https://www.sfgate.com/business/article/How-windmills-as-wide-as-jumbo-jets-are-making-12870597.php Source:   By Stanley Reed, San Francisco Chronicle Excerpt: ...The biggest turbines in Osterild stretch more than 600 feet high. The largest rotor blades can reach 270 feet in length, comparable to the wingspan of an Airbus A380, the world’s largest commercial plane. The price tag: More than $12 million. The monstrous scale has helped turn wind into a mainstream form of power. Larger turbines harness more wind, creating more energy. The biggest modern offshore turbines produce nearly 20 times as much power as ones developed three decades ago. The larger the size, the lower the cost of generating energy. In parts of northern Europe, wind is now a major power source. It accounts for 4 percent of overall global energy supply, according to the International Energy Agency. From those early Danish innovators, the industry has grown to be dominated by companies like Vestas Wind Systems and

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/26/climate/oman-rocks.html Source:   By Henry Fountain, The New York Times Excerpt: ...if this natural process, called carbon mineralization, could be harnessed, accelerated and applied inexpensively on a huge scale — admittedly some very big “ifs” — it could help fight climate change. Rocks could remove some of the billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the air since the beginning of the Industrial Age. And by turning that CO2 into stone, the rocks in Oman — or in a number of other places around the world that have similar geological formations — would ensure that the gas stayed out of the atmosphere forever. ...Capturing and storing carbon dioxide is drawing increased interest. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that deploying such technology is essential to efforts to rein in global warming. But the idea has barely caught on: There are fewer than 20 large-scale projects in operatio

https://www.edf.org/media/edf-announces-satellite-mission-locate-and-measure-methane-emissions Source:   By Environmental Defense Fund Excerpt: New TED Talk  ...about plans to develop and launch a new satellite purpose-built to identify and measure methane emissions from human-made sources worldwide, starting with the oil and gas industry. Data from MethaneSAT is intended to give both countries and companies robust data to spot problem areas, identify savings opportunities, and measure their progress over time. ...“Cutting methane emissions from the global oil and gas industry is the single fastest thing we can do to help put the brakes on climate change right now, even as we continue to attack the carbon dioxide emissions most people are more familiar with,” Krupp said.  ...It was 1978 when NASA’s Nimbus-7 satellite was first launched. It was that satellite that verified the hole in the ozone layer, and sparked a movement that led to one of the greatest environmental success stori

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/the-benefits-and-vulnerabilities-of-a-warming-europe Source:   By Alexandra Branscombe, AGU-Eos Excerpt: Europe is a continent with a wide range of ecosystems, climates, attractions, and different countries that draws tourists in both winter and summer seasons. Skiers enjoy winter sports in the Alps, and summer vacationers make their way to the Mediterranean coast. These tourist attractions are just some of the economic sectors that could be threatened in a warming and changing climate, prompting scientists around Europe to band together to evaluate the continent’s environmental vulnerabilities. Scientists from seven research institutions collaborated to investigate how Europe would change with a rise in global surface temperatures of between 1.5°C and 2°C. Their results show a range of impacts that will influence human health, energy demands, and travel in the coming decades. In a new paper, Jacob et al. used a greenhouse gas concentration traj