Tag Archives: carbon emissions

Boom Supersonic rolls out demonstrator aircraft in bid to break sound barrier

(Reuters) – Boom Supersonic on Wednesday unveiled its first demonstrator aircraft X-B1, which is scheduled to begin flight testing next year, in a milestone for the U.S. startup planning a commercial airliner that can conquer the sound barrier.

A handful of U.S. companies are vying to bring back supersonic passenger travel which died out with the Anglo-French Concorde’s retirement in 2003.

Today’s planned supersonic jets, while quieter and more fuel efficient than the Concorde, are under pressure from environmentalists and airports to meet noise levels and carbon emissions standards for conventional planes.

Denver-based Boom said in a release that XB-1 will undergo a carbon-neutral flight test program which is to start next year in Mojave, California.

XB-1 has a 71 foot-long (21.6 m) fuselage, a carbon-composite airframe and three GE-designed J85-15 engines, the statement said.

The aircraft’s first flight is targeted for the back half of 2021, with entry-into-service of the company’s supersonic airliner Overture expected by the end of the decade, Boom Chief Executive Blake Scholl said in an interview.

Overture, a supersonic airliner with 65 to 88 seats priced initially at business class fares, would cut transatlantic flying time in half to about three-and-half hours. The company says it has orders from Japan Airlines Co and Virgin Group.

Scholl said he expects the aviation market, hard-hit by the coronavirus pandemic, to rebound by the time Overture comes to market.

“The nice thing about supersonic jets is if you’re concerned about time on airplanes, less time is better,” he said.

Scholl founded Boom in 2014 after serving in leadership roles at Amazon and Groupon, according to the company’s website.

(Reporting By Allison Lampert; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Mercury released by permafrost thaw puts Yukon River fish at risk: study

By Yereth Rosen

ANCHORAGE (Reuters) – If carbon emissions continue at current rates, so much mercury will leach from thawing permafrost that fish in the Yukon River could become dangerous to eat within a few decades, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Current emissions rates threaten to trigger enough thaw release to drive mercury levels in Yukon River fish above federal safety guidelines by 2050, according to the study.

Mercury concentration in the Yukon is expected to double by the end of the century if carbon emissions continue at present rates, according to the study.

But if emissions are reduced in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, mercury concentrations will increase by only 14% by the end of the century, keeping levels in fish at or below safety guidelines, according to the study.

“A lot will depend on what we do in terms of response to climate change,” said Kevin Schaefer of the Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Center, the study’s lead author.

The study has implications beyond the indigenous communities in Alaska and Canada that depend on Yukon River fish for their income, diets and culture, Schaefer said.

The nearly 2,000-mile river is “a bellwether or a canary-in-the-coal mine kind of thing, an indicator of what might happen over the whole Arctic,” he said. Thaw-released mercury will work its way from the land to the river and ultimately, into the oceans, and thaw-released mercury in gaseous form will encircle the world, he said.

“What happens in the Yukon is going to affect the entire globe, not just the people who live on or around the Yukon River,” he said.

A 2018 study co-authored by Schaefer, in collaboration with partners from the U.S. Geological Survey and other institutions, estimated that Northern Hemisphere’s permafrost soils hold nearly twice as much stored mercury as is in all the rest of the world’s soils, the oceans and the atmosphere combined.

(Reporting by Yereth Rosen; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Christopher Cushing)

Hundreds of arrests as London climate-change activists vow more protests

By Simon Dawson Helena Williams

LONDON (Reuters) – London police have made nearly 500 arrests as climate-change protesters, labelled “uncooperative crusties” by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, continue two weeks of civil disobedience to push for more to be done to protect the environment.

The Extinction Rebellion group has been taking action in several countries including Britain, Germany, Austria, Australia, France and New Zealand as it lobbies politicians to go further in cutting carbon emissions.

The protests are the latest stage in a global campaign for tougher and swifter steps against climate change coordinated by the group, which rose to prominence in April when it snarled traffic in central London for 11 days.

Police said 152 arrests had been made on Tuesday, taking the total number over the two days to 471 as some protesters lay down in the road outside parliament whilst others dressed in colourful costumes or brought tree saplings to give to lawmakers.

Police have introduced stricter conditions, saying anyone wanting to continue the protest can only do so in Trafalgar Square.

“This action is necessary in order to prevent the demonstrations from causing serious disruption to the community,” police said. “Anyone who fails to comply with the condition is liable to arrest and prosecution.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson criticised the protesters when he attended an event late on Monday.

“I am afraid the security people didn’t want me to come along tonight because they said the road was full of uncooperative crusties,” he said, using a slang term for eco-protesters.

“They said there was some risk that I would be egged,” he added.

On Tuesday, some protesters hit back at him.

“It’s not helpful,” Diana Jones, from the southern English county of Sussex, told Reuters.

“We’re just ordinary people trying to express our deep disappointment with how slow the process of getting climate change action to occur is taking place, with the government not really listening, not really taking it forward on the scale it needs to be taken.”

The group wants Britain to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2025 rather than the government’s 2050 target.

(Additional reporting by Henry Nicholls and Ben Makori; writing by Costas Pitas; editing by Stephen Addison)