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Tech News
Exploration companies in nearly 30 countries are drilling to locate natural hydrogen gas trapped in underground rock formations, betting it could serve as a carbon-free energy source. Venture capitalists have poured almost $500 million into this search since 2023, with firms like UK-based H2Au already drilling test wells in Kansas.
The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a plan to eliminate remaining federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, finalizing the repeal of Biden-era rules and proposing removal of related emissions standards. The agency argues climate pollution's health impacts are too diffuse to regulate, even as electricity demand rises from AI, EVs, and manufacturing growth.
A new study finds that as global temperatures rise, thawing permafrost, drying forests, wildfires, and warming wetlands are releasing additional methane and carbon dioxide that current climate models largely fail to account for. Researchers estimate these natural feedback loops could amplify overall global warming by 20% to 30% by the end of the century, adding between 0.2C and 0.4C depending on how aggressively nations cut fossil fuel emissions.
A new UN Environment Programme report concedes that global warming will surpass the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold set by the Paris climate accord within the next few years, driven by continued burning of coal, oil and gas. Current temperatures already sit around 1.4°C above pre-industrial levels based on 20-year averages, and scientists say there is no longer a realistic path to staying under the limit.
MIT Technology Review's latest coverage highlights two issues: digital child-safety tools that have prevented harms like suicide and predation but also caused false alarms and anxiety, with researchers proposing better alternatives. Separately, the outlet examines how agriculture's reliance on natural gas for fertilizer production has driven price volatility, worsened by the Iran conflict's impact on trade through the Strait of Hormuz.
Rising natural gas prices tied to the Iran conflict have driven up urea prices, which briefly exceeded $850 per metric ton in April—80% above pre-conflict levels and the highest since the Russia-Ukraine war disrupted markets in 2022. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a third of global seaborne fertilizer trade passes, has been effectively shut to commercial shipping, threatening supply to some of the world's poorest nations.
A new analysis draws on atmospheric measurement records and emission datasets to explain why global methane concentrations temporarily plateaued rather than kept rising. Researchers attribute the pause primarily to increases in nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions and a geographic shift of those emissions toward the Southern Hemisphere, which altered atmospheric chemistry governing methane's main removal pathway via hydroxyl radicals.
An analysis of the Netherlands' waterway maintenance history shows that dredging was long done by hand, animal, wind and tidal power before the switch to oil-burning ships that now consume up to 3,000 litres of fuel per hour. Today the country removes 30 to 35 million cubic metres of silt annually to keep its harbours, canals and rivers navigable, a task growing more demanding as ships get bigger and cargo shifts from road to water.