All posts tagged: scale

Donald Trump is likely to scale back America’s climate targets – will other countries follow suit? | Science, Climate & Tech News

Donald Trump is likely to scale back America’s climate targets – will other countries follow suit? | Science, Climate & Tech News

After a year of ever more extreme weather and continually rising global temperatures, it’s no wonder this year’s UN climate summit has been called – once again – the “last-chance saloon”. Yet swaggering out through its swing doors goes president-elect Donald Trump. The timing of his election win, with its promise to withdraw the US from the global climate process, couldn’t be worse. Next year is forecast to exceed 1.5 degrees of warming for the first time – something the Paris Agreement is designed to prevent from becoming the norm. Despite that and nearly 30 years of talks, man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are still rising. Yet just a handful of nations have committed to cut them enough to prevent close to three degrees of warming by the end of the century. Read more from Sky News:British supermodel dies aged 46UK village had just 12 minutes of sunshine this month – here’s why So does America’s sudden departure, at this most precarious of moments, spell disaster? Under previous administrations, the US was a major diplomatic …

The full scale of Labour’s challenge revealed

The full scale of Labour’s challenge revealed

More from this theme Recent articles A damning parents’ survey has revealed the scale of the task ahead for ministers in fixing the broken SEND system by making mainstream schools more inclusive. While 90 per cent of parents of pupils with additional needs said their child was well supported in a special school, just 59 per cent said the same in a mainstream school. The sobering findings heap further pressure on the new government as it gets to grips with its SEND challenge. Schools Week reveals the four key problems facing Labour’s inclusive school drive… The parent perception problem The SEND improvement plan’s key theme is to make mainstream schools move inclusive. Labour, while still assessing the scale of the SEND problem and what its approach will be, has promised a “community-wide” solution. This will include “improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, as well as ensuring special schools cater to those with the most complex needs”. But a government survey of more than 2,000 parents with children in year 9, published on Friday, found …

Singapore ‘fighting a war’ against drug scourge given scale of lives lost, Victims Remembrance Day to be held: Shanmugam

Singapore ‘fighting a war’ against drug scourge given scale of lives lost, Victims Remembrance Day to be held: Shanmugam

SINGAPORE: Singapore is “fighting a war” against traffickers who profit off the drug trade at the expense of thousands of innocent lives, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said in Parliament on Wednesday (May 8). He framed Singapore’s fight against drugs as a war due to the “scale in terms of victims and lost lives” in this battle. Delivering a ministerial statement on Singapore’s national drug control policy, Mr Shanmugam cited statistics from various sources such as the World Health Organization, which reported 600,000 deaths in 2019 due to drug use, and the World Drug Report’s estimates in the same year where 31 million years of “healthy” life were lost due to disability and premature deaths as a result of drug use. “These are not mere statistics, but lives — fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters,” he said. Mr Shanmugam added that he was delivering the ministerial statement because even though Singapore’s strict narcotics policies are effective and supported by Singaporeans, they are criticised “without merit” by some parties who are helping inmates to abuse the legal process …

Electricity Maps calculates the carbon intensity of electricity consumption to optimize usage at scale

Electricity Maps calculates the carbon intensity of electricity consumption to optimize usage at scale

If you’re an electricity nerd, chances are you’ve already spent quite a few hours looking at Electricity Maps and its mesmerizing export flow animations. This open-source data visualization project has been around since 2016. But companies like Google and Samsung are increasingly relying on this rich data set to hit their sustainability goals and empower their own users. There are currently 20 people working for Electricity Maps and the company has been profitable for a few years. But TechCrunch has exclusively learned it recently raised a $5.4 million (€5M) funding round from Transition and Revent, to take things up a notch by investing in the product and the business. Electricity Maps is now both a data visualization tool and an enterprise API for data-driven decarbonization — and one wouldn’t work without the other. Founded by Olivier Corradi, a French and Danish entrepreneur and data scientist who previously worked for voice assistant startup Snips, Electricity Maps started from an itch to know more about electricity production and consumption. “There were articles in the press saying that …

‘There are people in tents writing dissertations’: UK reaches for scale of US campus protests | Israel-Gaza war

‘There are people in tents writing dissertations’: UK reaches for scale of US campus protests | Israel-Gaza war

Students across Britain have said they hope pro-Palestine protests will reach the same scale as those seen on US campuses as they call for universities to divest from companies supplying arms to Israel. Protests have spread across university campuses in Sheffield, Bristol and Leeds, after a crackdown in the US on protests, which led to mass arrests of students and staff. More than 2,000 people have been arrested on university campuses in the US, garnering attention from international media and people in the besieged Gaza Strip, including Bisan Owda, a Palestinian journalist and content creator living in Gaza, who encouraged student protesters “to do more” for this “unprecedented moment” in a video posted on Instagram. Samira Ali, 24, is one of about 100 students who stormed the library at Goldsmiths, University of London this week, occupying the first two floors. Ali, a third-year sociology student and co-organiser for Goldsmiths for Palestine, said 30 students had occupied the building, demanding the university ends “financial complicity” and condemns the war in Gaza. “I think that it’s only …

‘Change on an unprecedented scale’

‘Change on an unprecedented scale’

More from this theme Recent articles Rishi Sunak’s “Advanced British Standard” risks an increase in the volume of exams, the continuation of “unregulated” international A-levels and requires “significant investment” to deliver change on an “unprecedented scale”, Ofqual has warned. The exams regulator has issed its response to the government’s consultation on the new qualification, which ministers want to see replace A-levels and T-levels in around a decade. Here’s what you need to know. 1. ‘Reform on an unprecedented scale’ Ofqual said achieving the ambitions of the ABS “requires change on a scale unprecedented in England in recent decades”. “It envisages concurrent reform to curriculum, qualification content and structures, the qualifications market, and any associated technological reform.” Reform on this scale “can be delivered successfully, but its scale and complexity require significant investment of resource across all parts of the education system”. 2. Start with compulsory maths and English The regulator welcomed the “long-term reform timescale and the resourcing commitments set out in the consultation”, adding it was “important to sequence changes carefully”. They suggested the …

Homelessness jumps 16% in England, laying bare scale of housing crisis | Homelessness

Homelessness jumps 16% in England, laying bare scale of housing crisis | Homelessness

The number of people being made homeless jumped by 16% in the final three months of last year, according to the latest government figures, which laid bare the scale of the country’s housing crisis. Figures published by the government on Tuesday show nearly 45,000 households in England were assessed as homeless in the three months to December, up from just under 39,000 during the same period in 2022. The figures also show the number of people – including children – in temporary accommodation hit record levels in 2023, triggering warnings of a housing “emergency”. Mike Amesbury, the shadow minister for homelessness, said: “These stats reveal a growing Tory housing emergency being felt by families in every part of the country. Over the past 14 years, the Tories have taken a wrecking ball to the foundation of a secure home, leaving Britain facing a homelessness epidemic. “Under this government’s watch, kids are growing up in temporary accommodation, coming home from school to do their homework on the bathroom floor of a hotel room and eating dinner …

Nigeria’s YC-backed Chowdeck hopes to scale food delivery, a notoriously tough market, with .5M funding

Nigeria’s YC-backed Chowdeck hopes to scale food delivery, a notoriously tough market, with $2.5M funding

Food is significant to Nigerians, with households spending nearly 60% of their income on it, the highest globally, according to official reports. This strong affinity for food, coupled with the rise of online shopping, sets the stage for Nigeria’s food delivery market to potentially reach $2 billion to $3 billion by 2032. Despite the promising market size, there isn’t a clear leader yet. However, Lagos-based Chowdeck, backed by Y Combinator and armed with a $2.5 million in seed investment, aims to make its mark in a space that has burned heavyweights like Jumia and Bolt. Founded by Femi Aluko, Olumide Ojo, and Lanre Yusuf, Chowdeck offers consumers the convenience of ordering food and having it delivered to their doorstep within an average of 30 minutes. CEO Aluko shared that the inspiration for launching the startup came from his experience of quick deliveries and exceptional customer service during a work trip to Dubai. Aluko explained, “Ordering food in Nigeria would usually take one or two hours. But each time I ordered food during my three-month stay …

Facebook Cofounder Says Tesla Has Committed “Consumer Fraud on a Massive Scale,” Will End in Jail

Facebook Cofounder Says Tesla Has Committed “Consumer Fraud on a Massive Scale,” Will End in Jail

“This is Enron now, folks.” Heads Will Roll Amidst a chaotic month for Tesla — even by its continuously plunging standards — Facebook cofounder and multi-billionaire Dustin Moskovitz has made some pretty dire predictions for the automaker, accusing it of committing “consumer fraud on a massive scale.” “This is Enron now, folks,” Moskovitz wrote on Threads, referring to the corporation that went bankrupt in 2001 after it was exposed for one of the biggest accounting frauds in history. “It may keep going, but people are going to jail at the end.” His concerns stem from a graph Tesla shared to mark a key milestone: one billion miles driven using Full Self-Driving, the company’s highly fraught advanced driver assist system. He then compares it with a new graph released during Tesla’s latest earnings call — an event that came with its own eyebrow raising moments. The point of the side-by-side is this: according to Moskovitz, the automaker is wrongly recognizing its deferred revenue — revenue for a product that hasn’t been delivered, like an annual subscription …