Can we really reverse global warming after overshooting 1.5°C?
Fossil fuel emissions are likely to push the world past 1.5°C of warming Blossey/imageBROKER/Shutterstock The world is likely to overshoot 1.5°C of warming within the next few years, a report (UNEP) acknowledges. However, it says it is still possible to cool the planet back down to this level . Can it really be done? It isn’t impossible, but it certainly isn’t the most likely outcome. The goal of limiting the increase in the average global surface temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels looked implausible even back in 2015, when it was adopted as part of the Paris Agreement. The UNEP report can be seen as an “official” acknowledgment of what many have been saying for years: that it is now certain that we are going to blast right past this limit. But some aren’t giving up on the target. There are no good outcomes if we remain above 1.5°C, says Inger Andersen at UNEP. “Even if we exceed 1.5, let’s be very clear: that 1.5 target is still the goal. The report focuses on a scenario in which rapid emissions cuts and massive-scale removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere result in a return to 1.5°C of warming . But achieving this would require limiting temperature rises to no more than 1.8°C, says Roberts. Beyond this, there will be cascading effects from all the irreversible changes that make it much harder. However, restricting warming to this level requires a halving of global emissions by 2035, says report author Joeri Rogelj at Imperial College London. That seems highly unlikely given that emissions are still rising worldwide. In addition to emissions cuts, the scenario envisaged in the report also requires carbon removal on a truly gigantic scale – enough not just to balance out hard-to-tackle emission sources, such as farming, and achieve net zero, but to go well beyond that to remove around 10 gigatonnes of CO2 each year. That compares with current emissions of around 40 gigatonnes. This means scaling up carbon removal by a factor of around 100,000, says Reto Knutti at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, who wasn’t involved in the report. Cheap forms of carbon removal, such as planting forests, can’t be scaled up this much because there isn’t enough land. Direct air capture could be scaled up, but it is really expensive, he says. The scenario based on current policies forecasts warming of around 3°C by 2100. Until recently, overshooting and returning to 1.5°C was no more than a scientific thought experiment, says Oliver Geden at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
Families hit by long waits for dementia diagnosis
Michael Fathon with his father, Jim, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease at the age of 69 in 2022 Hundreds of families say they have had to wait months or even years for a dementia diagnosis for a loved one. Such long delays have an impact on their own work, finances and mental health, a survey for the Alzheimer's Society charity reveals. The charity is calling for a national standard that would mean someone with dementia would receive an accurate diagnosis within 18 weeks of being seen and referred by a GP. That would put dementia on a similar footing as other major health conditions, including cancer. Michael Fethon says his dad, Jim, waited 18 months from their initial appointment with a GP before being diagnosed. It was a delay that took its toll on Jim - and on Michael, who eventually had to give up his job to care for his dad. "I think my dad felt beside himself because he was experiencing symptoms. Michelle Dyson CB, of the Alzheimer's Society, says a diagnosis can really help families access support and plan for the future. "Too many families spend months, and sometimes years, waiting for answers while their dementia progresses. "It is like trying to plan a journey without knowing where you are going or when you will arrive. "You would never accept someone being diagnosed with cancer and then left to work out the next steps on their own." Dementia does not wait, and neither should diagnosis, she added. Burnham doesn't rule out tax rises to fix social care 'Every day I'm just winging it': The families hoping for social care reform This actor was told he had Alzheimer's, now he's performing a one-man show Keith and Sue first met when they were 15, and have been married since 1969. Keith and Sue Andrews first met when they were 15, and they've been married for 57 years. Sue's condition has deteriorated so much that she now lives in a home. Keith says they had to wait almost a year for a diagnosis, which was difficult. He says life became more maneagable, once they knew for sure.
Urine test can spot more than nine in 10 bladder cancers
An at-home urine test that the NHS has been trialling can detect more than nine in ten cases of bladder cancer, latest findings show. The study, published in European Urology Oncology, was led a diagnostics company Nonacus, and involved nearly 1,000 patients at seven hospitals in England and Scotland. Researchers hope it could reduce the number of patients needing urgent, more invasive procedures, called cystoscopies, which involve inserting a small camera up the urethra and into the bladder. If a larger trial is successful, it could mean tens of thousands of patients a year are spared these tests. More than 300,000 cystoscopies are performed in the UK each year and there are significant waiting lists in some areas. While the urine test is not a replacement for cystoscopies, it could help doctors identify patients at greater risk who should be prioritised for urgent ones rather than wait. This NHS trial found that the Galeas urine test identified 92% of bladder cancer cases. A negative result meant there was more than a 99% chance that the patient did not have bladder cancer. It checks for any genetic material shed into the urine (CRUK). It looks for more than 450 DNA mutations associated with bladder cancer across 23 genes. Prof Richard Bryan, co-author of the study and from Birmingham University, said after spending years developing and evaluating the science, it was exciting to see "very promising early performance" in a large real-world patient population. Under a licensing agreement, the test has been commercialised by Nonacus, which pays back part of the revenue to the University and CRUK. Michelle Mitchell from CRUK said: "Too many people are waiting longer than they should for a bladder cancer diagnosis, and it's essential that we find ways to tackle this problem. "It's early days for this test and further research is needed, but it's vital that we continue to find faster and less invasive ways to help diagnose or rule out cancer." Bladder cancer is more common in men over the age of 60 and the main symptom is blood in your urine. How serious bladder cancer is depends on how big the cancer is and whether it has spread elsewhere in the body. Early detection and treatment of cancer saves lives.
Watch: Astronauts set out on rare all-female spacewalk
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. This video can not be played Watch: Astronauts set out on rare all-female spacewalkClose For the sixth time in history, a team of two women completed a spacewalk outside the International Space Station. Nasa astronaut Jessica Meir and French astronaut Sophie Adenot suited up for a 6.5-hour spacewalk. Meir rode the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm to the worksites, while Adenot remained tethered to the station. Meir previously made history in 2019 when she and Nasa astronaut Christina Koch completed the first ever all-female spacewalk. This event marked the 284th spacewalk in support of space station assembly, maintenance and upgrades, and the seventh spacewalk of the year. Subsection Published close panel Share page Copy link About sharing AstronautsFollow Astronauts close panel You are now following Astronauts Updates from your News topics will appear in My News and in a collection on the News homepage. International Space StationFollow International Space Station close panel You are now following International Space Station Updates from your News topics will appear in My News and in a collection on the News homepage. NasaFollow Nasa close panel You are now following Nasa Updates from your News topics will appear in My News and in a collection on the News homepage.
How a small island in Canada appeared, vanished, and was found again
The floating island was first spotted -August A small, floating island on a lake in the Canadian province of British Columbia has been spotted again after officials lost track of it on satellite images following its initial discovery. The forested island was first spotted in the middle of Williston Reservoir, BC's largest fresh water lake, in early August a video that has since gone viral. A satellite image from late July confirmed the existence of the island, which is the size of about one-and-a-half American football fields. But a few weeks later, it had vanished from that spot. Officials in BC say they have now been able to locate it again near shore, though it's unclear where it came from. Bob Gammer, a spokesperson for BC Hydro, a government-owned utility that maintains the reservoir and a nearby dam, first learned of the island's existence after seeing a video of it circulating on Canadian social media pages. The video, taken by boaters, shows a forested patch of land that appeared to be bobbing in the water. Gammer said he at first thought it was an AI-generated clip. "I thought, well, this could be anywhere," he told the BBC. "Maybe it's not real." But a satellite image pulled up 21 July confirmed it was real, and was indeed floating in the middle of the reservoir in a remote northern part of the province. The island, however, appeared to have vanished in a satellite image taken just a few weeks later on 5 August. Its disappearance was covered , sparking intrigue around the globe. "We just don't know where it went," Gammer said. "Did it sink? Did it find its way into another corner of the reservoir?" Gammer said he can now put the questions to bed. The island, he said, appears to have simply drifted towards shore and landed around 30 km (18.6 miles) from where it was first spotted. This was confirmed by a new satellite image and a couple of eyewitness accounts from pilots flying above, he said. BC Hydro estimates the island to be 9,800 square metres, or one hectare - roughly the size of one Canadian football field, or 1.5 American football fields. As to its origins, Gammer said BC Hydro is still not entirely sure, but there is one strong theory: the island likely formed over many years from accumulating driftwood that served as a base for plants and trees to take root. He added he believes it broke off from the reservoir's shoreline this summer as water levels rose to a high not seen since 2012.
Are you made of real-world quarks or virtual-world qubits?
DigitalVision/ The following is an extract from our Lost in Space-Time . Each month, we dive into fascinating ideas from around the universe. You can Lost in Space-Time here. You can blame my youngest child for the existential crisis that I’m about to drag you into. When he gazed up with his innocent wide eyes to ask, “Mum, do you think we could be living inside a computer game?”, little did I know that my search for an answer would require a three-year journey of discovery! Could this all in fact be a computer simulation of a virtual reality so perfect that it appears to be real in every sense? Day one of my quest started with an epic internal battle between the part of me that wears my Astronomer Royal for Scotland hat, and the other part of me who is still a toddler. Astronomer Royal: “If a scientific question cannot be directly tested, it is, by definition, worthless. Move on.” Inner toddler: “Why? What is real?” It took a week before I settled on a position. The ability to simulate reality hinges on the question of whether everything in our universe is mathematical – maths is the only language that computers speak – and the Astronomer Royal could certainly interrogate that. Let’s start “shut up and calculate” prescription for quantum mechanics, (an approach that handily evades all the problematic philosophical questions that arise when you zoom into the quantum realm). In the 1970s, they gave birth to a single algebraic equation, the so-called standard model, that predicts the number of subatomic particles, their properties and how they interact with each other. Using this mathematical model, they predicted what should be observed when two protons smash into each other at close to the speed of light and break apart to reveal their innards. To carry out this challenging particle-smashing experiment, they built CERN, a 27-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets buried 100 metres under the France-Switzerland border. The perfect accuracy of the theorists’ predictions compared with the precision of CERN’s experimental measurements is breathtaking. The resulting discovery of the long-searched-for Higgs boson affirms our hypothesis that the universe is very mathematical. But then the astronomers came along, throwing several spanners in the works. For example, particles called neutrinos change their personality – switching from one so-called flavour to another – in the eight and a half minutes it takes them to travel from the sun’s core to our detectors.
Could humans ever communicate with whales? - video
Ever since the earliest known recording of whale song was made in 1949, researchers have been captivated , rumbles, clicks, grunts and squeals of their communication. As technology improves, scientists are decoding the intricate patterns that make different species’ vocalisations distinctive. Madeleine Finlay hears from Emma Bryce, a journalist who has spent months investigating human efforts to understand whale song. She explains how this knowledge could help us better protect whales from human-made harms. Credits: 1. Valeria Vergara/Raincoast Conservation Foundation 2. Footage courtesy of Raincoast Conservation Foundation - Obtained for research under SARA permit XMMS 4 2026 3. Video /Project CETI 4. Footage courtesy of Valeria Vergara and GREMM. Obtained for research under SARA permits QUE-MM02-2016 and QUE-LEP-001-2018 5. Project CETI 6.
A N.Y. hospital tried to close its birthing center. This city united to fight back
Y. hospital tried to close its birthing center. This city united to fight back Democrats and Republicans in Troy, N. Y., took on a national Catholic health system and kept the county's last birthing center open. Y. hospital tried to close its birthing center. This city united to fight back September 1, 20265:00 AM ET From By Noam Levey State Assembly member John T. McDonald III (center), a Democrat, worked to secure $5 million in state funding to help keep the Burdett Birth Center open in Troy, N. Katherine Bruno/Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood hide caption toggle caption Katherine Bruno/Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood TROY, N. Y. — Like many residents of this aging industrial city on the Hudson River, Starletta Washington was stunned when she heard Troy's last remaining hospital planned to close its birthing center. "It was devastating," said Washington, who heads the local YWCA. Washington was born at the hospital and had her children there. She couldn't believe families would now have to get to a hospital half an hour away or face the prospect of an emergency delivery. "Nobody else was going to be born in the city of Troy unless they were born on a city bus, in the back of a cab, or, disgustingly, on the side of the street?" Washington said. "Blew my mind." For stories on the science of healthy living, NPR's Health . Troy wasn't the first community to face this prospect. Since 2010, hospitals have closed hundreds of maternity units as cities and towns shrink and hospitals consolidate into larger systems. Troy found a more hopeful ending. Starletta Washington, who heads the YWCA in Troy, N. Y., was born at the hospital where Burdett Birth Center is located. Like many in the community, she says she was blindsided 's plan to close the center. Hannah Norman/KFF Health News hide caption toggle caption Hannah Norman/KFF Health News Elected officials from both major parties joined patient advocates, mothers, midwives, doulas and community leaders like Washington to challenge Trinity Health, the large Catholic health system that owns Troy's hospital and birthing center. The campaign even united Planned Parenthood and the Catholic diocese. "Whether you were Republican or Democrat, or if you didn't vote, it literally brought everyone together," said Carmella Mantello, the city's Republican mayor. "Everyone just said, 'We can't let this happen.'" Throughout the country, healthcare remains a flash point as politicians square off ahead of November's elections.
What's the secret ingredient in these cookies? Plastic
New research at the American Chemical Society meeting showcased a potentially edible cookie made out of — plastic! NPR Science LISTEN & FOLLOW NPR App Apple Podcasts Spotify Amazon Music iHeart Radio RSS link Science What's the secret ingredient in these cookies? Plastic August 31, 20265:54 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered Ari Daniel Cookies out of plastic Listen · Transcript Toggle more options Download Embed Embed <iframe src="https://www. npr. org/player/embed/nx-s1-5947227/nx-s1-9908289" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> Transcript New research at the American Chemical Society meeting showcased a potentially edible cookie made out of — plastic! Transcript MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: This next story is about taking plastic and converting it into cookies - yes, cookies. This is a process that might help deal with pollution and other problems. NPR science reporter Ari Daniel reports. ARI DANIEL, BYLINE: Transforming plastic into a snack may sound a little tough to swallow. But Lahiru Jayakody, a synthetic microbiologist at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, says just think of a cow. LAHIRU JAYAKODY: Can you eat grass? But cow take the grass and it produce milk. We use milk to make many, many different product. DANIEL: In other words, living creatures are like chemistry labs, converting raw ingredients into new materials. Microbes excel at this kind of thing, so Jayakody decided to try genetically engineering yeast to digest plastic, specifically the kind often used in water bottles and food packaging. D. student Sandhya Jayasekara first took the intact plastic, along with ground-up corn husks and stalks, and broke it all down into simpler molecules. SANDHYA JAYASEKARA: So that those molecules are available as a food for the yeast. DANIEL: She then gave it to the yeast, which processed this mix of disintegrated plastic and corn to make a gluey protein paste, which Jayasekara mixed with vanilla and beta-carotene that were produced , like oatmeal. A 3D food printer then turned that slurry into small cookies. JAYAKODY: There is no micro- or nanoplastic embedded into this cookie. So you are not eating plastic. DANIEL: Nor has anyone actually eaten the cookie yet. There are still safety tests to be done. The process is pricey, uses a lot of energy and not much of the plastic makes it into the final cookie. JAYAKODY: This is a proof of concept, right? JAYASEKARA: Kind of a beginning of a journey. DANIEL: Still, the researchers say they hope the cookies may, at some point, be made from plastic waste on-site in extreme or difficult environments, like outer space or disaster zones.
Smelling test: children need education in sniffing aromas, scientist says
‘I would love a world where at primary and secondary school people are taught to engage their noses,’ Tullett said. Clair/ View image in fullscreen ‘I would love a world where at primary and secondary school people are taught to engage their noses,’ Tullett said. Clair/ Smelling test: children need education in sniffing aromas, scientist says Exclusive: Dr Will Tullett says better understanding of scents can improve wellbeing and perception of the world Children need a better education in sniffing aromas, a leading historian of smells has said, noting it may improve their wellbeing and help them understand the world around them. Dr Will Tullett, of the University of York, said pollution had been found to impair people’s olfactory abilities, while many objects and substances today – from margarines to car interiors and even our own homes – were stripped of their original smells and “reodourised” with synthetic scents. “There is an open question about what the proliferation of those kinds of synthetic scents in our daily lives does to our ability to discriminate between different smells,” he said. As a result, Tullett said, there was a need for olfactory education. “I would love a world where at primary and secondary school people are taught to engage their noses,” he said, adding that training could also be done at home. He said one approach would be to encourage people to smell more items. “The more we smell, the more we enlarge the vocabulary through which we can describe other things,” he said, noting that sommeliers took a similar approach. “They’ll go to marketplaces and they’ll walk around and they’ll smell everything. And then what they’re doing is expanding their range of reference points. And then I think it’s being able to compare and contrast and think about what are the similarities between different smells.” Tullett said thinking about smells could also help us to understand ourselves, such as why we find some odours comforting, and could provide useful information about the world. “A classic example here is food safety and food sustainability – smelling as to whether something is fresh or not and whether you need to bin it, rather than relying solely on a use by date, for example,” he said. It’s just that they’re not necessarily given the opportunity, or equipped with the language, or even given a sense of confidence that they can talk about it,” he said.