Technoscience and the Future

To shield themselves from oil price gyrations, airlines are experimenting with fuels that incorporate ingredients like used fryer oil and algae.

Via Sakis Koukouvis, Russ Jam

The World Resources Institute (WRI) released a report, Global Coal Risk Assessment, that analyzes information about proposed new coal-fired plants and other market trends in order to assess potential future risks to the global climate.

The report finds that there are 1,199 new coal power plants in the works, totaling more than 1.4 million megawatts of capacity worldwide. That’s four times the capacity of all the coal-fired power plants in the U.S. Seventy-six percent of the coal plants are proposed for India and China, with the U.S. seventh in the world for coal power plants in development.
According to the WRI, if all of these projects are built, it would add new coal power capacity that is almost four times the current capacity of all coal-fired plants in the U.S.

View the locations of proposed coal-fired power plants by country in this interactive map at the article link.

Via Lauren Moss, Digital Sustainability

Cadarache: In the dusty highlands of Provence in southern France, workers have excavated a vast rectangular pit 17 metres (56 feet) down into the unforgiving rocks. From my raised vantage point, I can see bright yellow mechanical diggers and trucks buzzing around the edge of the pit, looking toy-like in the huge construction site. Above us, the fireball Sun dries the air at an unrelenting 37C.

These are embryonic stages to what is perhaps humankind's most ambitious scientific and engineering project: to replicate the Sun here on Earth.

Via Szabolcs Kósa