Missing emissions targets
Countries are nowhere near to reducing their carbon dioxide emissions to levels promised in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, according to a damning United Nations study. The annual Emissions Gap Report found that emissions rose in 2017, after remaining relatively flat in the three previous years. Based on current trends, the world will warm
5.8 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial temperatures by 2100—far more than the 3.6-degree goal in the Paris pact. To hit that lower target, the U.N. says, the world will have to reduce emissions by 25 percent by 2030. To keep temperature rises to under
1.5 degrees, which is increasingly what scientists think will be necessary to keep the planet habitable in the long term, emissions will need to be 55 percent lower by 2030. The report confirms fears raised by last month’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change study, which said countries are failing to act fast enough to avoid dire climate consequences, such as extreme droughts, floods, and sea level rises. “If the IPCC report represented a global fire alarm,” the U.N.’s environment deputy executive director, Joyce Msuya, tells Reuters.com, “this report is the arson investigation.”
research has found. Scientists at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology examined the activity levels of more than 4,400 kids and their parents over an 11-year period. They found that mothers whose exercise levels dropped as their children were growing up were more likely to have overweight teenagers. But when a mom’s weight went down, so did their children’s body mass index. No such correlation was found when fathers shed pounds. That could be because mothers still tend to be responsible for planning activities in the home and what’s eaten day to day, although the researchers note that they didn’t study these issues. “Parents have a major impact on their children’s health and lifestyle,” co-author Marit Naess tells The Daily Telegraph (U.K.). “Behaviors that lead to obesity are easily transferred from parent to child.”
span and weighs 5.4 pounds, flew nearly 200 feet in one gymnasium test flight, reports The Washington Post. It has a thrust-to-power ratio similar to a jet engine, yet is essentially silent. Lead engineer Steven Barrett admits his flying machine is “still some way away from an aircraft that could perform a useful mission,” and he doesn’t yet know whether the technology can be safely scaled up. Even so, he and his team think ionic wind technology could at the very least lead to quieter drones.