A few times in the past few months, Elon Musk has said that Tesla would remove its human safety monitors in some robotaxis by the end of this year. This is the biggie. Or one of the biggies. It’s one thing to have ~30 robotaxis driving around Austin and San ... [continued]
The post Tesla To Reach Huge Robotaxi Milestone Just In Time, Elon Musk Says appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw.
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In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online speech, content moderation and internet regulation, Mike and Ben cover:
This episode is brought to you by our sponsor CCIA, an international, not-for-profit trade association representing a broad cross section of communications and technology firms and that promotes open markets, open systems, and open networks.
One of my favorite over-the-air updates to my 2019 Tesla Model 3 came right after I bought it. Tesla added the capability to watch YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, and other things on the vehicle touchscreen. Actually, I forget now if all of those were added at once or some were added ... [continued]
The post Audi Brings Disney+ Into Car appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Peterbilt has unveiled four new medium duty electric trucks powered by a battery-electric powertrain from PACCAR.
The post Peterbilt Unveils New Electric Truck Models While Dispute With California Continues appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Colorado River water is not priced at rates that accurately reflect its scarcity, incentivizing inefficiency and overconsumption as climate change and overuse threaten the vital waterway for 40 million people and 5.5 million acres of agricultural land across the Western United States and northwestern Mexico.
The organization is looking to use the funds to increase staffing capacity, expand initiatives and bolster infrastructure.
The post AIR receives five-year, $1.5M Ford Foundation grant appeared first on Current.
Eric Migicovsky, who basically invented the smartwatch category with the original Pebble, just announced something much simpler: a $99 ring with one button that records voice memos. That’s it. No internet connection required, no cloud storage, no subscription fees, no wake words. Press the button, talk, release. Your note is saved locally—either on the ring’s tiny bit of memory or synced to your phone directly.
What makes the Pebble Index 01 actually interesting isn’t the hardware minimalism (though that’s refreshing). It’s that the whole thing is open source and designed to be hacked. Want long-press to do something different? Go for it. Want your voice memos piped into your task manager? Do it. The platform is yours to modify.
If you don’t know Migicovsky’s background: he kickstarted the original Pebble Watch in what became one of the platform’s most successful campaigns (I backed it), proving smartwatches could be useful. Pebble eventually got passed by bigger players, sold to Fitbit, then absorbed into Google.
A few years back, Eric moved into a different space, creating Beeper, the incredibly cool and useful universal messaging app, that pulls together basically all your messaging tools into a single unified interface. As I discussed with him on the Techdirt podcast last year, it was a cool example of how protocols let people build things that were more powerful. Last year, Beeper was sold to Automattic.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, Google agreed to open source all the original Pebble software (which it wasn’t using), and Eric decided to get back to his original baby, creating Core Devices, which would create a new generation of Pebble watches which recently shipped. This time, built on open source, totally hackable software, and even the ability of others to build devices on the Pebble platform.
I spoke to Eric last week about the Index 01. The design philosophy is clear and refreshing: keep it simple enough that it works perfectly every time. As someone who constantly sends myself notes—thoughts while walking, reminders mid-conversation, ideas that’ll vanish if I don’t capture them immediately—this is a tool I’m really looking forward to. But the real story isn’t the ring itself. It’s what you can do with it.
The AI processing is local—a small on-device model that does speech-to-text without sending anything to the cloud. But because the whole platform is open source, you’re not stuck with that default behavior. You can reprogram the button. You can route the output wherever you want. I’m already thinking about piping voice memos directly into my vibe coded task management tool, turning quick verbal notes into actionable tasks without touching a screen.
This is the kind of experimentation that closed hardware makes impossible. When you buy a typical consumer device, you’re renting someone else’s vision of how you should use it (and often paying a subscription fee for the privilege). When the hardware and software are open, you’re buying raw capability that you can shape however you need.
The device also has battery life that should last quite a while. Eric says two years, but that really depends on how much you use it. As I understand it, the battery can effectively record between 12 and 15 hours before the battery dies. If you’re just doing short 5 second notes to yourself, that can be quite some time.
The somewhat controversial decision here, though is that the ring is not rechargeable. From what Eric told me, that allowed them to simplify things and also use a longer-lasting hearing aid battery in the ring. Putting in a rechargeable battery and then adding a charging port and cables and such would have made the product more expensive, and less practical.
It’s a design choice that I can understand, but also one that some may bristle at, given that the ring will only last about two years if used regularly (and less if used a lot) and then become e-junk. For what it’s worth, the plan is to allow you to send back your used up ring to Core Devices to recycle when it reaches end of life (the app will warn you with plenty of time ahead). In theory, you would send it back when you buy a new one (assuming you found it super handy over the two years you were using it).
For years, I’ve argued for protocols over platforms in software—the idea that decentralized, open systems give users more control than walled gardens, even when the walled gardens are more convenient.
Consumer hardware has often gone in the opposite direction. We’ve too frequently traded repairability and control for sleekness and integration. Your smartphone is a sealed black box. Your smart home devices stop working when the company shuts down its servers. Even something as simple as a fitness tracker often requires a proprietary app and cloud account just to see your own data.
The Index 01 won’t reverse that trend by itself—it’s a $99 ring, not a revolution. But it’s a reminder that another path is possible. Open hardware, like open protocols, creates options. The Raspberry Pi proved there’s demand for hackable hardware in hobbyist computing. Framework has shown that’s true for laptops. Migicovsky is betting there’s demand for it in everyday consumer devices too.
I put in a pre-order. Not just because I need a better way to capture fleeting thoughts, but because this represents the kind of product I want to see more of: something you control, something you can modify, something that doesn’t stop working when the company loses interest. For all the complaints about big tech dominance and ecosystem lock-in, the solution isn’t better monopolies. It’s tools that put control back in users’ hands—whether that’s through open protocols in software or open platforms in hardware.
This is one example of what that looks like.
Produced and directed by longtime collaborators, the film is scheduled to be completed next fall.
The post New documentary feature will examine life and work of Bill Moyers appeared first on Current.
An official report lays out different scenarios for the cost of transitioning away from fossil fuels to net zero by 2050
Britain’s official energy system operator has attempted to work out what achieving net zero carbon emissions will cost, with its figures showing surging spending in the coming years.
The scale and speed of the shift to a low-carbon economy, and how to fund it, are hotly debated by political parties.
Continue reading...One of two things is true: 1) Waymo lives in Elon Musk’s head rent-free and is going to continue to be the robotaxi leader in North America for years to come, or 2) Waymo has been living on borrowed time, as Elon Musk claims, and Tesla will sprint past the ... [continued]
The post The Tesla vs. Waymo Battle Rages on with New Comments appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Fans of new sodium battery technology suffered a big disappointment earlier this year when the once-promising US energy storage startup Natron shuttered its doors. However, other US innovators have picked up the slack. That includes California-based Inlyte Energy, which has just completed a successful test of its full scale “salt ... [continued]
The post New Large-Scale Iron-Sodium Energy Storage System Passes The Test appeared first on CleanTechnica.
MOKE electric cars are coming to the US, starting in California where the company aims to fill the demand for fun, open-air EVs with a vintage flair.
The post The Appeal Of Vintage-Style Electric Cars Is About To Be Tested In California appeared first on CleanTechnica.
BMW electric vehicle drivers are the latest to gain access to certain Tesla Superchargers in the US (through the North American Charging Standard, or NACS). That makes it the 15th auto brand to get access, either through NACS adapters or a built-in NACS charging port. One very important thing to ... [continued]
The post BMW Drivers Now Have Access to Tesla Superchargers, 15th Auto Brand to Gain Access appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Angels of Cities
On the ground now (context) in Los Angeles (actually San Marino, but all this sprawl is Los Angeles), reminded afresh that I love this place. I just took a walk in 57° weather. It's clear, the sun is up, and the expected high is 82°. Perfect. I also drove to the Pasadena Peet's to fetch a couple of breve cortados (which Peet's has had far longer than Starbucks), renewing a ritual not possible anywhere in Indiana (though there is good coffee to be had, just not Peet's).
We're heading to our house in Santa Barbara tomorrow. While not perfect (no place is), Santa Barbara comes closer to perfect than any other city I know. It's no exaggeration that a Special Weather Statement would be "It's not perfect today. It might rain."
Mostly we're elsewhere, but it'll be good to be back for the holidays. And while I enjoy the city and our many friends there, I also feel the same about Boston, Cape Cod, the Bay Area, North Carolina, Seattle, New York, Indiana, and all the other places we've lived and gathered friends across the decades. All of their cities and regions yearn toward perfection, too. So hats off.
Building a development model on human connection
Jake Hylton went to 19 conferences this year.
“It was a hustle,” he said.
But going to as many convenings as possible was part of his personal plan as well as the strategic plan for LOOKOUT Publications, a nonprofit news site covering Arizona’s LGBTQ+ community. After all, the organization is built on the values of partnership and collaboration.
“Most funders won’t respond to your emails if they don’t know who you are, and the only way for them to know who you are is to build a relationship with them, and the only way to build a relationship with them is to be where they are, and the only place where they are is at the conferences.” he said.
Hylton has served as the outlet’s executive director since its founding in January 2023, but he’s relatively new to the journalism industry. For him, conferencing is part learning about the news business, part making connections. Before each conference, he develops what he calls his “crazy spreadsheet for funders,” a color-coded document that serves as his personal guide to success.
Before each conference, he obtains the list of attendees, drops it into an AI application, has it separate the funders from the publishers and scrapes the Internet for the attendees’ photos so that he knows what every single person looks like. He makes sure he has their names, emails, roles, and what foundation they’re with. Then he checks what regions they serve and which issues they fund.
“Is this a funding possibility?” he asks himself. Based on the potential, he then prioritizes who’s on the spreadsheet, labeling them Priority 1-5 based on who he needs to meet. “If I can get to my fives, I will, but I need to make sure I get through all my P1s and P2s, and my P3s are people I’ve already had conversations with that I need to just continue chatting with.” He adds nearby meeting spaces to the spreadsheet, such as restaurants and coffeehouses.
When he finally meets a funding officer, he doesn’t pitch his organization or ask for money.
“I never talk about the things I do, and I don’t talk about the things they do. I just treat them like a person, and we have human conversations. I get to know who they are. I get to know where they live. I get them talking about their family and their kids – and maybe one of the few times that they’re in a work setting surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of people, they feel seen. And sometimes on a human level, that’s all you really need,” he said.
“Not everything works out. Funders are like dating. You don’t go on a first date and say, ‘So are we gonna get married?’ If you go up to a funder and the very first thing you say to them is, ‘How do we get to be in a partnership and when will you give me money?’ That doesn’t work.”
His system is part of how he’s raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and made LOOKOUT a model for fundraising success among others in the industry.
LOOKOUT launched as a monthly Substack publication in January 2023 before receiving a $400,000 grant and an incubator invitation from the American Journalism Project in May, which helped it become a full-time business. Hylton and his partner, founder and editor-in-chief Joseph Darius Jaafari, raised an additional $74,000 in the last quarter of that year. In 2024, they brought in another $345,000, and so far this year, another $475,000, not counting AJP funding. With that, their team of 2.5 people produces three newsletters a week, a quarterly print magazine, and runs 40 events a year.
Connecting, clearly, is the crux of the publication, and Hylton said bonding with community members is the most rewarding part of his job. Nonprofit publication leaders often ask him how LOOKOUT can hold so many events a year. The key, Hylton said, is partnerships. “The community benefits the most,” he said. “It’s not enough to just give you information. You should also be able to understand who that information affects and who you can go to to not feel alone.”
The publication links with community organizations to share the workload and bring in collective audiences for events such as poetry nights, community workouts and inclusive gyms, trauma-healing workshops through drag. Each event costs the publication about $200. Forty events can be tiresome so the goal for next year is to pare it down to one monthly LOOKOUT signature event, hold smaller ones that others will manage, and recruit volunteers to chip in.
He recently was elected to the board of the Institute for Nonprofit News with a mission, he said, to use his experience and privilege to advocate for identity publications and publishers for marginalized communities. His supporters speak highly of his energy, creativity, and deep understanding of people.
“For me, building relationships makes me feel less alone. It also means that if either of us needs something, there’s a resource. It’s lonely to run a news organization. Everyone’s doing the same thing and figuring it out on their own. Why is everyone doing the same thing and making the same mistakes when there are people who’ve already gone through those mistakes and have figured out how to make it better? So for me, it was like: How do we work together?”
His work journey began at age 10, when he apprenticed under his mother in her restaurant consulting firm. His first love is theater, where he worked in his 20s, but after an on-the-job accident left him injured, he pivoted to tech startups. After working for several of them, he was miserable.
“I’m a storyteller, and I don’t know how to be anything but authentic and genuine. Being able to tell the story of what we do in an authentic and genuine way is extremely powerful. The one thing that I will say that I’ve always done in the many careers that I’ve had, and that theater made me good at is building relationships. Authentic, good relationships, not extractive, fake ones.”
Williams, Monica (2025, Dec. 11). 19 conferences, one spreadsheet and zero pitches: A look at LOOKOUT’s fundraising success. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/19-conferences-one-spreadsheet-and-zero-pitches-a-look-at-lookouts-fundraising-success/
John Oliver did in eight minutes what many pledge drives struggle to do in eight days: He explained precisely what public media is.
The post Opinion: Three things public media should steal from John Oliver’s ‘Last Week Tonight’ episode appeared first on Current.
This article is part of The Poynter 50, a series reflecting on 50 moments and people that shaped journalism over the past half-century — and continue to influence its future. As […]
The post Oprah changed what media could be — and how millions live their lives appeared first on Poynter.
Tuvalu is already losing ground to encroaching tides and storm surges and could be underwater by 2050
This is The Poynter Report, your daily guide to the news about news. Subscribe to get it in your inbox every weekday. When new Paramount CEO David Ellison hired Bari […]
The post Bari Weiss was expected to shake up CBS News. Instead, her first big move sticks to the script. appeared first on Poynter.
“You must listen to the science,” Chris Packham, the veteran presenter of BBC nature shows, implored an audience a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament. An invitation-only crowd of about a thousand people, including more than 100 Members of Parliament, news executives, celebrities, and civil society leaders sat before him, joined by a live-streaming audience. The November 27 gathering was billed as a National Emergency Briefing.
“You must listen to the science,” Packham repeated. “Because if you don’t, then things go wrong, and lives are lost.” Quoting from a recent investigation of the UK government’s handling of the Covid pandemic, Packham noted that an additional 23,000 people died during a single week “because scientific advice was ignored,” as social distancing orders were lifted prematurely. “Tragically,” he continued, the threat posed by climate change is “far, far greater…. It’s not thousands, it’s not hundreds of thousands, or millions of lives that are at risk. It’s billions of lives that are at risk.”
“Billions” was no TV star’s rhetorical flourish, a panel of top scientists then explained. A series of 10-minute presentations on the latest research on how rising global temperatures affect food production, public health, economic well-being, and military security offered a fresh take on what thousands of scientists have long warned. Humanity “is hurtling toward climate chaos,” in the words of “The 2025 State of the Climate Report,” published recently in BioScience, “an unfolding emergency… where only bold, coordinated action can prevent catastrophic outcomes.”
Irreversible tipping points, such as the shutdown of the massive ocean current known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), absolutely must be avoided, said Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter. An AMOC shutdown would spread Arctic Ocean ice far southward, give London temperatures of -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit) for a full three months of the year, and cut in half the world’s growing regions for wheat and maize, Lenton said, sparking “a global food security crisis.”
Packham also called out his news industry colleagues. The BBC presenter said the public was not “getting access to… the reality of what is happening to our one and only home.” Disinformation spread by the fossil fuel industry and its allies is partly to blame, he said. Beyond that, he added, much of the media “is either far from independent, outwardly biased, or simply failing in its duty to explain to everyone the gravity of our predicament.”
The briefing concluded with the release of a public letter demanding that government and media leaders do better. Addressed to Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the heads of five of Britain’s national broadcasters and their independent regulatory body, the letter was read aloud by actor Olivia Williams. Declaring that the people of Britain “are not safe,” the letter urged “the Government and all public service broadcasters to hold an urgent televised national emergency briefing for the public, and to run a comprehensive public engagement campaign so that everyone understands the profound risks this crisis poses to themselves and their families.”
Although this national emergency briefing was focused on Great Britain, it’s a wake-up call that needs to be heard in countries — and newsrooms — around the world. Despite an abundance of strong individual stories and a scattering of outlets providing high-profile coverage of the climate emergency, the media as a whole is still not reflecting what science says: Humanity’s planetary house is on fire, but we also have the tools to put that fire out. “Now is the time,” the letter concluded, “to put trust in the public,” which, if properly informed, is empowered to take “the action needed.”
Free training! The Climate Newsroom, CCNow’s free training program, is designed to provide new story ideas and help your newsroom deliver solutions-driven climate stories in three sessions. The deadline to apply for our winter cohort is Friday, January 16. Learn more + apply now!
Prep your winter coverage. Watch a recording of CCNow’s and Climate Central’s latest Prep Your Climate Coverage webinar where we dig in to how climate change is impacting winter in the US.
Share your end-of-year reflections. As we look toward the end of 2025, CCNow wants to hear from you, our journalistic community, about climate stories that were undercovered in 2025 and which ones should get more coverage in 2026. We’ll share select responses via social media and in our newsletters in the coming weeks. Share your thoughts here!
Urgent warning. The new UN Global Environment Outlook report, produced by more than 200 researchers, finds that “food and fossil fuel production is causing $5 billion of environmental damage an hour” and implores rapid global systemic transformation to avoid societal collapse. By Damian Carrington for The Guardian…
The report, representing six years of work by scientists, was “hijacked” by the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and others, at an October meeting in which they refused to approve the report’s summary findings, said the report’s co-chair Professor Sir Robert Watson. By Matt McGrath for the BBC News…
Water crisis. Tehran’s 10 million citizens were given the all-clear to venture outside this week after much needed rain returned air quality in the city to “acceptable” following three weeks of dangerous pollution levels due to an ongoing drought. The climate crisis led Iranian officials to warn residents that the city may need to be evacuated, if already decimated water supplies run out. From The New Arab…
Under threat. Indonesian authorities report that nearly 1,000 people have died and nearly one million people have been displaced by extreme rainfall that flooded coastal and highland areas, triggering landslides. On Monday, a new report by the Asian Development Bank climate impacts on Asia’s water infrastructure could threaten billions of people’s lives. From Agence France-Presse…
EV loser? Electric vehicles accounted for 25% of new cars sold worldwide in 2025, but EV sales in the US have been stuck at 10% since 2023. Will China’s dominance in the EV industry catapult it secure greater economic power? By Dana Nuccitelli for Yale Climate Connections…
“When you move, it moves. So the sun is asking you to notice that your presence makes a difference. It holds up in front of you the fact that your actions have consequences.”
– Scandinavian artist Olafur Eliasson on his new artwork “Presence,” in an interview with The Guardian
Audience engagement. The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism is out with new analysis of climate news use and audience attitudes in eight countries — Brazil, France, India, Germany, Japan, Pakistan, the UK, and the US. Read the report.
The Monthly Climate Brief. Climate Central is launching a monthly webinar on December 16, at 12pm ET. They’ll unpack global weather and climate data from November 2025, offer insights into the role of climate change in recent weather extremes, and answer audience questions. Learn more + register.
The Uproot Project is hiring writers for its biweekly newsletter, The Seedling, starting in 2026 (remote). Mongabay is hiring an English-language associate fellowship editor and Portuguese-language fellowship editor (remote). The Los Angeles Times is hiring an energy and climate reporter (El Segundo, Calif.). McClatchy Media is hiring a coastal climate reporter (Columbia, S.C.). Illinois Public Media is hiring an agriculture/environmental reporter (Urbana, Ill.).
Paid internships. The University of Miami’s Campus Climate Network and the Climate Accountability Lab are hiring college students to conduct research on their universities’ ties to the fossil fuel industry in spring 2026. Learn more + apply.
The post “Listen to the Science” appeared first on Covering Climate Now.
This is the story of a 10-year-old St. Petersburg girl named Bonnie Harris, who would one day become a reporter covering the presidential campaign of George W. Bush. When Bush […]
The post Two presidents, two female reporters and two revealing nicknames appeared first on Poynter.
Manchester Metropolitan University again wins top spot for climate and social justice in league table
More universities have severed ties with fossil fuel companies, banning them from recruitment fairs and refusing to advertise roles in the industry, according to the latest higher education league table.
The analysis found that eight more universities had signed up to end recruitment ties with the fossil fuel industry - an increase of 80% since last year. This means 18 higher education institutions, or 12% of the sector, now refuse to advertise roles with fossil fuel companies to their students.
Continue reading...I was going to explore some European EV sales trends this week and ran across the following chart, which shows the 8 leading auto brands’ quarterly market share of the BEV market in 13 European countries (combined): There are three things that jumped out to me looking at that chart. ... [continued]
The post Tesla’s Long-Term Sales Decline in Europe — Can Cheaper Models & “Full Self Driving” Turn Things Around? appeared first on CleanTechnica.
The Draft Plan Threatens to Undo New York’s Climate Progress and Raise New Yorkers’ Bills NEW YORK — Yesterday, the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter delivered over 1,000 State Energy Plan comments submitted by members and supporters to Governor Hochul’s New York City office. Supporters and spokespeople gathered outside with signs ... [continued]
The post Sierra Club Delivers Over 1,000 Comments on Unlawful NY State Energy Plan to Hochul’s NYC Office appeared first on CleanTechnica.
T&E, Greenpeace and a coalition of 12 other environmental organisations asks the European Commission to keep article 20 in the EU Air Services Regulation (ASR). Two years ago, the European Commission’s implementing decision (EU) 2022/2358 confirmed the French measure establishing a limitation on the exercise of traffic rights due to serious environmental ... [continued]
The post T&E, Greenpeace and 10+ Organisations Call on the EU to Maintain the Law Promoting Alternatives to Short-Haul Flights appeared first on CleanTechnica.
PARIS — Pension funds and other asset owners are exposing clients and beneficiaries to growing climate-related financial risks by failing to stop asset managers supporting fossil fuel expansion, according to new analysis published today by Reclaim Finance and endorsed by AnsvarligFremtid, Fossielvrij NL, Sierra Club, SOS UK, and Urgewald. Read ... [continued]
The post Sierra Club Endorses Report Revealing Pension Funds Failing to Stop Asset Managers Backing Fossil Fuel Expansion appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Critical minerals, such as copper, cobalt, and silicon, are vital for energy technologies, but most critical minerals markets are less transparent than mature energy markets, such as crude oil or coal. Like other energy markets, many supply-side and demand-side factors influence pricing for these energy-relevant critical minerals, but critical minerals supply chains contain ... [continued]
The post Energy Minerals Observatory: The Data Deficits in Critical Supply Chains appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Vanadium flow battery technology will be the first to take advantage of a new energy storage test facility hosted by the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
The post A New Flow Battery Will Get A Good Look-See From The US Dept. Of Energy appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Hyundai Motor’s work with Healthy Seas has removed 320 tons of marine litter, including abandoned fishing nets from “ghost farm” operations and other plastics Suitable recovered nets are recycled into new products, such as floormats for Hyundai’s IONIQ 5, IONIQ 6, IONIQ 9, INSTER, SANTA FE and NEXO in Europe ... [continued]
The post Hyundai Motor & Healthy Seas Celebrate 5 Years of Global Ocean Conservation & Education Leadership appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Yokohama, Japan — Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. and Wayve today announced the signing of definitive agreements to collaborate on integrating the next-generation ProPILOT series with Wayve AI technology across a broad range of Nissan vehicles. This partnership will combine Wayve’s embodied AI software with Nissan’s advanced driver-assistance systems to support ... [continued]
The post Nissan & Wayve Sign Definitive Agreements to Deliver Next-Generation Driver Assistance Technology appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Cyclones like those in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia that killed 1,750 are ‘alarming new reality’
The climate crisis supercharged the deadly storms that killed more than 1,750 people in Asia by making downpours more intense and flooding worse, scientists have reported. Monsoon rains often bring some flooding but the scientists were clear: this was “not normal”.
In Sri Lanka, some floods reached the second floor of buildings, while in Sumatra, in Indonesia, the floods were worsened by the destruction of forests, which in the past slowed rainwater running off hillsides.
Continue reading...In June 2024, the European Union (EU) announced big new tariffs on electric vehicles produced in China. Among other details and clarifications, plug-in hybrids were not included. The high tariffs would only apply to fully electric cars. On a continent trying to electrify the auto industry pretty quickly, that seemed ... [continued]
The post The Chinese EV Tariff & Vehicle Sales Backfire In Europe That Was Too Obvious appeared first on CleanTechnica.
While this is a kind of “gee-wiz” story that just catches one’s attention, it does bring up an interesting point or three. Increasing Passenger Safety via Robotaxis First, the news: A lady hailed a Waymo robotaxi to the UCSF (University of California–San Francisco) Medical Center on Monday, and on the ... [continued]
The post Now A Woman Has Given Birth In A Waymo appeared first on CleanTechnica.
If you didn’t have enough reason to dislike Uber before, you probably do now. The app-based ride-hailing company followed Lyft’s lead and made some bold-ish EV targets several years ago, then also provided its drivers with incentives to go electric. However, as the political winds in the US have changed, ... [continued]
The post Uber Abandons EVs & Climate, After Cozying Up With Trump appeared first on CleanTechnica.
Location, Location, Location
I'm 30 kilofeet above the Missouri River, westbound from IND to DEN, with (United tells me) eight minutes to get from Gate B24 to Gate…?. It's blank. Doesn't say. I guess we'll find out.
Update over Nebraska: We need to get from B45 to B25 in 8 minutes or less. It'll be fun if we make it. [Update later: we made it, just under the wire, and it was—perhaps also for others in the thick crowds who might be amused by the sight of a geezer with a packpack ambulating at speed down long concourses (one with an inconveniently disabled moving sidewalk between gates.]
Meanwhiles
I tend to use seatback screens on planes only to show a map of where we are, while I look out the window and shoot photos. (Here are 19,411 examples.) But the ground between IND and DEN was undercast, so I thought I'd try a movie, since on new and refurbished planes United now provides a bluetooth connection to one's headphones and ear pods. The first movie I tried to watch was Spinal Tap: II the End Continues. I liked the original too much to stick with it, and thought of more funny things they could have done with the script than they did, so I punched out after about ten minutes. Then I tried Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning. I had trouble figuring out what was going on while all the time studying Tom Cruise's 63-year old face (seemingly always in close-up) for signs of aging. I didn't see any and got bored anyway, so I went back to the map and listened to a podcast on my phone, providing an example of what I wrote about on Tuesday.
Oh my god!
I know Louis CK got canceled and all, but what he said here before that happened is still true. I'm living it now. In a chair. In the sky.
Predicting the predicting
I fear I will come to hate coverage of politics through prediction markets as much as I hate coverage of sports through gambling. So does this guy.