Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - After Trump tariffs, Chinese solar company says it will build U.S. factory (cnn.com)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: Oops ..... After Trump tariffs, Chinese solar company says it will build U.S. factory

JinkoSolar said in a statement Monday that its board of directors had given the go-ahead to "finalize planning for the construction of an advanced solar manufacturing facility in the U.S."

The statement suggested Jinko's decision was tied to the new tariffs, saying that the company "continues to closely monitor treatment of imports of solar cells and modules under the U.S. trade laws."

Submission + - Confident' Russia used Kaspersky software for devastating NSA attack (yahoo.com)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: Very high level of confidence' Russia used Kaspersky software for devastating NSA leaks
Three months after U.S. officials asserted that Russian intelligence used popular antivirus company Kaspersky to steal U.S. classified information, there are indications that the alleged espionage is related to a public campaign of highly damaging NSA leaks by a mysterious group called the Shadow Brokers.

Submission + - Study gives first proof that the Earth has a natural thermostat (phys.org)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: Study gives first proof that the Earth has a natural thermostat

New data provides the first proof that the Earth has a natural thermostat which enables the planet to recover from extremes of climate change — but the recovery timescales are significant.

The idea of a natural temperature thermostat was first proposed in 1981, but until now no-one has been able to provide data to show that the recovery from the hot and cold temperature fluctuations were associated with a specific mechanism.

Now a group of British scientists has shown that recovery from global cooling events is associated with changes in the rate of weathering of rocks, which is the main mechanism of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. In weathering, rocks are dissolved by rain and river water; the process removes CO2 from the atmosphere, which is then transported to the seas by rivers to be locked up in carbon-rich rocks such as limestone. The more weathering, the more CO2 is removed from the atmosphere.

Submission + - 12,000 yr old Methane blow outs in Sea Floor still leaking (inquisitr.com)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: Huge craters in the floor of the Arctic Ocean are the collapsed remains of methane domes which exploded after the last Ice Age as the glaciers above them retreated, research suggests. Even now, some 11,600 years after the last gas domes burst, methane is still seeping out of the sea floor.

The methane explosions, created craters up to 1 kilometre wide in an area that was once solid ice

Submission + - Updated NASA Data: Global Warming Not Causing Any Polar Ice Retreat (forbes.com)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: Updated data from NASA satellite instruments reveal the Earth’s polar ice caps have not receded at all since the satellite instruments began measuring the ice caps in 1979. Since the end of 2012, moreover, total polar ice extent has largely remained above the post-1979 average.

In May 2015, the updated NASA data show polar sea ice is approximately 5 percent above the post-1979 average.

Submission + - Politicians want to leave you voicemail — without ever ringing your cellph (recode.net)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: It’s part of a push by groups, including the U.S. Chamber, to relax the FCC’s robocalling rules.

Under current federal law, telemarketers and others, like political groups, aren’t allowed to launch robocall campaigns targeting cellphones unless they first obtain a consumer’s written consent.

But businesses stress that it’s a different story when it comes to “ringless voicemail” — because it technically doesn’t qualify as a phone call in the first place. In their eyes, that means they shouldn’t need a customer or voter’s permission if they want to auto-dial mobile voicemail inboxes in bulk pre-made messages about a political candidate, product or cause. And they want the FCC to rule, once and for all, that they’re in the clear.

Their argument, however, has drawn immense opposition from consumer advocates.

Submission + - Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy (spectator.co.uk) 1

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy

Even put together, wind and photovoltaic solar are supplying less than 1 per cent of global energy demand. From the International Energy Agency’s 2016 Key Renewables Trends, we can see that wind provided 0.46 per cent of global energy consumption in 2014, and solar and tide combined provided 0.35 per cent. Remember this is total energy, not just electricity, which is less than a fifth of all final energy, the rest being the solid, gaseous, and liquid fuels that do the heavy lifting for heat, transport and industry.

Their trick is to hide behind the statement that close to 14 per cent of the world’s energy is renewable, with the implication that this is wind and solar. In fact the vast majority — three quarters — is biomass (mainly wood), and a very large part of that is ‘traditional biomass’; sticks and logs and dung burned by the poor in their homes to cook with. Those people need that energy, but they pay a big price in health problems caused by smoke inhalation.

Submission + - ICE To Start 'Targeted' Site Visits To Catch H-1B Visa Fraud (dailycaller.com)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: They are coming for you = ICE To Start ‘Targeted’ Site Visits To Catch H-1B Visa Fraud

UCIS said it will do so by targeting worksites where fraud and abuse are commonplace, including sites that have a high ratio of H-1B workers compared to U.S. workers and ones where employers are petitioning for H-1B workers who work off-site at another company location.

Submission + - Reuters- Arctic ice loss driven by natural swings, not just mankind: study (reuters.com)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: Arctic ice loss driven by natural swings, not just mankind: study -
Natural swings in the Arctic climate have caused up to half the precipitous losses of sea ice around the North Pole in recent decades, with the rest driven by man-made global warming, scientists said on Monday.

The study indicates that an ice-free Arctic Ocean, often feared to be just years away, in one of the starkest signs of man-made global warming, could be delayed if nature swings back to a cooler mode.

Natural variations in the Arctic climate "may be responsible for about 30–50 percent of the overall decline in September sea ice since 1979," the U.S.-based team of scientists wrote in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Submission + - Guardian -Drastic cooling in North Atlantic beyond worst fears, scientists warn (theguardian.com)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: Climatologists say Labrador Sea could cool within a decade before end of this century, leading to unprecedented disruption.
Climatologists who have looked again at the possibility of major climate change in and around the Atlantic Ocean, a persistent puzzle to researchers, now say there is an almost 50% chance that a key area of the North Atlantic could cool suddenly and rapidly, within the space of a decade, before the end of this century.

Submission + - Climate variation proof involves chaotic planetary movements (wisc.edu)

Submitted by bricko
bricko writes: The finding, published Feb. 23, 2017 in the journal Nature, is important because it provides the first hard proof for what scientists call the “chaotic solar system,” a theory proposed in 1989 to account for small variations in the present conditions of the solar system. The variations, playing out over many millions of years, produce big changes in our planet’s climate — changes that can be reflected in the rocks that record Earth’s history.

The discovery promises not only a better understanding of the mechanics of the solar system, but also a more precise measuring stick for geologic time. Moreover, it offers a better understanding of the link between orbital variations and climate change over geologic time scales.

Slashdot Top Deals

Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

Close