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Atmospheric landfill gas emissions present serious problems when trying to counter the effects of global warming. The main constituent of landfill gas is methane, a more damaging greenhouse gas than CO2. European Union directives require the control and collection of landfill gases and promote energy recovery via combustion of the gas. A key challenge for combustion of landfill gas is the highly corrosive nature of the gas constituents which causes heightened maintenance and failure of applied engine systems. Conventional engines suffer from the effects of corrosion; however, stepped piston engine technology has yet to be considered for operational use at landfill sites. The engine has inherent advantages for such an application when compared with current conventional engines. The engine allows improved lubricating oil health compared to conventional engines and hence reduced oil use. This study discusses the challenges along with modelling of stepped piston and equivalent four-stroke engine solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water shortage has plagued the social development and human well-being of global closed basins. However, the hydroclimate research on different time scales in these regions remains inadequate at a global scale. In this paper, the hydrological responses from global closed basins to millennial-scale and centennial-scale cold/warm events since the Last Glacial Maximum were explored. Closed-basin lake records indicate that the westerlies-dominated closed basins are generally wetter during cold events than the corresponding warm ones on the millennial and centennial scales. In contrast, the monsoon-influenced closed basins prevail wetter climates during warm events. According to the hydroclimate simulations, precipitation seasonality plays a significant role in causing above spatial–temporal patterns. There is more winter rainfall in westerlies-dominated closed basins during cold events in the Last Glacial Maximum and Little Ice Age and more summer rainfall in monsoon-influenced closed basins during warm events in the mid-Holocene and Medieval Climate Anomaly. Under modern and future global warming, the hydroclimate changes in global closed basins show more regional differentiation, resulting in wetter mid-latitude Asian and low-latitude African closed basins but drier southwest North American and Australian closed basins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has tied the journalistic norm of 'balance' to an overarching tendency to polarize the climate debate between realists and contrarians. This study uses conversation analysis to advance our knowledge about how climate changes are debated verbally in practice. It builds upon a corpus of current televised climate change panel debates in Denmark. The corpus confirms a documented turn from debating if global warming is a fact to debating what we should do to reduce emissions. Analyses detail two methods, which the interviewer invokes to administer turn-taking: (a) stand-alone next speaker reference and (b) prefatory address term + interrogatives that implicitly project disagreement. These methods help interviewers sustain their formal neutrality. But the study also finds that perspectives are orchestrated to (re)produce multiple polarizations between representatives of different interests and ideologies, for example activists versus business representatives, which might not be helpful in solving the climate crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The metrics used in environmental management are performative. That is, the tools deployed to classify and measure the natural world interact with the things they were designed to observe. The idea of performativity also captures the way these interactions shape or distort the governance activities that metrics are used to inform. The performativity of metrics reveals how mundane practices of measurement and auditing are inscribed with substantial power. This has proven particularly true for the global warming metrics, like GWP100, that are central to the management of anthropogenic climate change. Greenhouse gases are materially heterogenous, and the metrics used to commensurate their various warming impacts influence the distribution of both culpability and capital in climate policy and markets. The publication of a new warming metric, GWP* (or GWP Star), has generated a modest scientific controversy, as a diverse cast of stakeholders recognize this performativity seek to influence the metrological regime under which they live. We analyse this controversy, particularly as it unfolded in the fractious discourse around sustainable food and farming, to develop the concept of reflexive performativity : where actors are anticipatory and strategic in their engagement with the metrics that are used to govern their lives. We situate this idea in relation to, and in tentative evidential support of, the concept of reflexive modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores British newspaper descriptions of the impact of climate change across three time periods. It shows a reduction in representing the consequences of climate change as 'out of human control'. It also shows a decrease in adopting alarming and uncertain descriptions within the centre-left group, whereas mocking the effects of climate change is a peculiarity of right-leaning narratives. The complexity of climate narratives produces a variety of representations of the consequences of climate change, which in turn might increase 'uncertainty' in public understanding of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China and the United States are the world's top two greenhouse gas emitters. However, little is known as to the amount of attention the media in both countries have paid to the issue of climate change, and the ways in which their media framed the issue. To address both queries, this study analyzed the climate change coverage (N = 9,001) of the Chinese and US media, using a computational approach. Results revealed overall increases of attention to climate change in both countries' media from 2016 through 2019, whereas the Chinese witnessed a more evident increase after 2018. Moreover, the media in both countries tended to foster a sense of responsibilities rather than confining the issue to an episodic level. Furthermore, the US media highlighted political conflict and the catastrophic consequences of climate change, whereas the Chinese media highlighted public accountability and governance, as well as economic development and competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]