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Bluepeak, a leading provider of high-speed fiber internet across Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Texas, and Wyoming, is proud to announce its expansion into East Grand Forks, Minnesota. 
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From
www
The Chinese automaker is racing ahead of global competitors—but don't expect to see those gains in the US anytime soon.
Somehow, the whole thing got even faster. Earlier this month, Chinese automaker BYD announced that its Flash Chargers, first rolled out a year ago, can now charge some electric vehicle batteries from around 10 to 70 percent in five minutes, and from 10 to full in about nine. That’s more than 600 miles of range in the time it takes to order a cappuccino and leave a nice tip.
The new BYD chargers can add miles super quickly because they deliver up to 1,500 kilowatts (kW) per charge. Compare that to the 350 kW “hyper-fast” chargers seen more typically in the US, which can top up 80 percent of a battery in 15 to 25 minutes, and the full thing in closer to 40.
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Today’s episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Brewster Kahle, Founder & Director, Internet Archive.
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Rising temperatures are making physical activity undesirable and even dangerous in many parts of the world, and as global heating worsens, it will further affect how much people are able to move.
Researchers analysed data from 156 countries between 2000 and 2022 and modelled how rising temperatures may affect physical activity globally by 2050. They found that each additional month with an average temperature above 27.8C would increase physical inactivity by an average of 1.5 percentage points globally, with an even higher increase of 1.85 points in low and middle-income countries.
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NTT and MHI achieved record 15% efficiency beaming 152 W of power over 1 kilometer, using laser wireless power transmission system.
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From
medium
Last week, a new climate study revealed that the pace of global warming nearly doubled in the last decade. The world was warming at a rate of about 0.2°C per decade from 1970 to 2015, according to researchers, but is now heating at 0.35°C per decade.
Earlier that same week, 28 scientists signed an open letter decrying the fact that the Trump administration recently removed the climate science chapter from the Federal Judicial Center’s reference manual — the guide that has equipped American judges and lawyers to interpret scientific evidence since 1994.
At the same moment it appears the climate crisis is accelerating, the U.S. is pulling back from climate commitments, leaving the Paris Agreement on climate. So this week, some fresh looks at how our understanding of the climate is changing (hint: not in good ways).
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From
apnews
Nearly every part of the United States is getting walloped by wild weather or just about to be slammed by a stretch of weather extremes, from flooding rain to record heat and late-season snow.
Days of downpours have begun in Hawaii. The Southwest will soon bake with day after day of record 100-degree-plus (38 Celsius-plus) heat. Two storms will dump snow by the foot over northern Great Lakes states. And the dreaded polar vortex will again invade the Midwest and East with soul-crushing Arctic chill.
This forecast of extremes comes as weather whiplash has already hit much of the East.
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Florida environmentalists are sounding the alarm that the Florida Legislature once again appears poised to dramatically reduce funding for Florida Forever, the state’s main program for buying land for conservation.
Although the Legislature allocated $18 million last year, the House’s proposed FY 2026/27 budget defunds the program outright, while the Senate allocates $35 million, with that money directed to easements on private agricultural lands only, eliminating traditional land acquisition.
Instead, GOP lawmakers would direct hundreds of millions of dollars to the Rural and Family Lands Protection program, which allows agricultural landowners to permanently preserve their land from development.
“While these conservation easements are good for cattle, provide linkages to wildlife, and keep these properties from being converted to subdivisions and shopping malls, they do not allow for public access,” noted St. Petersburg Democratic Rep. Lindsay Cross on the floor of the House last week.
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From
capecodnews
In this month' column, we follow a sensor buoy into a pond and find out how the power of extended senses can shape our understanding.
We have hundreds of ponds on Cape Cod, and a pilot sensor project was conducted in several of them last year. Once the ice clears, an expanded 2026 program will begin.
The company behind this, Subtidal, spun out of WHOI about three years ago. Scientist Matt Long and business partner Casey Wilson were passionate about measuring carbon removal in the ocean and developed a sensor-based process for identifying these changes.
But they kept hearing about concerns a little closer to shore, ones that screamed out for the kind of data their sensors could capture, and their analytic tools could turn into knowledge. They pivoted to focus on algae blooms and pond health.
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From
www
Major US technology companies have been named as potential targets as the war between Iran, Israel, and the United States begins to spill into the digital infrastructure that powers modern economies.
Iranian state-linked media this week published a list of offices and infrastructure run by US companies with Israeli links whose technology has been used for military applications. According to Al Jazeera, the companies include Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia, and Oracle. Many of these companies operate regional offices, cloud infrastructure, or data-center operations across the Gulf, including in the United Arab Emirates. None have released public statements on this development. The list was published by the semi-official, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–linked Tasnim News Agency alongside a warning that the scope of the conflict could expand beyond traditional military targets.
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From
ilsr
Across the nation, families and individuals are struggling to keep up with skyrocketing electric bills. Electricity prices have soared in recent years, dramatically outpacing both inflation and wage growth. Low‑income households, especially Black and Native American families, bear a disproportionate share of high energy costs. More and more households are falling behind on their utility bills, or having life-sustaining power cut off due to nonpayment.
Excessive utility profit rates are a key driver of these problems. In exchange for a legal monopoly over the public good of electricity, for-profit utilities agree to have their prices set by state regulators. Regulators also set the rates of profit – also known as return on equity – utilities can pay their investors. These approved profit rates are too high, and are costing U.S. customers an extra $300 per household, or $50 billion per year.
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Israel’s bombing of Iran’s oil infrastructure will have major long-term environmental repercussions, experts have warned, as monitors admitted they were struggling to keep track of the environmental disasters arising from the widening war. Even as Iranians filled the streets to mark the appointment of a new supreme leader, the Shahran oil depot north-east of Tehran and the Shahr-e fuel depot to its south continued to burn on Monday, two days after they were bombed by Israeli warplanes. In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Iran’s environmental agency and the Iranian Red Crescent Society had warned Tehran residents to stay at home, warning the toxic chemicals spread by airstrikes on five fossil fuel installations around the city could lead to acid rain and damage the skin and lungs.
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From
www
Cities usually fade into darkness within minutes after sunset. Streetlights switch on across neighborhoods while construction crews shut down equipment for the night. Solar farms stop producing electricity as the final sunlight slips below the horizon. For most of human history, that transition from daylight to darkness has followed the same predictable rhythm everywhere on Earth. Yet the sky above Earth has been changing. Thousands of satellites now travel through low Earth orbit, and long-exposure images of the Milky Way frequently show bright streaks crossing telescope photographs. Astronomers have begun tracking how these spacecraft affect observations of faint stars and distant galaxies. The growing number of satellites has already reshaped parts of the night sky. A California startup now wants satellites to play a more active role after sunset. The company,Reflect Orbital, is developing spacecraft equipped with large mirrors designed to redirect sunlight toward the ground. The concept would allow specific locations to receive extra illumination even after darkness begins.
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HANOI, Vietnam, March 21, 2025 (AP) — The war in Iran is exposing the world’s reliance on fragile fossil fuel routes, lending urgency to calls for hastening the shift to renewable energy.
Fighting has all but halted oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas, or LNG. The disruption has jolted energy markets, pushing up prices and straining import-dependent economies.
Asia, where most of the oil was headed, has been hit hardest, but the disruptions also are a strain for Europe, where policymakers are looking for ways to cut energy demand, and for Africa, which is bracing for rising fuel costs and inflation.
More than 90% of new renewable power projects worldwide in 2024 were cheaper than fossil-fuel alternatives.
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From
newrepublic
As hedge funds buy up land to obtain water rights, a libertarian state representative from Arizona has proposed a seemingly radical solution to the water crisis. Is he right?
When members of the Colorado River Water Users Association, or CRWUA, descended on Caesars Palace for their annual conference in December, few showed much enthusiasm for Las Vegas’s popular diversions. Attendees mostly bypassed the slots and roulette tables, the magic shows and nightclubs. The sole planned excursion on offer—an early morning jaunt to Hoover Dam—was the definition of a busman’s holiday. This was not a decadent bunch. They were serious-minded people dealing with a monumental problem. Some called it an emergency; even the most sanguine considered it a crisis. Water was running out.
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From
www
The EV manufacturer is supported by a robust online community. But Elon Musk’s politics and overblown hype about Full Self-Driving are turning some loyalists away.
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Finland is slowly making a name for itself as an innovator, albeit a low-key one, regarding wireless electricity transmission, which aims to transmit power via the airwaves without having to use cables, sockets or connectors.
Although the concept remains more than than a little exotic-sounding, scientists scientists from Finland are slowly but surely pushing the boundaries of said technology via experimental research.
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I am, however, going to use a crash of a cyclist and a car as a metaphor: there is a kind of collision that is almost always fatal because its severity isn’t apparent until it is too late to avert the crash. Anyone who’s been filled with existential horror at the looming climate emergency can certainly relate.
The metaphor isn’t exact. “Constant bearing, decreasing range” is the result of an optical illusion that makes it seem like things are fine right up until they aren’t. Our failure to come to grips with the climate emergency is (partly‡) caused by a different cognitive flaw: the fact that we struggle to perceive the absolute magnitude of a series of slow, small changes.
‡The other part being the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics, obviously
This is the phenomenon that’s invoked in the parable of “boiling a frog.” Supposedly, if you put a frog in a pot of water at a comfortable temperature and then slowly warm the water to boiling, the frog will happily swim about even as it is cooked alive. In this metaphor, the frog can only perceive relative changes, so all that it senses is that the water has gotten a little warmer, and a small change in temperature isn’t anything to worry about, right? The fact that the absolute change to the water is lethal does not register for our (hypothetical) frog.
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We will almost certainly hear about ICE and Trump and his oil wars in Conan O’Brien’s running commentary or in the acceptance speeches during Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony. But will anyone talk about climate change?
An analysis by Good Energy, a story consultancy, points to a good chance that someone will. In advance of the awards ceremony on March 15, the group conducted a “climate reality check” (sometimes referred to as the Bechdel-Wallace test for climate fiction) on the films that received nominations for Academy Awards.
To pass the ‘climate reality check,’ a movie must depict climate change in some way, and a character in the story must recognize it.
In what it describes as “a defining year for climate at the Oscars,” the team found that 31% of the eligible nominees, a record high, acknowledged climate change.
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Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just buy a pair of solar panels at Walmart in the morning and plug them in on your deck in the afternoon — in the span of a few hours, setting yourself up to produce clean energy that will lower your electricity bill?
But that’s not an option for most Americans right now. For one thing, the devices aren’t widely available in U.S. stores. And if they were, you’d likely have to jump through a series of hoops with your utility to get them up and running.
Virginia lawmakers are about to change all that for residents of the state. Residents of the state will soon be able to use the tech to lower their electricity bills. Gov. Spanberger has made affordability a top legislative priority.
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An oil spill has contaminated a 230-kilometer stretch of beaches along the Gulf Coast states of Veracruz and Tabasco.
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In the race to meet the demands of the energy transition, biodiversity hotspots such as Palawan in the Philippines are being increasingly mined for critical elements
Moharen Tahil Tambiling lowers himself from the fishing boat into the water and gingerly picks his way over the reef circling the bay. At low tide here in Brooke’s Point on Palawan, a long, rugged island in the south-west of the Philippines archipelago, the coral is just under the surface, and it looms suddenly under the waves, scraping at the boat’s wooden hull.
Beneath his feet are brain-like mounds and curling fingers of coral. Leaning over the side of the fishing boat, the men point out different kinds: some which were once vibrant orange and others that should be delicate pink. Now, almost everything is the same dull khaki, covered by a thick film of silt. Another man jumps overboard, stirring the sediment. A cloud rises like thick smoke over the reef.
Plunging his hands into the water, Tambiling, a farmer and Indigenous leader from the nearby village, draws up a thick, viscous clump of goop: grey threaded with orange. “Laterite,” he says, his face set in a grim line against the drizzle.
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You may be hearing a lot lately about critical minerals and rare earth elements. These natural materials are essential to industry and modern technology – everything from cellphones to fighter jets.
They include lithium and cobalt used in batteries, neodymium for magnets in motors and hard drives, and rare earths that are essential in defense systems, lasers and medical imaging. Critical minerals are also indispensable for renewable energy systems, energy storage and digital infrastructure. Without them, modern society – and any realistic path to a world with net-zero emissions – would not be possible.
Critical minerals get their name because they’re also highly vulnerable to supply chain disruptions from global events, trade tensions or economic instability. And, today, one country dominates many critical mineral supply chains: China.
With that in mind, many governments are looking for alternative sources of critical minerals, and several companies are eyeing the ocean floor as a potential new frontier for mining them.
Critical minerals are found in several forms in the ocean, from potato-size nodules to brine pools. They are also in some of the least understood parts of our planet.
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Thousands of authors including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman have published an “empty” book to protest against AI firms using their work without permission.
About 10,000 writers have contributed to Don’t Steal This Book, in which the only content is a list of their names. Copies of the work are being distributed to attenders at the London book fair on Tuesday, a week before the UK government is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.
By 18 March ministers must deliver an economic impact assessment as well as a progress update on a consultation about the legal overhaul, against a backdrop of anger among creative professionals about how their work is being used by AI firms.
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From
www
Scientists are deeply concerned about SpaceX's recent proposal to launch one million satellites into orbit around Earth. Their concerns range from a loss of the natural night sky and our access to space, to the environmental impact on our atmosphere.
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