Crossposted from https://piefed.social/post/886955

Rocket fire, artillery shelling, and explosive devices, such as land mines, from both militaries have ravaged Ukraine’s landscapes and ecosystems. Over a third of all carbon emissions in Ukraine stem from warfare — the largest share of any sector in the country. Fighting has triggered destructive wildfires in heavily forested and agricultural grassland regions of eastern Ukraine. From February 2022 through September 2024, almost 5 million acres burned, nearly three-quarters of which are in or adjacent to the conflict zone.

This is why a collective of forestry scientists in Ukraine and abroad are working together to study war-driven wildfires and other forest destruction, as well as map unexploded ordnance that could spur degradation down the road. The efforts aim to improve deployment of firefighting and other resources to save the forests. It is welcome work, but far from easy during a war, when their efforts come with life-threatening consequences.

“The shelling, it’s an explosive wave, the fire makes everything unrecognizable,” a medic with the National Guard 13th Khartiya Brigade told the Institute for War & Peace Reporting in March. “When they get up, the forest is different, it has all changed.”

When you introduce war, you create fires that can’t be effectively extinguished. “You cannot fly aircraft to suppress fire with water because that aircraft will be shot down,” Maksym Matsala, a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, explained.

Forests and agricultural land are woven together across Ukraine, meaning wildfires also endanger the country’s food supply. Battle-sparked blazes destroy harvests and eliminate the trees that shelter cropland from drying winds and erosion that can lead to drought — leaving those on the military front lines and Ukrainian citizens at risk of food insecurity.

https://archive.ph/tadCp

Honestly I found this video in particular hard to watch.

It’s a gut-wrenching story and hits heavy because we all know that these companies will never be dismantled and the people within them investigated and ultimately held responsible.

You might have seen this video in your yt recommendations, I don’t usually watch veriatsium, but it’s worth a watch.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/64402908

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/64402838

TLDR:

• Theoretical and experimental evidence now strongly supports the possibility of energy extraction from spinning objects, including black holes.

• Creating a “black hole bomb” is no longer just science fiction—lab-scale analogs exist.

• Realizing a full-scale version (especially around a real black hole) is still far in the future, but the groundwork is being laid.

Main Idea

It is theoretically and experimentally possible to extract energy from spinning black holes, and under specific conditions, this could be amplified to create what’s known as a “black hole bomb.”

Theoretical Background

Penrose Process (1969)

• Proposed by Roger Penrose.

• Energy can be extracted from a spinning black hole via its ergosphere.

• The ergosphere is a region just outside the event horizon where spacetime is dragged due to the black hole’s spin.

• Inside this region:

  • Objects cannot remain stationary.
  • Energy can be gained if mass is ejected in the right way.
  • A spacecraft, for instance, could enter the ergosphere and leave with more energy than it had.

Zeldovich Effect (1971)

• Proposed by Yakov Zeldovich.
• Rotating bodies (not just black holes) can amplify electromagnetic waves via rotational energy.
• Predicted that light or sound aimed at a spinning object could gain energy upon reflection.
• Required extremely high rotational speeds—nearly relativistic—for noticeable effects.

Experimental Verification

Sound Waves (2020)

• Spinning absorptive disc increased the energy of low-frequency sound waves.
• Proved the Zeldovich effect using acoustics.

Electromagnetic Waves (2023–2024)

• A spinning aluminum cylinder with surrounding magnetic coils showed energy amplification of EM waves.
• Rotation direction affected energy gain/loss.
• First real-world proof of the superradiance concept from Zeldovich's theory.

Black Hole Bomb Concept (1972)

Key Mechanism

• Enclose a spinning black hole (or any rotating energy source) with a reflective mirror.

• Waves bounce between the mirror and ergosphere, each time gaining energy from the black hole’s spin.

• This creates a positive feedback loop:

  • Energy builds exponentially.
  • Could result in an enormous explosion (i.e., a “black hole bomb”).
  • Or energy could be released in a controlled burst, like a black hole plasma gun.

Recent Experiments (2024)

• Miniature black hole bomb analog was created:

  • A metal cylinder was rotated.
  • Surrounded by coils acting as magnetic mirrors.
  • EM waves were amplified exponentially when rotation threshold was met.
  • Verified theoretical predictions experimentally for the first time.

Challenges & Future Research

For Actual Black Holes

• Creating a real reflective mirror around a black hole is still theoretical.
• Stabilizing such a structure near a black hole is currently beyond our technology.

Next Step: Quantum Foam

• Researchers aim to attempt amplification using quantum vacuum energy (quantum foam).

• If successful:

  • Could demonstrate energy extraction from spacetime itself.
  • Would confirm another Zeldovich prediction.
  • Potential Nobel Prize-level breakthrough.

source

Vancouver, Canada heats a neighbourhood with sewage

Trump issued an executive order Thursday declaring that U.S. policy includes “creating a robust domestic supply chain for critical minerals derived from seabed resources to support economic growth, reindustrialization, and military preparedness.” He described seabed mining as both an economic and national security imperative necessary to counter China.

Increasingly, mining companies have been eager to scrape the ocean floor for cobalt, manganese, nickel and other metals that could help make batteries for cellphones and electric cars. But scientists have warned that the process could irreparably alter the seabed, kill extremely rare sea creatures that haven’t been named or studied, and — depending on how the metals are carried up to the surface — risk introducing metals into fisheries that many Pacific peoples rely upon.

The order aims to jump-start the industry that has been spearheaded by small Pacific nations like Nauru seeking economic growth, but has been facing growing pushback from Indigenous advocates who fear the lasting consequences of mining the deep sea.

“This extraction has no thought in mind about caring for resources,” said Solomon Kahoʻohalahala, who is Native Hawaiian and has been a vocal critic of the potential seabed industry at the United Nations. “It seems that there’s no vision for what we do in the long term,” he said. “It doesn’t speak to how we’re looking to take care of resources for the generations that are unborn. That’s a very different perspective that I hold as an Indigenous person.”

Trump officials are analyzing whether to remove federal protections for national monuments spanning millions of acres in the West, according to two people familiar with the matter and an internal Interior Department document, in order to spur energy development on public lands.

Interior Department aides are looking at whether to scale back at least six national monuments, said these individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because no final decisions had been made. The list, they added, includes Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante — national monuments spread across Arizona, California, New Mexico and Utah.

Interior Department officials are poring over geological maps to analyze the monuments’ potential for mining and oil production and assess whether to revise their boundaries, one individual said.

https://archive.ph/53hlu

Here at Ask NYT Climate, we usually dive into specific questions, from the greenest ways to dispose of pet waste to the most eco-friendly workout clothing. But because Tuesday is Earth Day, we’re tackling one of the big questions: What is the single best thing I can do for the planet?

We put this to half a dozen experts who shared their advice on how to be the best planetary citizen possible.

https://archive.ph/U3G0C