It’s the year 2073, and the worst fears of modern life have been realized. Surveillance drones fill the burnt orange skies and militarized police roam the wrecked streets, while survivors hide away underground, struggling to remember a free and hopeful existence. In this ingenious mixture of visionary science fiction and speculative nonfiction, Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Asif Kapadia (Amy) transports us to a future foreshadowed by the terrifying realities of our present moment. Two-time Academy Award® nominee Samantha Morton (In America, Sweet and Lowdown, Minority Report) plays a survivor besieged by nightmare visions of the past—a past that happens to be our present, visualized through contemporary footage interconnecting today’s global crises of authoritarianism, unchecked big tech, inequality, and global climate change. 2073 is an urgent, unshakable vision of a dystopic future that could very well be our own.
Category: climatology
How Data Can Accelerate the Energy Transition
Using data and digitalization technologies could revolutionize industries and contribute to net-zero climate goals.
Scientists repurpose old solar panels to convert CO₂ exhaust into valuable chemicals
Centuries ago, alchemists worked furiously to convert the common metal lead to valuable gold. Today, chemists are repurposing discarded solar panels to create valuable organic compounds from carbon dioxide (CO2), a common greenhouse gas.
Significantly reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to mitigate the most devastating effects of climate change will require a large reduction in emissions as well as strategies designed to sequester emitted CO2 and other offending gases. While simply sequestering greenhouse gases would fulfill this goal, creating useful organic chemicals from waste CO2 is akin to generating valuable materials from trash.
A team of chemists from Yokohama National University, Electric Power Development Co., Ltd. and the Renewable Energy Research Center at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) recently decided to tackle two waste problems—excess CO2 emissions and decommissioned solar panels —in the pursuit of creating value-added organic chemicals. The team designed a study to determine if recycled components of discarded solar panels could be used to efficiently convert CO2 into useful, carbon-based compounds.
Harmful algae blooms have secret to success over other algaes—manipulating its environment
An alga that threatens freshwater ecosystems and is toxic to vertebrates has a sneaky way of ensuring its success: It suppresses the growth of algal competitors by releasing chemicals that deprive them of a vital vitamin.
The finding was reported in a new study from Cornell University, describing how the cyanobacteria Microcystis aeruginosa manipulates its environment to give itself advantages to take over the water column, leading to harmful algal blooms and mats in lakes during hot summers.
“Microcystis seems to be able to dominate more and more in the changing climate,” said Beth Ahner, professor in the Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering and corresponding author of the paper.
Precipitation extremes in 2024 Reviews Earth & Environment
2024 was one of the wettest years on record, witnessing record-breaking extreme precipitation events across the globe, several of which were compound events. Extreme rainfalls were unprecedented in arid regions and parts of the Global South, with severe monsoon rains and rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones causing severe casualties and economic losses.
Beyond shade: Researchers improve radiant cooling to make outdoor temperatures feel cooler
A team of UCLA engineers and researchers has developed a new technique to make it feel up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler outside while preserving a sense of safe and open space.
Featured in Nature Sustainability, the UCLA-led study demonstrated a new way to harness radiant cooling. Instead of relying on dark and windowless spaces, such as a tunnel, to create radiant cooling that raises safety concerns for public outdoor spaces, the new approach combines water-cooled aluminum panels and see-through, infrared-reflective thin polymer film, which allows both efficient cooling and visibility—a top priority, especially for residents in urban communities.
As climate change accelerates, extreme heat events are occurring with greater intensity and frequency, threatening the safety of people who spend significant time outdoors.
Cool solutions could head off the climate-damaging rush for air con
Demand for air conditioning will only grow as temperatures rise, sending energy consumption soaring. But there are some interesting ways to deal with the issue, finds Graham Lawton
