Scientists sound the alarm over a concerning phenomenon observed in the ocean: ‘This is worrying news’
Stephen Proctor – November 4, 2023
Scientists are worried that the recent extreme ocean warming is a sign we haven’t kept up with how quickly the planet is changing. Countries have reported some of the warmest temperatures in recorded history, and the same can be said for the waters from the North Atlantic to Antarctica.
What’s Happening?
The oceanic heat wave is hitting both sides of North America. Waters off the coast of Florida and the western coasts of the U.S. and Canada are alarmingly warm. The Western Mediterranean, off the coasts of Southern Spain and North Africa, is also warmer than average. The same can be said for the Baltic Sea and the water around New Zealand and Australia.
A recent report showed that the number of these heat waves in ocean waters doubled between 1982 and 2016, noted the BBC, and the heat waves have also worsened considerably.
“This is worrying news for the planet,” said Christopher Hewitt, director of climate services for the World Meteorological Organization, in a news report from the WMO.
Why is the marine heat wave concerning?
Marine heat waves can negatively affect ocean life, the fishing industry, and weather patterns.
These heat waves can cause fish to die on a large scale and coral reefs to undergo “coral bleaching.” The warmer water also changes the behavior patterns of marine life, making it harder for fishermen to locate and catch enough to sustain their livelihood. Alaska was forced to cancel the snow crab harvest in 2022 because the billions of crabs that historically called the Bering Sea home had all but disappeared.
An even more concerning effect of these marine heat waves is the threat they pose to the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, which is basically a giant global conveyor belt of ocean water.
Water in the AMOC travels from the tropics to the North Atlantic, where it cools and becomes saltier, then sinks deep into the ocean before traveling back south and repeating the process. The AMOC is crucial in regulating global weather patterns, including the jet stream.
If the water in the North Atlantic becomes too warm, the AMOC could slow down or even stop, resulting in extreme changes to the weather around the world. Scientists say this could happen sometime between 2025 and 2095, reported CNN.
What’s being done about marine heat waves?
A group of scientists from around the world is working to better understand marine heat waves, what causes them, their effect on the climate, and their effect on the environment around them. While there’s still a long way to go, a team in Australia was able to predict a marine heat wave several months out.
Dead bodies litter Mount Everest because it’s so dangerous and expensive to get them down — and 2023 could be the most deadly season yet
Hilary Brueck, Ashley Collman and Maiya Focht – November 2, 2023
Scroll back up to restore default view.
More than 310 people have died climbing Everest since exploration first started in the early 1900s.
It’s dangerous to retrieve the bodies, so many litter the mountain to this day.
Many have blamed overcrowding for deaths in recent years, and 2023 saw a record number of climbers.
Dead bodies are a common sight on top of Mount Everest.
On average, six people die climbing the world’s tallest peak each year. The year 2015 was the mountain’s deadliest in recent history, when an avalanche killed 19.
Including sherpas that accompany climbers, that means about 900 people tried to summit the mountain from the South side during the main 2023 climbing season, which only lasts about eight weeks, each April and May
When people die on Everest, it can be difficult to remove their bodies. Final repatriation costs tens of thousands of dollars (in some cases, around $70,000) and can also come at a fatal price itself: Two Nepalese climbers died trying to recover a body from Everest in 1984.
Lhakpa Sherpa, who is the women’s record-holder for most Everest summits, said she saw seven dead bodies on her way to the top of the mountain in 2018.
“Only near the top,” she told Insider in 2018, remembering one man’s body in particular that “looked alive, because the wind was blowing his hair.”
Her memory is a grim reminder that removing dead bodies from Mount Everest is a pricey and potentially deadly chore.
These days, tourists spend anywhere from $50,000 to well over $130,000 to complete a once-in-a-lifetime Everest summit. It’s difficult to know for sure exactly how many people have died trying to get up and down, and where all those bodies have ended up.
Recent fatality estimates are as high as 322 after an especially deadly 2023 season. A BBC investigation in 2015 concluded “there are certainly more than 200” corpses lying on Everest’s slopes.
Some hikers are blaming the surges in deaths in recent decades, in part, on preventable overcrowding.
As May temperatures warm and winds stall, favorable springtime Everest climbing conditions sometimes only last a few days. These brief climbing windows can create conveyor-belt style lines that snake toward the top of the mountain.
Mountaineers line up as they make their way up a slope on Mount Everest on May 31, 2021.LAKPA SHERPA/AFP via Getty Images
Climbers can be so eager to reach the peak and stake their claim on an Everest summit that they develop what’s called “Summit Fever,” risking their lives just to make it happen.
Other Everest climbers complain about risky human traffic jams in the mountain’s “death zone,” the area of the hike that reaches above 8,000 meters (about 26,250 feet), where air is dangerously thin and most people use oxygen masks.
Even with masks, this zone is not a great place to hang out for too long, and it’s a spot where some deliriously loopy trekkers may start removing desperately-needed clothes, and talking to imaginary companions, despite the freezing conditions.
Getting bodies out of the death zone is a hazardous chore.
“Even picking up a candy wrapper high up on the mountain is a lot of effort, because it’s totally frozen and you have to dig around it,” Ang Tshering Sherpa former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, told the BBC in 2015. “A dead body that normally weighs 80kg might weigh 150kg when frozen and dug out with the surrounding ice attached.”
Mountaineer Alan Arnette previously told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that he signed some grim “body disposal” forms before he climbed Everest, ordering that his corpse should rest in place on the mountain in case he died during the trek.
“Typically you have your spouse sign this, so think about that conversation,” he added. “You say ‘leave me on the mountain,’ or ‘get me back to Kathmandu and cremate,’ or ‘try to get me back to my home country.'”
For years, Everest climbers often referenced one particular dead body they called “Green Boots” who some spotted lying in a cave roughly 1,130 feet from the peak. It was the body of Tsewang Paljor, a 28 year-old Indian climber who died on the mountain in 1996, during the same storm that inspired Jon Krakauer’s bestseller, “Into Thin Air.”
Pemba Dorjee Sherpa, who has climbed up Everest 20 times, at camp three on the mountain in Nepal, May 20, 2019.Reuters/Phurba Tenjing Sherpa
But in recent years, Everest’s most infamous corpse has been tougher for hikers to spot, leading to widespread speculation that the body was either moved, or covered by rocks, as climber Noel Hanna told the BBC.
Nepalese Sherpas generally consider it inappropriate and disrespectful to their mountain gods to leave dead bodies littering their holy mountain. In 2019, at least four bodies were taken down from the mountain by Nepalese trash collectors.
“There’s sort of this idea that there’s only one mountain that really matters in the kind of Western, popular imagination,” filmmaker and director Jennifer Peedom told Insider when her documentary, “Mountain” was released in 2017.
Peedom had climbed Everest herself four times as of 2018, but said the thrill of summiting Everest is largely relegated to the history books, and for “true mountaineers,” it’s just an exercise in crowd control these days.
“There seems to be a disaster mystique around Everest that seems to only serve to heighten the allure of the place,” she said. “It is extremely overcrowded now and just getting more and more every year.”
This story was originally published in May 2019. It has been updated.
US EPA needs to phase out food waste from landfills by 2040 -local officials
Leah Douglas – October 31, 2023
FILE PHOTO: Workers use heavy machinery to move trash and waste at the Frank R. Bowerman landfill in California
(Reuters) – A group of local U.S. government officials from 18 states on Tuesday urged the Environmental Protection Agency to phase out food waste disposal in landfills by 2040 to cut emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane.
Food waste causes 58% of the methane emissions that come from landfills, the EPA said in an Oct. 19 report that calculated those emissions for the first time. The U.S. is lagging on a goal to halve food waste by 2030, and the EPA has been criticized for under-investing in the issue.
“Without fast action on methane, local governments will increasingly face the impacts of warming temperatures, sea level rise, and extreme weather events,” the officials, including the mayors of Seattle and Minneapolis, said in a joint letter to the agency.
They also asked the agency to update landfill standards to better detect and mitigate methane leaks.
More than one third of food produced in the U.S. is wasted, and methane emissions from landfilled food waste are growing, totaling more than 55 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent in 2020, according to the EPA.
Landfills are responsible for about 14% of U.S. methane emissions, according to the EPA. Methane is 28 times stronger than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas over a 100-year period.
Some cities and municipalities have voluntary household composting programs for food waste. Residents of New York City, which was not among the cities that signed the letter to EPA, will soon be required to separate food scraps from the rest of their household trash.
The EPA provides resources on its website for household food waste management and has a program for businesses to commit to cutting their food waste, though the agency does not verify their progress.
Food waste will be a priority at this year’s United Nations climate conference, to be held at the end of November in the United Arab Emirates.
(Reporting by Leah Douglas; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
Americans are still putting way too much food into landfills. Local officials seek EPA’s help
Melina Walling – October 31, 2023
Shredded organic materials are piled up before being taken to a anaerobic digester at a GreenWaste Zanker Resource Recovery Facility in San Jose, Calif., Friday, Oct. 27, 2023. For the first time since the 1990s, the EPA updated its ranking of preferred strategies for waste reduction, ranging from preventing wasted food altogether (by not producing or buying it in the first place) to composting or anaerobic digestion, a process by which food waste can be turned into energy in the form of biogas. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)A truck loaded with organic material exits a GreenWaste Zanker Resource Recovery Facility with the generators that will convert biogas into electricity at rear in San Jose, Calif., Friday, Oct. 27, 2023. For the first time since the 1990s, the EPA updated its ranking of preferred strategies for waste reduction, ranging from preventing wasted food altogether (by not producing or buying it in the first place) to composting or anaerobic digestion, a process by which food waste can be turned into energy in the form of biogas. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)Generators that will convert biogas into electricity sit at a GreenWaste Zanker Resource Recovery Facility in San Jose, Calif., Friday, Oct. 27, 2023. For the first time since the 1990s, the EPA updated its ranking of preferred strategies for waste reduction, ranging from preventing wasted food altogether (by not producing or buying it in the first place) to composting or anaerobic digestion, a process by which food waste can be turned into energy in the form of biogas. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
CHICAGO (AP) — More than one-third of the food produced in the U.S. is never eaten. Much of it ends up in landfills, where it generates tons of methane that hastens climate change. That’s why more than 50 local officials signed onto a letter Tuesday calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to help municipal governments cut food waste in their communities.
The letter came on the heels of two recent reports from the EPA on the scope of America’s food waste problem and the damage that results from it. The local officials pressed the agency to expand grant funding and technical help for landfill alternatives. They also urged the agency to update landfill standards to require better prevention, detection and reduction of methane emissions, something scientists already have the technology to do but which can be challenging to implement since food waste breaks down and starts generating methane quickly.
Tackling food waste is a daunting challenge that the U.S. has taken on before. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the EPA set a goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030, but the country has made little progress, said Claudia Fabiano, who works on food waste management for the EPA.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” Fabiano said.
Researchers say the EPA reports provide sorely needed information. One report found that 58% of methane emissions from landfills come from food waste, a major issue because methane is responsible for about a quarter of global warming and has significantly more warming potential than carbon dioxide.
With the extent of the problem clearly defined, some elected leaders and researchers alike hope to take action. But they say it will take not just investment of resources but also a major mindset shift from the public. Farmers may need to change some practices, manufacturers will need to rethink how they package and market goods, and individuals need to find ways to keep food from going to waste.
So for the first time since the 1990s, the EPA updated its ranking of preferred strategies for waste reduction, ranging from preventing wasted food altogether (by not producing or buying it in the first place) to composting or anaerobic digestion, a process by which food waste can be turned into biogas inside a reactor. Prevention remains the top strategy, but the new ranking includes more nuances comparing the options so communities can decide how to prioritize their investments.
But reducing waste requires a big psychological change and lifestyle shift from individuals no matter what. Researchers say households are responsible for at least 40% of food waste in the U.S.
It’s a more urgent problem than ever, said Weslynne Ashton, a professor of environmental management and sustainability at the Illinois Institute of Technology who was not involved with the EPA reports. Americans have been conditioned to expect abundance at grocery stores and on their plates, and it’s expensive to pull all that food out of the waste stream.
“I think it is possible to get zero organic waste into landfills,” Ashton said. “But it means that we need an infrastructure to enable that in different locations within cities and more rural regions. It means we need incentives both for households as well as for commercial institutions.”
With the problem clearly defined and quantified, it remains to be seen whether communities and states will get extra help or guidance from the federal level — and how much change they can make either way. The EPA has recently channeled some money from the Inflation Reduction Act toward supporting recycling, which did include some funding for organics waste, but those are relatively new programs.
Some local governments have been working on this issue for a while. California began requiring every jurisdiction to provide organic waste collection services starting in 2022. But others don’t have as much of a head start. Chicago, for instance, just launched a city-wide composting pilot program two weeks ago that set up free food waste drop-off points around the city. But prospective users have to transport their food scraps themselves.
Ning Ai, an associate professor of urban planning and policy at the University of Illinois Chicago, said the report could be bolstered by more specific information about how different communities can adopt localized solutions, since preventing food waste might look different in rural and urban areas or in different parts of the country. But she was also impressed that the report highlighted tradeoffs of environmental impacts between air, water and land, something she said is not often as aggressively documented.
“These two reports, as well as some of the older ones, that definitely shows up as a boost to the national momentum to waste reduction,” said Ai, who was not involved with the EPA’s research.
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
SC wastes more food than any other state, new study shows. Here’s why and how much
Sarah Claire McDonald – November 1, 2023
With the coming months bringing seasonal food fads and festive holidays, food waste has the potential to be much more prominent around this time of year.
After Cherry Digital, a communications agency, surveyed 3,200 Americans to find out how much was thrown away this past year, it was discovered that U.S. households waste about $907 worth of food annually.
Food waste comes in to Re-Soil, near Elgin, and is composted over a 15 day period.
As for South Carolina, the reported estimation was much higher than the nation’s.
Residents in households around the Palmetto State were reported to waste over $1,300 worth of food each year, according to survey data from the study.
After the findings were broken down state-by-state, the survey found that South Carolinians were the most wasteful overall, getting rid of $1,304.68 worth of food each year.
The least-wasteful state in the U.S. is West Virginia, the study states. This state’s residents reportedly only throw away $404.90 worth of their annual groceries.
Although this could in part be due to wasted leftovers, there could be another issue afoot.
The survey shows that only one-quarter of people know what the “use-by date” actually means for peak product quality.
According to the findings, the survey displayed that 30.4% of individuals believed that this date means the last date the product was edible, 22% thought that it meant that it was the last date the food product could be displayed and sold in a store and 21% believed that it meant the date that the product would be at its best flavor and quality, which is the meaning behind a “best-by date.”
According to the United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA FSIS), examples of commonly used phrases and their meaning include:
A “Best if Used By/Before” date indicates when a product will be of its best flavor or quality. It is not a purchase or safety date.
A “Sell-By” date tells the store how long to display the product for sale for inventory management. It is not a safety date.
A “Use-By” date is the last date recommended for the use of the product while at peak quality. It is not a safety date except for when used on infant formula as described below.
A “Freeze-By” date indicates when a product should be frozen to maintain peak quality. It is not a purchase or safety date.
The survey also discovered that, for food wasted, 51.1% of people believe that best before dates on fruits and vegetables should be ignored as “it’s easy to tell if something has gone bad,” as detailed by its findings. The study also discovered that the foods Americans would most likely throw away are dairy products at 46.6%, 22.3% for meat, fish at 19.2%, bread at 5.1% and vegetables at 8.5%.
Discarded rotten fruit left for waste after a market.
For those who don’t want their uneaten or unused food to go to waste, your local community may have several food drives, food banks and community help centers that will take all kinds of donations, especially around the holidays.
Although there could be several others, Feeding America’s website lets its users search for nearby affiliated food banks to donate. This website can be found online at https://www.feedingamerica.org/find-food-bank.
More than 50 officials call on the EPA to help local governments cut food waste in their communities
Joy Saha – November 1,2023
Person Throwing Pizza In Garbage Getty Images/Andrey Popov
On Tuesday, more than 50 local officials penned a letter urging the Environmental Protection Agency to phase out food waste disposal in landfills by 2040 to cut emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane, Reuters reported.The letter came in the wake of two reports from the EPA that spotlights America’s food waste crisis and its detrimental environmental consequences. More than one-third of the food produced in the U.S. is never consumed. Much of that waste ends up in landfills, where it generates astounding amounts of toxic methane.
Food waste causes 58% of the methane emissions that come from landfills, the EPA said in an Oct. 19 report that calculated those emissions for the first time. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the EPA set a goal in 2015 to cut food waste in half by 2030. But very little progress has been made and the EPA has been criticized for “under-investing in the issue,” Reuters said.
“Without fast action on methane, local governments will increasingly face the impacts of warming temperatures, sea level rise, and extreme weather events,” the officials said in their joint letter to the agency. They also called on the EPA to update landfill standards to “require better prevention, detection and reduction of methane emissions,” per ABC News. Landfills are responsible for about 14% of U.S. methane emissions, the EPA also found. Reuters added that compared to carbon dioxide, another powerful greenhouse gas, methane is 28 times stronger over a 100-year period.
New tool reveals swaths of American coastline are expected to be underwater by 2050: ‘Time is slipping away’
Brittany Davies – October 31, 2023
If you ask Climate Central — which has a coastal risk screening tool that shows an area’s risk for rising sea levels and flooding over the coming decades — Texas’s coastline is in trouble.
The new map-based tool compiles research into viewable projections for water levels, land elevation, and other factors in localized areas across the U.S. to assess their potential risk.
The predictive technology indicates that, under some scenarios, many of Texas’s coastal areas, such as much of Galveston Island, Beaumont, and the barrier islands, will be underwater during floods by 2050.
What’s happening?
Coastal areas face threats from rising sea levels caused by melting ice caps and warming oceans, as well as flooding from storms intensified by changing temperatures. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates more than 128 million people live in coastal communities, many of which will be severely impacted by the effects of higher tides and dangerous storms.
CNN reports that coastal flooding could cost the global economy $14.2 trillion in damages, not including loss of life and well-being, by the end of the century. The loss of land due to sea level rise is also detrimental to the entire ecosystem, disrupting important wetlands and freshwater supplies.
Why is this concerning?
The coastal risk screening tool provides startling insight into how many areas will likely be affected by rising tides and floods, especially if nothing is done to mitigate Earth’s rapidly rising temperatures. As 2050 quickly approaches, time is slipping away to prepare and protect communities and ecosystems from the rising waters.
Planning, approving, and implementing new infrastructure and other major projects to keep communities safe can take years to complete. Because the wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly, cities need to start planning now before they find themselves in too deep.
What’s being done to reduce the risk?
Many of the most vulnerable regions are densely populated and people are already dealing with personal and economic damages from intensified flooding. While some may be able to move or make changes to their homes and communities to prepare for rising waters, not everyone has the means or desire to make these changes.
Several actions may be taken by individuals, organizations, municipalities, and the government to reduce the impacts of coastal flooding. The first step is understanding where the vulnerabilities are, indicates Peter Girard of Climate Central. Protecting existing wetlands and utilizing nature-based solutions such as living shorelines or sand dunes can lessen the impacts of flooding, storm surges, and erosion.
Community developers are encouraged to consider those most vulnerable when implementing coastal resiliency strategies such as shifting populations or building flood walls. Individuals living in flood zones should learn about the risks and obtain insurance protection if available.
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They went hunting for fossil fuels. What they found could help save the world
Laura Paddison, CNN – October 29, 2023
When tw o scientists went looking for fossil fuels beneath the ground of northeastern France, they did not expect to discover something which could supercharge the effort to tackle the climate crisis.
Jacques Pironon and Phillipe De Donato, both directors of research at France’s National Centre of Scientific Research, were assessing the amount of methane in the subsoils of the Lorraine mining basin using a “world first” specialized probe, able to analyze gases dissolved in the water of rock formations deep underground.
A couple of hundred meters down, the probe found low concentrations of hydrogen. “This was not a real surprise for us,” Pironon told CNN; it’s common to find small amounts near the surface of a borehole. But as the probe went deeper, the concentration ticked up. At 1,100 meters down it was 14%, at 1,250 meters it was 20%.
This was surprising, Pironon said. It indicated the presence of a large reservoir of hydrogen beneath. They ran calculations and estimated the deposit could contain between 6 million and 250 million metric tons of hydrogen.
That could make it one of the largest deposits of “white hydrogen” ever discovered, Pironon said. The find has helped fuel an already feverish interest in the gas.
White hydrogen – also referred to as “natural,” “gold” or “geologic” hydrogen – is naturally produced or present in the Earth’s crust and has become something of a climate holy grail.
Hydrogen produces only water when burned, making it very attractive as a potential clean energy source for industries like aviation, shipping and steel-making that need so much energy it’s almost impossible to meet through renewables such as solar and wind.
But while hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, it generally exists combined with other molecules. Currently, commercial hydrogen is produced in an energy-intensive process almost entirely powered by fossil fuels.
A rainbow of colors is used as a shorthand for the different types of hydrogen. “Gray” is made from methane gas and “brown” from coal. “Blue” hydrogen is the same as gray, but the planet-heating pollution produced is captured before it goes into the atmosphere.
The most promising from a climate perspective is “green” hydrogen, made using renewable energy to split water. Yet production remains small scale and expensive.
That’s why interest in white hydrogen, a potentially abundant, untapped source of clean-burning energy, has ratcheted up over the last few years.
‘We haven’t been looking in the right places’
“If you had asked me four years ago what I thought about natural hydrogen, I would have told you ‘oh, it doesn’t exist,’” said Geoffrey Ellis, a geochemist with the US Geological Survey. “Hydrogen’s out there, we know it’s around,” he said, but scientists thought big accumulations weren’t possible.
Then he found out about Mali. Arguably, the catalyst for the current interest in white hydrogen can be traced to this West African country.
In 1987, in the village of Bourakébougou, a driller was left with burns after a water well unexpectedly exploded as he leaned over the edge of it while smoking a cigarette.
The well was swiftly plugged and abandoned until 2011, when it was unplugged by an oil and gas company and reportedly found to be producing a gas that was 98% hydrogen. The hydrogen was used to power the village, and more than a decade later, it is still producing.
When a study came out about the well in 2018, it caught the attention of the science community, including Ellis. His initial reaction was that there had to be something wrong with the research, “because we just know that this can’t happen.”
Then the pandemic hit and he had time on his hands to start digging. The more he read, the more he realized “we just haven’t been looking for it, we haven’t been looking in the right places.”
The recent discoveries are exciting for Ellis, who has been working as a petroleum geochemist since the 1980s. He witnessed the rapid growth of the shale gas industry in the US, which revolutionized the energy market. “Now,” he said, “here we are in what I think is probably a second revolution.”
White hydrogen is “very promising,” agreed Isabelle Moretti, a scientific researcher at the University of Pau et des Pays de l’Adour and the University of Sorbonne and a white hydrogen expert.
“Now the question is no longer about the resource… but where to find large economic reserves,” she told CNN.
A slew of startups
Dozens of processes generate white hydrogen but there is still some uncertainty about how large natural deposits form.
Geologists have tended to focus on “serpentinization,” where water reacts with iron-rich rocks to produce hydrogen, and “radiolysis,” a radiation-driven breakdown of water molecules.
White hydrogen deposits have been found throughout the world, including in the US, eastern Europe, Russia, Australia, Oman, as well as France and Mali.
Some have been discovered by accident, others by hunting for clues like features in the landscapes sometimes referred to as “fairy circles” – shallow, elliptical depressions that can leak hydrogen.
Ellis estimates globally there could be tens of billions of tons of white hydrogen. This would be vastly more than the 100 million tons a year of hydrogen that is currently produced and the 500 million tons predicted to be produced annually by 2050, he said.
“Most of this is almost certainly going to be in very small accumulations or very far offshore, or just too deep to actually be economic to produce,” he said. But if just 1% can be found and produced, it would provide 500 million tons of hydrogen for 200 years, he added.
It’s a tantalizing prospect for a slew of startups.
Australia-based Gold Hydrogen is currently drilling in the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia. It targeted that spot after scouring the state’s archives and discovering that back in the 1920s, a number of boreholes had been drilled there which had very high concentrations of hydrogen. The prospectors, only interested in fossil fuels, abandoned them.
“We’re very excited by what we’re seeing,” said managing director Neil McDonald. There is more testing and drilling to do but the company could get into early production possibly in late 2024, he told CNN.
Some startups are seeing eye-popping investments. Koloma, a Denver-based white hydrogen start-up, has secured $91 million from investors, including the Bill Gates-founded investment firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures – although the company remains tight-lipped about exactly where in the US it is drilling and when it is aiming for commercialization.
Another Denver-based company, Natural Hydrogen Energy, founded by geochemist Viacheslav Zgonnik, has completed an exploratory hydrogen borehole in Nebraska in 2019 and has plans for new wells. The world is “very close to the first commercial projects,” Zgonnik told CNN.
“Natural hydrogen is a solution which will allow us to get get to speed” on climate action, he said.
Aerial view of drilling operations by Natural Hydrogen Energy in Kansas. – Natural Hydrogen Energy LLC
From hype to reality
The challenge for these businesses and for scientists will be translating hypothetical promise into a commercial reality.
“There could be a period of decades where there’s a lot of trial and error and false starts,” Ellis said. But speed is vital. “If it’s going to take us 200 years to develop the resource, that’s not really going to be of much use.”
But many of the startups are bullish. Some predict years, not decades, to commercialization. “We have all necessary technology we need, with some slight modifications,” Zgonnik said.
Challenges remain. In some countries, regulations are an obstacle. Costs also need to be worked out. According to calculations based on the Mali well, white hydrogen could cost around $1 a kilogram to produce – compared to around $6 a kilogram for green hydrogen. But white hydrogen could quickly become more expensive if large deposits require deeper drilling.
Back in the Lorraine basin, Pironon and De Donato’s next steps are to drill down to 3,000 meters to get a clearer idea of exactly how much white hydrogen there is.
There’s a long way to go, but it would be ironic if this region – once one of western Europe’s key coal producers – became an epicenter of a new white hydrogen industry.
Shopper left furious after purchase on dad’s recent grocery store trip: ‘Totally wipes out the benefit’
Kendall Burke – October 29, 2023
A Redditor who found a baffling instance of excessive plastic took to the r/anticonsumption subreddit to voice their frustrations.
The poster said their dad bought the offending cucumber — which was covered in not one, but two layers of single-use plastic — during a recent grocery run, seemingly at U.K. chain Morrison’s, given the branding The Greengrocer’s on Market Street.
“All this plastic for HALF A F******* CUCUMBER,” the frustrated Redditor wrote.
Photo Credit: u/DyeTheSheep / Reddit
The image reveals that the package actually contains just half a cucumber, which could be the reason for wrapping it in so much plastic, as cut vegetables and fruit spoil faster than uncut ones. However, that raises the question, why would anyone sell just half a cucumber.
Commenters agreed with the original poster’s sentiment.
One shared, “The other day I saw organic cilantro on a plastic tray, wrapped with plastic. Totally wipes out the benefit of organic.”
Another joked, “Nice I need a plastic bag to transport it too please.”
While plastic wrap can reduce how quickly food spoils, a main cause of consumer-level food waste, it can take anywhere between 20 and 500 years (or more by some estimates) to break down in our landfills and oceans.
Innovative solutions to this issue are being perfected every day. Multiple companies have debuted versions of plastic-free “plastic” wrap, with one particularly cool option that sprays on like a Spiderman web. There are also myriad groups at work on an international and local level to clean up our existing ocean plastic problem.
Warehouse worker sparks outrage with alarming photo of employer’s shipping practice: ‘We get two to five shipments a week like this’
Laurelle Stelle – October 28, 2023
A frustrated warehouse employee showed the world the wasteful and polluting practice of a company they said they do business with regularly in the r/Anticonsumption subreddit.
Plastic shipping packages are a significant fraction of the world’s plastic problem. Some companies, like Amazon, have said they’ll try to switch to more affordable and eco-friendly alternatives. Other businesses seem utterly unaware of the money they’re losing and the impact they’re having on the environment.
Photo Credit: u/MDGR28 / Reddit
“This clothing company always ships their freight in two inches thick of plastic wrap,” said this fed-up Redditor.
The attached photo showed a shipping pallet in a warehouse in the process of being unwrapped. A pile of wadded plastic beside the pallet was clearly enough to cover it dozens of times over — and there was still more around the merchandise. None of the other pallets in the background had nearly as much packing material wrapped around them.
“It’s so much!” the Redditor complained. “We get two to five shipments a week like this.”
Wrapping pallets this way just doesn’t make financial sense. It takes longer to both wrap and unwrap, wasting employee time that both companies have to pay for — not to mention the cost of the material itself.
Also, as Greenpeace recently pointed out, plastic recycling is difficult, and most plastic never gets recycled. Instead, plastic trash either ends up in landfills or as litter in the environment, including in the ocean, where it is dangerous to wildlife. The best way to prevent that outcome is to minimize the use of disposable plastic to start with.
“There are alternatives that exist. You can have safety without plastic,” said one commenter, sharing a link to a how-to page listing eco-friendly options. “Also, it took me like two seconds to find these alternatives.”
Even a small improvement would be better than nothing, as another user pointed out. “My dad made an arrangement with his local post office for their plastic wrap,” they said. “This stuff is excellent for packing material. Sure beats having to buy packing materials. Does it get tossed by the buyer? Sure, but it’s being reused once, at least, and not immediately discarded by the post office.”
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