articles

A new way of recycling millions of tons of plastic garbage into liquid fuel has been devised by researchers from the University of California, Irvine and the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC) in China.

"Synthetic plastics are a fundamental part of modern life, but our use of them in large volume has created serious environmental problems," said UCI chemist Zhibin Guan. "Our goal through this research was to address the issue of plastic pollution as well as achieving a beneficial outcome of creating a new source of liquid fuel."

Una técnica de cultivo practicado durante siglos por los habitantes de África Occidental, que convierte el suelo de la selva tropical pobre en nutrientes, en tierras de cultivo fértiles, podría ser la respuesta a la mitigación del cambio climático y revolucionar la agricultura en África.

Last month, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) as measured at Amsterdam Island, in the southern Indian Ocean, for the first time exceeded the symbolic value of 400 ppm, or 0.04%. The CO2 concentrations recorded at the Amsterdam Island research station are the lowest in the world (excluding seasonal cycles), due to the island's remoteness from anthropogenic sources. The 400 ppm threshold was already crossed in the Northern hemisphere during the 2012/2013 winter. In addition, the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is speeding up, growing by more than 2 ppm annually over the past four years. The data has been collected for the past 35 years at the Amsterdam Island research station by the French national observation service ICOS-France at the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement (LSCE, CNRS / CEA / UVSQ), with the support of the Institut Polaire Français Paul-Emile Victor (IPEV).

¿Qué tan ambicioso es el mundo? La conferencia sobre el clima de París en diciembre pasado sorprendió a muchos al prometer no sólo el mantener el calentamiento "muy por debajo de dos grados centígrados," sino también a "proseguir los esfuerzos" para limitar el calentamiento a 1,5 grados C. Esto plantea una cuestión muy importante: ¿Cuál es la diferencia entre un mundo con un aumento de dos grados y otro con aumento de 1,5 grados?

China has an opportunity to massively increase its use of wind power -- if it properly integrates wind into its existing power system, according to a new study. The research forecasts that wind power could provide 26 percent of China's projected electricity demand by 2030, up from 3 percent in 2015.

Such a change would be a substantial gain in the global transition to renewable energy, since China produces the most total greenhouse gas emissions of any country in the world.