Day: April 26, 2022

Twitter bans climate change propaganda ads as deniers target platforms

Read the full story in the Washington Post.

Twitter is banning advertisements that promote climate change denial in an effort to curb the reach of groups seeking to downplay the extent of the environmental crisis.

Under the new policy, advertisements that contradict the “scientific consensus” on climate change will be prohibited along with other types of banned-ads such as campaigns that contain violence, profanity or personal attacks. Twitter will be relying on reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a unit within the United Nations, to inform its decisions about which advertisements break its rules, according to the company.

What’s ahead for emerging contaminants: Highlights and recommendations

Read the full post at JD Supra.

There have been a number of important recent developments, with more on the way, concerning emerging contaminants such as Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) and 1,4-dioxane. It can be hard for companies to discern, respond to, and plan for the practical impact of these developments on their regulatory compliance, environmental cleanups, litigation, and day-to-day business operations.

Evanston Public Library’s first annual Blueberry Awards highlight nature, sustainability in children’s literature

Read the full story at the Daily Northwestern.

Slimy insects, invasive species and hidden foxes brought home the prize this week as some of the subjects of Evanston Public Library’s inaugural class of Blueberry Award-winning books.

EPL designated 26 awardees, including one winner and six Blueberry Changemaker honorees, for excellence in ecologically-focused children’s literature intended to strengthen young readers’ connection with nature and encourage stewardship of the environment.

Inside Clean Energy: Here are the people who break solar panels to learn how to make them stronger

Read the full story at Inside Clean Energy.

National lab program aims to understand why solar equipment sometimes fails and how to make it last longer.

Global science project links Android phones with satellites to improve weather forecasts

Read the full story from The Verge.

Collecting satellite data for research is a group effort thanks to this app developed for Android users. Camaliot is a campaign funded by the European Space Agency, and its first project focuses on making smartphone owners around the world part of a project that can help improve weather forecasts by using your phone’s GPS receiver.

The Camaliot app works on devices running Android version 7.0 or later that support satellite navigation. The way satellite navigation works, phones or other receivers look for signals from a network of satellites that maintain a fixed orbit. The satellites send messages with the time and their location, and once it’s received, the phones note how long each message took to arrive, then use that data to figure out where on Earth they are.

Researchers think that they can use satellite signals to get more information about the atmosphere. For example, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere can affect how a satellite signal travels through the air to something like a phone.

As air pollution declined, tribal nations got left out

Read the full story from Bloomberg.

Although air pollution in the U.S. had been on a steady decline over the last two decades (until recently), the benefits have not been evenly distributed. A new analysis of data between 2000 and 2018 shows that trends for Native American communities on tribal land have not kept up with the decline in other communities, which means Native Americans now bear an increasing burden of dangerous air pollutants.

The research, published Wednesday in the American Journal of Public Health, adds to ample past studies that have documented the disproportionately high exposure among people of color in urban areas, especially those in Black and brown neighborhoods that have historically faced racially restrictive redlining policies.

Study provides a data resource for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances in streams within Iowa agricultural watersheds

Read the full story from the USGS.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) were detected in streams within agricultural areas (an often-unmeasured landscape) across Iowa. The data from this study provide one resource to understand the extent of PFAS concentrations in water resources from diverse landscapes throughout the United States.

We’re no more serious about the climate crisis than we were before the pandemic

Read the full story in Scientific American.

Emergency managers are stuck reacting to a constant march of disasters.

Good Energy: A Playbook for Screenwriting in the Age of Climate Change

Good Energy describes the playbook as a resource, “…for screenwriters and creatives—those who are steeped in the climate crisis and those who are learning about it. Whether you’re writing a screenplay, outlining a pilot, or working as an EP or assistant on the twenty-third season of a show (we see you, Grey’s Anatomy), this Playbook will help you bring your climate stories to life.”

The playbook includes expert-informed material and fictional “story seeds,” which are intended to show glimpses of the enormous menu of potential climate stories, which are legally free to use as a jumping-off point.

See also AP’s story about the project.

Bridgestone partners with LanzaTech to pursue end-of-life tire recycling technologies

Read the company news release.

Bridgestone Americas has announced an exclusive partnership with Carbon Capture and Transformation (CCT) company, LanzaTech NZ, Inc. (LanzaTech) to address end-of-life tire waste. The two companies will co-develop the first dedicated end-of-life tire recycling process leveraging LanzaTech’s proprietary CCT technology, creating a pathway toward tire material circularity and the decarbonization of new tire production.