How to build a ship for interstellar travel
Trump's U-turn on chip-export controls could be a boon
The phenomenon could be harnessed to boost immunotherapy
Treatment is improving, even for the most dangerous
To maintain the bombs, and build new ones, scientists are pushing the frontiers of physics
A new model is finding connections spanning the Roman world
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The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
Scientists slam Trump administration climate report as a ‘farce' full of misinformation
A new Trump administration report which attempts to justify a mass rollback of environmental regulations is chock-full of climate misinformation, experts say. On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a proposal to undo the 2009 'endangerment finding', which allows the agency to limit planet-heating pollution from cars and trucks, power plants and other industrial sources. Hours later, the Department of Energy (DOE) published a 150-page report defending the proposal, claiming scientific concern about the climate crisis is overblown. 'Climate change is a challenge – not a catastrophe,' wrote the energy secretary, Chris Wright, in the report's introduction. The esteemed climate scientist Michael Mann said the report was akin to the result he would expect 'if you took a chatbot and you trained it on the top 10 fossil fuel industry-funded climate denier websites'. The energy department published the report hours after the EPA announced a plan to roll back 2009's 'endangerment finding', a seminal ruling that provided the legal basis for the agency to regulate climate-heating pollution under the Clean Air Act. If finalized, the move would topple virtually all US climate regulation. In a Fox News interview, Wright claimed the report pushed back on the 'cancel culture Orwellian squelching of science'. But Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard University and expert in climate misinformation, said its true purpose was to 'justify what is a scientifically unjustifiable failure to regulate fossil fuels'. 'Science is the basis for climate regulation, so now they are trying to replace legitimate science with pseudoscience,' she said. The attack on the research underpinning the endangerment finding – which says greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare – comes as part of Trump's 'drill, baby, drill' agenda to boost fossil fuels, which are the primary cause of global warming. 'This is an agenda to promote fossil fuels, not to protect public health and welfare or the environment,' said Rachel Cleetus, a director at climate and science non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists who was an author on the sixth US national climate assessment. Asked about scientists' assertions that the new report is rife with misinformation, an energy department spokesperson, Ben Dietderich, said: 'This report critically assesses many areas of ongoing scientific inquiry that are frequently assigned high levels of confidence – not by the scientists themselves but by the political bodies involved, such as the United Nations or previous presidential administrations.' But the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces what is widely considered the gold standard compendium of climate science, compiled by a huge multinational team of scientists, peer-reviewed and agreed to by every national government. The latest IPCC synthesis report, released two years ago, was a vast undertaking involving 721 volunteer scientists around the world. It states that it is 'unequivocal' that human activity has heated the planet, which has 'led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people'. By contrast, the Trump administration report was crafted by five handpicked scientists who are seen as having fringe or contrarian views by mainstream climate scientists, with no peer review. The experts behind the report have previously denied being climate deniers. The energy department did not respond to a question about the authors. 'This report had five authors and was rushed over four months, and would not pass muster in any traditional scientific peer review process,' said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at the climate non-profit Berkeley Earth, who called the paper a 'farce'. Wright, the energy secretary, insisted he had not steered the report's conclusions, while Judith Curry, one of the report authors, said in a blogpost she hoped the document would push climate science 'away from alarmism and advocacy'. Mainstream climate scientists, however, condemned the findings as distorted and inaccurate. 'This is a report written by a couple of scientists who are outliers in their arguments for climate change,' said Natalie Mahowald, a climate scientist at Cornell University. 'This document does in no way depreciate the value of previous assessments, but rather just cherrypicks the literature to pretend to create a new review.' Mahowald said the lack of peer review meant it was 'obviously not as robust' as the IPCC report or the US government's periodic national climate assessment, which the Trump administration recently took offline. The latest national climate assessment, compiled by a dozen government agencies and outside scientists in 2023, concluded that the 'effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States' 'If almost any other group of scientists had been chosen, the report would have been dramatically different,' Andrew Dessler, a climate researcher at Texas A&M University, said of the new report. 'The only way to get this report was to pick these authors.' Hausfather agreed that the authors' work 'might represent their views but is not consistent with the broader scientific literature on climate change'. He was among the scientists whose work the authors cited. The new paper includes a chart from a 2019 report which he led, claiming it demonstrates how climate models 'consistently overestimated observations' of atmospheric carbon. But Hausfather's research actually showed that climate models have performed well. 'They appear to have discarded the whole paper as not fitting their narrative, and instead picked a single figure that was in the supplementary materials to cast doubt on models when the whole paper actually confirmed how well they have performed in the years after they were published,' he said. The energy department did not respond to a request for comment about Hausfather's concerns. That approach to research seems to underpin the entire paper, said Hausfather, who is also the climate research lead at tech company Stripe. 'This is a general theme in the report; they cherrypick data points that suit their narrative and exclude the vast majority of the scientific literature that does not,' he said. Dessler said scientists are obliged to engage with the full range of evidence, even if it contradicts their initial assumptions. Ignoring this principle 'can rise to the level of scientific misconduct', he said. 'The report they produced should be thought of as a law brief from attorneys defending their client, carbon dioxide,' Dessler said. 'Their goal is not to weigh the evidence fairly but to build the strongest possible case for CO2's innocence.' The lack of peer review in the administration's report led to conclusions that deviated, sometimes wildly, from the scientific literature. Many of its claims are based on long-debunked research long promoted by climate deniers, said Mann. 'It is shop worn, decades-old, discredited climate denier talking points, dressed up in the clothing of some sensible new set of revelations,' he said. 'What's different is that it has the imprimatur of the EPA and the federal government now.' The report, for instance claims that warming trends have been overstated, despite evidence to the contrary. It was published as extreme heat is affecting millions of Americans. 'They're literally trying to tell us not to believe what we see with our own two eyes … and instead buy into their denialist framing that rejects not just the science, but what is plainly evident if you look out your window,' said Mann. The authors also write that ocean acidification is occurring 'within the range of natural variability' and is beneficial for marine life despite the ocean's acidic levels currently being the highest since 14m years ago, a time when a major extinction event was occurring. And the report references the apparent health of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, which it says 'has shown considerable growth in recent years'. The reef was recently hit by its sixth mass bleaching event since 2016, a devastating phenomenon for corals in which they whiten and sometimes die due to high sea temperatures. No widespread bleaching events were recorded on the reef before 1998. The report is 'tedious' and at times 'truly wearisome', according to Bob Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University. Kopp recently worked on a paper showing how rising temperatures and drought will worsen crop yields, counter to the report's claims that crops will flourish with extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. 'Carbon dioxide fertilization is largely irrelevant to how increasingly extreme heat and intense drought will impact crop yields,' Kopp said. 'As a former department of energy fellow, I'm embarrassed by this report.'
Reuters
3 days ago
- Reuters
Trump's lightning reactor build program ignites nuclear sector
July 31 - In a flurry of executive orders, President Trump has mandated the Department of Energy (DOE) to authorise and develop three pilot small modular reactors (SMRs) in a bid to accelerate nuclear power deployment and meet soaring demand from AI. The Trump administration wants the pilot reactors to achieve "criticality" by July 4, 2026, requiring completion of design, licensing and testing within a year. Trump also directed the Department of Defense (DOD) to commission its own pilot reactor within three years. SMRs promise lower upfront capital costs and shorter construction times than conventional large reactors, but first of a kind (FOAK) designs have taken years to gain regulatory approval and investors have been wary of development and construction risks. Soaring demand from Big Tech has catalysed interest in nuclear power and developers say small reactors can be built in line with rising demand from data centers. Trump's executive orders also directed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to process licence approvals for new reactors within 18 months and establish a process for "high-volume licensing of micro reactors and modular reactors, including allowing for standardized applications." The DOE and DOD will seek to source private funding for the construction and operation of nuclear fuel recycling, reprocessing, and fabrication capabilities, the White House said. The government aims to increase U.S. nuclear capacity from about 100 GW today to 400 GW by 2050 and only three large reactors have entered commercial operation this century. CHART: Annual US nuclear power installations DOE authorization of SMR designs will help unlock private funding, provide a fast-track licensing approach and help establish the required supply chains and talent pipeline, a DOE spokesperson told Reuters Events. The executive orders provide a "much-needed catalyst" for SMR deployment in the civilian sector by "circumventing some of the structural and regulatory bottlenecks that have historically slowed down progress,' James Walker, CEO of micro reactor developer Nano Nuclear Energy, said. The federal actions will effectively guarantee initial customers and testing grounds for new reactors, unlock procurement pathways and create viable use cases, Walker said. Faster deployment The DOE closed its application window for reactor developers on June 21 and applications will be assessed based on criteria including technological readiness, siting evaluations, financial viability and a detailed plan for achieving criticality. The DOE is seeking designs that have a "reasonable chance' of achieving criticality by July 2026, the DOE spokesperson said. To speed up the process, the department is streamlining its authorization process and eliminating or expediting its environmental reviews for permits and approvals, the spokesperson noted. CHART: Small modular reactor projects by country Developing projects on DOE and DOD land should shorten approval and deployment timelines. The DOE-owned Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is one potential location for the test reactors, as well as Sandia National Labs which has sites in New Mexico and California, as well as numerous DOD sites. Shifting the deployment of FOAK reactors onto lands under DOE or DOD control will help to remove obstacles to development, Walker said. FOAK reactors 'often languish due to lack of customers and high regulatory uncertainty,' Walker said. The executive orders require the NRC to expedite the approval process for designs that the DOE or DOD have demonstrated have the ability to function safely. Download exclusive insights from the Reuters Events: SMR & Advanced Reactor 2025 conference in May. Applicants will be responsible for all design, manufacturing, construction, operating and decommissioning costs. While the projects will not receive federal funding, the DOE will provide federal resources as part of the application process, the DOE spokesperson noted. The executive orders could see multiple FOAK reactors deployed by the end of the decade and these reactors will each generate operational data, workforce expertise and bolster public confidence to catalyze the commercial market, Walker said. 'Difficult' deadline Developers of micro reactors or SMRs that have high technology readiness and a clear pathway to manufacturing will benefit most from the federal development initiatives, Walker said. Companies like BWX, Holtec, Westinghouse and NuScale are developing SMRs based on existing light water reactor (LWR) technology but a number of advanced reactor developers and micro reactor developers are also seeking to deploy rapidly in the coming years and signing early commercial arrangements with large offtakers including tech groups. Trump's orders could "ensure we get more near term deployment of known technologies' but might not help 'more exotic or 4th generation [nuclear] tech," Patrick O'Brien, Director, Government Affairs and Communications at Holtec International, told Reuters Events. Holtec is one of a small group of developers seeking to win DOE funds for SMRs based on LWR technology, allocated through a separate funding round. For exclusive nuclear insights, sign up to our newsletter. Micro reactors would be more likely to achieve the criticality deadline of July 2026 on federal sites, due to their smaller size, O'Brien said. Building a whole advanced reactor system in a year would be 'extremely difficult' because of supply chain constraints, Walker warned. Instead, the DOE could adjust its definition of criticality to specify that only fuel assembly rather than the entire reactor must reach criticality by the July 2026 deadline, he said.
Economist
3 days ago
- Economist
How to build a ship for interstellar travel
But international regulation and precarious funding threaten their efforts Trump's U-turn on chip-export controls could be a boon The phenomenon could be harnessed to boost immunotherapy Treatment is improving, even for the most dangerous To maintain the bombs, and build new ones, scientists are pushing the frontiers of physics A new model is finding connections spanning the Roman world
