With New Factory, Tesla Ventures Into Solar Power Storage for Home and Business

In recent years, the fast-growing popularity of solar panels has intensified a central challenge: how to use the sun’s energy when it isn’t shining.

Now, Tesla Motors, the maker of luxury electric sedans, says it is taking a big step toward meeting that challenge with a fleet of battery systems aimed at homeowners, businesses and utilities. The company’s foray into the solar storage market will include rechargeable lithium-ion battery packs that can mount to a home garage wall as well as battery blocks large enough to smooth out fluctuations in the grid.

“We’ve obviously been working on building a world-class battery, a superefficient and affordable way to store energy,” said Khobi Brooklyn, a Tesla spokeswoman. “It’s just that we’ve been putting that battery in cars most of the time.”

To herald its ambitions in the field, the company scheduled an event Thursday night at its design studio in Hawthorne, Calif., with Elon Musk, its chief executive, presiding.

In a news conference before the event, Mr. Musk said the consumer battery, called the Powerwall, would sell for $3,500, and was derived from the batteries that Tesla uses in its Model S vehicles. The device, which Tesla will start producing later this year, will be installed by licensed technicians.

The batteries will be connected to the Internet and can be managed by Tesla from afar. Customers can connect up to nine battery packs to store larger amounts of power.

“If you have the Tesla Powerwall, if the utility goes down, you still have power,” Mr. Musk said. He added: “The whole thing is an integrated system that just works.”

Energy and auto analysts have generally responded positively to Tesla’s move. “Elon thinks that there’s a long-term gain to be made or a long-term play not only in electric cars but also in electric energy storage — and he’s probably right,” said Karl Brauer, an analyst at Kelley Blue Book. “There’s a universal application for portable energy and storable energy that goes to everybody. It’s really just a matter of getting the business model together.”

Tesla’s announcement comes as energy companies are moving in the same direction. Sungevity, a leading solar installer, announced a partnership this week with Sonnenbatterie, a smart energy storage provider in Europe, to begin offering their systems to its customers. NRG, one of the largest independent power producers in the United States, is also developing storage products.

“We have to be in this space,” said Steve McBee, chief executive of NRG Home. “If your goal is to build a meaningful solar business that is durable over time, you have to assume that that solar business is going to morph into a solar-plus-storage solution. That will be mandatory at some point.”

Still, the market is young and, some experts say, Tesla has the advantage of reach and scale — as well as a $5 billion battery production plant under construction near Reno, Nev., that it calls the Gigafactory.

“Tesla’s not the only one doing it, but Tesla can bring it to a wider audience than most other people can,” said Shayle Kann, a vice president at GTM Research, which tracks clean-tech industries. “Once they get the Gigafactory up and going, they will be able to deploy on a scale that no one will quite be able to rival. So they may have a cost advantage in that.”

Tesla has been refining its storage business for a few years, working with a number of companies including Jackson Family Wines, the electric utility Southern California Edison and the installation company SolarCity, of which Mr. Musk is chairman and whose founders, Lyndon and Peter Rive, are his cousins.

The Tesla systems are designed for different scales. The home battery, roughly four feet by three feet, would allow solar customers to have power in the event of an failure, draw from it when utility rates are higher and use more of the electricity their panels produce, easing reliance on the grid.

For utilities, they can help compensate for fluctuations from intermittent sources like solar and wind — whose production can dip sharply or stop altogether — as well as meet demand during peak periods.

And for businesses, they can help lower demand for electricity from the grid, which in turn can lower costly demand charges.

Amazon Web Services, which manages cloud-based computing systems and has a goal to derive all its energy from renewable sources, is beginning a pilot program with Tesla in Northern California.

“Batteries are important for both data center reliability and as enablers for the efficient application of renewable power,” James Hamilton, distinguished engineer at Amazon Web Services, said through a spokeswoman. “They help bridge the gap between intermittent production, from sources like wind, and the data center’s constant power demands.”

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Climate change 'could make one in six species extinct by end of the century'

If the world continues down the existing path of carbon dioxide emissions, the rate of mass extinction will not just get worse for every 1C extra rise in global average temperatures, it will actually accelerate, the study discovered.

The endemic plants and animals of South America, Australia and New Zealand are particularly at risk of rising temperatures because for many of these rare species there is nowhere else to go when their only homeland becomes uninhabitable, scientists found.

On current climate projections, which would see global average temperatures reach about 4C higher than pre-industrial times by 2100, the study found that 16 per cent of species in the world would face the risk of imminent extinction purely because of climatic factors, rather than from habitat loss, environmental degradation or ocean acidification.

Critically endangered species

 

Even if international attempts to curb greenhouse gas emissions are successful by keeping the inevitable rise in global average temperatures to below the 2C “safe” threshold, the global extinction risk would still increase from its current 2.8 per cent to 5.2 per cent, said Mark Urban of the University of Connecticut, the author of the new report in the journal Science.

“We don’t know how long these extinctions will take, but these species will be committed to extinction. They will be on the train towards extinction, but we don’t know when it will arrive,” Dr Urban told The Independent.

“This is purely the contribution to extinction risk from the changing climate. Today, the biggest threats are from habitat loss and environmental degradation, but in a warmer world the climate will become more and more important,” he said.

The American Pike. Regions of North America and Europe showed up to have the lowest extinction risks (AP)
The study was a meta-analysis of 131 previous studies into the extinction risks posed by climate change. It was an attempt to build a global picture across a range of animals and plants living on all continents, and on both land and sea.

“We can look across all the studies and use the wisdom of many scientists. When we put it all together we can account for the uncertainty in each approach, and look for common patterns and understand how the moderators in each type of study affect outcomes,” Dr Urban said.

Read more:
Our planet’s most beautiful landscapes – after we made them ugly
5 charts that show how much we’re killing our planet
California governor orders drastic cut in greenhouse gas emissions

Stephen Cornelius, chief adviser on climate change at WWF-UK, said: “This study further highlights the urgency of taking strong action to address climate change and that ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option.”

The analysis revealed that the regions of the world where endemic species are most vulnerable to climate change, such as Australia and New Zealand, were actually the least studied in term of the threats posed by global warming, he said.

Global average temperatures reach about 4C higher than pre-industrial times by 2100, according to predictions (Getty Images)
The most studied regions of North America and Europe showed up to have the lowest extinction risks, at 5 per cent and 6 per cent respectively, while South America had the highest extinction risk of 23 per cent, with Australia and New Zealand following with a 14 per cent extinction risk each.

“One of the biggest contributions to risk in South America and New Zealand is that they have a relatively large number of endemic species with small distributions,” Dr Urban said.

“With Australia and New Zealand, we’re also looking at land masses that are relatively small and isolated, so that the possibility of a species shifting to a new habitat simply doesn’t exist,” Dr Urban said.

Raising temperatures will present particular problems for mountain animals and plants that have evolved to live within a certain range of climate extremes. As it gets warmer, they can move higher and higher but eventually there will run out of habitable space.

Some species will be able to disperse more easily than others at the local climate changes, while for others the habitat range will become smaller and smaller, leading to a point where breeding populations are no longer viable, the study said.

“Extinction risks from climate change are expected not only to increase but to accelerate for every degree rise in global temperature,” Dr Urban said.

“The signal of climate change-induced extinctions will become increasingly apparent if we do not act now to limit future climate change,” he said.

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Image of Pluto from Nasa's New Horizons probe reveals planet may have polar cap

The pictures taken by the craft’s Lorri telescope from a distance of over 100 million km appear to show markings and different shades of light on the planet’s surface, indicating that the planet may support nitrogen ice.

According to experts, this is exciting because it is not common to find such variations on a planet’s surface from this distance.

Image of Pluto from Nasa's New Horizons probe reveals planet may have polar cap

The pictures taken by the craft’s Lorri telescope from a distance of over 100 million km appear to show markings and different shades of light on the planet’s surface, indicating that the planet may support nitrogen ice.

According to experts, this is exciting because it is not common to find such variations on a planet’s surface from this distance.

The scrapping of Sky's dedicated 3D channel shows that gimmicks are a big turn-off

Back in 2008, the red button’s uses were multiple and mysterious, but now that it’s possible to check the football scores on a phone, it’s far less intriguing. Will the latest curved screens ever become a standard part of home entertainment? Perhaps, but the history of TV gimmicks makes one thing clearer than UltraHD – as long as the picture moves and the sound is audible, what we watch on TV matters much more than how.

David Simon has got his wires crossed

Even before Freddie Gray died from injuries sustained in police custody, people who’d never set foot in Baltimore could claim an in-depth knowledge of its flawed civic institutions, thanks to HBO series The Wire. But when The Wire’s patch became the focus of international news, some found the status quo-supporting commentary of its creator David Simon disappointing. In a Monday night blog post, Simon called protesters’ actions "an affront to that man’s memory".

Disappointing: The Wire creator David Simon (Getty)
Is his support for traditional law and order really surprising? While The Wire was clear-sighted in its depiction of many urban ills, police brutality was rarely one. Now that this is a live-wire issue in America it seems, on at least one aspect of Baltimore, Simon’s first-hand experience falls short.

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Review: Gurrumul, an Aboriginal Singer, Makes U.S. Debut

There’s something preternaturally soothing about the voice of Gurrumul, an Australian aboriginal singer and songwriter who made his United States debut on Wednesday night at SubCulture. It seems to arrive from a distance, high and serene, with a hint of reediness and a humble quaver, proffering melodies like lullabies.

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu was born blind and grew up in an indigenous culture with a rich oral history on Elcho Island off the north coast of Australia. Nearly all of his songs are in his native language, Yolngu, and they often refer to traditional lore and to relationships with family and nature; “Djilawurr,” a song about a tropical bird, rose to a final falsetto birdcall. Gurrumul has been reworking his heritage for the wider world since the 1990s, when he was a musician in the aboriginal-rock band Yothu Yindi. The release of his solo debut album, “Gurrumul,” in 2008, made him a major star in Australia: performing in concert halls, appearing with orchestras, singing for heads of state, getting remixed. His music is as approachable as it is otherworldly.

It’s gentle folk-rock that was played at SubCulture by Gurrumul on acoustic guitar with a three-man band. The chords and tunings were Western, and the tunes were straightforward and symmetrical. Gurrumul, who plays his guitar left-handed and upside-down, and the guitarist Ben Hauptmann picked intertwined parts over Tony Floyd’s restrained drumming and Michael Hohnen’s string bass. Gurrumul barely spoke onstage; Mr. Hohnen, who’s also the band’s producer, said that Gurrumul is shy and speaks little English. So Mr. Hohnen introduced the songs with brief explanations. That left Gurrumul to perform as a purely musical figure, almost meditative, sitting in stillness but for his fingers and mouth and crooning in a language few of the listeners understood, but giving every melody an inner glow.

Along with his aboriginal legacy, another influence on Gurrumul is clearly the hymns of a missionary church on the island. Mr. Hohnen announced that the band’s next album, which it has been working on in New York City, is a gospel album, and Gurrumul sang one Christian song with deep reverence. A country lilt slipped into some of the band’s (slightly) faster songs, while a song that Mr. Hohnen said was based on an aboriginal dance inspired by cats turned out, disappointingly, to settle into reggae. But the band’s newest material — scheduled for an album a few years from now, Mr. Hohnen said — hinted at expanding ambitions. It was a song about a crow (with audience participation encouraged) that created a mesh of echoing guitar patterns and a stop-start beat behind a rougher, less westernized melody — a more adventurous way to bring aboriginal music into the 21st century.

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Commonly Used Chemicals Come Under New Scrutiny

A top federal health official and hundreds of environmental scientists on Friday voiced new health concerns about a common class of chemicals used in products as varied as pizza boxes and carpet treatments.

The concerted public campaign renews a years-old debate about a class of chemicals known as poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, or PFASs. After studies showed that some PFASs lingered in people’s bodies for years, and appeared to increase the risks of cancer and other health problems, the chemical manufacturer DuPont banned the use of one type of PFAS in its popular Teflon products, and other companies followed suit.

At issue now are replacement chemicals developed by those manufacturers and used in thousands of products, including electronics, footwear, sleeping bags, tents, protective gear for firefighters and even the foams used to extinguish fires.

The companies assert that the alternatives are safe and vehemently contest the scientists’ contentions, pointing to extensive studies conducted in the last decade or so.

But two separate salvos fired on Friday question whether enough research has been done to justify the chemical industry’s confidence in the safety of this crop of PFASs.

“Research is needed to find safe alternatives for all current uses of PFASs,” Linda S. Birnbaum, the head of the national toxicology program for the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in a commentary piece published Friday in Environmental Health Perspectives. “The question is, should these chemicals continue to be used in consumer products in the meantime, given their persistence in the environment?”

The journal, published by the National Institutes of Health, devoted several pages to the issue, with articles from researchers and from the industry trade group.

A statement signed by 200 international scientists — environmental health experts, toxicologists, epidemiologists and others — urged countries around the world to restrict the use of PFASs.

“We call on the international community to cooperate in limiting the production and use of PFASs,” the statement said.

In a counterpoint, the American Chemistry Council, the industry trade association, argued that the statement ignored the fact that such chemicals use “essential technology for many aspects of modern life,” and that tests, reviewed by the Environmental Protection Agency, concluded that these alternatives were safer than the chemicals they were replacing.

The PFAS family of chemicals represents an important part of DuPont’s $34.7 billion in sales last year.

Thomas H. Samples, the company’s head of risk management for the division that manufactures these chemicals, rejected the scientists’ concerns.

“We don’t dismiss the right of folks to debate this,” Mr. Samples said. “But we just believe based on the 10-year history of extensive studies done on the alternatives, that the regulatory agencies have done their job of determining that these things are safe for their intended uses.”

This business sector, the fluoro-technology industry, is considerable and reached $19.7 billion in sales in 2013, according to the most recent estimate from the FluoroCouncil, a division of the American Chemistry Council.

This class of chemicals is known for its durability. PFASs have strong water-resistant properties. Cardboard pizza boxes treated with the chemicals, for example, stay sturdy even when grease seeps into them.

But some of these same features worry environmental health specialists because traces of the chemicals linger and have been detected in the bloodstream of a large segment of the population, although typically at low levels. In some cases, detectable levels of the older class chemicals have been declining as major manufacturers have developed alternatives they say are safer.

Some researchers cite lingering concerns about a chemical spill more than a decade ago. The health of residents of Parkersburg, W.Va., is still monitored related to a spill of an older form of PFAS from a nearby chemical plant. A class-action lawsuit accused DuPont, which owned the plant, of knowingly contaminating the residents’ groundwater, and the company faces new accusations, in a separate report being issued Friday by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, that it is not living up to the terms of a court settlement.

Mr. Samples, from DuPont, which is based in Delaware, disputed any suggestion that it was not complying with those terms.

But Dr. Paul Brooks, who helped conduct a study in the West Virginia case that found probable links between the chemical and health issues like thyroid disease and kidney cancer, said DuPont needed to do more to ensure that local residents were participating in the monitoring program. He said he was not convinced that the alternative chemicals that DuPont and other companies were selling would eliminate the health threat.

“When you have something that is a first cousin or brother-in-law to a chemical that we are certain is carcinogenic, you have to somehow prove that it is safe before you use it — that it is not injurious,” he said. “You just have to be cautious.”

Some environmental scientists point to a chemical called GenX as an example of a newer but questionable alternative. Some studies have linked GenX to short-term symptoms like eye and skin irritation in humans, as well as liver damage in animals. Mr. Samples, of DuPont, which manufacturers GenX, said that the tests involved exposing animals to levels so concentrated that they were intended to cause health complications. He also said the chemical was used in industrial settings, not as an ingredient in consumer products.

Still, environmental and health specialists are urging consumers to avoid products containing PFASs “whenever possible.”

“It’s likely they’re going to have some health effects, it just may take us a while to figure out what it is,” said Thomas F. Webster, a professor of environmental health at Boston University’s school of public health who was an author of a paper seeking more scrutiny of PFASs. “It might take five or 10 years to really do the research.”

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Sinosphere Blog: Hong Kong Kidnapping Revives Memories of Other High-Profile Crimes

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Question Time election debate: Watch Ed Miliband slip on David Cameron's sweat

As he exited the stage to a rare round of applause – waving to the hostile audience who had grilled him for half an hour – this happened:

What made him trip? "He slipped on David Cameron’s sweat," explained the Labour leader’s campaign chief Lucy Powell afterwards.

You might think she was joking, but a closer look at pictures of the Prime Minister’s sweaty face suggests a politician may have actually given a right answer for once.

David Cameron struggled to keep the sweat away in a heated exchange with a hostile audience in Leeds

It could have been so much worse for Mr Miliband – he could have emulate former Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s famous ‘beach moment':

The night started well for Mr Miliband as he walked confidently up some steps – albeit with some guidance.

Ed Miliband is guided up the steps at the Leeds Art Gallery It all went downhill from there. At least he didn’t end up on his backside though – that would have handed the right-wing press a week’s worth of front-pages.

Read more: How the three leaders compared
QUESTION TIME ELECTION LEADERS’ DEBATE – AS IT HAPPENED
Miliband: No deal with the SNP to become PM

The #Milistumble, as it was dubbed on Twitter, quickly became the most-talked about moment of his whole 30-minute interrogation and sparked a flurry of jokes on social media.

BREAKING Culprit responsible for Ed Miliband slipping off stage comes forward… #SunNation pic.twitter.com/1q7DdsQU4l

— Tim Gatt (@TimGatt) April 30, 2015

 

Have you had an accident that wasn’t you’re fault a trip? A slip? Call Injury lawyers for you for more info @Ed_Miliband

— Matt Scotney (@MattScotney) April 30, 2015

 

If he succeeds in his mission to become Prime Minister, they may have to build a ramp outside Number 10 Downing Street.

 

In pictures: Ed Miliband trying to look normal

 

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The Independent has got together with May2015.com to produce a poll of polls that produces the most up-to-date data in as close to real time as is possible.

Click the buttons below to explore how the main parties’ fortunes have changed:

All data, polls and graphics are courtesy of May2015.com. Click through for daily analysis, in-depth features and all the data you need.  (All historical data used is provided by UK Polling Report)

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Books of The Times: Review: Kate Atkinson’s ‘A God in Ruins’ Offers Lives Skipping Among Eras

In a churlish note at the end of her subtly fine new novel, “A God in Ruins,” Kate Atkinson talks about an author’s right to remain uncertain about what she has accomplished until she has actually done it. It’s “as if there is a part of the writing brain that knows what it’s doing and another part that is woefully ignorant,” she says.

Readers drawn to Ms. Atkinson’s maverick ambitions need to absorb her work in that same spirit, not entirely sure of her objectives until they have all been achieved. She builds each book so differently that a new one is best approached with a wide-open mind, even if, like “A God in Ruins,” it has links to the hugely successful, high-concept hit that preceded it.

In “Life After Life” (2013), her best and best-known book, Ms. Atkinson gave an Englishwoman named Ursula Todd a succession of alternative life stories: She’s born at the same time to the same parents in each, but everything else is mutable. Some lives end with her death in infancy, others bring her into the horrors of the Blitz. That book so brilliantly sequenced Ursula’s different lives that gimmickry just wasn’t an issue. Ms. Atkinson didn’t like having to explain what “Life After Life” was “about,” either.

But she is willing to call “A God in Ruins” the story of Ursula’s many possible lives, since Ursula figures in it. The main focus, though, is on her younger brother, Teddy, and his life, which is also inextricably connected with World War II. Teddy grows up to command Royal Air Force Halifax bombers, and while his dramatic airborne experiences combine to form the book’s centerpiece, war is not this novel’s true subject. It’s about Paradise lost and fiction’s ways of allowing us to imagine what we cannot know. This elaborate multigenerational family story is filled with ascents and descents, growing up and growing old, kindness and cruelty. It’s also a tale of an uncommonly good man who has willed himself to be one. It took a lot of evil to make Teddy so unwaveringly generous.

Ms. Atkinson does not play the same kinds of flagrant time tricks here that made “Life After Life” so dramatic. She needn’t erase one story to tell the next. But she does skip easily back and forth among decades, so that Teddy’s boyhood in the 1920s or Queen Elizabeth II’s 2012 Diamond Jubilee are both within easy reach of any other point in the book’s timeline. Teddy as a young father to his only child, Viola (who deserves a name resembling “vile”), is never far from Teddy, 60 years later, being forced into a nursing home by an adult daughter who can’t wait to unload him. “The Ancient Mariner was lucky,” thinks Viola at her most odious, which is really saying something. “His albatross was already dead before it was hung round his neck.”

Neither Viola’s story nor anyone else’s is told in strict chronological order. Ms. Atkinson’s method this time is more circular, which succeeds in making it much more enticing than a straightforward chronology. She first introduces Teddy as a man in uniform, “just one of the many,” in 1944, without explaining his circumstances. Then she cuts to the Todd family in 1925, still intact at their redoubt, Fox Corner, “an Arcadian dream” that will later exist only as an idyllic memory. In keeping with her general sense of mischief, Ms. Atkinson has changed various details about the characters from their “Life After Life” versions.

Then it’s on to “The Adventures of Augustus,” a children’s book that appropriates Teddy’s life and has been written by his Aunt Izzie, who drove an ambulance during World War I and is the family eccentric, as well as the family vamp. And from there it’s a straight leap to 1980, where Viola, at 28, is living on a commune with a lapsed aristocrat named Dominic, who fancies himself an artist and has severe, trippy mood swings. “The term ‘bipolar’ came too late for Dominic,” Ms. Atkinson writes about the man who has fathered two children, a boy named Sun and a girl named Moon, with Viola. “He was dead by then.”

All of this unfolds, and we haven’t even met Viola’s mother, Nancy, who spends the war semi-engaged to Teddy while fully engaged decrypting German codes at Bletchley Park. But Nancy, like the others here, is met glancingly at first, to the point where we misapprehend her character. Only as the book unfolds is each character more fully revealed. Ms. Atkinson’s artistry in making this happen is marvelously delicate and varied. Who can blame her for not wanting to make it thuddingly obvious by explaining exactly how and why she pulls these characters’ strings?

Structure, and its way of coalescing from the seemingly casual into the deliberate, has been a main attraction in other Atkinson books. In this one, the main attraction is Teddy, and the way his glorious, hard-won decency withstands so many tests of time. Everything about his boyhood innocence is reshaped by his wartime ordeals, which are rendered with terrifying authenticity thanks to the author’s research into real bombers’ recollections. And after the war he re-enters a world in which he can take nothing for granted: not his wife’s truthfulness, his daughter’s humanity, his grandchildren’s safety or survival skills. Everywhere he looks he sees life’s fragility, and everything he does is an act of preservation.

As for that, Ms. Atkinson has one huge trick up her sleeve, but she saves it for the book’s final moments to make it that much more devastating. She gets you to that final moment on faith and through writerly seduction. Just know that every salient detail in “A God in Ruins,” from the silver hare adorning Teddy’s pram to the queen’s Diamond Jubilee, is here for a fateful reason.

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Expo 2015: World-class icons from the Eiffel Tower to the Space Needle

Previous Expos and World’s Fairs have ended up with a particular icon as their legacy – a symbol that has outlasted the event itself. Perhaps Expo 2015’s most memorable and long-lasting building will be Wolfgang Buttress’s Hive, the UK pavilion. Or the Tree Of Life, a 30 metre-tall showpiece sculpture by Marco Balich, which sits in a lake outside the Italian pavilion. Let’s hope it’s something that can compete with these historic highlights.

Eiffel Tower, Paris, France

Built for: Exposition Universelle 1889

La Tour Eiffel (toureiffel.paris) is the best known of the World’s Fair icons. Its metallic heft has become a shorthand for Paris – not bad for something considered a monstrosity when it was built for the 1889 Exposition Universelle. It was originally intended to be pulled down after 20 years, but Gustave Eiffel’s 300-metre iron pylon defied the odds, and today no first-timer would dream of visiting Paris without seeing this huge structure for themselves.

Eiffel Tower (Getty) Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, United States

Built for: Panama-Pacific Exposition 1915

Surrounded by lagoons and covered in vines, the evocative Palace of Fine Arts (palaceoffinearts.org) looks like a cross between a Mayan temple and ruined British country house. It was built by Bernard Maybeck to host concerts and art shows during the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exhibition, and it still does that today. The events are a little different, though – recent performers have included Rufus Wainwright and Eels.

The Atomium, Brussels, Belgium

Built for: Expo 1958

The Atomium (atomium.be) could be the most stylish symbol of any Expo. This instantly recognisable structure by Andre Waterkeyn, with Andre and Jean Polack, is a 100-metre-tall sculpture of, essentially, an atom. Comprising nine steel balls connected by tubes, it was the centrepiece of the legendarily optimistic Brussels Expo of 1958, and also takes a starring role in Jonathan Coe’s hilarious recent novel, Expo 58, which is set at the fair.

Unisphere, New York, US

Built for: 1964-5 World’s Fair

This landmark in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, is a hollow, 43-metre stainless-steel globe, constructed for the 1964-65 World’s Fair. The surrounding pool and fountains have been returned to their former glory, while the nearby New York State Pavilion and observation towers are undergoing a restoration. Having also hosted a World’s Fair in 1939, the park is celebrating the 75th and 50th anniversaries of the events on 7 June, with international food stalls, cultural performances and a vintage carousel.

Biosphere, Montreal, Canada

Built for: Expo ’67

Montreal’s Expo ’67 arguably produced the best haul of architecture from one Expo. There was Basil Spence’s brutalist British pavilion (sadly demolished), Moshe Safdie’s wonderfully blocky Habitat 1967 flats, the whitewashed French pavilion (now a casino) and the Biosphere (ec.gc.ca/biosphere) by Buckminster Fuller, which was the American pavilion. It has burned down (featured as Arcade Fire artwork) and is now an environmental museum. The Expo site today hosts music festivals such as Osheaga (31 July to 2 August; osheaga.ca).

Plaza de España, Seville, Spain

Built for: 1929 Ibero-American Expo

This huge and impressive square in Seville’s Maria Luisa Park was the main setting for the 1929 Ibero-American Exposition. The idea was for it to put Seville on the map, and it’s certainly a grand space, embraced by the sweeping curve of Baroque exhibition buildings (now Andalucian government offices). The city was bitten by the Expo bug and hosted another edition in 1992 on nearby La Cartuja Island, with a monorail line and post-modern pavilions painted in garish colours.

Space Needle, Seattle, US

Built for: Century 21, the 1962 World’s Fair

An instantly-recognisable symbol of Seattle, the Space Needle (spaceneedle.com) soars 184 metres above the park where Century 21, the 1962 World’s Fair, was held. Millions of visitors have taken a fast lift to the top of this sci-fi-style landmark, which appears with its twinkling red light on top of the titles to Seattle-set sitcom, Frasier.

China Art Museum, Shanghai, China

Built for: Expo 2010

The bright red Chinese pavilion at Expo 2010, held in Shanghai, references traditional Asian timber architecture, souped up with all the energy that buzzing 21st-century China emits. Designed by Chinese architect He Jingtang, the pavilion was transformed into the China Art Museum (china.artmuseumonline.org) in 2012 and now exhibits works by artists such as Guan Liang and Lin Fengmian.

Tower of the Sun, Osaka, Japan

Built for: Expo ’70

Expo ’70 was a panoply of hi-tech architecture, planned by Kenzo Tange – the man who rebuilt the Macedonian capital, Skopje, as a brutalist megacity after an earthquake in 1963. Tange worked with Taro Okamoto to create the Tower of the Sun, the symbol of the event – a 70-metre surrealist tower shaped like a cartoonish Sun God. It stands in Osaka’s Expo Commemoration Park.

The Crystal Palace, London

Built for: 1851 Great Exhibition

It may not technically still be there, but Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace was the showpiece of the first modern Expo, the 1851 Great Exhibition. It was perhaps the highpoint of Victorian architectural ambition and was moved from Hyde Park to Crystal Palace Park in 1854. The palace burnt down in 1936, but you can still see the steps, statues and terraces, plus the park (crystalpalacepark.org.uk) contains Victorian curios such as the famous dinosaurs. There are even plans to rebuild the Palace.

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Lake Michigan winter ice melts, revealing shipwrecks beneath crystal-clear water

A US Coast Guard aircrew took photos of shipwrecks last week during a routine patrol along the northeast shoreline.

One pilot, Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Wilson, told NPR that it is "fairly common" to spot an old wreck on patrols but “not in the numbers we saw on that flight".

Some of the wrecks are known, including the 1857 wreckage of the James McBride – a 121 foot long brig which sank during a storm on 19 October 1857 – and the 1917 wreckage of the Rising Sun – a 133 foot long wooden steamer – while others are yet to be identified.

James McBride: The 121 foot brig James McBride ran aground during a storm on 19 October, 1857 Lake Michigan is undergoing its annual springtime transition after the winter ice melts and ahead of the return of summer sediment and algae, when the water is left unusually clear.

NPR reported that around 6,000 ships have sank in the five Great Lakes, 1,500 of them in Lake Michigan alone.

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Teenager Pulled From Rubble in Katmandu 5 Days After Quake

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Quake Survivor on Being Trapped for Days

KATMANDU, Nepal — The 15-year-old boy had been buried alive under the rubble of this quake-stricken capital for five days, listening to bulldozers clearing mountains of debris, fearful the incessant aftershocks might finally collapse the darkened crevice where he was trapped.

And then, “all of the sudden I saw light,” Pempa Tamang said, recounting the moment Thursday he was pulled from a hole at the bottom of what was once a seven-story building in Kathmandu.

Tamang did not know whether he was alive or dead. “I thought I was hallucinating,” he said.

The improbable rescue was an uplifting moment in Nepal, which has been overwhelmed by death and destruction since the 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Saturday. By late Thursday, the government said the toll from the tremor, the most powerful recorded here since 1934, had risen to 6,130 dead and 13,827 injured.

After night fell, police reported another dramatic rescue: A woman in her 20s, Krishna Devi Khadka, was pulled from a building in the same neighborhood as Tamang near Kathmandu’s main bus terminal, according to an officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the media.

“Life has become a struggle to survive. It gives us hope,” said Hans Raj Joshi, who watched Tamang’s rescue. “We thought they were only bringing out the dead. It’s hard to believe people are still alive.”

When Tamang was finally extricated, rescue workers inserted an IV in his arm, propped him onto a yellow plastic stretcher — the same kind that has helped convey countless dead — and carried him through the ruins on their shoulders as if he was a newly crowned king.

Lines of police stood on both sides, keeping back mobs of bystanders and journalists. A dazed Tamang, wearing a dark shirt with the New York Yankees logo and the words “New York Authentic,” blinked at the bright sky.

When the procession turned a corner and entered the main road outside, there was a sound Kathmandu hadn’t heard in days: the jubilant cheers of thousands of ecstatic onlookers.

Nepal, however, is far from normal. More than 70 aftershocks have been recorded in the Himalayan region by Indian scientists in the past five days, according to J.L. Gautam, the director of seismology at the Indian Meteorological Department in New Delhi.

Shortages of food and water and worry over the fate of relatives have triggered an exodus from the capital, prompting thousands to board buses provided by the government to their rural hometowns.

“I have to get home. It has already been so many days,” said Shanti Kumari, with her 7-year-old daughter, who was desperate to see family in her home village in eastern Nepal. “I want to get at least a night of peace.”

Although small shops have begun reopening, and the once ubiquitous tent cities have begun thinning out, an air of desperation remains. “We’re still feeling aftershocks. It still doesn’t feel safe,” said Prabhu Dutta, a 27-year-old banker from Kathmandu.

Some residents have begun returning to work, including at Dutta’s bank, but he said it was impossible to concentrate. “We roam around the office. We only have one topic of conversation: the earthquake.”

Tamang’s dark hair was disheveled, and he looked weak and tired but otherwise fine as he recounted his story in an Israeli field hospital.

When Saturday’s quake began at 11:56 a.m., Tamang said he was having lunch with a friend in the hotel where he worked. As he ran downstairs, they shook. He saw walls cracking, ceilings caving in.

He was in the basement when “suddenly the building fell down. I thought I was about to die,” he told reporters. Tamang fainted, and when he regained consciousness, he could see little but darkness.

He was buried face down in a tiny crevice deep in the rubble. He was terrified.

For days, Tamang survived on two cans of ghee, or clarified butter. He rested his head on chunks of concrete and broken piece of corrugated aluminum roof.

One Nepalese team had begun combing the rubble in Tamang’s neighborhood, a place they had found another survivor Monday. They cried out and knocked on broken concrete slabs, and then listened closely for any response.

Mostly there was silence. But when an officer named L. Bahadu Basnet, shouted “Is anyone there?” he was shocked to get a reply.

“Who is there? Brother, I am here!” Tamang shouted weakly back from a hole in the ground.

The team used a jack to help support the rectangular entrance, and Basnet took off his helmet, put on a headlamp, and crawled on his arms 10 feet (3 meters) inside, pushed in by his colleagues.

He could see Tamang wedged lying down in a crevice behind a motorcycle, and was shocked how responsive he was. “He thanked me when I first approached him,” Basnet said. “He told me his name, his address, and I gave him some water. I assured him we were near.”

It took nearly hours to carefully clear the way for Tamang to be lifted out. Members of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Disaster Assistance Response Team brought in equipment to help and lowered a pole-mounted rotatable camera into the hole, said one of the team’s members, Andrew Olvera.

Looking at a pair of huge, ripped concrete floors hanging precariously like curtains on the side of the destroyed building, just above the rescue site, Olvera said the operation was dangerous. But, “it’s risk versus gain. To save a human life, we’ll risk almost anything.”

At the Israeli field hospital, doctors X-rayed Tamang and injected him with glucose. Lt. Libby Weiss of the Israeli Defense Forces said he was dehydrated but lucid and “in remarkably good shape,” with no other injuries except scratches.

“It’s a miracle,” Weiss said. “I think it’s an amazing thing to see in the midst of all this calamity.”

Naryan Pandey was standing on the main street outside when a dazed Tamang was carried on the stretcher, blinking at the sky in a dark shirt with the New York Yankees logo and the words “New York Authentic.”

“I’m surprised he’s still alive. We’ve seen dead bodies coming out of the rubble for five days,” Pandey said. “But it doesn’t change what we are going through. I’ve barely eaten. We don’t have enough water. I’m hungry.”

And then he added, eyeing the rubble beyond: “My friend is still in there. He was a cook. He’s still there.”

___

Associated Press writers Binaj Gurubacharya, Foster Klug and Johnson Lai in Kathmandu, and Nirmala George in New Delhi contributed to this report.

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General Election 2015: Your questions on the environment answered

Marion Godman, Kennington

Liz Truss: “We put in place a comprehensive strategy which includes cattle movement controls, badger vaccination in some areas and culling in the areas where the disease is rife. This approach has worked in Australia, it’s working in New Zealand and Ireland and is supported by leading vets.”

Maria Eagle: “The Independent Expert Panel, the Government’s own scientific advisers, concluded after the first year of the badger culls that they were “ineffective” and “inhumane”. A Labour government will end these disastrous culls.”

What will you do about the ban on hunting with hounds if you form the next government?

Goff Moore, Maidenhead

Liz Truss: “I personally believe that the Hunting Act was a mistake and would vote for repeal. Acknowledging the strong views on both sides of the debate, the Conservatives are committed to giving Parliament the opportunity to repeal the Hunting Act on a free vote.”

Maria Eagle: “The Hunting Act is one of the Labour Party’s proudest achievements. Yet despite its success and the overwhelming support of the British public, it is under threat from the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, who have promised to hold a free vote on repealing the Act. David Cameron has repeatedly stated his opposition to the Hunting Act. Only Labour can protect it.”

Read more:
Green Party accused of ignoring climate change
Keep Lib Dems in coalition, says green industry
Where the parties stand on the key environmental issues

General election 2015: The worst gaffes and controversies so far

 

Are you in favour of GM foods or against them and why? How would you seek to change the laws on GM if elected?

Alice Chislett, Leyton

Liz Truss: “I want Britain to lead the world in food and farming, and our farmers should have access to the latest technology, including GM. We’ll only agree to the planting of GM crops if a robust risk assessment indicates that it is safe for people and the environment.”

Maria Eagle: “GM foods are one possible tool that could make a contribution to tackling the challenge of global food security… That’s why it is right the EU member states decide themselves whether they wish to use GM crops. But the safety of people and the environment should be the government’s top priority and any decision needs to be grounded in scientific evidence.”

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Are you undecided about who to vote for on 7 May? Are you confused about what the parties stand for and what they are offering? Take this interactive quiz to help you decide who to vote for…

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What measures will you take to support the transition to a zero-carbon economy, which is essential to avoid catastrophic climate change? 

Chris Ring, Derby

Liz Truss: We have cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 6 per cent since 2010. We will work for a fair, strong, legally-binding, global climate deal which limits temperature rises to below 2C. We will reduce carbon emissions in the most cost-effective way possible.

Maria Eagle: We remain committed to the Carbon Budgets which commit the UK to a 50 per cent cut in emissions on 1990 levels by 2025. The next Labour government will therefore set a legally binding target to decarbonise the electricity supply by 2030, consistent with advice from the Committee on Climate Change.

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Nasa's Messenger Capsule to smash into Mercury and die, ending a life of pioneering discovery

That all comes to a crashing conclusion Thursday, when the ship is due to perish in a massive impact with the planet it so diligently documented, according to the space agency. MESSENGER is about 10 and a half years old.

“It’s like losing a member of the family,” mission head Sean Solomon toldScientific American.

NASA knew this day was coming. The craft ran out of propellant last winter and has been slowly spiraling toward Mercury’s surface ever since.

Since then, the only thing keeping MESSENGER aloft was the creativity of the scientists who run it. After exhausting the liquid propellant used to keep the craft in motion, the team jerry-rigged an alternative source of fuel from the helium used to maintain pressure inside the ship’s gas tanks.

It was the first time anyone had tried to extend a spacecraft’s life this way, Stewart Bushman, lead propulsion engineer for the mission, told Astronomy Magazine. Finding replacement fuel is so rarely necessary, since something else almost always goes wrong on a spacecraft first.

But MESSENGER’s life story has been one of defied expectations.

The spacecraft, whose name stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging, launched in August 2004. It was the first mission in nearly 30 years dedicated to studying the planet closest to the sun. Its predecessor, Mariner 10, was able to photograph just half the planet in a handful of flybys before running out of fuel and losing radio contact with Earth.

This time, scientists said, the spacecraft wasn’t just going to zoom past Mercury and snap some photos. MESSENGER was scheduled to spend a full year in orbit around the little-studied planet, mapping its surface, probing its atmosphere and investigating its interior.

“It took technology more than 30 years … to bring us to the brink of discovering what Mercury is all about,” Solomon said in a State Department press release issued the day of the launch. “By the time this mission is done we will see Mercury as a much different planet than we think of it today.”

Solomon was right, possibly more so than he could have imagined.

After journeying 5 billion miles through space, conducting multiple flybys of Earth, Venus and Mars, MESSENGER pulled into Mercury’s orbit on March 17, 2011. A little over a week later, it sent home the first ever image of Mercury taken from orbit. The photo showed a vast, gray, pockmarked expanse of rock, seemingly even more barren than the moon.

This image, taken March 29, 2011, is the first ever obtained from a spacecraft in orbit around Mercury. But the MESSENGER mission revealed that there was much more to Mercury than meets the eye. Beneath that bland, gray exterior, the planet has a massive, spinning iron core that generates its magnetic field. Unlike Earth’s core, this one appears to be liquid and huge — about 85 percent of the planet’s radius.

That boiling liquid rock is entirely beneath the planet’s surface, but among MESSENGER’s other discoveries was that, in its early years, Mercuryseethed with volcanic activity. Scientists used to think that the planet lacked the “volatile compounds” needed for explosive eruptions, believing that such molecules were either fried or blasted away during Mercury’s formation. But evidence that volcanoes did explode, and that some of those “volatiles” still remain, meant that scientists had to reconsider their assumptions about the planet’s origin.

“This research is revolutionizing our thinking about the early history of the planets and satellites,” Jim Head, a MESSENGER mission co-investigator, said in a press release about the study.

Other surprises from MESSENGER’s four years in orbit include the observation of seasons within its barely-existent atmosphere, the realization that the planet is contracting as it cools and the discovery of unexplained, shallow “hollows” marring the planet’s surface.

One of the mission’s biggest headlines came in 2012, when MESSENGER provided absolute confirmation that there is ice on Mercury. Given the planet’s wispy atmosphere and dangerous proximity to the sun (Mercury’s orbit brings it three times closer than Earth’s and subjects it to solar rays that are 11 times as strong), it seemed a poor candidate for finding water, particularly in frozen form. But for years, telescope observations kept revealing strange bright patches at the planet’s poles.

Science News in Pictures

MESSENGER gave scientists the first opportunity to examine those patches up close. What they found surprised them: Because the planet doesn’t tilt on its axis, there are pockets at the poles that never see sunlight. In those pockets, researchers found clumps of ice accumulated beneath a layer of dark, organic material. Not life, but something on the way to it.

“I don’t think anybody could count Mercury as habitable,” Solomon told Scientific American. But that organic material — “the ingredients for habitability,” as Solomon called it — must have come from somewhere. How it wound on Mars is a mystery space researchers are itching to solve.

“Those polar regions, I think, are calling out to people … and saying, ‘Send us another spacecraft, we have more stories to tell,’” Solomon told the LA Times.

All the while, MESSENGER took more than 270,000 images of Mercury’s surface, helping NASA to produce the first-ever complete map of the planet.

The year-long orbital mission was so successful that NASA extended it in 2012. The use of helium to propel the craft helped extend its lifespan even further, allowing scientists to collect more data. Even now, as the craft hurtles toward its doom, MESSENGER is beaming data to researchers back on Earth.

In this undated photo provided by NASA, technicians with The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Titusville, Fla., prepare the MESSESNGER spacecraft for a move to a hazardous processing facility in preparation for loading the spacecraft’s hypergolic propellants. (NASA via AP)

One of the last transmissions was a series of spectrometer images showing variations in the minerals that make up the planet’s crust.

Since Mercury has an insubstantial atmosphere, MESSENGER won’t burn up as it descends. Instead, it’ll crash into Mercury at a speed of about 2.5 miles per second, according to Scientific American, adding its own small impact crater to the hundreds that pock the planet’s surface.

It’s a bittersweet end for the researchers who have spent over a decade following the spacecraft from afar.

“We’re at the end of a really successful mission, and we can’t do anything anymore to stop it from doing what it naturally wants to do,” Thomas Zurbuchen, a member of MESSENGER’s science team, said in a statement. “The sun is pulling on it. The planet is pulling on it. It’s just physics. It has to crash.”

Copyright Washington Post

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Image of Pluto from Nasa's New Horizon probe reveals planet may have polar cap

The pictures taken by the craft’s Lorri telescope from a distance of over 100 million km appear to show markings and different shades of light on the planet’s surface, indicating that the planet may support nitrogen ice.

According to experts, this is exciting because it is not common to find such variations on a planet’s surface from this distance.

BBC hopes Scandinavian drama 1864 can echo success of Borgen and The Killing... and shed light on the Schleswig-Holstein Question

But the BBC is hoping considerably more will be gripped by its latest Danish import, a sweeping historical saga set against Denmark’s disastrous war with Bismarck’s Prussia, which has already provoked anger among Scandinavian historians.

The Second Schleswig War, which pitted Prussian and Austrian forces against Denmark for control over the duchies of Holstein and Lauenburg, is obscure even to many modern-day Danes.

But BBC4 is hoping the presence of familiar faces from the hit imports Borgen and The Killing will help guide British viewers through 1864, a new £17m period drama tackling the subject.

The eight-part series, which begins this month, reunites a corset-wearing Sidse Babett Knudsen, who played the prime minister in the political drama Borgen, with Pilou Asbæk, spin-doctor Kasper Juul in the series.

Read more:
Sidse Babett Knudsen interview: Star says Birgitte Nyborg may yet return
New Sofie Grabol drama Fortitude: Darker than Scandi noir?
The Scandi and Nordic music acts you should listen to now

Soren Malling, Sarah Lund’s detective partner in The Killing and Lars Mikkelsen, who played Copenhagen mayoral candidate Troels Hartmann in the crime thriller, also appear.

Sidse Babett Knudsen in 1864
1864 explores how Danish politicians, inflamed with nationalism, threw the country into a war with Prussia which resulted in a crushing defeat. The country lost one-third of its territory and was forced to rebuild a shattered national psyche.

The story is told through two brothers who volunteer for the army. Knudsen plays Johanne Luise Heiberg, the most celebrated actress of her day, who stiffens the resolve of the Danish Prime Minister DG Monrad.

The drama also incorporates cameos from the British prime minister at the time, Lord Palmerston, as well as Queen Victoria.

Produced by state broadcaster DR, the series won an unprecedented 67% viewing share in Denmark. But it was condemned by academics and the right-wing Danish People’s Party for depicting the founders of Denmark’s constitution as war-crazed nationalists.

Ole Bornedal, the director, said Britain too could benefit from a similar display of on-screen national humility. “The right-wing said we were rewriting history. They thought it was an attack on them. The Danes, like the British, feel we are the best. Denmark has always had this very secluded, cosy, roses growing up walls, blue water, naïve innocence.”

New European drama coming our way

 

Bornedal said: “One nation is not better than another. The Brits are not God’s chosen, King Arthur people. A certain kind of humility would be suitable for both the British and the Danes.”

Asbæk, who plays a debauched, aristocratic war veteran, added: “The Germans are presented as the evil ones but the Brits are baddies too. You should have come and helped us.”

1864 also prompted a national debate over historical bestiality. In one scene, group of drunken aristocrats depart to the stables and force themselves upon a cow. Malling, who appears in the scene, said: “The right-wing said this is not possible. ‘They did not fuck cows in the 1860s’. But when my upper-class character whips a gypsy and almost kills him, they said ‘oh yes, that’s normal.’”

A scene from 1864
The cow scene was filmed at an old Danish Barony castle. Bornedal said: “We wanted to show the sheer decadence in the countryside. We told the Baroness we were about to film this controversial scene in her stables. She was dressed in all her jewels and she said ‘That’s what we did in the 19th century, everyone knows that.’”

BBC4 has already snapped up another DR series, a contemporary economic crime thriller called Follow The Money, in which a police detective uncovers a web of shady dealings surrounding an energy company after a body is found near a wind farm.

What was the Schleswig-Holstein Question?

The battle for control over the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein led to three wars and endless head-scratching from Lord Palmerston through to today’s GCSE history students.

The duchies had been ruled by the kings of Denmark. But 1848 witnessed an uprising by the majority German population, seeking independence from Denmark and to join up with the German Confederation.

Prussia intervened, driving Denmark’s troops from Schleswig-Holstein during a 3-year skirmish.

But the Confederation returned Schleswig-Holstein to Denmark under an 1852 treaty under condition that Denmark did not seek to further its claim over the duchies.

King Christian IX of Denmark violated the agreement with an 1863 constitution seeking to reintegrate the territory, paving the way for the Second Schleswig War.

This time Austria and Bismarck’s Prussia crushed Danish military resistance, ending Denmark’s claims to Great Power status.

Administration of Schleswig-Holstein then became the pretext for the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, resulting in Prussian dominance.

After Germany’s defeat in World War I, the Danish majority area of Northern Schleswig was finally unified with Denmark after two plebiscites organised by the Allied powers.

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Matter: New Estimates for Extinctions Global Warming Could Cause

Climate change could drive to extinction as many as one in six animal and plant species, according to a new analysis.

In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, Mark Urban, an ecologist at the University of Connecticut, also found that as the planet warms in the future, species will disappear at an accelerating rate.

“We have the choice,” he said in an interview. “The world can decide where on that curve they want the future Earth to be.”

As dire as Dr. Urban’s conclusions are, other experts said the real toll may turn out to be even worse. The number of extinctions “may well be two to three times higher,” said John J. Wiens, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona.

Global warming has raised the planet’s average surface temperature about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution. Species are responding by shifting their ranges.

In 2003, Camille Parmesan of the University of Texas and Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University analyzed studies of more than 1,700 plant and animal species. They found that, on average, their ranges shifted 3.8 miles per decade toward the planet’s poles.

If emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to grow, climate researchers project the world could warm by as much as 8 degrees Fahrenheit. As the climate continues to change, scientists fear, some species won’t be able to find suitable habitats.

For example, the American pika, a hamsterlike mammal that lives on mountains in the West, has been retreating to higher elevations in recent decades. Since the 1990s, some pika populations along the species’s southernmost ranges have vanished.

Hundreds of studies published over the past two decades have yielded a wide range of predictions regarding the number of extinctions that will be caused by global warming. Some have predicted few extinctions, while others have predicted that 50 percent of species face oblivion.

There are many reasons for the wide variation. Some scientists looked only at plants in the Amazon, while others focused on butterflies in Canada. In some cases, researchers assumed just a couple of degrees of warming, while in others they looked at much hotter scenarios. Because scientists rarely were able to say just how quickly a given species might shift ranges, they sometimes produced a range of estimates.

To get a clearer picture, Dr. Urban decided to revisit every climate extinction model ever published. He threw out all the studies that examined just a single species, such as the American pika, on the grounds that these might artificially inflate the result of his meta-analysis. (Scientists often pick out individual species to study because they already suspect they are vulnerable to climate change.)

Dr. Urban ended up with 131 studies examining plants, amphibians, fish, mammals, reptiles and invertebrates spread out across the planet. He reanalyzed all the data in those reports.

Overall, he found that 7.9 percent of species were predicted to become extinct from climate change. Estimates based on low levels of warming yielded much fewer extinctions than hotter scenarios.

By his calculation, with an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit in surface temperature, 5.2 percent of species would become extinct. At 7.7 degrees, 16 percent would.

Dr. Urban found that the rate of extinctions would not increase steadily, but would accelerate if temperatures rose.

Richard Pearson, a biogeographer at University College London, called the new meta-analysis “an important line in the sand that tells us we know enough to see climate change as a major threat to biodiversity and ecosystems.”

But he said that Dr. Urban was likely underestimating the scale of extinctions. The latest generation of climate extinction models are more accurate, Dr. Pearson said: sadly, they also produce more dire estimates.

Dr. Wiens also noted that the tropics have been underrepresented in climate extinction studies. In Dr. Urban’s meta-analysis, 78 studies focused on species in North America and Europe, while only seven came from South America. Yet when Dr. Urban combined all the data from South American studies, he found that 23 percent of species were at risk of extinction. In North America, by contrast, only 5 percent faced extinction.

What makes this imbalance all the more glaring, Dr. Wiens said, is the fact that most of the planet’s species live in tropical forests such as the Amazon. If climate extinction research took tropical diversity into account, the planet’s overall risk would be much higher.

Dr. Urban acknowledged that his meta-analysis is far from the final word. “This is a summary of the best information we have right now,” he said. As predictions improve, Dr. Urban said, they will allow conservation biologists to pinpoint the species at greatest risk of extinction and help plan strategies to save them.

The scientists building these new models may be able to draw from data not just on living species, but extinct ones as well.

In this week’s issue of Science, an international team of scientists reported a new finding on ocean extinctions over the past 23 million years.

They found that some groups, such as marine mammals, have been far more prone to extinctions than others, such as mollusks. Biology can put certain species at extra risk: they may produce few offspring, for instance, or have a limited range.

Dr. Pearson said that climate extinction models will need to take other factors into account, as well. “What happens to other species in an ecosystem when a species goes extinct?” he asked. Its partners in that habitat might risk extinction as well.

Dr. Urban saw many other ways in which climate extinction models should improve. For one thing, they should take into account the cities, farms and other barriers that humans have put in the way of species seeking new habitats.

Given the stark results of research so far, Dr. Urban said, these new prediction models can’t come too soon. “We need to elevate our game,” he said.

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The Money Issue: In Code We Trust

When Caesar Augustus minted the denarius coin, around 15 A.D., he did so with a decree that it be made almost entirely of silver. But over the coming decades, as the financial health of the Roman Empire declined — largely because of its increasingly independent army, which demanded ever more money to subdue the rebellious provinces — the emperors began, slowly at first, mixing in copper to stretch the silver further. By 280 A.D., a denarius was 98 percent copper, with a thin silver wash on the surface. The implication was clear to every Roman: Here, in their hands, was a physical manifestation of the empire’s deepening desperation. Whatever proclamations the emperor might make, the coin told the truth.

The lesson, perhaps, is that money shapes — and is shaped by — the society at large. And the last century has seen far more transformation in money than any other to date. A hundred years ago, paper money was still just a reference document, the real value hidden away in a vault full of gold. But with the rise of information technology, money has increasingly become an abstraction. We’ve created A.T.M. and debit and credit cards, electronic transfers and 401(k) accounts. Since 1980, computers and deregulation have allowed Wall Street firms to experiment exuberantly with new securities that blur the line between finance and gambling. By the early 2000s, banks were selling securitized mortgage-backed assets as “money-good,” and it was largely this mistaking of junk for cash that brought about the financial crisis of 2008.

They do their best to hide it, but today the world’s central bankers are in something like a state of panic. Money is, quite clearly, uncontrollable. This manifests in large ways — like the six years of continuous crisis that have roiled the eurozone — but also in smaller, more technical matters. For example, the Federal Reserve has no idea how much money is out there, at least in all its digital forms, or how fast the overall supply is growing. This is alarming, because the whole concept behind the Fed is to monitor and control the money supply. That was a much easier task in an era of physical banks and highly regulated savings accounts. But today, each of us has the power to increase the money supply by simply carrying a balance on a credit card. (If you ever meet a central banker and want to get her stammering, ask this question: “How much money is there, precisely?”)

One way to understand this chaos is to see that power is shifting. The authority to create, move and define money — once confined to central banks and treasury departments — is being dispersed to an odd mix of entrepreneurs, libertarian hackers and old-line banking institutions. Even for the most technologically skeptical, this monetary chaos isn’t something we can choose to avoid. It’s a new and pivotal force in our economy, and it will change the way we work and live.

In this Money Issue, we’ve collected four articles that capture ways that technology is changing the very nature of money. Two of these articles are about Bitcoin and Kickstarter — two phenomena that represent, in extreme form, two contradictory aspects of money that have been there from the beginning: total anonymity and rich social context. As a digital form of currency, Bitcoin receives its authority not from a government but from an algorithm that is everywhere and nowhere. It allows for an anonymity of exchange and a creation of value all but completely unmoored from history. Kickstarter, by contrast, calls upon money’s other characteristic: its deeply social nature. It’s impossible to make an anonymous donation to Kickstarter, which is precisely the point, since our donations are often performances of sorts, put on for the benefit of friends or people we admire.

The other two articles revolve around technology that seeks to reduce the influence of money or even bypass it entirely. One of them profiles a Silicon Valley start-up that claims its technology can ameliorate some of the precariousness of working life — a precariousness that technology, paradoxically, has helped to create. The other documents how a software engine has enabled a profound form of nonfinancial exchange: a “kidney chain,” in which friends and family of patients with kidney failure, potentially as many as 70 in total, donate in an act of reciprocal generosity. It’s a wonderful example of an algorithm, built on the latest computer science, that allows for the most ancient form of exchange — that is, barter — to save the lives of loved ones.

There is a common perception that economists believe money drives human behavior. In fact, it’s almost precisely the opposite. Most modern economics is predicated on an idea first espoused by David Hume in his 1752 essay, “Of Money,” that currency, gold, bank slips, checks and so on are beside the point. What actually matters is what we make and do and feel and want. Money is just an imperfect tool to add it all up, to assign value to our fundamental human desires. We need money only because it, unlike passion, can be stored and traded and counted.

Arguably the two greatest economists of all time — Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes — both wrote about money as a way to get at something far more important: who we human beings really are and how we can have the best possible lives. Smith believed that the core desire of all people was to be both loved and worthy of love. Keynes believed the highest possibility of human life came from creating and appreciating artistic works of true beauty. In either case, money is not some separate force, easily divided from other, more human, concerns. Money is changing now, very fast, but only because we are, too.

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