Month: March 2019

Enlarge (credit: Caetano Candal Sato)

It sounds like a drastic course of action: inject stuff high into Earth’s atmosphere to reflect a little sunlight and help counteract global warming. Then again, injecting a bunch of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and warming the planet was pretty drastic, too.

The key to thinking sensibly about this “solar geoengineering” is to avoid the extremes and consider the most plausible use scenarios. That means we can ignore things like using solar geoengineering to cancel out all warming while still emitting as much CO₂ as we please—it simply isn't plausible.

There are a number of reasons to take it off the table. There’s the fact that the cooling influence of atmospheric injections is only temporary—quitting quickly reveals the full force of the warming you’re offsetting. There’s also the fact that this scheme only counteracts warming—the acidification of the oceans would continue apace. And for another example, the mismatch in physics between solar-geoengineering-driven cooling and greenhouse warming means that precipitation can decline even if temperature stays the same.

Enlarge / University of New Mexico Taos Campus solar photovoltaic array. (credit: Getty Images)

On Tuesday, New Mexico's state House of Representatives passed the "Energy Transition Act," which commits the state to getting 100 percent of its energy from carbon-free sources by 2045. The act passed the state Senate last week. Now the bill awaits the signature of New Mexico's Governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham.

Governor Grisham's office told GreenTechMedia on Tuesday that she would "sign the bill as quickly as possible."

The bill includes interim goals mandating that 50 percent of the state's energy mix be renewable by 2030 and 80 percent of the energy mix be renewable by 2040. The state currently buys no nuclear power, which is not renewable but qualifies as a zero-carbon energy source. The bill passed yesterday does not require that 100 percent of the state's energy be renewable by 2045; it just specifies that no electricity come from a carbon-emitting source.

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  When you first visit the site, you get this simple interface. [credit: Samuel Axon ]

Mozilla has publicly launched its Firefox Send file-sharing service after a lengthy testing period. It allows you to send files via a link to anyone and set conditions for access like a time period or number of downloads before the file expires.

Firefox Send can handle files as large as 2.5GB. When the Test Pilot period for the service began in August of 2017, the limit was 1GB; that limit still applies until you sign in with your Firefox account (opening an account is free).

You can set a limit to how many times the file can be downloaded before it is deleted from the servers: one, two, three, four, five, 20, 50, or 100 times. You can also set a time limit before deletion—seven days, one day, one hour, or five minutes. Finally, you can set a password of your choice for access to the file. After you go through this brief process, you'll get a link to send to the recipient to download the file.

Enlarge (credit: Verizon)

Verizon will launch its 5G mobile service in April, but it will only be available in two cities at first, and customers will have to pay an extra $10 a month to access it.

One bit of good news is that Verizon won't apply throttling (or "de-prioritization") to the 5G service, but that may change later on, and slowdowns will continue to apply to Verizon's existing 4G service.

Verizon today announced that its 5G network will go live on April 11 in "select areas of" Chicago and Minneapolis and eventually hit "more than 30" US cities in 2019. To use the 5G service at launch, you'll have to pay $50 for "the Verizon-exclusive 5G Moto Mod," which can be attached to a Motorola Moto Z3, a phone that Verizon sells for $480.

Enlarge / A Lion Air Boeing 737 MAX 8 crashed in October 2018; a software fix based on the investigation was delayed by the US government shutdown. It's possible that the fix could have prevented the crash of a similar aircraft in Ethiopia on March 10, 2019. (credit: PK-REN, Jakarta, Indonesia )

Update: President Donald Trump announced Wednesday afternoon that the Federal Aviation Administration will order all 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9 planes be grounded.

"We’re going to be issuing an emergency order of prohibition to ground all flights of the 737 Max 8 and the 737 Max 9 and planes associated with that line," Trump said. "Pilots have been notified, airlines have been all notified. Airlines are agreeing with this. The safety of the American people and all people is our paramount concern."

Original story: Despite two crashes within six months, a growing number of grounding orders worldwide for the Boeing 737 MAX, and a number of recent complaints from US pilots over problems with the aircraft's automatic trim controls, the Federal Aviation Administration continues to allow the 737 MAX to fly. "The United States Federal Aviation Administration is not mandating any further action at this time, and based on the information currently available, we do not have any basis to issue new guidance to operators," a Boeing spokesperson said in a March 12 statement.

Enlarge (credit: SXSW)

AUSTIN, Texas—In 2018, Elon Musk showed up at South by Southwest to inspire humanity. In 2019, "Elon Musk" showed up to destroy it.

“By the way, my accent? It’s correct," "Musk" told a sold out theater on Friday night toward the beginning of "his" SXSW Comedy keynote, Elon Musk: The Frightening and Awful Future of Humanity. "I’m South African and also Canadian, so I’m evil but kind of shy about it.”

Elon Musk‘s plot to destroy SXSW failed last night ... for now ...#SXSW2019 #sxswcomedy #redplanetredherring

: @withreservation pic.twitter.com/Ts6vbMHIvs

— James Adomian (@JAdomian) March 9, 2019

If you're thinking something looks a little different about "Musk" at SXSW 2019, it's not the choice of sweater. "When I’m doing an impression, I’m most interested in making fun of folks who are already larger-than-life personalities: bombastic figures, figures with giant egos, and maybe bigger blind spots—I love that," "Elon," aka comedian James Adomian, tells Ars. "That’s what makes it interesting to me and the audience. I’m not going to be doing a Robert De Niro impression. Obviously, sometimes you do an impression someone else has done before, but you want your own take on it, and that involves finding the craziest thing about them and exaggerating it—that’s where the comedy is. It’d be boring if I didn’t pick big targets."