Considering that the Pyrenees are located between France and Spain, both of which do have a plastic pollution problem, France and Spain seem much likelier sources for this particular case of microplastic pollution.
But it would be nice to have a similar study done on microplastic pollution in the Himalaya, to compare to the Pyrenees.
IMO (from my own travel and from talking to other people who noticed plastics pollution and travelled to the same places as me), this also is a cultural issue: People in France or Spain seem to be littering more than in Germany. People in Japan litter less than those in Germany. People in the British Isles, China and Saudi Arabia litter more than those in France. Different people have different attitude on how much effort they'd put into keeping the environment clean. A French guy I met in Japan found it quite noticeable that there is far more litter in French parks, even when there are plenty of bins people could use than in Japanese parks without bins.
Your "mile per mile"-claim obviously is false when comparing to very sparsely populated countries, such as Greenland (nearly the same rate of homicides per capita as the US, but very sparsely populated).
And per capita it is well known to be false, as European countries have far lower rates. Including those with far lower gun ownership rates than the US, such as Germany (about one fifth the homicide rate of the US), and those with gun ownership rates higher than the US, such as Switzerland (about one tenth the homicide rate of the US).
And there are small countries, such as the Vatican, which hasn't had a homicide since 1998 (though it has one of the highest per-capita crime rates in the world due to the small number of citizens vs. large number of visitors).
USB 3 hub, connected to my laptop via type A SS to type B SS cable.
USB 2 hub, connected via Type A to type B cable.
Scanner, connected via Type A to type B cable.
USB keyboard with hub, connected via type A, mouse connected via type A.
Blue Ray burner, connected via 2xtype A to mini B cable.
A type A SS to micro type B SS cable that I use for connecting an external harddisk for backups.
Smartphone connected via type A to micro type B cable.
2 USB to serial cables, type A
U-EC6 adapter for wriitng C, connected via type A to mini type B cable.
3 C evaluation boards, two use mini B, one uses micro B.
A few days ago there was also a type A to type C cable to connect some else's smartphone.
So there are now at least 6 different types of USB to USB cables on my desk (a few days ago it was at least 7). Seems to me that with USB, one now needs far more different types of cables than back in the days of RS232, parallel port, etc.
In case you still care about the original question:
The German equivalent can be found in "Politische, kirchliche und literarische Zustände in Deutschland" by Franz Chassot von Florencourt, published in 1840:
"stark und unzweideutig treten die Züge wie in Stein gemeißelt hervor, und unzerstörbar für alle Ewigkeit, so sehr auch eine spätere Zeit daran herumpfuscht und den Charakter zu verwischen sucht"
Hub-and-spoke seems mostly dead to me already in Europe.
High-speed rail to get to / from an international airport, direct flight between airports in between.
Domestic airports (unless kept alive via heavy subsidies by local politicians than can't stand the loss of "their" airport) have reverted back into airfields for hobby pilots. In 2024, new EU regulation comes into effect, placing limits on subsidies given to airports (subsidies will only be allowed for investments then, but no longer for operating costs). This will kill most remaining domestic European airports.
From the article: "The model is similar to milk deliveries in the early 20th century,".
Still getting the model to work for more products than just milk can make sense.
I am not fully convinced though. There are a few brands participating, but it is not something universal, and I feel this will only really take off if there is a certain critical mass. They claim "50-75% better for the environment than conventional alternatives", but I'd like to see the details (e.g. what they compared to - cardboard vs plastic vs glass, etc).
It seems this is not about shops that you go to. Rather for delivery.
I guess the advantage of the platform is that it helps standardize the containers across companies (though I remember that glass bottles also tend to come in standardized sizes and shapes - the 1l juice bottles look all the same, the difference seems mostly in the label).
Of course there are products where the inner packaging / container can't be cardboard (some of them mentioned in the article).
There the reusable containers might make more sense (though I'd still like to see a comparison of environmental impact vs. more traditional approaches, such as reusable glass bottles).
Cardboard is cheap, light and easily recyclable. Is using stainless steel really better for the environment?
After all it needs extra collection and cleaning infrastructure (while there is an established paper / cardboard collection and recycling infrastructure), and has a much higher initial energy cost. The added weight (and thus higher emissions from transport) also needs to be taken into account.
According to the article, Apple did so not only once, but kept making changes and requiring different screws at short notice. That was the reason they wanted a local screw manufacturer in the first place: So it would be able to adjust to changing requirements quickly.
As the article states, Apple kept changing the specifications on the screw on short notice, so they wanted a local manufacturer to avoid delays from shipping and long-distance-communication failures.
As the 1999 article Die Recken von Schöningen – 400 000 Jahre Jagd mit dem Speer discusses, throwing spears matters, animals will flee at a certain distance of a perceived threat. For most animals this is less than 30 m. The Schöningen spears make practical hunting weapons up to about 30 m distance.
The 1999 article also argues that in some situations throwing spears is more effective than using a bow: Animals learn to associate the characteristic noise from firing an arrow from a bow with danger; triggering a flight reflex that makes them start to move while the arrow is still in flight. This can be a problem when hunting with bows. On the other hand, there is no such noise when throwing spears
I wonder why this study is considered big news now. It confirms the findings of German scientists from the late 90s (see e.g. Die Recken von Schöningen – 400 000 Jahre Jagd mit dem Speer, more publications referenced in the German Wikipedia and the new article in Nature). The design of the experiments seems similar. They even chose the very same spear (Schöningen 2) to base their replicas on.
Replicating earlier results is important and useful. Still I don't get why the results are reported by the media as if they were a surprise.
In the timeframe used above ("3 decades"), 1995 to 2016, the US reduced their carbon-dioxide emissions by 22% (same source as used before for Germany).
While in general, the US still has a long way to go, there is one quite impressive aspect: The reversal of the decline of rail freight following the deregulation in 1980 (through AFAIK in recent years it started to decline a bit again). In Germany, rail freight market share in 2015 by tonnes-kilometers is just 18 %. For the US, recent data seems hard to find; rail freight market share in 2008 by tonnes-kilometers was 44 %.
Considering that transport account for about a third of carbon-dioxide emissions, and that road emission per tonne-kilometre are about three times as much as for rail, that makes a big difference.
Rail freight market share in Germany is about the EU average. Some European countries are doing substantially worse (e.g. UK at 13% in 2013 and Ireland at 1% in 2013), others much better (e.g. Austria at 42%, Latvia at 60%).
While US presence helps protect Europe from Russian aggression, Europeans would be able to do that job by themselves.
The European militaries are not a strong as the US. But they'd still be a sufficient deterrent regarding Russian aggression against EU member states. Integrating these militaries into an EU military might be necessary (since the countries currently have different strengths that would complement each other). The EU has sufficient conventional forces for small-scale conflicts. There is a nuclear second-strike capability which provides a deterrent regarding large-scale conflict.
On the other hand, US presence mostly provides advantages to the US. Both in terms of influence within the EU, and in terms of capabilities in projecting US force to nearby places, such as the middle east.
Natural gas from Russia isn't that expensive (especially when delivered via the new pipelines Trump is complaining about).
It is not a renewable resource, but much better than coal in terms of emissions.
In case relations with Russia deteriorate or Russia increases the price too much, US LNG will become a viable alternative - Trump would prefer Germany to buy more of it now, but currently US LNG isn't priced competitively compared to Russian gas. Also, Russia has a reputation of being a reliable supplier of natural gas, as long as they are paid. They always kept the gas flowing throughout the cold war.
While that is true true, our main problem right now is not heat released directly, but warming via the greenhouse effect.
Heat released is a momentary problem, that will go away by itself very quickly. Contamination from nuclear accidents takes a bit longer, but will go away by itself within just a few millennia. Climate change also will revert by itself given enough time; but it might take a few 100 million years.
The agreement reached by the comission on phasing out coal yesterday mandates a gradual reduction in the use of coal. This might or might not save those forests that have become a symbol of the opposition to open-pit lignite mining: "Die Kommission hält es für wünschenswert, dass der Hambacher Forst erhalten bleibt."
While the compromise makes it likely that the coal under the forests won't be mined (the compromise mandates a gradual closing of plants and mines, but doesn't mandate, which mines should be closed first), the lowering of groundwater levels due to the nearby mining might still kill the forests.
Either way, those forests are mostly of symbolic value; they are tiny compared to the total of forests in Germany - 32% of the country. Looking at the big picture, what matters is that carbon emissions go down further.
Unfortunately, further potential for hydroelectric energy in Germany is small. Places suitable for large-scale generation are already in use. Many places suitable for small-scale generation, such as former mills have already been reactivated (hydro power in Germany went from 17.4 GWh in 1990 to 19.3 in 2015). There is a little bit of further potential, which can and should be used, but looking at the big picture further hydroelectric power can only be a tiny part of the German energy supply.
Considering that both nuclear and oil have lower carbon-dioxide emissions per given amount of energy produced than coal, how would that do "nothing to solve the underlying issues"?
There are a lot more jobs in coal mining than in the nuclear industry. Closing open-pit lignite mines faces strong opposition from unions and local politicians.
The decision to close down nuclear power plants, while keeping coal plants running doesn't make sense from the perspective of helping the environment. But it makes a lot of sense from a political perspective.
Emissions-wise, natural gas (0.20 g CO2 per Wh) is a much better energy source than coal (0.34 to 0.41 g CO2 per Wh). Also, gas power plants can be adjusted very quickly, making them particularly suitable to balance the varying output from wind and solar energy (both of which Germany has a lot of).
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Considering that the Pyrenees are located between France and Spain, both of which do have a plastic pollution problem, France and Spain seem much likelier sources for this particular case of microplastic pollution.
But it would be nice to have a similar study done on microplastic pollution in the Himalaya, to compare to the Pyrenees.
IMO (from my own travel and from talking to other people who noticed plastics pollution and travelled to the same places as me), this also is a cultural issue: People in France or Spain seem to be littering more than in Germany. People in Japan litter less than those in Germany. People in the British Isles, China and Saudi Arabia litter more than those in France. Different people have different attitude on how much effort they'd put into keeping the environment clean. A French guy I met in Japan found it quite noticeable that there is far more litter in French parks, even when there are plenty of bins people could use than in Japanese parks without bins.
Your are wrong.
Your "mile per mile"-claim obviously is false when comparing to very sparsely populated countries, such as Greenland (nearly the same rate of homicides per capita as the US, but very sparsely populated).
And per capita it is well known to be false, as European countries have far lower rates. Including those with far lower gun ownership rates than the US, such as Germany (about one fifth the homicide rate of the US), and those with gun ownership rates higher than the US, such as Switzerland (about one tenth the homicide rate of the US).
And there are small countries, such as the Vatican, which hasn't had a homicide since 1998 (though it has one of the highest per-capita crime rates in the world due to the small number of citizens vs. large number of visitors).
Currently on my desk:
A few days ago there was also a type A to type C cable to connect some else's smartphone.
So there are now at least 6 different types of USB to USB cables on my desk (a few days ago it was at least 7). Seems to me that with USB, one now needs far more different types of cables than back in the days of RS232, parallel port, etc.
In case you still care about the original question:
The German equivalent can be found in "Politische, kirchliche und literarische Zustände in Deutschland" by Franz Chassot von Florencourt, published in 1840:
"stark und unzweideutig treten die Züge wie in Stein gemeißelt hervor, und unzerstörbar für alle Ewigkeit, so sehr auch eine spätere Zeit daran herumpfuscht und den Charakter zu verwischen sucht"
Hub-and-spoke seems mostly dead to me already in Europe.
High-speed rail to get to / from an international airport, direct flight between airports in between.
Domestic airports (unless kept alive via heavy subsidies by local politicians than can't stand the loss of "their" airport) have reverted back into airfields for hobby pilots. In 2024, new EU regulation comes into effect, placing limits on subsidies given to airports (subsidies will only be allowed for investments then, but no longer for operating costs). This will kill most remaining domestic European airports.
Which is already in the article: "The model is similar to milk deliveries in the early 20th century"
From the article: "The model is similar to milk deliveries in the early 20th century,".
Still getting the model to work for more products than just milk can make sense.
I am not fully convinced though. There are a few brands participating, but it is not something universal, and I feel this will only really take off if there is a certain critical mass. They claim "50-75% better for the environment than conventional alternatives", but I'd like to see the details (e.g. what they compared to - cardboard vs plastic vs glass, etc).
It seems this is not about shops that you go to. Rather for delivery.
I guess the advantage of the platform is that it helps standardize the containers across companies (though I remember that glass bottles also tend to come in standardized sizes and shapes - the 1l juice bottles look all the same, the difference seems mostly in the label).
Of course there are products where the inner packaging / container can't be cardboard (some of them mentioned in the article).
There the reusable containers might make more sense (though I'd still like to see a comparison of environmental impact vs. more traditional approaches, such as reusable glass bottles).
Cardboard is cheap, light and easily recyclable. Is using stainless steel really better for the environment?
After all it needs extra collection and cleaning infrastructure (while there is an established paper / cardboard collection and recycling infrastructure), and has a much higher initial energy cost. The added weight (and thus higher emissions from transport) also needs to be taken into account.
The problems caused by using nuclear energy go away by themselves, within just a few millennia.
The problems caused by burning fossil fuels also go away by themselves. It just takes 100000 times longer.
According to the article, Apple did so not only once, but kept making changes and requiring different screws at short notice. That was the reason they wanted a local screw manufacturer in the first place: So it would be able to adjust to changing requirements quickly.
As the article states, Apple kept changing the specifications on the screw on short notice, so they wanted a local manufacturer to avoid delays from shipping and long-distance-communication failures.
As the 1999 article Die Recken von Schöningen – 400 000 Jahre Jagd mit dem Speer discusses, throwing spears matters, animals will flee at a certain distance of a perceived threat. For most animals this is less than 30 m. The Schöningen spears make practical hunting weapons up to about 30 m distance.
The 1999 article also argues that in some situations throwing spears is more effective than using a bow: Animals learn to associate the characteristic noise from firing an arrow from a bow with danger; triggering a flight reflex that makes them start to move while the arrow is still in flight. This can be a problem when hunting with bows. On the other hand, there is no such noise when throwing spears
I wonder why this study is considered big news now. It confirms the findings of German scientists from the late 90s (see e.g. Die Recken von Schöningen – 400 000 Jahre Jagd mit dem Speer, more publications referenced in the German Wikipedia and the new article in Nature). The design of the experiments seems similar. They even chose the very same spear (Schöningen 2) to base their replicas on.
Replicating earlier results is important and useful. Still I don't get why the results are reported by the media as if they were a surprise.
In the timeframe used above ("3 decades"), 1995 to 2016, the US reduced their carbon-dioxide emissions by 22% (same source as used before for Germany).
While in general, the US still has a long way to go, there is one quite impressive aspect: The reversal of the decline of rail freight following the deregulation in 1980 (through AFAIK in recent years it started to decline a bit again). In Germany, rail freight market share in 2015 by tonnes-kilometers is just 18 %. For the US, recent data seems hard to find; rail freight market share in 2008 by tonnes-kilometers was 44 %.
Considering that transport account for about a third of carbon-dioxide emissions, and that road emission per tonne-kilometre are about three times as much as for rail, that makes a big difference.
Rail freight market share in Germany is about the EU average. Some European countries are doing substantially worse (e.g. UK at 13% in 2013 and Ireland at 1% in 2013), others much better (e.g. Austria at 42%, Latvia at 60%).
While US presence helps protect Europe from Russian aggression, Europeans would be able to do that job by themselves.
The European militaries are not a strong as the US. But they'd still be a sufficient deterrent regarding Russian aggression against EU member states. Integrating these militaries into an EU military might be necessary (since the countries currently have different strengths that would complement each other). The EU has sufficient conventional forces for small-scale conflicts. There is a nuclear second-strike capability which provides a deterrent regarding large-scale conflict.
On the other hand, US presence mostly provides advantages to the US. Both in terms of influence within the EU, and in terms of capabilities in projecting US force to nearby places, such as the middle east.
Natural gas from Russia isn't that expensive (especially when delivered via the new pipelines Trump is complaining about).
It is not a renewable resource, but much better than coal in terms of emissions.
In case relations with Russia deteriorate or Russia increases the price too much, US LNG will become a viable alternative - Trump would prefer Germany to buy more of it now, but currently US LNG isn't priced competitively compared to Russian gas. Also, Russia has a reputation of being a reliable supplier of natural gas, as long as they are paid. They always kept the gas flowing throughout the cold war.
While that is true true, our main problem right now is not heat released directly, but warming via the greenhouse effect.
Heat released is a momentary problem, that will go away by itself very quickly. Contamination from nuclear accidents takes a bit longer, but will go away by itself within just a few millennia. Climate change also will revert by itself given enough time; but it might take a few 100 million years.
Nope. Germany is opening new mines and power plants: http://airclim.org/acidnews/ge...
However, the temperatures at which these power plants will operate make them unsuitable for use as pizza ovens.
The agreement reached by the comission on phasing out coal yesterday mandates a gradual reduction in the use of coal. This might or might not save those forests that have become a symbol of the opposition to open-pit lignite mining: "Die Kommission hält es für wünschenswert, dass der Hambacher Forst erhalten bleibt."
While the compromise makes it likely that the coal under the forests won't be mined (the compromise mandates a gradual closing of plants and mines, but doesn't mandate, which mines should be closed first), the lowering of groundwater levels due to the nearby mining might still kill the forests.
Either way, those forests are mostly of symbolic value; they are tiny compared to the total of forests in Germany - 32% of the country. Looking at the big picture, what matters is that carbon emissions go down further.
Or hydro, but nobody seems to like hydro anymore.
Unfortunately, further potential for hydroelectric energy in Germany is small. Places suitable for large-scale generation are already in use. Many places suitable for small-scale generation, such as former mills have already been reactivated (hydro power in Germany went from 17.4 GWh in 1990 to 19.3 in 2015). There is a little bit of further potential, which can and should be used, but looking at the big picture further hydroelectric power can only be a tiny part of the German energy supply.
Considering that both nuclear and oil have lower carbon-dioxide emissions per given amount of energy produced than coal, how would that do "nothing to solve the underlying issues"?
There are a lot more jobs in coal mining than in the nuclear industry. Closing open-pit lignite mines faces strong opposition from unions and local politicians.
The decision to close down nuclear power plants, while keeping coal plants running doesn't make sense from the perspective of helping the environment. But it makes a lot of sense from a political perspective.
Emissions-wise, natural gas (0.20 g CO2 per Wh) is a much better energy source than coal (0.34 to 0.41 g CO2 per Wh). Also, gas power plants can be adjusted very quickly, making them particularly suitable to balance the varying output from wind and solar energy (both of which Germany has a lot of).