Cuando el dueño de la tienda de abastos Melchor Villanueva se inclina sobre el mostrador puede ver todo su mundo bajo sus manos. El vidrio del mostrador muestra fotos de su comunidad: jóvenes futbolistas, jóvenes vestidas con sus mejores galas para sus fiestas de quince años, y pescadores con pañuelos contra el sol. Muchos descienden de los supervivientes del huracán Janet, que en 1955 mató a una tercera parte de la población de Xcalak, una ciudad costera en la frontera de México con Belice, y destruyó las plantaciones de cocoteros del pueblo. “Acá dejó solo arena”, recuerda Villanueva. Continue reading Ensayo y error en un pueblo playero de México
Tag Archives: Environment
Big Data vs. Bad Air
In mid-October 2016, officials from China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection counted five illegal trash-burning sites and hundreds of thousands of vehicles exceeding emission standards in Beijing alone. For the first time since last winter’s pollution high season, city officials issued a yellow air-quality alert, which required shutting down power plants and reining in Beijing’s frenetic factories and road traffic. If this winter is anything like past winters, the city will have to pull out the yellow card again—and may even have to reach for its red card.
Read the rest of this news story in the January issue of IEEE Spectrum or the updated online version: [html] [pdf].
A Sooty North Pole Ahead
Where there’s oil, there’s a way. This summer the federal government showed that it is willing to approve drilling operations in U.S. waters off Alaska. In addition to legislation, other barriers to Arctic development are disappearing: summers at the North Pole could be ice-free as soon as 2020, reducing the need for ice-breaking vessels and opening the way for faster and cheaper trading routes. An increase in shipping across the top of the world, however, could have “significant regional impacts by accelerating ice melt,” according to a recent government report by the Canadian Northwest Territories. And that aggravated melting could raise global sea levels. Continue reading A Sooty North Pole Ahead
Emissions Testing Tech Puts Pressure on Carmakers
In late September, Volkswagen admitted to using software that activated hardware to scrub nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions during required emissions tests, but not during normal driving. The deception improved the cars’ gas mileage at the cost of emitting between 10 and 40 times the legal limit of NOx, a precursor gas to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ammonia (NH3), and other gases that cause respiratory problems. In the last few years, newly maturing instruments of several kinds have converged on a single message: diesel exhaust in the real world is far higher than what carmakers advertise and what is permitted by the law in many countries.
Continue reading Emissions Testing Tech Puts Pressure on Carmakers