLS to near 10 million pounds of thrust on Artemis IX. The Trump administration's proposed budget for NASA, though, wants to kill off the use of the SLS rocket after Artemis III, although Congress is the ultimate decision-maker on what gets funded. So until directed otherwise, contractors continue to work on future versions of the SLS. Northrop Grumman's solid rocket boosters for Artemis are enhanced versions of similar boosters used during the Space Shuttle Program. The BOLE design is a solution to components no longer in production. The update uses a carbon fiber composite case and a different propellant formula among other features. The goal is a 10% increase in booster performance over the boosters used on Artemis I. That would equate to SLS being able to carry another 11,000 pounds of payload to lunar orbit. The nozzle issue was reminiscent of another Northrop Grumman booster problem seen in 2024. SpaceX Crew Dragon with 4 Axiom Space astronauts docks with space station Kennedy Space Center goes retro for Y2K after-hours event SpaceX launches historic mission to space station on new Crew Dragon dubbed 'Grace' Space Coast launch schedule With SLS rocket future uncertain, L3Harris still cranking out engines That's when a nozzle flew off of one of the boosters used on the United Launch Alliance Vulcan Certification-2 mission from Cape Canaveral. That incident contributed to a delay in the Space Force giving ULA the OK to fly national security missions. Northrop Grumman officials, though, said the ULA and Artemis boosters are not directly related. 'It is an entirely separate product,' said Mark Pond, senior director of NASA programs for Northrop Grumman's propulsion systems during an Artemis II media day last December at Kennedy Space Center. Artemis II is slated to launch no later than April 2026 on what would be the first crewed mission sending four astronauts on a trip around the moon, but not landing on it. 'From a concern standpoint, we've met all of our requirements, we've done all of our testing, we've met all of our acceptance tests and our delivery requirements, and for that reason, we are not concerned from an Artemis II perspective,' he said.
