A new pollution study in Europe using a van to chase other vehicles and measure their tailpipe emissions finds that newer, diesel-fueled, heavy trucks and buses emit, on average, 34% more of the health and climate hazard known as black carbon than older vehicles of the same types.
Continue reading Tailpipe Study: Newer Trucks Emit More Black Carbon
A century ago, Panama beat out Nicaragua to snag one of the biggest engineering projects of the age: a U.S.-backed canal that would link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, creating a shorter trade route between East and West. In 2014 — the 100th anniversary of the Panama Canal’s completion — Nicaragua made plans for its own interoceanic linkage, which would be triple the length of Panama’s. If completed, the project could break Panama’s long- standing monopoly on the shipping trade in the region — but at a severe ecological price.
Nicaragua has great expectations for the Grand Canal, a US$50-billion, 5-year project to link its Caribbean and Pacific coasts with a 280-kilometre waterway. President Daniel Ortega and other supporters of the canal, who celebrated the start of construction on 22 December, say that it will generate much-needed income for residents of the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Continue reading Nicaragua defies canal protests
In a laboratory on Norway’s fjord-laced coast, Jane Feste bubbles some carbon dioxide gas through a liquid for a crowd of visitors. “I will take an amine—that’s a base—and that will absorb…the CO2. So [that’s] what’s happening out in the plant, just shown for the eye here,” the laboratory technician explains. She’s referring to Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM), the US $1 billion, 350-megawatt power plant and test facility that the Norwegian government and several energy firms built. The assembled journalists cannot seem to decide if they should applaud the spectacle or if they’re witnessing a modern case of the emperor’s new clothes. Continue reading Inside the World’s Largest Carbon-Capture Test Facility
