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World's richest 10% caused two thirds of global warming: study

World's richest 10% caused two thirds of global warming: study

Yahoo07-05-2025

The world's wealthiest 10 percent of individuals are responsible for two thirds of global warming since 1990, researchers said Tuesday.
How the rich consume and invest has substantially increased the risk of deadly heatwaves and drought, they reported in the first study to quantify the impact of concentrated private wealth on extreme climate events.
"We link the carbon footprints of the wealthiest individuals directly to real-world climate impacts," lead author Sarah Schoengart, a scientist at ETH Zurich, told AFP.
"It's a shift from carbon accounting toward climate accountability."
Compared to the global average, for example, the richest one percent contributed 26 times more to once-a-century heatwaves, and 17 times more to droughts in the Amazon, according to the findings, published in Nature Climate Change.
Emissions from the wealthiest 10 percent in China and the United States -- which together account for nearly half of global carbon pollution -- each led to a two-to-threefold rise in heat extremes.
Burning fossil fuels and deforestation have heated Earth's average surface by 1.3 degrees Celsius, mostly during the last 30 years.
Schoengart and colleagues combined economic data and climate simulations to trace emissions from different global income groups and assess their impact on specific types of climate-enhance extreme weather.
The researchers also emphasised the role of emissions embedded in financial investment rather than just lifestyle and personal consumption.
"Climate action that doesn't address the outsized responsibilities of the wealthiest members of society risk missing one of the most powerful levers we have to reduce future harm," said senior author Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, head of the Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis near Vienna.
- Billionaires tax -
Owners of capital, he noted, could be held accountable for climate impacts through progressive taxes on wealth and carbon-intensive investments.
Earlier research has shown that taxing asset-related emissions is more equitable than broad carbon taxes, which tend to burden those on lower incomes.
Recent initiatives to increase taxes on the super-rich and multinationals have mostly stalled, especially since Donald Trump regained the White House.
Last year, Brazil -- as host of the G20 -- pushed for a two-percent tax on the net worth of individuals with more than $1 billion in assets.
Although G20 leaders agreed to "engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed," there has been no follow-up to date.
In 2021, nearly 140 countries agreed on work toward a global corporate tax for multinational companies, with nearly half endorsing a minimum rate of 15 percent, but those talks have stalled as well.
Almost a third of the world's billionaires are from the United States -- more than China, India and Germany combined, according to Forbes magazine.
According to anti-poverty NGO Oxfam, the richest 1 percent have accumulated $42 trillion in new wealth over the past decade.
It says the richest one percent have more wealth than the lowest 95 percent combined.
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Emperor penguin populations declining faster than expected
Emperor penguin populations declining faster than expected

Yahoo

time8 hours ago

  • Yahoo

Emperor penguin populations declining faster than expected

Emperor penguin populations in Antarctica have shrunk by almost a quarter as global warming transforms their icy habitat, according to new research on Tuesday that warned the losses were far worse than previously imagined. Scientists monitoring the world's largest penguin species used satellites to assess sixteen colonies in the Antarctic Peninsula, Weddell Sea and Bellingshausen Sea, representing nearly a third of the global emperor penguin population. What they found was "probably about 50-percent worse" than even the most pessimistic estimate of current populations using computer modelling, said Peter Fretwell, who tracks wildlife from space at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). Researchers know that climate change is driving the losses but the speed of the declines is a particular cause for alarm. The study, published in the journal Nature Communications: Earth & Environment, found that numbers declined 22 percent in the 15 years to 2024 for the colonies monitored. This compares with an earlier estimate of a 9.5-percent reduction across Antarctica as a whole between 2009 and 2018. Warming is thinning and destabilising the ice under the penguins' feet in their breeding grounds. In recent years some colonies have lost all their chicks because the ice has given way beneath them, plunging hatchlings into the sea before they were old enough to cope with the freezing ocean. Fretwell said the new research suggests penguin numbers have been declining since the monitoring began in 2009. That is even before global warming was having a major impact on the sea ice, which forms over open water adjacent to land in the region. But he said the culprit is still likely to be climate change, with warming driving other challenges for the penguins, such as higher rainfall or increasing encroachment from predators. "Emperor penguins are probably the most clear-cut example of where climate change is really showing its effect," Fretwell told AFP. "There's no fishing. There's no habitat destruction. There's no pollution which is causing their populations to decline. "It's just the temperatures in the ice on which they breed and live, and that's really climate change." - 'Worrying result" - Emperor penguins, aka Aptenodytes forsteri, number about a quarter of a million breeding pairs, all in Antarctica, according to a 2020 study. A baby emperor penguin emerges from an egg kept warm in winter by a male, while the female in a breeding pair embarks on a two-month fishing expedition. When she returns to the colony, she feeds the hatchling by regurgitating and then both parents take turns to forage. To survive on their own, chicks must develop waterproof feathers, a process that typically starts in mid-December. The new research uses high resolution satellite imagery during the months of October and November, before the region is plunged into winter darkness. Fretwell said future research could use other types of satellite monitoring, like radar or thermal imaging, to capture populations in the darker months, as well as expand to the other colonies. "We really do need to look at the rest of the population to see if this worrying result transfers around the continent," he said, adding however that the colonies studied were considered representative. He said there is hope that the penguins may go further south to colder regions in the future but added that it is not clear "how long they're going to last out there". Computer models have projected that the species will be near extinction by the end of the century if humans do not slash their planet-heating emissions. The latest study suggests the picture could be even worse. "We may have to rethink those models now with this new data," said Fretwell. But he stressed there was still time to reduce the threat to the penguins. "We've got this really depressing picture of climate change and falling populations even faster than we thought but it's not too late," he said. "We're probably going to lose a lot of emperor penguins along the way but if people do change, and if we do reduce or turn around our climate emissions, then then we will save the emperor penguin." klm/gil

Imaging Satellites Can Protect Ceasefire, Peacekeeper Lives In Ukraine
Imaging Satellites Can Protect Ceasefire, Peacekeeper Lives In Ukraine

Forbes

time19 hours ago

  • Forbes

Imaging Satellites Can Protect Ceasefire, Peacekeeper Lives In Ukraine

Images captured by futuristic satellites circling the globe—of Russian tanks crashing the border with democratic Ukraine—were blasted out to iPhone screens across the continents. Spectators stretching from elite EU campuses to the Elysée Palace were captivated when Ukraine's outgunned defenders began launching miniature weaponized drones that halted the armored battalions, whose retreat was imaged in technicolor by spacecraft hundreds of kilometers above the Earth. These robotic photographers, whizzing through orbit at 28,000 kilometers per hour, seemed to change the world—and the war—overnight. Their sensational imagery of the lightning invasion of Ukraine, and its remarkable defense, generated allies for the embattled nation around the world. Yet these celestial imagers might also aid a future peacemaking coalition deployed to help halt the conflict, predicts Valerie Sticher, a renowned scholar on peace initiatives and conflict resolution at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. Imaging satellites often provide the sole means to safely monitor the most dangerous war zones, and could play a pivotal role in supporting peacekeepers sent to observe a future ceasefire agreement in Ukraine, says Dr. Sticher. One of the globe's top experts on the use of remote sensing technology, including imaging satellites, in ceasefire monitoring, Sticher tells me in an interview that photographs of conflict zones captured by orbiting spacecraft have already been used to help observers steer clear of high-risk hotspots. As satellite-based cameras and radar imaging tech become more advanced and extensive, she says, they could become essential tools in observing truces in war-torn regions like Ukraine. 'I don't think the use of satellite images and other remote sensing technology (such as cameras mounted on drones) can directly replace human ceasefire monitors,' she says. 'But they can play an important role in expanding monitoring to areas where human monitors cannot go for safety reasons.' Ceasefire monitoring teams can now use satellite-based photographers as avatars to chronicle trenches, tanks, troops and other dangers. Satellite 'imagery can also provide photographic evidence that is harder to dispute than witness accounts—an important advantage in the context of potential disinformation campaigns,' Sticher says. This transformation of imaging sats into surrogate truce observers began during an earlier ceasefire operation in Ukraine mounted by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The OSCE deployed its 'Special Monitoring Mission' team of hundreds of unarmed observers as part of a ceasefire agreement that Moscow only haltingly signed onto after its troops led the surprise takeover of the Ukrainian region of Crimea, and then started arming Moscow-backed militias along the nearby borderlands. Yet the terms of the truce provided no enforcement mechanisms for ceasefire violations, much less for punishment of any party breaking the agreement. As a result, violations exploded, sometimes endangering the patrols of the peacekeepers. In 2017, after a surreptitiously planted landmine killed peacekeeper Joseph Stone, an American paramedic, the ceasefire contingent ramped up reliance on satellites to monitor especially hazardous sectors surrounding the 400-kilometer-long 'line of contact' separating the two sides in the conflict. U.S. Senator Roger Wicker said at the time that he lamented Joseph Stone's 'tragic death' while carrying out peacekeeping duties 'in territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists.' Wicker, who is now the powerful chairman of the Senate's Armed Services Committee, added: ''Russian-led separatist forces continue to commit the majority of ceasefire violations' in Ukraine, and said OSCE observers were likely deliberately targeted by the Russian-supported militants. Sticher, who has headed a series of leading studies on ceasefire monitoring aided by advanced satellite technologies, says in one paper: 'The war in Ukraine has pushed the role of satellite imagery in armed conflicts into the spotlight.' During the first space race, the superpowers began launching super-secret spacecraft to detect the firing of nuclear missiles and map enemy military installations. But with the new-millennium NewSpace race, expanding constellations of independent satellites outfitted with sophisticated cameras, she says, are being 'employed by a wide range of human rights, humanitarian, and peacekeeping actors to mitigate the impact of violence or support the resolution of armed conflicts.' The peacekeeping operation in Ukraine has been lauded worldwide for its leading-edge use of satellites and uncrewed aerial vehicles, or drones, equipped with cameras to provide real-time detection of troop movements, missile batteries and the flow of refugees away from battlefronts. But the makeshift ceasefire agreement, riddled with breaches, sometimes placed the monitors in high-risk situations. 'OSCE staff reported that the risk of UAVs being shot down was a serious impediment to monitoring,' Sticher and her colleague Aly Verjee, a scholar at Sweden's University of Gothenburg, say in one study. The ceasefire operation lost dozens of drones blasted by belligerents, partly due to 'resistance to being monitored.' And while satellites that passed overhead every 90 minutes provided staggered snapshots of changes along the frozen battlefront, they add, 'Over time, the parties became apt at camouflaging their heavy weapons systems' to hide from these high-altitude scouts. Sticher lauds the peacekeepers who served in the earlier ceasefire operation, which ended with Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. She adds that a colleague at ETH Zurich, Alexander Hug, co-led that mission and penned a captivating first-hand account on his team and their satellite backup. Hug says in his chronicles on the conflict that his peacekeeping contingent relied on satellite cameras to track an ever-changing labyrinth of dangers produced by the smoldering war. Satellites helped his ceasefire observers track major changes on the battlefield, including 'the positions of the forces, damage to critical infrastructure, [and] the presence of weapon systems and other military-type installations.' 'If satellite imagery revealed newly placed anti-tank mines on a patrolling route,' he says, 'the Mission first deployed a UAV in the area to verify the facts and could, if the mines were still in place, re-route the patrol.' In a preface to Hug's report, Philippe Étienne, former French ambassador to the U.S., says although the ceasefire endeavor 'could not prevent Russia's aggression against Ukraine, it helped to contain violence during the phase it was active.' And while the truce was pummeled by outbreaks of violence, 'predominantly by Russian troops and affiliated armed group troops in eastern Ukraine,' Ambassador Étienne says, the peacekeeping team 'managed to negotiate temporary pauses in the fighting, to enable the evacuation of civilians caught in the middle of the war.' Yet Étienne, who also served as chief diplomatic adviser to French President Emmanuel Macron, suggests the peacekeeping mission, its next-generation satellite wingmen, and even the house-of-cards ceasefire pact should all be studied in advance of crafting any future truce arrangement for Ukraine. France has been the major global power to press the Kremlin to enter ceasefire talks with Ukraine, and co-shaped a new round of EU sanctions against Russia until it does so. So far, the White House has failed to match the new European sanctions or the stepped-up pressure on Vladimir Putin to suspend the fighting during peace negotiations. Yet French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said during a recent roundtable with journalists and scholars, hosted by the Atlantic Council think tank, that Paris and Washington might still join forces to cajole Moscow into joining a ceasefire summit. 'Right now, the main obstacle to peace is Vladimir Putin,' said Minister Barrot. During his stopover in Washington, Barrot added, he praised 'Senator Lindsey Graham, who put together a massive package of sanctions … aimed at threatening Russia into accepting a ceasefire.' Senator Graham has already amassed a veto-proof majority in the Senate backing the bill, and Minister Barrot said the centuries-old allies could coordinate to quickly push for truce talks. At the same time, there has been a rush of global peace advocates offering to host ceasefire negotiations. During the very first mass he celebrated to mark his out-of-the-blue election as the new Bishop of Rome, Pope Leo XIV lamented: 'Martyred Ukraine awaits negotiations for a just and lasting peace.' Building on the anti-war legacy of Pope Francis, who was a prime force behind the promulgation of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, Pope Leo also met privately with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and proposed the world's smallest nation—Vatican City—could help stage a first round of peace talks with the holder of the globe's biggest stockpile of nuclear weapons, Russia. Switzerland, which hosted a 'Summit on Peace in Ukraine' last year, could play a key role in brokering and monitoring a future ceasefire, says Dr. Sticher. The quest to end wars and promote peace across the continents is such a central element in Switzerland's identity that it is enshrined in the Swiss constitution. Halting the barrage of bullets and missiles that is decimating Ukraine could draw on a wealth of scholarship and experience across Switzerland, Sticher says: 'Switzerland can play a role, there is Swiss expertise in both ceasefire mediation and ceasefire monitoring.' Any new ceasefire agreement, Dr. Sticher adds, must avoid repeating the mistakes of the earlier pact. 'The new ceasefire should be clear and strong in outlining strategies for dealing with violations,' she says. The truce should also 'explicitly provide for the incorporation of technology such as satellite imagery into a future ceasefire observation mission.' 'If the two sides reach an agreement on a ceasefire with a demilitarized zone, and agreement on what types of weapons can be in what proximity of this zone,' she says, 'then satellite imagery could be used to verify that the parties comply with this agreement.' In ceasefires of the future, Sticher adds, expanding use of satellite imagery 'can be an invaluable tool to support human monitors'—by helping document the ever-changing dangers of battle zones and by providing crystal-clear evidence of truce violations.

Thermal Runaway Explains Why Waymo Cars Burned So Completely in the Recent Los Angeles Protests
Thermal Runaway Explains Why Waymo Cars Burned So Completely in the Recent Los Angeles Protests

Scientific American

time20 hours ago

  • Scientific American

Thermal Runaway Explains Why Waymo Cars Burned So Completely in the Recent Los Angeles Protests

Imagine watching a car burn until it seems to vaporize and the street itself begins to sag. That happened on Sunday in Los Angeles, when protesters torched at least five Waymo-branded Jaguar I-Pace robotaxis. When the smoke cleared, virtually the entire shell of each car—its roof, doors, hood, trunk and body panels—was gone, leaving only wheel rims and traces of aluminum lacing. Why did the fires cause such obliteration? The answer starts with the battery. Each I-Pace can carry roughly 90 kilowatt-hours of stored chemical energy, comparable to about 170 pounds (77 kilograms) of TNT. That energy is distributed across hundreds of lithium-ion pouch cells, which are sealed in flammable electrolyte and separated by polymer films as thin as snack-bag plastic. When any one cell is punctured or overheated—or set aflame with an incendiary device—chemical reactions generate more heat than the cell can shed, and neighboring cells follow in a chain reaction. This positive-feedback loop is called 'thermal runaway.' According to a 2024 study in the Journal of Power Sources, as the battery burns, its temperature can soar past 1,000 degrees Celsius. At that point, the pack becomes its own furnace. Aluminum sections of the car's floor surrender, liquefying at about 660 degrees C and taking the underbody with them. Magnesium parts—seat-base frames, the bracket that holds the steering column and the cross-car beam that is located behind the dashboard—flare bright white. Patches of magnesium can catch fire and burn fiercely. Plastics disappear as vapor, wheels lose their tire, and even the lidar mast on the roof quickly resembles an overcooked marshmallow. A 2025 study in Fire Technology and a 2023 study in Applied Energy noted that the placement of the battery on the floor—sometimes referred to as a 'skateboard architecture'—makes the floor the hottest zone. Thus, flames radiate upward and outward, cooking everything above. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. All the while, the battery cells vent hydrogen fluoride, a toxic, lung-searing gas documented in laboratory test burns of commercial lithium packs. Among the disturbing scenes from the recent Los Angeles protests, which erupted over federal immigration raids, are those in which protestors stood around the flaming Waymos. Historically, first responders without supplied-air protection have developed throat burns and breathing difficulties upon arriving at scenes with burning lithium-ion batteries. Depending on the hydrogen fluoride levels, an exposed person can begin coughing up blood within minutes. Whereas inhaling concentrations above roughly 30 parts per million (ppm) is immediately dangerous to health, 50 ppm may be fatal when inhaled for a half-hour to an hour, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that exposure to 170 ppm for 10 minutes can be deadly. Measurements taken near electric-vehicle (EV) fires show peaks of 150 to 450 ppm, with levels during much of the fire hovering around 50 ppm. Firefighters call such blazes 'battery box fires,' and they hate them. Flame-retardant foams do little, and fire departments now favor high-pressure water lances or immersion pits. Dousing a runaway battery usually means lowering temperatures below the runaway threshold for every last battery cell—a task that, according to the Independent, can swallow 30,000 to 40,000 gallons (about 114,000 to 151,000 liters) of water. That's at least 40 times the amount of water required to extinguish a gasoline-car fire. If you hit the flames too lightly, stranded energy reignites hours later—a quirk the National Transportation Safety Board flagged in its 2020 report on EV firefighting hazards. Car designers have tried to address the danger. Software monitors cell temperatures and slows the rate at which batteries charge to prevent overheating. And it automatically cuts current if anything looks amiss. Yet even the best code cannot rewrite chemistry: in 2023 Jaguar recalled more than 6,400 I-Pace cars after at least a dozen of them caught fire from overheated batteries—which had likely shorted from manufacturing defects in their pouch cells. Six of the fires happened while the car was either plugged in or within a few minutes of being unplugged. Waymo's fleet got the update to better regulate the batteries, but software can't help when someone smashes one of the car's windows and lights up its interior with a 'makeshift flamethrower,' as reported by the Los Angeles Times. Could a Waymo van have burned just as thoroughly? Only with great effort. The company's earlier Chrysler Pacifica hybrids, which were phased out in 2023, stored a tenth of their battery energy in a steel-framed shell. Steel keeps its shape beyond 1,300 degrees C, so after a typical blaze, you would still recognize the carcass. To prevent thermal runaway, Teslas have batteries that use thousands of small cylindrical cells locked inside an aluminum tray with titanium undershields and built-in firebreaks. And most brands of electric-car batteries now sit in similarly rigid aluminum or steel boxes—and are shifting toward less volatile chemistries. Importantly, however, the scene in Los Angeles by no means indicates that electric cars are tinderboxes. A 2023 study in Finland showed that, mile for mile, they caught fire less often than gasoline cars. But when an EV does burn, the physics shift. You're no longer fighting a puddle of gasoline on asphalt; you're battling an energy-dense, metal-oxide battery that is determined to finish what it started—and in such cases, a single Molotov cocktail can turn a sleek robotaxi into a pool of molten alloy.

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