North from Tower
The price of green energy | DW Documentary
Electric vehicles, wind and solar power: The age of fossil fuels is grinding to a halt. At the same time, demand for other raw materials is rising. It’s a billion-dollar business, with serious environmental consequences.
These days, rare-earth metals like graphite, copper and lithium are key components in many hi-tech products. These include not just smartphones and laptops, but electric vehicles and wind power plants, as well. Despite being key to an environmentally-friendlier future, the extraction process for these rare metals often completely fails to take into account workers’ health and safety or basic environmental standards.
China is a market leader in the mining and trading of rare-earth metals. The negative consequences can be seen in places like the province of Heilongjiang. Here, toxic residues from the graphite extraction process can be found several kilometers from the graphite mines. Copper and lithium, used in the production of batteries, are mined on a huge scale in Chile and Bolivia.
The global trade in raw materials is a burgeoning billion-dollar business. But reserves are finite. That’s why consumption should be reduced and recycling quotas for these sought-after resources increased.
USDA confirms HPAI in two additional states, increase in surveillance
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has confirmed the presence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in birds in two additional states — a flock of commercial broiler chickens in Fulton County, Kentucky, and a backyard flock of mixed species birds in Fauquier County, Virginia.
Last week, the first case was confirmed in a commercial turkey flock in Dubois County, Indiana. This was the first confirmed case of HPAI in commercial poultry in the United States since 2020.
Passing by Shepards
Always enjoy this view heading into Greenville with the Heldeberg Mountains high above.
Solar (Sun) Intensity By Location and Time – Engaging Data
This visualization shows the amount of solar intensity (also called solar insolation and measured in watts per square meter) all across the globe as a function of time of day and day of year. This is an idealized calculation as it does not take into account reductions in solar intensity due to cloud cover or other things that might block the sun from reaching the earth (e.g dust and pollution).