Tag: Climate Change

Nvidia announces Earth-2 digital twin to forecast planet’s climate change

Nvidia unveiled Earth-2 Cloud Platform for predicting climate change across the entire planet, using simulation by AI supercomputers. In a bid to combat the increasing economic losses due to extreme weather patterns caused by climate change, Nvidia has introduced Earth-2, a revolutionary climate digital twin cloud platform. Revealed at GTC, Earth-2 offers groundbreaking APIs designed […]

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Making the clean energy transition work for everyone

The clean energy transition is already underway, but how do we make sure it happens in a manner that is affordable, sustainable, and fair for everyone? That was the overarching question at this year’s MIT Energy Conference, which took place March 11 and 12 in Boston and was titled “Short and Long: A Balanced Approach […]

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Study finds lands used for grazing can worsen or help climate change

When it comes to global climate change, livestock grazing can be either a blessing or a curse, according to a new study, which offers clues on how to tell the difference. If managed properly, the study shows, grazing can actually increase the amount of carbon from the air that gets stored in the ground and […]

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Letting the Earth answer back: Designing better planetary conversations

For Chen Chu MArch ’21, the invitation to join the 2023-24 cohort of Morningside Academy for Design Design Fellows has been an unparalleled opportunity to investigate the potential of design as an alternative method of problem-solving. After earning a master’s degree in architecture at MIT and gaining professional experience as a researcher at an environmental nongovernmental […]

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At Sustainability Connect 2024, a look at how MIT is decarbonizing its campus

How is MIT working to meet its goal of decarbonizing the campus by 2050? How are local journalists communicating climate impacts and solutions to diverse audiences? What can each of us do to bring our unique skills and insight to tackle the challenges of climate and sustainability? These are all questions asked — and answered […]

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Explained: Carbon credits

One of the most contentious issues faced at the 28th Conference of Parties (COP28) on climate change last December was a proposal for a U.N.-sanctioned market for trading carbon credits. Such a mechanism would allow nations and industries making slow progress in reducing their own carbon emissions to pay others to take emissions-reducing measures, such […]

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Moving past the Iron Age

MIT graduate student Sydney Rose Johnson has never seen the steel mills in central India. She’s never toured the American Midwest’s hulking steel plants or the mini mills dotting the Mississippi River. But in the past year, she’s become more familiar with steel production than she ever imagined. A fourth-year dual degree MBA and PhD […]

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How Do Oil Companies Get Away With, Well, Everything? An Expert Explains.

One thing that’s certain about the war in Ukraine is that the major oil companies – BP, Shell, Chevron, Exxon and TotalEnergies – are absolutely raking it in. According to a Global Witness report, those five companies have made $281 billion since Russia invaded in February 2022. Yep, really. As far as the UK-based companies […]

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The Hot New Luxury Good for the Rich: Air

Luxury markets have developed in other parts of the world with poor air quality, too. For Wired, Akanksha Singh described the “pay-to-breathe” economy in India, where air-filtered spaces are accessible only to affluent people. In China, the sociocultural anthropologist Victoria Nguyen reported, underground bomb shelters have been converted into communal breathing areas, while wealthier Chinese […]

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Anushree Chaudhuri: Involving local communities in renewable energy planning

Anushree Chaudhuri has a history of making bold decisions. In fifth grade, she biked across her home state of California with little prior experience. In her first year at MIT, she advocated for student recommendations in the preparation of the Institute’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade. And recently, she led a field research project […]

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Local journalism is a critical “gate” to engage Americans on climate change

Last year, Pew Research Center data revealed that only 37 percent of Americans said addressing climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress. Furthermore, climate change was ranked 17th out of 21 national issues included in a Pew survey.  But in reality, it’s not that Americans don’t care about climate change, says […]

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Study measures the psychological toll of wildfires

Wildfires in Southeast Asia significantly affect peoples’ moods, especially if the fires originate outside a person’s own country, according to a new study. The study, which measures sentiment by analyzing large amounts of social media data, helps show the psychological toll of wildfires that result in substantial air pollution, at a time when such fires […]

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‘Bad News’ for Humanity: A Critical Climate System Could Collapse Sooner Than We Thought

ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs. We’re on track towards a “cliff-like” tipping point where Atlantic Ocean currents abruptly shut down, according to a study published Friday in Science Advances. Once this tipping point is reached, it will have a massive impact on the global climate, including potentially […]

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Study: Global deforestation leads to more mercury pollution

About 10 percent of human-made mercury emissions into the atmosphere each year are the result of global deforestation, according to a new MIT study. The world’s vegetation, from the Amazon rainforest to the savannahs of sub-Saharan Africa, acts as a sink that removes the toxic pollutant from the air. However, if the current rate of […]

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How Bad Are Taylor Swift’s Private Jet Emissions? An Expert Explains.

Taylor Swift on her Eras tour. Photo: John Shearer/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management The normie queen of pop’s been in the news a lot of late, and loads of that’s been to do with her bloody private jets. She’s got two, or at least she did before she reportedly sold one of them in January […]

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Letter to the MIT community: Announcing the Climate Project at MIT

The following letter was sent to the MIT community today by President Sally Kornbluth. Dear members of the MIT community, At my inauguration, echoing a sentiment I heard everywhere on my campus listening tour, I called on the people of MIT to come together in new ways to marshal a bold, tenacious response to the […]

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3 Questions: The Climate Project at MIT

MIT is preparing a major campus-wide effort to develop technological, behavioral, and policy solutions to some of the toughest problems now impeding an effective global climate response. The Climate Project at MIT, as the new enterprise is known, includes new arrangements for promoting cross-Institute collaborations and new mechanisms for engaging with outside partners to speed […]

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MIT researchers map the energy transition’s effects on jobs

A new analysis by MIT researchers shows the places in the U.S. where jobs are most linked to fossil fuels. The research could help policymakers better identify and support areas affected over time by a switch to renewable energy. While many of the places most potentially affected have intensive drilling and mining operations, the study […]

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Everything You Need to Know About Greenwashing

On the heels of the hottest year ever recorded in human history, climate change is at the top of many people’s minds. You may have heard a lot of terms thrown around—heat pumps, carbon taxes, electric vehicles—but perhaps none is more important to understand as a consumer, and a citizen, than greenwashing. Here’s everything you […]

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Meet the Fashion Influencers of Climate Activism

Fashion influencers Nolan White (L) and Aja Barber. Photos via Instagram.  The fashion industry produces up to 100 billion garments are produced each year. And each year, approximately 92 million tons of clothing ends up in landfills.  The mass consumption encouraged by fast fashion brands, media trend cycles, and advertising are huge contributors to the […]

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How Your Old Wardrobe Can Fight Climate Change. Seriously.

Getty Images/jennifer.m.ramos When she was still in elementary school, Elysha Schubauer used to add buttons and embroider on her own clothes. By high school, she was mending tears and sewing on patches.  “I wanted unique pieces that I couldn’t find anywhere else,” says Schubauer. “If I found something I like that fits me well, I […]

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Susan Solomon wins VinFuture Award for Female Innovators

Lee and Geraldine Martin Professor of Environmental Studies Susan Solomon has been awarded the 2023 VinFuture Award for Female Innovators. Solomon was picked out of almost 1,400 international nominations across four categories for “The discovery of the ozone depletion mechanism in Antarctica, contributing to the establishment of the Montreal Protocol.” The award, which comes with […]

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Faculty, staff, students to evaluate ways to decarbonize MIT’s campus

With a goal to decarbonize the MIT campus by 2050, the Institute must look at “new ideas, transformed into practical solutions, in record time,” as stated in “Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade.” This charge calls on the MIT community to explore game-changing and evolving technologies with the potential to move campuses […]

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Q&A: A blueprint for sustainable innovation

Atacama Biomaterials is a startup combining architecture, machine learning, and chemical engineering to create eco-friendly materials with multiple applications. Passionate about sustainable innovation, its co-founder Paloma Gonzalez-Rojas SM ’15, PhD ’21 highlights here how MIT has supported the project through several of its entrepreneurship initiatives, and reflects on the role of design in building a holistic […]

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New tool predicts flood risk from hurricanes in a warming climate

Coastal cities and communities will face more frequent major hurricanes with climate change in the coming years. To help prepare coastal cities against future storms, MIT scientists have developed a method to predict how much flooding a coastal community is likely to experience as hurricanes evolve over the next decades. When hurricanes make landfall, strong […]

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What a Novel About an AI Documenting the Last Human Says About Our Real Dystopia

Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard’s podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet. The unreliable narrator of After World, the new novel from author Debbie Urbanski, is an AI tasked with writing a book about Sen, the last human on Earth. In this world, humanity is done. The world is moving on […]

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Meeting the clean energy needs of tomorrow

Yuri Sebregts, chief technology officer at Shell, succinctly laid out the energy dilemma facing the world over the rest of this century. On one hand, demand for energy is quickly growing as countries in the developing world modernize and the global population grows, with 100 gigajoules of energy per person needed annually to enable quality-of-life […]

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K. Lisa Yang Global Engineering and Research Center will prioritize innovations for resource-constrained communities

Billions of people worldwide face threats to their livelihood, health, and well-being due to poverty. These problems persist because solutions offered in developed countries often do not meet the requirements — related to factors like price, performance, usability, robustness, and culture — of poor or developing countries. Academic labs frequently try to tackle these challenges, […]

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Soaring high, in the Army and the lab

Starting off as a junior helicopter pilot, Lt. Col. Jill Rahon deployed to Afghanistan three times. During the last one, she was an air mission commander, the  pilot who is designated to interface with the ground troops throughout the mission. Today, Rahon is a fourth-year doctoral student studying applied physics at the Department of Nuclear […]

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When Your Boomer Mum Joins Extinction Rebellion

This article originally appeared on VICE Netherlands. Every young person I know seems worried about the world these days. Long-drawn-out conflicts, the climate crisis, the decline in homeownership: We have a lot to blame our predecessors for. Meanwhile, those same predecessors (AKA boomers) are often painted as cranky conservatives with big houses and an even […]

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