Tag Archives: Air pollution

US

A US federal agency is considering a ban on gas stoves

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New York
CNN
 — 

A federal agency is considering a ban on gas stoves as concerns about indoor pollution linked to childhood asthma rise, Bloomberg first reported.

A US Consumer Product Safety commissioner told Bloomberg gas stove usage is a “hidden hazard.”

“Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned,” agency commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. said in a Bloomberg interview. The report said the agency plans “to take action” to address the indoor pollution caused by stoves. CNN has reached out to the CPSC for comment.

The CPSC has been considering action on gas stoves for months.Trumka recommended in October that the CPSC seek public comment on the hazards associated with gas stoves. The pollutants have been linked to asthma and worsening respiratory conditions.

A December 2022 study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that indoor gas stove usage is associated with an increased risk of current asthma among children. The study found that almost 13% of current childhood asthma in the US is attributable to gas stove use.

Trumka told Bloomberg the agency plans to open public comment on gas stove hazards. Options besides a ban include “setting standards on emissions from the appliances.”

Thirty-five percent of households in the United States use a gas stove, and the number approaches 70% in some states like California and New Jersey. Other studies have found these stoves emit significant levels of nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter – which without proper ventilation can raise the levels of indoor concentration levels to unsafe levels as deemed by the EPA.

“Short-term exposure to NO2 is linked to worsening asthma in children, and long-term exposure has been determined to likely cause the development of asthma,” a group of lawmakers said in a letter to chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric, adding it can also exacerbate cardiovascular illnesses.

The letter – Sen. Corey Booker and Sen. Elizabeth Warren among its signers – argued that Black, Latino and low-income households are more likely to be affected by these adverse reactions, because they are either more likely to live near a waste incinerator or coal ash site or are in a home with poor ventilation.

In a statement to CNN, the CPSC said the agency has not proposed any regulatory action on gas stoves at this time, and any regulatory action would “involve a lengthy process.”

“Agency staff plans to start gathering data and perspectives from the public on potential hazards associated with gas stoves, and proposed solutions to those hazards later this year,” the commission said in a statement. “Commission staff also continues to work with voluntary standards organizations to examine gas stove emissions and address potential hazards.”

Some cities across the US banned natural gas hookups in all new building construction to reduce greenhouse emissions – Berkeley in 2019, San Francisco in 2020, New York City in 2021. But as of last February, 20 states with GOP-controlled legislatures have passed so-called “preemption laws” that prohibit cities from banning natural gas.

“To me that’s what’s interesting about this new trend, it seems like states are trying to eliminate the possibility before cities try to catch onto this,” Sarah Fox, an associate law professor at Northern Illinois University School of Law, told CNN last year. “The natural gas industry… has been very aggressive in getting this passed.”

In a statement to CNN Business, the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers said an improvement in ventilation is the solution to preventing indoor air pollution while cooking.

“A ban on gas cooking appliances would remove an affordable and preferred technology used in more than 40% of home across the country,” Jill Notini, industry spokesperson, said in a statement. ” A ban of gas cooking would fail to address the overall concern of indoor air quality while cooking, because all forms of cooking, regardless of heat source, generate air pollutants, especially at high temperatures.”

The American Gas Association pushed back against a natural gas ban in a blog post in December, saying it makes housing more expensive as “electric homes require expensive retrofits.”

However, Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act includes a rebate of up to $840 for an electric stove or other electric appliances, and up to an $500 to help cover the costs of converting to electric from gas.

– CNN’s Ella Nilsen contributed to this report.

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Rare good news for planet: Ozone layer on track to recover within decades as chemicals are phased out

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CNN
 — 

In rare good news for the planet, Earth’s ozone layer is on track to recover completely within decades, as ozone-depleting chemicals are phased out across the world, according to a new United Nations-backed assessment.

The ozone layer protects the planet from harmful ultraviolet rays. But since the late 1980s, scientists have sounded the alarm about a hole in this shield, caused by ozone-depleting substances including chlorofluorocarbons, dubbed CFCs, often found in refrigerators, aerosols and solvents.

International cooperation helped stem the damage. The use of CFCs has decreased 99% since the Montreal Protocol went into force in 1989, which began the phase-out of those and other ozone-harming chemicals, according to the assessment by a panel of experts published on Monday.

If global policies stay in place, the ozone layer is expected to recover to 1980 levels by 2040 for most of the world, the assessment found. For polar areas, the timeframe for recovery is longer: 2045 over the Arctic and 2066 over the Antarctic.

“Ozone action sets a precedent for climate action. Our success in phasing out ozone-eating chemicals shows us what can and must be done – as a matter of urgency – to transition away from fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gases and so limit temperature increase,” said Secretary General for the World Meteorological Organization Petteri Taalas.

Ozone-depleting gases are also potent greenhouse gases, and without a ban the world could have seen additional warming of up to 1 degree Celsius, according to a 2021 study in the journal Nature. The planet has already warmed around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution, and scientists have warned that it should be limited to 1.5 degrees to prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis. Warming beyond 1.5 degrees would dramatically increase the risk of extreme drought, wildfires, floods and food shortages, scientists have reported.

For the first time in this assessment, which is published every four years, scientists also looked at the prospect of solar geoengineering: the attempt to reduce global warming through measures such as spraying aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight out of the earth’s atmosphere.

They found stratospheric aerosol injection could help reduce climate warming but warned there may be unintended consequences. Deploying the technology “could also affect stratospheric temperatures, circulation and ozone production and destruction rates and transport,” the report, published every four years, found.

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Business

Lab-grown meat is OK for human consumption, FDA says

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CNN
 — 

The US Food and Drug Administration has given a safety clearance to lab-grown meat for the first time.

Upside Foods, a California-based company that makes meat from cultured chicken cells, will be able to begin selling its products once its facilities have been inspected by the US Department of Agriculture.

The agency said it had evaluated the information submitted by Upside Foods and it had “no further questions at this time about the firm’s safety conclusion.”

“Advancements in cell culture technology are enabling food developers to use animal cells obtained from livestock, poultry, and seafood in the production of food, with these products expected to be ready for the U.S. market in the near future,” Dr. Robert M. Califf, the FDA’s commissioner of food and drugs and Susan T. Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), said in a statement.

“The FDA’s goal is to support innovation in food technologies while always maintaining as our first priority the safety of the foods available to U.S. consumers,” the statement added.

Upside Foods founder and CEO Uma Valeti said on Twitter that its cultivated chicken “was one step closer to being on tables everywhere.”

“UPSIDE has received our ‘No Questions Letter’ from the FDA,” Valeti tweeted. “They’ve accepted our conclusion that our cultivated chicken is safe to eat.”

He told CNN earlier this year that the process of making cultivated meat was “similar to brewing beer, but instead of growing yeast or microbes, we grow animal cells.”

“These products are not vegan, vegetarian or plant-based – they are real meat, made without the animal.”

Singapore was the first country to allow the sale of cultured meat. It granted San Francisco start-up Eat Just Inc. regulatory approval in 2020 to sell its laboratory-grown chicken in Singapore.

Advocates hope that cultured meat will reduce the need to slaughter animals for food and help with the climate crisis. The food system is responsible for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, most of which are from animal agriculture.

“We are thrilled at FDA’s historic announcement that, after a rigorous evaluation, UPSIDE Foods has become the first company in the world to receive the US FDA greenlight for cultivated chicken,” David Kay, director of communications at Upside Foods, said via email.

“At scale, cultivated meat is projected to use substantially less water and land than conventionally-produced meat.”

Although not technically an approval, the FDA said that a thorough pre-market consultation process had been completed. The clearance only applies to food made from cultured chicken cells by Upside, but the statement said the FDA “is ready to work with additional firms developing cultured animal cell food.”



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World

Biden aims to assert American leadership abroad at UN climate summit and G20

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Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt
CNN
 — 

It’s a story President Joe Biden tells at nearly every opportunity: last year, meeting his new counterparts at his first international summit, he proudly informed them, “America is back.”

“For how long?” one of them asked.

As Biden departs this week for a weeklong around-the-world trip, the question still resonates.

“They’re very concerned that we are still the open democracy we’ve been and that we have rules and the institutions matter,” Biden said Wednesday during a news conference.

Biden hopes his stops at a climate meeting here on the Red Sea, a gathering of Southeast Asian nations in Cambodia and a high-stakes Group of 20 summit on the Indonesian island of Bali will assert American leadership in areas former President Donald Trump either ignored or actively shunned.

“If the United States tomorrow were to, quote, withdraw from the world, a lot of things would change around the world. A whole lot would change,” Biden said ahead of his trip.

He and his advisers believe they are entering the series of high-stakes meetings with a solid argument his version of the US role in the world will endure. He resisted historical and political headwinds in this year’s midterm elections while many of Trump’s handpicked candidates lost. And over the past year, he secured passage of a major climate investment and rallied the world behind efforts to support Ukraine and isolate Russia.

Yet the anxieties of American allies persist over the future of US commitments – to Ukraine, to fighting climate change, to treaty partners and, perhaps most urgently, to upholding Democratic norms. Foreign diplomats have watched intently as the midterm political season played out, searching for clues at how the American electorate was judging Biden’s first two years in office and reporting back to their capitals on voter dissatisfaction that could fuel Trump’s return to office.

Republicans appeared to be moving toward gaining control of the House of Representatives as of Wednesday night. And Trump is readying a third presidential bid, potentially to be announced while Biden is on the opposite side of the planet.

White House aides have not voiced concern at the potential split-screen, believing foreign policy to be among the president’s strengths, particularly when compared to Trump’s chaotic style of diplomacy.

“We just have to demonstrate that he will not take power,” Biden said Wednesday. “If he does run, making sure he, under legitimate efforts of our Constitution, does not become the next president again.”

Presidents have often turned to foreign policy, where they can act with relatively few congressional restraints, at moments of domestic political turmoil. President Barack Obama launched a similar tour of Asia after his self-described “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms.

Four defining global threats will loom over Biden’s trip: Russia’s war in Ukraine, escalating tensions with China, the existential problem of climate change and the potential for a global recession in the coming months. Other flashpoints, like North Korea’s rapidly accelerating provocations and uncertainty over Iran’s nuclear program, will also factor in.

Of those, defending Ukraine and combating climate change could be the most impacted by results from this week’s election.

At the G20 summit, Biden hopes to rally leaders from the world’s developed economies behind his 10-month effort to isolate and punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. He isn’t planning to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, who won’t be attending the meeting in person and is considering whether to participate virtually.

Global economic headwinds have tested international resolve for the pressure campaign, however, and world leaders have worked with varying levels of intensity toward finding a diplomatic end to the conflict.

Some Trump-aligned House Republicans have called for cutting funding to Ukraine, though other GOP defense hawks have vowed not to abandon the country amid its war with Russia.

House Republican Leader McCarthy, in an interview with CNN this week, attempted to reaffirm his support for Ukraine while saying they would not automatically rubber stamp any additional requests for aid.

“I’m very supportive of Ukraine,” McCarthy said. “I think there has to be accountability going forward. … You always need, not a blank check, but make sure the resources are going to where it is needed. And make sure Congress, and the Senate, have the ability to debate it openly.”

At the United Nations climate summit in Egypt, Biden arrives having signed the largest US investment in fighting climate change ever, a dramatically different scenario from previous international meetings – including last year’s gathering in Scotland – where American commitments to carbon reduction weren’t backed by law.

“We’ve seen the United States go from a global laggard to a global leader in less than 18 months,” a senior administration official said this week.

The $375 billion commitment will provide Biden leverage as he works to convince other countries to step up their own efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, all with the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

In his speech, Biden will call on nations to “really keep their eyes on the ball when it comes to accelerating ambitious action to reduce emissions,” the official said. And he will highlight his administration’s intent to propose a rule this week requiring large federal contractors to develop carbon reduction targets and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions, leveraging the federal government’s purchasing power to combat climate change in the private sector and bolster vulnerable supply chains.

But Republicans have said they will work to repeal parts of the law, and have accused Biden of contributing to rising energy prices by blocking the extraction of fossil fuels, which contribute to climate change.

When Trump was president, he withdrew the US altogether from the Paris Climate Accord, the agreement leaders are meeting to discuss the week.

Even absent the American political uncertainty, there are concerns rising energy costs and a looming recession could dampen resolve toward transitioning to cleaner energy. US officials have moderated expectations for this year’s summit, which Biden is only expected to attend for a few hours.

In Congress, Biden has achieved more bipartisan success in his efforts to counter China, the other major issue he will confront this week. A recently passed law meant to bolster the American semiconductor industry earned Republican and Democratic votes, partly because it promised to wean the US off its dependence on Chinese products.

Biden’s aides worked over the past month to arrange his first face-to-face meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping since taking office, even as tensions simmer between Washington and Beijing. The meeting will take place on Monday at the G20 in Indonesia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit in August to self-governing Taiwan enraged Chinese leaders and led to a near-shutoff of communication with the US.

Biden said Wednesday he and Xi would lay out “what each of our red lines are” and discuss issues they each believe are in their own “critical national interests” during the meeting.

In his recently released National Security Strategy, Biden identified China as “America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge,” and he hopes an in-person meeting with Xi – who has just resumed international travel following the Covid-19 pandemic – can help establish lines of communication.

Xi arrives at the G20 fresh from an historic Communist Party conference that elevated him to an unprecedented third term – a sharp contrast to Biden’s current political situation.

It’s not yet clear how that disparity will manifest in Bali.

“The big question is are the two leaders going to come in a sort of more conciliatory mode or sort of a more defiant one,” said Matthew Goodman, senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“They’ve both gotten through their political events of the year and they might come in a little more liberated for one reason or another to try to reach out and find common ground,” Goodman said. “There are the kind of global challenges that really affect both the US and China – whether it’s growth, or pandemics, or climate change. And so there’s possibility of some kind of conciliatory approach from both sides.”

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World

COP27 climate summit: Here’s what to watch

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CNN
 — 

As global leaders converge in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the UN’s annual climate summit, researchers, advocates and the United Nations itself are warning the world is still wildly off-track on its goal to halt global warming and prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

Over the next two weeks, negotiators from nearly 200 countries will prod each other at COP27 to raise their clean energy ambitions, as average global temperature has already climbed 1.2 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution.

They will haggle over ending the use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, which has seen a resurgence in some countries amid the war in Ukraine, and try to come up with a system to funnel money to help the world’s poorest nations recover from devastating climate disasters.

But a flood of recent reports have made clear leaders are running out of time to implement the vast energy overhaul needed to keep the temperature from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold scientists have warned the planet must stay under.

Reports from the United Nations and the World Meteorological Association show carbon and methane emissions hit record levels in 2021, and the plans countries have submitted to slash those emissions are beyond insufficient. Given countries’ current promises, Earth’s temperature will climb to between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Ultimately, the world needs to cut its fossil fuel emissions nearly in half by 2030 to avoid 1.5 degrees, a daunting prospect for economies still very much beholden to oil, natural gas and coal.

“No country has a right to be delinquent,” US Climate Envoy John Kerry told reporters in October. “The scientists tell us that what is happening now – the increased extreme heat, extreme weather, the fires, the floods, the warming of the ocean, the melting of the ice, the extraordinary way in which life is being affected badly by the climate crisis – is going to get worse unless we address this crisis in a unified, forward-leaning way.”

Here are the top issues to follow at COP27 in Egypt.

Developing and developed countries have for years tussled over the concept of a “loss and damage” fund; the idea which suggests countries causing the most harm with their outrageous planet-warming emissions should pay poorer countries, which have suffered from the resulting climate disasters.

It has been a thorny issue because the richest countries, including the US, don’t want to appear culpable or legally liable to other nations for harm. Kerry, for instance, has tiptoed around the issue, saying the US supports formal talks, but he has not given any indication of what solution the country would sign on to.

Meanwhile, small island nations and others in the Global South are shouldering the impact of the climate crisis, as devastating floods, intensifying storms and record-breaking heat waves wreak havoc.

The deadly flooding in Pakistan this summer, which killed more than 1,500 people, will surely be an example the countries’ negotiators point to. And since September, more than two million people in Nigeria have been affected by the worst flooding there in a decade. At this very moment, Nigerians are drinking, cooking with and bathing in dirty flood water amid serious concerns over waterborne diseases.

It is likely loss and damage will have space on the official COP27 agenda this year. But beyond countries committing to meet and talk about what a potential loss and damage fund would look like, or whether one should even exist, it is unclear what action will come out of this year’s summit.

“Do we expect that we’ll have a fund by the end of the two weeks? I hope, I would love to – but we’ll see how parties deliver on that,” Egypt’s chief climate negotiator Ambassador Mohamed Nasr recently told reporters.

Former White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy told CNN she thinks loss and damage will be the top issue at the UN climate summit this year, and said nations including the US will face some tough questions about their plans to help developing nations already being hit hard by climate disasters.

“It just keeps getting pushed out,” McCarthy said. “There’s need for some real accountability and some specific commitments in the short-term.”

People will be watching to see if the US and China can repair a broken relationship at the summit, a year after the two countries surprised the world by announcing they would work together on climate change.

The newfound cooperation came crashing down this summer when China announced it was suspending climate talks with the US as part of broader retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

Kerry recently said the climate talks between the two countries are still suspended and will likely remain so until China’s president Xi Jinping gives the green light. Kerry and others are watching to see whether China fulfills the promise it made last year to submit a plan to bring down its methane emissions or updates its emissions pledge.

The US and China are the world’s two largest emitters and their cooperation matters, particularly because it can spur other countries to act, too.

Separate from a potential loss and damage fund, there is the overarching issue of so-called global climate finance; a fund rich countries promised to push money into to help the developing world transition to clean energy rather than grow their economies with fossil fuels.

The promise made in 2009 was $100 billion per year, but the world has yet to meet the pledge. Some of the richest countries, including the US, UK, Canada and others, have consistently fallen short of their allocation.

President Joe Biden promised the US would contribute $11 billion by 2024 toward the effort. But Biden’s request is ultimately up to Congress to approve, and will likely go nowhere if Republicans win control of Congress in the midterm elections.

The US is working on separate deals with countries including Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia to get them to move away from coal and toward renewables. And US officials often stress they want to also unlock private investments to help countries transition to renewables and deal with climate effects.

COP27 is intended to hold countries’ feet to the fire on fossil fuel emissions and gin up new ambition on the climate crisis. Yet reports show we are still off-track to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A UN report which surveyed countries’ latest pledges found the planet will warm between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius. Average global temperature has already risen around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution.

Records were set last year for all three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

There is a spot of encouraging news: the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles is surging and helping to offset the rise in fossil fuel emissions, according to a recent International Energy Agency report.

But the overall picture from the reports shows there is a need for much more clean energy, deployed swiftly. Every fraction of a degree in global temperature rise will have stark consequences, said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

“The energy transition is entirely doable, but we’re not on that pathway, and we have procrastinated and wasted time,” Andersen told CNN. “Every digit will matter. Let’s not say ‘we missed 1.5 so let’s settle for 2.’ No. We must understand that every digit that goes up will make our life and the life of our children and grandchildren much more impacted.”

The clock is ticking in another way: Next year’s COP28 in Dubai will be the year nations must do an official stocktake to determine if the world is on track to meet the goals set out in the landmark Paris Agreement.

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Science

A space rock that slammed into Mars revealed a surprise

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CNN
 — 

You never forget your first Mars mission.

When NASA’s InSight spacecraft arrived at the red planet on November 26, 2018, it was the first time I covered the landing of a spacecraft on Mars. The robotic lander made a graceful, ballet-like touchdown on the Martian surface.

Moments later, it sent back a “beep” and a photo of its landing site to mission control, as if to say, “I made it!” As the InSight team erupted into cheers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, I was dancing right along with them thousands of miles away at my desk.

The mission has made incredible discoveries about quakes on the red planet and what Mars’ core might be like.

But the InSight mission is nearing an end as dust obscures its solar panels. In a matter of weeks, the lander won’t be able to send a beep to show it’s OK anymore.

Before it bids farewell, though, the spacecraft still has some surprises in store.

When Mars rumbled beneath InSight’s feet on December 24, NASA scientists thought it was just another marsquake.

The magnitude 4 quake was actually caused by a space rock slamming into the Martian surface a couple thousand miles away.

The meteoroid left quite a crater on the red planet, and it revealed glimmering chunks of ice in an entirely unexpected place — near the warm Martian equator.

Meanwhile, researchers tested a microbe nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium” under Mars-like conditions. The hardy organism’s ability to withstand harsh conditions led the scientists to believe ancient microbial life might be sleeping deep beneath the Martian surface.

Humans aren’t the only beings that pick their nose.

For the first time, an aye-aye, an unusual-looking lemur species, was documented rooting around in its nose — and then licking its finger clean.

Other nonhuman primates sample their own snot, too — but the critter’s incredibly long middle finger means it can reach all the way back into its throat, as depicted in a CT scan taken by the researchers.

Local legends associate the nocturnal aye-aye’s lengthy digit with prophecies of death in its native Madagascar. But researchers hope people will see the value in saving this misunderstood and highly endangered creature.

Emperor penguins may reign supreme at the South Pole, but the iconic species is at risk of going extinct due to the climate crisis.

As greenhouse gas and carbon emissions warm the Earth, the floating world in the Southern Ocean these marine birds call home melts. Sea ice is where they breed and raise their chicks, remain safe from predators and forage for food.

When sea ice disappears, entire emperor penguin colonies can vanish.

The flightless seabirds have now been listed as threatened by the US Fish and Wildlife Service — that means they’ll receive new protections under the Endangered Species Act.

Marine archaeologists have finally located an elusive 17th century shipwreck in Sweden.

The researchers found the Äpplet, one of four warships created on the order of King Gustavus Adolphus in 1625. The vessel was a sister ship to the Vasa, which capsized on its maiden voyage and is on display in a Stockholm museum.

The Äpplet served in Europe’s Thirty Years’ War and then was deliberately sunk in 1659 after being deemed unseaworthy. Researchers now plan to make a 3D image of the shipwreck as it rests on the seabed.

The James Webb Space Telescope showcased last week a sparkling view of the star-forming region called the Pillars of Creation.

A new image of the same feature, captured in mid-infrared light, reveals the dark underbelly of the normally ethereal scene where dust has drowned out the starlight. Only a few red stars pierce the darkness.

The towering columns resemble a tangle of ghostly figures clawing their way across the cosmos. With Halloween around the corner, it would be a fitting illustration of “the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir” from Edgar Allan Poe’s “Ulalume.”

Additionally, Webb spied a distant surprise that might be an ancient merger between two galaxies during the early days of the universe. And planetary scientists made a startling discovery about exoplanets that may narrow the search for habitable worlds.

Check out these intriguing stories:

— A mysterious field in China’s Hengduan Mountains is filled with dozens of species of rhododendrons. Rather than competing with one another, they’ve evolved to live in harmony. (add link Friday)

— Retired astronaut Scott Kelly is part of a new expert team that will delve into the mysteries of UFOs. The highly anticipated NASA study kicked off Monday.

— Meet some adorable additions to the tree of life. After years of effort, researchers have discovered six new species of rainfrogs on the eastern slopes of the Ecuadorian Andes.

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Science

Meet the International Space Station’s new diverse crew

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CNN
 — 

When astronauts venture aboard the International Space Station, they see a world without borders. They work together while orbiting Earth, and no boundaries are visible between them, even as member countries contend with geopolitics on the planet below.

This week, a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft with a diverse crew lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The capsule carried NASA astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada, astronaut Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Roscosmos — the first Russian to travel on a SpaceX spaceflight.

“We live in the same world, we live in the same universe,” Cassada said. “Sometimes we experience it in a very different way from our neighbors. We can all keep that in mind … and continue to do amazing things. And do it together.”

The NASA SpaceX Crew-5 mission, now safely ensconced on the space station, is one of firsts.

Nicole Aunapu Mann is the first Native American woman to go to space as well as the first woman to serve as mission commander for a SpaceX mission.

Mann grew up in Northern California and is a registered member of the Wailacki tribe of the Round Valley reservation. She has been a pilot and colonel in the US Marine Corps. But it wasn’t until her mid-20s that she realized she wanted to be an astronaut and that it was even possible.

“I realized that being an astronaut was not only something that was a possible dream but actually something that’s quite attainable,” Mann said. “I think as a young girl, I just didn’t realize that that was an opportunity and a possibility.”

A monster tsunami rippled across the planet when a dinosaur-killing asteroid crashed into Earth 66 million years ago.

The impact caused 75% of animal and plant life to go extinct and created a chain of cataclysmic events.

Waves more than a mile high pushed away from the impact crater near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and scoured the ocean floor thousands of miles away from the asteroid strike. The tsunami was thousands of times more energetic than those generated by earthquakes.

Sediment cores also showed that the tsunami’s powerful force even disturbed coasts of New Zealand’s islands halfway around the globe.

We get by with a little help from our friends.

The James Webb Space Telescope recently teamed up with two other space observatories to produce dazzling new images of the cosmos. By working together, these telescopes can provide a more complete portrait of the universe.

The Chandra X-ray Observatory added X-ray data to some of Webb’s first images to reveal previously hidden aspects. The X-rays pinpointed exploded stars, a shock wave and superheated gas, all highlighted in glowing pinks, purples and blues.

Additionally, astronomers combined Webb and Hubble data to showcase a pair of galaxies about 700 million light-years away from Earth. Webb scientists also spied a celestial surprise, in the form of a distant galaxy, within the image.

Composting your produce scraps can be great for the environment, but there’s an art to this environmentally friendly practice.

Food waste creates harmful greenhouse gases inside a landfill — and little to none of it is composted. Composting means mixing food and yard waste with nitrogen, carbon, water and air to help scraps decompose and turn into fertile soil that your garden will love.

A compost pile that stinks isn’t getting enough oxygen and is emitting methane. To prevent the formation of this harmful gas, and the smell, turn your compost pile every two to five weeks.

Learn more about lifestyle changes to minimize your personal role in the climate crisis and reduce your eco-anxiety in our limited Life, But Greener newsletter series.

Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo won the Nobel Prize for medicine this week for his pioneering use of ancient DNA to answer questions about human evolution.

In 2010, Pääbo sequenced the first Neanderthal genome and discovered that Homo sapiens interbred with them. Pääbo was also able to extract DNA from fossil fragments, which revealed Denisovans, a new kind of extinct human.

His work has allowed researchers to compare human genetics with the DNA of Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Meanwhile, the Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to scientists who discovered how to snap molecules together, and the Nobel Prize for physics went to quantum physicists for unlocking the eerie behavior of particles.

Check out these new finds:

— Archaeologists have uncovered the pieces of a nearly 2,000-year-old classical statue depicting the mythical hero Hercules in northeastern Greece.

— The Pacific Ocean is shrinking and making way for a new supercontinent, called Amasia, that will likely form in about 200 million to 300 million years.

— A new image from a telescope in Chile may look like a comet, but it’s actually an incredibly long debris trail created when the DART spacecraft slammed into an asteroid last month.

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Science

Rocket Launches May Be Polluting Our Atmosphere in New Ways

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SpaceX, Blue Origin, and a host of other private companies helped to make 2021 the year with the most space launches in history, but scientists say this mad dash to space could be causing further damage to our atmosphere.

The number of launch attempts has doubled in the last decade. And after counting all of the planned launches for 2022, it seems the current year is set to blow past last year’s record. But rocket launches come with big emissions, the atmospheric impact of which isn’t fully understood.

Now, two scientists have added to the growing body of knowledge suggesting that the race to leave the Earth could be harming our planet and our health. The researchers referenced a webcast video to model a SpaceX launch in painstaking detail. Their simulation showed that exhaust from the rocket dumped a surprising amount of climate-altering carbon gases, as well as harmful nitrogen oxides, across multiple levels of the atmosphere.

“Pollution from rockets should not be underestimated as frequent future rocket launches could have a significant cumulative effect on climate,” wrote the researchers in their paper, published Tuesday in the journal Physics of Fluids. They also mentioned the possibility of rocket launches becoming a future human health hazard.

“At present, the risk is low because a small number of launches take place,” Dimitris Drikakis, a physicist and engineer at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus and co-author of the new study, explained in an email to Gizmodo. “The problem may become significant when frequent launches take place.”

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Drikakis and his University of Nicosia colleague Ioannis Kokkinakis specifically looked at the exhaust emissions from a computer model they built, one meant to closely match the 2016 Thaicom-8 launch of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which obtained its power from the fuel RP-1, or Rocket Propellant-1, which is similar to jet fuel. The researchers considered the role of heat, pressure, gas mixing, dispersal patterns, and other factors to estimate rocket emissions at various heights and up to a maximum 41.6 miles (67 kilometers) above the surface.

Earth’s atmosphere has multiple levels based on altitude, each exhibiting its own unique set of conditions. Drikakis and Kokkinakis followed their modeled rocket launch from the near-Earth troposphere through to the stratosphere and into the mesosphere.

Based on their models, the researchers estimated that the single Falcon 9 rocket produced around 116 metric tons of carbon dioxide in the first 165 seconds of its journey. “This amount is equivalent to that emitted by about 69 cars over an entire year [in the United Kingdom],” wrote Drikakis to Gizmodo. To repeat: 69 car years of driving versus 165 seconds of rocket flight.

Carbon dioxide accumulates in the lower atmosphere as we burn fossil fuels, and is the greenhouse gas largely responsible for human-caused climate change. But much of the emissions produced in the model study appeared in the higher altitude mesosphere, where the climate impacts of C02 are less well understood than they are closer to Earth. For each kilometer climbed by the rocket at the highest altitudes examined, the simulated Falcon 9 sent out a mass of carbon dioxide equal to 26 times the amount already present in one cubic kilometer of the mesosphere.

At the same time, the rocket also shot out similar amounts of carbon monoxide and water vapor, which are typically only present in the mesosphere in trace amounts. This now adds to the list of poorly understood atmospheric changes that rocket launches could be creating.

And then there are the dreaded nitrogen oxides (NOx) to consider. On top of being bad-to-breathe pollutants that can trigger respiratory diseases, these gases also degrade our atmosphere’s critical ozone layer. In the first 70 seconds of the studied launch, the SpaceX rocket produced an estimated one metric ton of NOx, equivalent to about 1,400-cars-worth of annual emissions, according to Drikakis. Nitrogen oxides form best under high heat, so most of that release happened in the lower atmosphere, specifically at altitudes below 6.2 miles (10 km).

“CO2 and other greenhouse gas species [types] emitted in the mesosphere can affect the climate, if emitted in enough quantity,” said Erik Larson, a geoscientist at Harvard University who was not involved in the new research, in an email to Gizmodo. But he added that this paper doesn’t actually assess the climate impacts of the rocket launch.

Instead, Larson said the study’s value is in its estimates of emission quantities. The study “fills some gaps,” he explained. In particular, Larson thought the most “important contribution” from the new research had to do with nitrogen oxide production and the potential for ozone risk, as opposed to assessments of direct air-quality impacts. “It destroys the beneficial ozone layer,” he said. “I think the important global impacts of rocket NOx emissions are likely to be destruction of stratospheric ozone as opposed to air quality.”

The ozone layer protects our planet’s surface from the most damaging of the Sun’s rays. Without it, much of life on Earth would die. And we nearly lost it once before owing to chemical emissions. After the offending, damaging compounds were banned, the ozone layer recovered, but it has remained a constant concern ever since.

A 2018 UN report concluded that rocket launches have a teeny tiny (sub 0.1%) impact on the ozone. But ozone loss due to rocket launches could be more than 10 times higher than previously assumed due to the a lack of research on the topic, according to the new study. And, again, there are many more rockets going into space now than there were even four years ago.

It’s important to restate that the new study is dependent on estimates and models, which means it has major limitations. “The atmosphere is a very complex system,” said Drikakis. He pointed out that his team had to reckon with a lot of uncertainty when obtaining these results owing to the lack of clear information about the physical and chemical processes happening across higher altitudes of the atmosphere.

In addition to chipping away at those uncertainties, the scientists plan to further explore the link between ozone depletion and space launches in future research. They also hope that more studies examine the impact of mesosphere changes on Earth’s climate.

But for now, even knowing all of the above, Drikakis and Kokkinakis are still pro-space exploration. “We are rocket enthusiasts and believe that the commercial sector has made amazing progress in the field,” Drikakis told me. “We are at the beginning of a fantastic journey” that we should continue, he added.

He hopes their research and studies like it will help the burgeoning space industry “design solutions that will improve the rockets’ design and mitigate the effects of exhaust gases.” For Earth’s sake, lets all hope that innovation comes at rocket-speeds.

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Business

BP deal sends Nasdaq-listed EV charging stock Tritium surging

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The need for new charging infrastructure in the U.K. is likely to become increasingly pressing in the years ahead, not least because authorities want to stop the sale of new diesel and gasoline cars and vans by 2030.

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Tritium and BP have entered into a multi-year contract related to the supply of electric vehicle chargers, in the latest example of how energy majors are looking to cement their position in the burgeoning EV market.

According to a statement issued by Tritium on Monday, the agreement will initially center around an order of “just under 1,000 chargers” for the U.K. and Australian and New Zealand markets.

Australian firm Tritium, which was established in 2001, specializes in the development and production of direct current fast chargers for EVs. Shares of the Nasdaq-listed company rose by over 12% Monday, and opened flat on Tuesday. The stock is still down around 4% so far this year.

Toward the end of March, BP — which is better known for its oil and gas production — said it would invest £1 billion (roughly $1.3 billion) in U.K.-based electric vehicle charging infrastructure across a 10-year period.

BP said the money would “enable the deployment of more rapid and ultra-fast chargers in key locations.” The company also said its charging business, known as BP Pulse, would “approximately triple its number of charging points by 2030.”

Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro

BP’s announcement came on the same day the U.K. government published its electric vehicle infrastructure strategy, which said it expected the country would be home to roughly 300,000 public chargepoints by 2030 “as a minimum.”

BP is not alone in its attempt to lay down a marker in the electric vehicle charging market. Back in January, Shell announced the opening of an “EV charging hub” in London. Shell said it had replaced gasoline and diesel pumps at the site with what it called “ultra-rapid chargepoints.”

The fossil fuel powerhouse is targeting the installation of 50,000 on-street chargers by the middle of the decade via its subsidiary, Ubitricity.

The need for new charging infrastructure in the U.K. is likely to become increasingly pressing in the years ahead, not least because authorities want to stop the sale of new diesel and gasoline cars and vans by 2030. From 2035, the U.K. will require all new cars and vans to have zero-tailpipe emissions.

According to figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders published at the beginning of April, new battery electric car registrations in the U.K. hit 39,315 in March, a 78.7% increase year-on-year.

“This is the highest volume of BEV registrations ever recorded in a single month, and means that more were registered in March 2022 than during the entirety of 2019,” the SMMT said.

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Health

Ventilation, Vaccination Key to Suppressing Covid-19 as People Head Back Indoors

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Forget temperature checks and deep-cleaning surfaces. The best way to protect people from Covid-19 as they return to offices and other indoor spaces is to bolster air quality and vaccination coverage, experts on the transmission of the virus say.

Their consensus reflects an evolving understanding of the spread of a virus that the World Health Organization declared the cause of a pandemic two years ago this Friday. Deep-cleaning surfaces and temperature checks—still a mainstay at many businesses—have been understood for many months to be of relatively little help stopping the virus from spreading. Rather, as businesses and communities across the U.S. begin what is shaping up to be the broadest return yet to pre-pandemic behaviors, transmission and infectious-disease experts said broad vaccine coverage and good air hygiene stand out as the most important mitigation efforts.

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