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Bryangax

29 Jun 2025 - 01:37 am

Climeworks, which launched in 2009, is among around 140 direct air capture companies globally, but is one of the most high-profile and best funded.
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In 2021, it opened its Orca plant in Iceland, followed in 2024 by a second called Mammoth. These facilities suck in air and extract carbon using chemicals in a process powered by clean, geothermal energy.

The carbon can then be reused or injected deep underground where it will be naturally transformed into stone, locking it up permanently. Climeworks makes its money by selling credits to companies to offset their own climate pollution.

The appeal of direct air capture is clear; to keep global warming from rising to even more catastrophic levels means drastically cutting back on planet-heating fossil fuels. But many scientists say the world will also need to remove some of the carbon pollution already in the atmosphere. This can be done naturally, for example through tree planting, or with technology like direct air capture.
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The advantage of direct air capture is that carbon is removed from the air immediately and “can be measured directly and accurately,” said Howard Herzog, senior research engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative.

But there are big challenges, he told CNN. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been shooting upward, but still only makes up about 0.04%. Herzog compares removing carbon directly from the air to needing to find 10 red marbles in a jar of 25,000 marbles of which 24,990 are blue.

This makes the process energy-intensive and expensive. The technology also takes time to scale.

Climeworks hasn’t come anywhere close to the full capacity of its plants. Orca can remove a maximum of 4,000 tons of carbon a year, but it has never captured more than 1,700 tons in a year since it opened in 2021. The company says single months have seen a capture rate much closer to the maximum.

The company’s Mammoth plant has a maximum capacity of 36,000 tons a year but since it opened last year it has removed a total of 805 tons, a figure which goes down to 121 tons when taking into account the carbon produced building and running the plants.

Antionegat

28 Jun 2025 - 01:20 pm

“It’s true that both plants are not yet operating at the capacity we originally targeted,” said the Climeworks spokesperson.
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“Like all transformative innovations, progress is iterative, and some steps may take longer than anticipated,” they said.

The company’s prospective third plant in Louisiana aims to remove 1 million tons of carbon a year by 2030, but it’s uncertain whether construction will proceed under the Trump administration.

A Department of Energy spokesperson said a department-wide review was underway “to ensure all activities follow the law, comply with applicable court orders and align with the Trump administration’s priorities.” The government has a mandate “to unleash ‘American Energy Dominance’,” they added.

Direct air capture’s success will also depend on companies’ willingness to buy carbon credits.
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Currently companies are pretty free to “use the atmosphere as a waste dump,” said Holly Buck, assistant professor of environment and sustainability at the University at Buffalo. “This lack of regulation means there is not yet a strong business case for cleaning this waste up,” she told CNN.

Another criticism leveled at Climeworks is its failure to offset its own climate pollution. The carbon produced by its corporate activities, such as office space and travel, outweighs the carbon removed by its plants.

The company says its plants already remove more carbon than they produce and corporate emissions “will become irrelevant as the size of our plants scales up.”

Some, however, believe the challenges Climeworks face tell a broader story about direct air capture.

This should be a “wake-up call,” said Lili Fuhr, director of the fossil economy program at the Center for International Environmental Law. Climeworks’ problems are not “outliers,” she told CNN, “but reflect persistent technical and economic hurdles faced by the direct air capture industry worldwide.”

“The climate crisis demands real action, not speculative tech that overpromises and underdelivers.” she added.

Some of the Climeworks’ problems are “related to normal first-of-a-kind scaling challenges with emerging complex engineering projects,” Buck said.

But the technology has a steep path to becoming cheaper and more efficient, especially with US slashing funding for climate policies, she added. “This kind of policy instability and backtracking on contracts will be terrible for a range of technologies and innovations, not just direct air capture.”

Direct air capture is definitely feasible but its hard, said MIT’s Buck. Whether it succeeds will depend on a slew of factors including technological improvements and creating markets for carbon removals, he said.

“At this point in time, no one really knows how large a role direct air capture will play in the future.”

Vincentepirm

28 Jun 2025 - 03:37 am

“AI expends a lot of energy being polite, especially if the user is polite, saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’”
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Dauner explained. “But this just makes their responses even longer, expending more energy to generate each word.”

For this reason, Dauner suggests users be more straightforward when communicating with AI models. Specify the length of the answer you want and limit it to one or two sentences, or say you don’t need an explanation at all.

Most important, Dauner’s study highlights that not all AI models are created equally, said Sasha Luccioni, the climate lead at AI company Hugging Face, in an email. Users looking to reduce their carbon footprint can be more intentional about which model they chose for which task.

“Task-specific models are often much smaller and more efficient, and just as good at any context-specific task,” Luccioni explained.
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If you are a software engineer who solves complex coding problems every day, an AI model suited for coding may be necessary. But for the average high school student who wants help with homework, relying on powerful AI tools is like using a nuclear-powered digital calculator.

Even within the same AI company, different model offerings can vary in their reasoning power, so research what capabilities best suit your needs, Dauner said.

When possible, Luccioni recommends going back to basic sources — online encyclopedias and phone calculators — to accomplish simple tasks.

Why it’s hard to measure AI’s environmental impact
Putting a number on the environmental impact of AI has proved challenging.

The study noted that energy consumption can vary based on the user’s proximity to local energy grids and the hardware used to run AI models.
That’s partly why the researchers chose to represent carbon emissions within a range, Dauner said.

Furthermore, many AI companies don’t share information about their energy consumption — or details like server size or optimization techniques that could help researchers estimate energy consumption, said Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside who studies AI’s water consumption.

“You can’t really say AI consumes this much energy or water on average — that’s just not meaningful. We need to look at each individual model and then (examine what it uses) for each task,” Ren said.

One way AI companies could be more transparent is by disclosing the amount of carbon emissions associated with each prompt, Dauner suggested.

Phillipwaw

28 Jun 2025 - 12:48 am

“We’re asking everyone to take it slow, avoid driving through standing water, and use alternate routes when possible,” Rosenlund urged.
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Rainfall in Grand Island began Wednesday afternoon but the intensity picked up quickly after dark, falling at more than an inch per hour at times.

A total of 6.41 inches of rain fell by midnight, which made it the rainiest June day and the second rainiest day of any month in the city’s 130-year history of weather records.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood emergency — the most severe form of flood warning — at 11:45 p.m. CDT Wednesday for Grand Island that continued for several hours into Thursday morning, continuously warning of “extensive flash flooding.”
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Multiple rounds of heavy storms tracked over the area late Wednesday into early Thursday morning and ultimately dumped record amounts of rainfall. A level 2-of-4 risk of flooding rainfall was in place for Grand Island at the time, according to the Weather Prediction Center.

More than a month’s worth of rain – nearly 4.5 inches – fell in only three hours between 10 p.m. CDT Wednesday and 1 a.m. CDT Thursday. Rainfall of this intensity would only be expected around once in 100 years, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.

Climate change is making heavy rainfall events heavier. As the world warms due to fossil fuel pollution, a warmer atmosphere is able to soak up more moisture like a sponge, only to wring it out in heavier bursts of rain.

Hourly rainfall rates have intensified in nearly 90% of large US cities since 1970, a recent study found.

Clintonmoima

28 Jun 2025 - 12:40 am

‘Like wildfires underwater’: Worst summer on record for Great Barrier Reef as coral die-off sweeps planet
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Great Barrier Reef, Australia
CNN
—
As the early-morning sun rises over the Great Barrier Reef, its light pierces the turquoise waters of a shallow lagoon, bringing more than a dozen turtles to life.

These waters that surround Lady Elliot Island, off the eastern coast of Australia, provide some of the most spectacular snorkeling in the world — but they are also on the front line of the climate crisis, as one of the first places to suffer a mass coral bleaching event that has now spread across the world.
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The Great Barrier Reef just experienced its worst summer on record, and the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced last month that the world is undergoing a rare global mass coral bleaching event — the fourth since the late 1990s — impacting at least 53 countries.

The corals are casualties of surging global temperatures which have smashed historical records in the past year — caused mainly by fossil fuels driving up carbon emissions and accelerated by the El Nino weather pattern, which heats ocean temperatures in this part of the world.

CNN witnessed bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef in mid-February, on five different reefs spanning the northern and southern parts of the 2,300-kilometer (1,400-mile) ecosystem.

“What is happening now in our oceans is like wildfires underwater,” said Kate Quigley, principal research scientist at Australia’s Minderoo Foundation. “We’re going to have so much warming that we’re going to get to a tipping point, and we won’t be able to come back from that.”

Coral bleached white from high water temperatures on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. CNN
Bleaching occurs when marine heatwaves put corals under stress, causing them to expel algae from their tissue, draining their color. Corals can recover from bleaching if the temperatures return to normal, but they will perish if the water stays warmer than usual.

“It’s a die-off,” said Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a climate scientist at the University of Queensland in Australia and chief scientist at The Great Barrier Reef Foundation. “The temperatures got so warm, they’re off the charts … they never occurred before at this sort of level.”

The destruction of marine ecosystems would deliver an effective death sentence for around a quarter of all species that depend on reefs for survival — and threaten an estimated billion people who rely on reef fish for their food and livelihoods. Reefs also provide vital protection for coastlines, reducing the impact of floods, cyclones and sea level rise.

“Humanity is being threatened at a rate by which I’m not sure we really understand,” Hoegh-Guldberg said.

Haroldwounc

28 Jun 2025 - 12:17 am

This company says its technology can help save the world. It’s now cutting 20% of its staff as Trump slashes climate funding
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Two huge plants in Iceland operate like giant vacuum cleaners, sucking in air and stripping out planet-heating carbon pollution. This much-hyped climate technology is called direct air capture, and the company behind these plants, Switzerland-based Climeworks, is perhaps its most high-profile proponent.

But a year after opening a huge new facility, Climeworks is straining against strong headwinds. The company announced this month it would lay off around 20% of its workforce, blaming economic uncertainties and shifting climate policy priorities.
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“We’ve always known this journey would be demanding. Today, we find ourselves navigating a challenging time,” Climeworks’ CEOs Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher said in a statement.

This is particularly true of its US ambitions. A new direct air capture plant planned for Louisiana, which received $50 million in funding from the Biden administration, hangs in the balance as President Donald Trump slashes climate funding.

Climeworks also faces mounting criticism for operating at only a fraction of its maximum capacity, and for failing to remove more climate pollution than it emits.

The company says these are teething pains inherent in setting up a new industry from scratch and that it has entered a new phase of global scale up. “The overall trajectory will be positive as we continue to define the technology,” said a Climeworks spokesperson.

For critics, however, these headwinds are evidence direct air capture is an expensive, shiny distraction from effective climate action.

Jamesdag

28 Jun 2025 - 12:09 am

These preppers have ‘go bags,’ guns and a fear of global disaster. They’re also left-wing
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The day after President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Eric Shonkwiler looked at his hiking bag to figure out what supplies he had. “I began to look at that as a resource for escape, should that need to happen,” he said.

He didn’t have the terminology for it at the time, but this backpack was his “bug-out bag” — essential supplies for short-term survival. It marked the start of his journey into prepping. In his Ohio home, which he shares with his wife and a Pomeranian dog, Rosemary, he now has a six-month supply of food and water, a couple of firearms and a brood of chickens. “Resources to bridge the gap across a disaster,” he said.
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Margaret Killjoy’s entry point was a bleak warning in 2016 from a scientist friend, who told her climate change was pushing the global food system closer than ever to collapse. Killjoy started collecting food, water and generators. She bought a gun and learned how to use it. She started a prepping podcast, Live Like the World is Dying, and grew a community.

Prepping has long been dominated by those on the political right. The classic stereotype, albeit not always accurate, is of the lone wolf with a basement full of Spam, a wall full of guns, and a mind full of conspiracy theories.

Shonkwiler and Killjoy belong to a much smaller part of the subculture: They are left-wing preppers. This group is also preparing for a doom-filled future, and many also have guns, but they say their prepping emphasizes community and mutual aid over bunkers and isolationism.

In an era of barreling crises — from wars to climate change — some say prepping is becoming increasingly appealing to those on the left.
The roots of modern-day prepping in the United States go back to the 1950s, when fears of nuclear war reached a fever pitch.

The 1970s saw the emergence of the survivalist movement, which dwindled in the 1990s as it became increasingly associated with an extreme-right subculture steeped in racist ideology.

A third wave followed in the early 2000s, when the term “prepper” began to be adopted more widely, said Michael Mills, a social scientist at Anglia Ruskin University, who specializes in survivalism and doomsday prepping cultures. Numbers swelled following big disasters such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2008 financial crisis.

A watershed moment for right-wing preppers was the election of Barack Obama in 2008, Mills said. For those on the left, it was Trump’s 2016 election.

Preppers of all political stripes are usually motivated by a “foggy cloud of fear” rather than a belief in one specific doomsday scenario playing out, Mills said. Broad anxieties tend to swirl around the possibility of economic crises, pandemics, natural disasters, war and terrorism.

“We’ve hit every one of those” since the start of this century, said Anna Maria Bounds, a sociology professor at Queens College, who has written a book about New York’s prepper subculture. These events have solidified many preppers’ fears that, in times of crisis, the government would be “overwhelmed, under-prepared and unwilling to help,” she said.

Johnnyedife

28 Jun 2025 - 12:08 am

‘Extraordinary rainstorm’ floods Nebraska city, triggers water rescues
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An entire June’s worth of rain fell in just a few hours over Grand Island, Nebraska, Wednesday night, triggering life-threatening flash flooding that inundated neighborhoods, stranded motorists and forced water rescues.

Crews have responded to dozens of calls to assist motorists stuck in flooded roads since torrential rain began Wednesday night, according to Spencer Schubert, the city’s communications manager. The flooding has also displaced an unspecified number of residents from their homes.
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“At this time we have no injuries to report,” Schubert said early Thursday morning, noting some rescues were ongoing.

Torrential rain caused sewers to back up into several homes and sent floodwater running into basements, according to a Thursday news release from the city. Some affected residents took shelter at local hotels or with friends and family.

“This was an extraordinary rainstorm and is very similar to the historic rains seen in the 2005 floods,” Jon Rosenlund, the city’s emergency director said. “We will be actively monitoring rivers, creeks and other drainage areas over the next few days for future flooding issues.”

Flooding in 2005 turned streets into rivers in Grand Island. At one point, the city tore up a major road to open up a channel to drain flooding away from homes, CNN affiliate KHGI reported.

The central Nebraskan city is home to around 53,000 people and is about 130 miles southwest of Omaha. The rain came to an end around sunrise Thursday, but the danger remains, with a flood warning in effect until 7 p.m. CDT.

Harveyhic

28 Jun 2025 - 12:00 am

“Generally, if people were more informed about the average
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(environmental) cost of generating a response, people would maybe start thinking, ‘Is it really necessary to turn myself into an action figure just because I’m bored?’ Or ‘do I have to tell ChatGPT jokes because I have nothing to do?’” Dauner said.

Additionally, as more companies push to add generative AI tools to their systems, people may not have much choice how or when they use the technology, Luccioni said.

“We don’t need generative AI in web search. Nobody asked for AI chatbots in (messaging apps) or on social media,” Luccioni said. “This race to stuff them into every single existing technology is truly infuriating, since it comes with real consequences to our planet.”
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With less available information about AI’s resource usage, consumers have less choice, Ren said, adding that regulatory pressures for more transparency are unlikely to the United States anytime soon. Instead, the best hope for more energy-efficient AI may lie in the cost efficacy of using less energy.

“Overall, I’m still positive about (the future). There are many software engineers working hard to improve resource efficiency,” Ren said. “Other industries consume a lot of energy too, but it’s not a reason to suggest AI’s environmental impact is not a problem. We should definitely pay attention.”

Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Greener newsletter. Our limited newsletter series guides you on how to minimize your personal role in the climate crisis — and reduce your eco-anxiety.

Alfredlinny

27 Jun 2025 - 06:37 pm

UK project trials carbon capture at sea to help tackle climate change
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The world is betting heavily on carbon capture — a term that refers to various techniques to stop carbon pollution from being released during industrial processes, or removing existing carbon from the atmosphere, to then lock it up permanently.

The practice is not free of controversy, with some arguing that carbon capture is expensive, unproven and can serve as a distraction from actually reducing carbon emissions. But it is a fast-growing reality: there are at least 628 carbon capture and storage projects in the pipeline around the world, with a 60% year-on-year increase, according to the latest report from the Global CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) Institute. The market size was just over $3.5 billion in 2024, but is projected to grow to $14.5 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights.
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Perhaps the most ambitious — and the most expensive — type of carbon capture involves removing carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the air, although there are just a few such facilities currently in operation worldwide. Some scientists believe that a better option would be to capture carbon from seawater rather than air, because the ocean is the planet’s largest carbon sink, absorbing 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions.

In the UK, where the government in 2023 announced up to ?20 billion ($26.7 billion) in funding to support carbon capture, one such project has taken shape near the English Channel. Called SeaCURE, it aims to find out if sea carbon capture actually works, and if it can be competitive with its air counterpart.

“The reason why sea water holds so much carbon is that when you put CO2 into the water, 99% of it becomes other forms of dissolved carbon that don’t exchange with the atmosphere,” says Paul Halloran, a professor of Ocean and Climate Science at the University of Exeter, who leads the SeaCURE team.

“But it also means it’s very straightforward to take that carbon out of the water.”

Pilot plant
SeaCURE started building a pilot plant about a year ago, at the Weymouth Sea Life Centre on the southern coast of England. Operational for the past few months, it is designed to process 3,000 liters of seawater per minute and remove an estimated 100 tons of CO2 per year.

“We wanted to test the technology in the real environment with real sea water, to identify what problems you hit,” says Halloran, adding that working at a large public aquarium helps because it already has infrastructure to extract seawater and then discharge it back into the ocean.

The carbon that is naturally dissolved in the seawater can be easily converted to CO2 by slightly increasing the acidity of the water. To make it come out, the water is trickled over a large surface area with air blowing over it. “In that process, we can constrict over 90% of the carbon out of that water,” Halloran says.