The report, by the humanitarian organization DARA, finds that climate change already causes an average of 400,000 deaths each year, mostly due to hunger and communicable diseases in developing countries. Meanwhile, there are 4.5 million carbon-related deaths due to causes including indoor smoke and air pollution. That adds up to nearly 5 million deaths a year, and the number will rise to nearly 6 million by 2030.

In economic terms, the report finds that climate change cost the world $700 billion — or close to 1 percent of global GDP — in lost potential for economic development in 2010. Combined with costs related to the carbon-intensive economy, the total was more than $1.2 trillion.

As temperatures rise, the economic impact of climate change is estimated to more than double, reaching 2.5 percent of global GDP by 2030, and additional carbon economy costs will bring the total impact to more than 3 percent.

Developing countries will suffer the most in terms of both mortality and money. The report says least developed countries face an average of more than 10 percent forgone GDP in 2010 because of climate change and the carbon economy. Over 90 percent of deaths from both sets of causes, and more than 98 percent of those caused by climate change, will occur in developing countries.

The report calls for action to reduce climate change and carbon dependence and estimates that shift would cost 0.5 percent of GDP this decade. Other studies have found a higher cost — 2 percent of Global GDP in one case, according to Reuters.

Along with reducing the impact of climate change and carbon-intensive energy, the DARA report says the international community must work to mitigate key risks like food security, smoke and air pollution and diseases that are associated with the environmental damages.

Main photo credit: Bidgee/Wikimedia Commons

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The Bulawayo City Council called for residents to unite in the simultaneous flush after going without water for 72 hours. The city has implemented a strict conservation program designed to make drought-ravaged supply dams last until the rainy season starts in November. After such long periods without running water, the sewer system can become so clogged that the mass flushing is needed to clear it out.

In fact, while the city-wide toilet flush might sound like a joke, the situation in Bulawayo is becoming more and more serious. Residents say they’re keeping water in large drums to survive the water outages, but they fear disease outbreaks.

A plan is underway to bring water to the city from the Zambezi River with a pipeline partly funded by China, but the project won’t be complete until 2014 at the earliest.  Meanwhile, in just the coming weeks, city officials are warning they may have to extend the water rationing periods to 92 hours at a stretch.

Drought has been a serious problem in Zimbabwe this year, reminding some of a disastrous dry period in 1992. The nation’s cabinet has formed a committee to address the issue and attempt to ensure access to food.

Recently, the government announced a $2 million program to provide feed to keep cattle in the Matabeleland South area from starving after there was too little grain to keep grazing pastures growing. The international community has also provided aid to the nation to support food security. The World Food Program has said that close to 1.7 million Zimbabweans are in urgent need of food aid.

Featured image credit: 80n/Flickr

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“If we as humans modify the stratosphere, it may – through the chain of events we demonstrate in this study – also impact the ocean circulation,” said Thomas Reichler, senior author of the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience. “Good examples of how we modify the stratosphere are the ozone hole and also fossil-fuel burning that adds carbon dioxide to the stratosphere. These changes to the stratosphere can alter the ocean, and any change to the ocean is extremely important to global climate.”

Scientists have long known that the movement of the stratosphere can affect the troposphere — the air that’s closer to Earth, at six miles or less above the surface. They’ve also known that weather affects the oceans. But this is the first study to put the system together and show how winds far above the Earth’s surface can move the seas.

To understand the vast systems involved in these relationships, the researchers used weather observations and computer programs that could simulate 4,000 years of weather. What they found was decade-scale changes in stratospheric wind patterns called the polar vortex and correlated changes in deep-sea circulation.

The key to the connection between sky and sea is in the North Atlantic, south of Greenland. It’s a spot where the water can get so cold and salty that it becomes significantly denser than the ocean around it, causing it to sink. That sinking “drives the three-dimensional oceanic conveyor belt circulation,” Reichler said. And even small amounts of heating or cooling from the atmosphere — coming down from the stratospheric winds — can determine whether the water sinks or not.

Main image credit: Brenda Starr/Flickr. Illustration courtesy of Thomas Reichler, University of Utah.

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“It’s absolute realistic,” he added insistently to an incredulous-looking Charlie Rose. “It will happen.”

Branson said federal budget cuts to NASA have opened up an opportunity for the private sector. His spaceflight company Virgin Galactic plans to start offering commercial space flights — priced at $200,000 for a two-hour trip — beginning next year. And he says he and his kids will be on the first flight.

The Virgin America CEO has never been known as a shrinking violet. Last year, he celebrated the launch of the Virgin Galactic space terminal in New Mexico by opening a bottle of champagne while rappelling from a balcony.

Branson, a noted environmentalist and fan of Al Gore, didn’t mention the environmental impact of space tourism, which could soon surpass all of the world’s subsonic airplanes as a source of climate change.

He did say the ability to visit space will open up to a broader range of people as the price for a trip falls over time. He also said Virgin will be able to use profits from space tourism in the next 20 years to move into new territory, like putting more satellites into space for various uses and launching the Mars program.

Meanwhile, back in his core business closer to Earth, he acknowledged that the current quality of U.S. air carriers is “pretty abysmal.” Still, even for the bedraggled airline industry, Branson said has a shiny, if somewhat hard-to-swallow new vision: A flight from the U.S. to Australia in two and a half hours within his children’s lifetime.

Photo of Branson before the 2009 demonstration of WhiteKnight2 in 2009. Credit: Arnfinn Christensen/Wikimedia

Video credit: CBS News

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Nuclear fusion has long been a holy grail for alternative technology advocates. This kind of reaction, which powers active stars, could be a safer, more powerful energy source than nuclear fission, without the toxic waste.

According to Discovery News, Sandia uses an accelerator to shoot a magnetic field thorough a tiny cylinder containing the hydrogen isotope deuterium. (In language suggesting a James Bond villain, it calls the device “the Z machine.”) As the cylinder is compressed, a laser heats the deuterium, turning it into a plasma, which is then able to fuse.

The latest experiments tested the cylinder to make sure it wouldn’t be too damaged by the compression, which means the deuterium should be able to fuse successfully.

New tests coming in 2013 and beyond will help determine whether the Z machine can function using a mix of deuterium and a radioactive hydrogen isotope known as tritium. Fusion between deuterium and tritium is the easiest reaction of this kind to achieve, making them the likely fuel for first-generation fusion reactors.

Sandia, operated by a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Corp. under a contract from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, is one of the leading institutions researching “hot fusion.”

Reaching a break-even in fusion doesn’t automatically mean the technology will be commercially viable, but the Sandia research suggests the possibility of more practical high-yield fusion, where energy output is at least 1,000 times the input.

Photo of Sandia researcher Ryan McBride with the “Z machine” courtesy Sandia National Laboratories

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Now, Reuters reports that two of nuclear’s biggest supporters, France and Japan, have essentially switched sides in the debate. In the wake of last year’s Fukushima disaster, Japan is phasing out its nuclear plants and increasing spending on renewable energy, while France plans to reduce its dependence on nuclear.

By the 2030s, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda says the island nation — which produced more than 10 percent of the world’s nuclear power in pre-Fukushima years — will be out of the nuclear industry. At the same time, it plans to triple the share of renewable resources so they contribute 30 percent of its energy needs.

French president Francois Hollande promises to cut the share of nuclear power in the country from a whopping 75 percent today to 50 percent by 2025. Hollande also called for a 40 percent cut in the European Union’s carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and a 60 percent cut by 2040.

Weighing in on the other side of the debate, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that it may be impossible to fill the gap left by nuclear power entirely with renewables and said the nations will inevitably end up using more fossil fuels. (Incidentally, the website of the journal Nature has an interesting set of charts showing IEA projections on fuel mix through 2035, as well as some other useful data.)

Luis Uriza of Bain & Co. told Reuters that natural gas is the most likely fuel to fill the void, which Japan already imports as a major energy source.

Germany, one of the most aggressive pursuers of alternative power, has backed away from nuclear since Fukushima, but it is still gets a large share of its power from fossil fuels.

Photo of nuclear power plant in Cattenom, France, courtesy of Stefan Kühn/Wikimedia

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That’s right—even better than a zero-energy building, this home actually has a second identity as a power plant, producing more energy for the grid than it uses.

Villa Åkarp, completed in 2009 outside Malmo, Sweden with the help of technology from Rockwool International, uses many design elements drawn from the passive house movement. That means jealously guarding every bit of heat in the house: it’s hyper-insulated with more than 20 inches of insulation on the walls and roof, and krypton gas filling for the windows.

One bedroom ceiling even uses wax granulate in its drywall that melts when the temperature rises above 77 degrees Farenheit, drawing heat from the air. When it gets cold, the wax hardens, releasing the heat.

Every entrance and exit to the house, including the wastewater pipe, is calibrated to reduce heat loss. Hot water running down from the shower pre-warms the water coming in from outside, reducing the pressure on the hot water tank.

Heat and hot water come from thermal solar collectors and a pellet stove. Photovoltaic panels produce about 4,200 kWh of electricity per year, which, thanks to super-efficient appliances and LED lights, creates a surplus of 600 kWh.

Since Villa Åkarp went online, Rockwell says more houses like it have been built. They’re not for everyone yet, with a price tag $100,000 more than a similar home, but falling costs of solar panels may change that.

Meanwhile, if some of the high-tech bells and whistles involved in homes like this are out of reach for many of us, we can still look to some of its basic premises, like getting some better insulation, as winter approaches.

Featured image credit: Rockwool International

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An international expedition in the republic of Yakutia has found intact cells in the remains of one of the huge beasts, but it’s not yet clear whether the find includes the living cells necessary for cloning.

Semyon Grigoryev, a professor at North-East Federal University, told Reuters that it’s possible, but unlikely, that the permafrost of the far northern region has kept cells alive. If found, a single living cell could be multiplied, bringing the creatures back to life.

Controversial South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk, whose company did the world’s first commercial dog cloning, will examine the mammoth remains in the hopes that they can be cloned. In 2006, Hwang was found to have fabricated data and used unethical methods in human cloning experiments.

Since at least 2008, scientists have been talking about the possibility of bringing mammoths back to life. One method that has been discussed is modifying the DNA of an elephant’s egg based on the sequencing of mammoth DNA from ancient remains.

Of course there’s the question of why anyone would want to bring a huge hairy monster to life. The most obvious reason is to put mammoths in a zoo to give modern humans a sense of what our ancient ancestors were up against on their hunting expeditions. But developing the technology could also lead to the reversal of more recent extinctions.

The X Prize Foundation, which organized a race in 2004 to put the first private vessel into space, has announced a “Jurassic Park X Prize” for the creation of a “safe, repeatable and reliable” method for bringing extinct creatures back to life. Despite the ominous name, the foundation’s purpose is to find a way to rebuild the populations of some of the many species that humans have driven out of existence.

Main image credit: Charles R. Knight/Wikimedia Commons

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Utilities were a particularly active player in the field, accounting for 477 megawatts. Many states demand that electric companies get an increasing percentage of their energy from renewable sources, which encourages that kind of investment.

SEIA President and CEO Rhone Resch said the cost of solar installations is falling, making it easier for all types of customers to get into the market. US average system prices have fallen 10 percent over the last quarter alone, the report said.

On the residential side, much of the growth in installations has come from third-party installations where a homeowner or business essentially rents their roof to an outside company that puts up panels and sells the electricity to the grid. In California, Arizona and Colorado, 70 percent of new residential installations followed that model. According to Shayle Kann of GTM Research, third-party deals have attracted $600 million in new investments in recent months, demonstrating their growing acceptance among project investors.

PV installations have been up and down in recent quarters, jumping from 477 megawatts in the third quarter of 2011 to 791 megawatts in the fourth quarter and then falling to 512 megawatts in the first quarter of this year. Between the industry’s strong showing in the second-quarter and the fact that there are 3,400 megawatts of utility projects under construction, the report predicts that a total of 3,200 megawatts will be installed in 2012. That’s up 71 percent from last year.

Concentrating solar power, an alternative to photovoltaic panels, is also growing, though not as quickly as PV. As of the end of the second quarter, 546 megawatts of concentrating solar capacity were installed in the US.

Featured image credit: Flickr/theregeneration

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The latest advance in the field comes from European researchers, who have published the results of a May experiment in which they “transported” quantum particles 88 miles between two Canary Islands. “Transported” goes in quotes here because what moved from one island to another wasn’t actually a subatomic particle. Instead, they moved the particle’s characteristics, essentially turning a distant bit of matter into an exact copy of the local one.

The experiment marks the longest distance ever traversed with this kind of technology. The previous record, a bit over 60 miles, was set earlier this year by Chinese scientists.

The European team said their work required a number of technical innovations. Where past experiments have used optical fiber, the distance involved here would have resulted in too much degradation of the signal. Instead, they used lasers.

For all the science fiction nerds out there, the research may bring to mind the ansible, first envisioned by Ursula Le Guin, which lets far-flung worlds communicate instantaneously. Sadly, that’s not on the horizon yet. Because of the mind-boggling characteristics of quantum particles, it’s essentially impossible for someone on the receiving end of a quantum communications device to understand the information being sent without an additional, slower-than-light message that allows for translation.

Nonetheless, the scientists say the technology is developing to the point where it may have practical uses before long. The next step is extending the communication distance to allow messages from Earth to a satellite, or from satellite to satellite. Although the distances involved in that kind of experiment would be much larger, the signal would be able to move more freely in space because there’s less atmosphere to plow through.

Getting that kind of communication functioning could create the basis for a worldwide “quantum internet.” One of the big advantages over the old-fashioned internet would be that, because quantum particles can’t be observed without being changed, any attempt at hacking messages would be instantly obvious. The technology could also lead to faster data analysis with “quantum computers.”

Image credit: IQOQI/Vienna

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