Science & Environment
Big cut in UK emissions needed, says watchdog
The UK needs to make huge cuts to its greenhouse gas emissions this decade to help the world avoid the worst impacts of rising temperatures, the government’s climate watchdog has said.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) says the UK has the technologies to do this, but meeting the goal would require much greater investment in renewable energy, electric cars and heat pumps.
While the UK has already cut its emissions by more than 50% since 1990, the CCC says it should extend this to 81% by 2035, which would make a “credible contribution” to the international goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.
A spokesperson said the government would carefully consider the CCC’s advice.
If the government commits to the suggested target, it would represent a significant advance on the UK’s current international pledge to cut emissions by 68% by 2030.
It is, however, broadly in line with the UK’s legally-binding carbon-cutting path towards net zero emissions by 2050.
These figures do not include emissions from products manufactured abroad and imported, nor those from international flights and shipping, in line with UN standards.
The UK’s relative success so far has been largely down to cleaning up electricity, with progress in other areas, such as home heating, proving more difficult.
But the CCC is confident that the UK’s targets are still possible.
“All the core technologies have got cheaper, and they keep getting cheaper, and that’s what gives us more and more confidence that we’ll be able to achieve this very ambitious level of emissions reductions,” Nigel Topping, member of the CCC, told BBC News Climate Editor Justin Rowlatt.
‘Climate leadership’ ahead of COP29
As part of global agreements to tackle climate change, countries have to submit new carbon-cutting targets by early next year.
But the government is expected to announce its new target early, at the upcoming UN climate conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan in November.
It hopes this will set the ball rolling and encourage other nations to ramp up their plans.
“Britain is back in the business of climate leadership,” a spokesperson for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said.
The focus of COP29, though, will be money.
There are hopes for a new deal on the funds that richer countries – largely responsible for global warming – should give to poorer nations to help them tackle climate change.
The CCC calls for the UK to commit its fair share of money in line with its leadership ambitions.
It also says that the government should improve preparations for the impacts of rising temperatures back home.
Science & Environment
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Jim Cramer’s top 10 things to watch in the stock market Friday
Hand bags are displayed at Macy’s Herald Square store on December 17, 2023 in New York City.
Kena Betancur | Corbis News | Getty Images
My top 10 things to watch Friday, Oct. 25
1. Wall Street is on pace for a higher open as the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note was little changed, hovering just below 4.2%. The bond market has been a thorn in the side of equities lately. The Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Dow enter Friday lower for the week.
2. The Federal Trade Commission picked up a huge win when a U.S. judge blocked the $8.5 billion merger between Tapestry, which owns brands including Coach and Kate Spade, and Capri Holdings, which owns Versace and Michael Kors. The judge said the tie-up would reduce competition in the market for so-called affordable luxury handbags.
3. Tesla shares have more room to run, even after posting their best day in more than a decade Thursday, up nearly 22% in response to earnings. The reason is Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker is much further along on self-driving technology than people think. Club holding Nvidia‘s chips help power Tesla’s self-driving systems.
Science & Environment
The Elements of Marie Curie review: Dava Sobel’s biography of Marie Curie shows how she helped women into science
The Elements of Marie Curie
Dava Sobel (Fourth Estate, UK; Grove Atlantic, US)
ON 7 November 1867, Marya Salomea Sklodowska was born in Warsaw, then part of the Russian Empire. She was the youngest of five children, and became known as “Manya” by her family.
She was a voraciously curious child who learned to read at the age of 4 and developed a fascination with science, thanks in large part to her father, a teacher of physics and mathematics. Even so, no one could…
Science & Environment
China’s steel exports expected to falter in 2025 as pain from tariffs spread
JIUJIANG, CHINA – JUNE 17: A worker manufactures seamless steel gas cylinders for export at the workshop of Sinoma Science & Technology (Jiujiang) Co., Ltd. on June 17, 2024 in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province of China.
Wei Dongsheng | Visual China Group | Getty Images
China’s steel exports will soon hit an eight-year high, before sweeping tariffs sink in and drag down the industry in 2025, industry watchers said.
As the biggest exporter of steel, China accounts for about 55% of the world’s steel production. The country’s steel exports have been surging this year and are expected to smash through the 100 million metric ton mark, matching levels last seen in 2016.
Strategists at Macquarie Capital predicted that China’s steel exports will reach 109 million tons this year, before declining to 96 million tons in 2025. Trade tariffs could further curb China’s steel exports, “albeit this may require a while to play out,” analysts from the the investment bank told CNBC.
Their predictions were echoed by analysts interviewed by Citigroup. China’s steel shipment is “skewed to the downside” from next year and onwards due anti-dumping measures, Ren Zhuqian, an analyst from steel consultancy Mysteel, said in a Citigroup note this month.
Foreign markets have been particularly crucial amid a domestic supply glut, as China’s economy grapples with a prolonged property crisis and slowdown in manufacturing activities.
In September, China’s steel exports jumped 26% from a year ago to 10.2 million tons, surpassing the 10-million ton a month benchmark that was last hit in June 2016. In the first nine months of the year, exports rose 21.2% year on year to 80.7 million tons, according to the customs data last week.
After hitting a record high of 112 million tons in 2015, the country’s steel exports had been on a multi-year slide before it started improving in 2020.
Steel export growth has accelerated ever since, propelled by a lack of domestic demand, even as overall export growth in China slowed sharply in September on the back of a series of disappointing data that pointed to a weak economy.
Anti-dumping ‘Wac-A-Mole’
Floods of cheap steel from China had sparked concern among its trading partners of unfair competition for domestic steelmakers. More and more have ramped up anti-dumping measures, including hefty tariffs.
Steel producers in importing countries have been “under massive strain,” said Chim Lee, senior analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, especially those in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
Thailand expanded anti-dumping duties to 31% on hot-rolled coil, high-strength steel used for critical infrastructure construction, from China in August. Mexico imposed a nearly 80% tariff on some Chinese steel imports late last year.
This month, Brazilian government imposed 25% tariffs on all steel products from the country. And Canada’s 25% surtax on Chinese steel products, which it announced in August, came into effect on Tuesday.
These kinds of protectionism measures tend to have short-lived impacts, said Tomas Gutierrez, head of data at consultancy Kallanish Commodities, as steel exporters resort to measures such as “circumvention,” shaking off the China-label by making transits through a third-party country.
We see a ‘whac-a-mole’ scenario: when one country starts to limit steel imports from China, Chinese steel producers are likely to redirect them to another country until that market, too, imposes new trade restrictions.
Chim Lee
Senior analyst, Economist Intelligence Unit
But Vietnam’s ongoing anti-dumping probe into hot-rolled coil could derail China’s export momentum as it “impacts a much higher volume of Chinese steel,” Gutierrez said.
Vietnam is a major importer of Chinese steel, consuming about 10% of the country’s steel exports in 2023, according to a Mysteel report. Other top destination markets include Thailand, India and Brazil.
Last month, Indian government ordered tariffs of between 12% and 30% on some steel products imported from China and Vietnam, escalating an anti-dumping duty it imposed on Chinese steels last year.
“We see a Whac-A-Mole scenario,” EIU’s Chim said. The tariffs lead Chinese steel producers to redirect to alternative markets, “until that market, too, imposes new trade restrictions.”
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration called for tripling tariffs on Chinese steel in April, and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said he could raise tariffs by 60% on Chinese goods if re-elected next month.
But the impact of these threats from Washington would be rather limited, as less than 1 percent of Chinese steel exports, worth $85 billion, were shipped to the U.S. in 2023.
Dwindling demand
For the first time in six years, the World Steel Association this month forecast that China’s domestic steel demand this year would account for less than half of global demand, citing “the ongoing downturn” in the country’s real estate sector.
China’s property-related steel demand may not see a substantial improvement until 2025 or 2026, EIU’s Chim said, as Beijing seeks to curb new housing supplies while clearing existing housing inventories.
New construction starts, the most steel intensive part of the property construction process, will continue to be very weak, Chim said.
Meanwhile, he added, state-led infrastructure investment, which has increasingly pivoted away from roads and railways to energy infrastructure, is unlikely to fill the gap left by home builders.
More domestic steelmakers had scaled back production given poor profitability on steel sales. Almost three-quarters of Chinese steel companies reported losses in the first six months this year, with many at risks of bankruptcy.
China’s production of medium-thick hot-rolled coil — a proxy of flat steel products — fell 5.4% from the prior month in September, and 6.4% on year, according to S&P Global, which cited official customs data.
On escalating trade tensions, a spokesperson for China’s customs administration said a majority of Chinese steel products were to meet domestic demand, before receding that the hard-rolled coils “would have broad appeal in overseas market,” due to continuous innovation and product upgrades in the industry.
A possible tax crackdown
Beijing’s possible crackdown on value-added tax could make matters worse for China’s steel industry.
This year, steel mills have been under pressure from regulators over allegations that they skirted taxes to make exports even cheaper.
Authorities had set up an investigative team to crack down on these “illegal” steel exports, Luo Tiejun, vice president of the state-backed Iron and Steel Industry Association, said in a meeting last week.
“If China really followed through [with the investigation], Chinese exports would be much less competitive and export volumes could come down,” Gutierrez said. But the government may not have the “confidence” for that yet.
Science & Environment
‘consistent and coherent energy policy’ matters
With a historic presidential election just around the corner, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth told CNBC’s Jim Cramer what kind of government action is important for his company.
“What really matters is consistent and coherent energy policy,” he said. “Affordable and reliable energy is essential to keeping inflation at a level that economies can handle — and that’s why we need investments, and we need stable policy to encourage that investment.”
Wirth stressed that energy is a vital part of the global economy, saying that if supplies are constrained by political actions, it can trigger inflationary reactions across the board. The price of energy, he continued, is “embedded in everything,” and he said other countries are looking to the U.S. for long term commitments about energy and investment in the global supply.
According to Wirth, Chevron is apolitical and tries to work with both parties. He said there are legislators from both sides of aisle — usually from energy producing states — that understand his company’s needs. He said Chevron wants to see people elected to office that believe in free markets, competition and “the economic vitality of this country.”
He also stressed that electricity demand in the U.S. will continue to grow, saying there will be a need for all kinds of power, including wind, solar and natural gas. He added that even though electric vehicles are becoming more popular, combustion engines remain important and produced en masse. And Chevron’s oil has purposes beyond gasoline, he continued. For example, he said, oil helps create petrochemicals which are used for a variety of manufacturing purposes, including to create materials for EVs.
“There’s room for all of it. We’re going to need all of it,” he said, “I want to see every solution that is economic and feasible come to bear.”
Science & Environment
What happened when a rock as big as London hit Earth?
A huge meteorite first discovered in 2014 caused a tsunami bigger than any in known human history and boiled the oceans, scientists have discovered.
The space rock, which was 200 times the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, smashed into Earth when our planet was in its infancy three billion years ago.
Carrying sledge hammers, scientists hiked to the impact site in South Africa to chisel off chunks of rock to understand the crash.
The team also found evidence that massive asteroid impacts did not bring only destruction to Earth – they helped early life thrive.
“We know that after Earth first formed there was still a lot of debris flying around space that would be smashing into Earth,” says Prof Nadja Drabon from Harvard university, lead author of the new research.
“But now we have found that life was really resilient in the wake of some of these giant impacts, and that it actually bloomed and thrived,” she says.
The meteorite S2 was much larger than the space rock we are most familiar with. The one that led to the dinosaurs’ extinction 66 million years ago was about 10km wide, or almost the height of Mount Everest.
But S2 was 40-60km wide and its mass was 50-200 times greater.
It struck when Earth was still in its early years and looked very different. It was a water world with just a few continents sticking out of the sea. Life was very simple – microorganisms composed of single cells.
The impact site in Eastern Barberton Greenbelt is one of the oldest places on Earth with remnants of a meteorite crash.
Prof Drabon travelled there three times with her colleagues, driving as far as possible into the remote mountains before hiking the rest of the way with backpacks.
Rangers accompanied them with machine guns to protect them against wild animals like elephants or rhinos, or even poachers in the national park.
They were looking for spherule particles, or tiny fragments of rock, left behind by impact. Using sledge hammers, they collected hundreds of kilograms of rock and took them back to labs for analysis.
Prof Drabon stowed the most precious pieces in her luggage.
“I usually get stopped by security, but I give them a big spiel about how exciting the science is and then they get really bored and let me through,” she says.
The team have now re-constructed just what the S2 meteorite did when it violently careened into Earth. It gouged out a 500km crater and pulverised rocks that ejected at incredibly fast speeds to form a cloud that circled around the globe.
“Imagine a rain cloud, but instead of water droplets coming down, it’s like molten rock droplets raining out of the sky,” says Prof Drabon.
A huge tsunami would have swept across the globe, ripped up the sea floor, and flooded coastlines.
The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami would have paled in comparison, suggests Prof Drabon.
All that energy would have generated massive amounts of heat that boiled the oceans causing up to tens of metres of water to evaporate. It would also have increased air temperatures by up to 100C.
The skies would have turned black, choked with dust and particles. Without sunlight penetrating the darkness, simple life on land or in shallow water that relied on photosynthesis would have been wiped out.
These impacts are similar to what geologists have found about other big meteorite impacts and what was suspected for S2.
But what Prof Drabon and her team found next was surprising. The rock evidence showed that the violent disturbances churned up nutrients like phosphorus and iron that fed simple organisms.
“Life was not only resilient, but actually bounced back really quickly and thrived,” she says.
“It’s like when you brush your teeth in the morning. It kills 99.9% of bacteria, but by the evening they’re all back, right?” she says.
The new findings suggest that the big impacts were like a giant fertiliser, sending essential ingredients for life like phosphorus around the globe.
The tsunami sweeping the planet would also have brought iron-rich water from the depths to the surface, giving early microbes extra energy.
The findings add to a growing view among scientists that early life was actually helped by the violent succession of rocks striking Earth in its early years, Prof Drabon says.
“It seems that life after the impact actually encountered really favourable conditions that allowed it to bloom,” she explains.
The findings are published in the scientific journal PNAS.
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