Also on today’s menu:
5G Expansion And The Weather
Smart Traffic Lights
The center-left government of German Chancellor Olav Scholz is accelerating the country’s transition to clean energy following Vladmir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, planning to introduce legislation that would require nearly 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035 in an effort to reach net-zero emissions by 2045, Dan Gearino reports in Inside Climate News.
The new climate legislation focuses mostly on the electricity sector and sets a 2035 target for almost completely eliminating fossil fuels from the production of electricity. Last year, the country that generated 43 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels.
Many green energy advocates call for nuclear power as part of the mix, but Germany is near the end of a phaseout of its nuclear power plants, initiated after the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. The Ukraine war has intensified Germany’s concerns about the safety of nuclear power as Ukraine’s nuclear power plants have been caught in the crossfire and Russian troops have stormed the region that includes the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Steffi Lemke, Germany’s environment minister, said, “In view of safety, economic, and legal risks, we rule out extending operations for Germany.”
5G Expansion And The Weather
The expansion of 5G cellular networks to improve wireless data streaming to smartphones, tablets, and laptops has some scientists worried. Because 5G taps into Spectrum-range radio wavelengths that the earth’s atmosphere also naturally emits, allowing satellite sensors to translate the information into weather data, there is concern about possible interference that could make weather forecasting less accurate.
Atmospheric scientists say auctioning off additional spectrum bands could reduce their ability to warn communities about extreme weather events like hurricanes and tropical storms in order to save lives.
“Precise and timely information about the weather is especially important in our age of extreme weather,” the article states. “In 2012, for example, the National Hurricane Center was able to give the state of Louisiana an accurate prediction for when and where Category 1 Hurricane Isaac would make landfall about two days in advance of the storm.”
Smart Traffic Lights
The artificially intelligent Surtrac (Scalable Urban Traffic Control) system, deployed in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood in 2012, watches city traffic and adjusts lights at nine intersections to enhance traffic flow. Since its installation, travel time dropped by 26 percent and time spent idling at red lights dropped by 40 percent, according to Popular Science.
Allowing cars to move more efficiently requires fewer traffic lanes. Currently, 22 cities are using Surtrac, including Atlanta and several New England towns. It is relatively cheap, easy to install and maintain, and can utilize existing infrastructure like streetlight cameras.
The system is not perfect: Pedestrians and bicyclists say they have to wait longer at corners because the system’s data collection tools — primarily cameras trained on vehicles — reflect a bias for cars.
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