🇫🇮 World’s Largest Sand Battery

🌲 5,900-Year-Old Trees Uncovered in Melting Ice

Researchers have discovered the remains of more than 30 dead whitebark pine trees that were entombed in ice for millennia. The trees were found laying flat, but well-preserved in good condition, suggesting they were rapidly enveloped by ice. The trees were recently exposed when the ice patch, in northwest Wyoming Rocky Mountains, began melting due to hotter temperatures related to human-caused climate change. In the same area, receding ice patches have also revealed fragments of wooden hunting weapons, including one that was more than 10,000 years old. Scientists believe this area will provide important information on past climate, human activity, and environmental change.

Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine

🇫🇮 World’s Largest Sand Battery

Finland recently flipped the switch on the world’s largest sand-based battery, containing 2,000 metric tons of pulverized rock and sand inside a 49-foot-wide silo. Electricity from renewable sources is used to heat the sand, with the heat used at a later time for various ends. This battery promises to slash the town’s carbon emissions by eliminating costly oil that currently powers the town’s heating network. The sand battery, created by Finnish company Polar Night Energy, can store 1,000 megawatt-hours of heat for weeks at a time, enough for a week’s worth of heating in the Finnish winter. The temperature at the outlet can reach 400C, and only about 10-15% of the heat is lost between storage and recovery. The town’s current heating system also relies on burning wood chips, but the addition of the sand battery will reduce that consumption by about 60%.

Tim De Chant, Tech Crunch

ℹ️ Climate Misinformation is Worsening the Climate Crisis

According to a new report from the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE), rampant climate misinformation is turning the climate crisis into a catastrophe. The report found that climate action was being obstructed and delayed by false and misleading information stemming from fossil fuel companies, rightwing politicians, and some nation states. They found that climate denialism has evolved into campaigns focused on discrediting solutions, such as the false claims that renewable energy caused the recent massive blackout in Spain. The UN special rapporteur on human rights on climate change has called for misinformation and greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry, media, and advertising firms to be criminalized for amplifying disinformation and misinformation. Brazil, who is hosting the upcoming COP30 climate summit, is rallying nations behind a separate UN initiative to crack down on climate misinformation.

Damian Carrington, The Guardian