Sustainable Infrastructure

A report from The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate advocates for smart choices over the next 15 years with an expected investment of US$90 trillion for infrastructure worldwide. Co-chair Nicholas Stern:

We cannot continue with business as usual, which will lock in high-carbon infrastructure and create further congestion and pollution while choking off development opportunities, particularly for poor people. We can and should invest in and build cities where we can move and breathe and be productive, while protecting the natural world that underpins our livelihoods.

Ten Times More Galaxies

So if the number of galaxies were undercounted by a factor of ten, does that do anything to explain the "missing mass" that dark matter/dark energy are supposed account for?

Update (October 26):  Not a related study, but a paper published in Scientific Reports by lead author Subir Sarkar from Oxford University uses a larger database of supernovae to dispute a previous claim that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. It's been the justification for the hypothesized dark matter/dark energy.

[W]e find, rather surprisingly, that the data are still quite consistent with a constant rate of expansion.

Update (May 28, 2020):  It's cool how J. Xavier Prochaska and Jean-Pierre Macquart describe their efforts to find missing "baryonic" matter in the form of low-density, hot plasma dispersed throughout the universe. The missing matter is half of the predicted 5% of all matter represented by baryons. The other 95%, of course, is dark matter/dark energy whatever the hell that is.

Rapid Change

The World Meteorological Organization warns that changes in the Arctic climate are increasingly challenging to monitor. Dan Grimes:

The Arctic is a principal, global driver of the climate system and is undergoing an unprecedented rate of change with consequences far beyond its boundaries.

The changes in the Arctic are serving as a global indicator – like ‘a canary in the coal mine’ – and are happening at a much faster rate than we would have expected.