Guest post: How Caribbean states are shifting climate legislation
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The Caribbean region is among the most vulnerable to climate change, despite historically contributing less than half of one percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Rising sea levels, extreme heat and more frequent and intense storms – such as the 2024 Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall in Grenada – pose urgent and growing threats to […]
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UK drone technology firm secures £3.65 million investment
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The firm has secured a contract with National Grid to inspect and monitor the UK’s electricity transmission network. A UK firm developing autonomous aerial solutions, sees.ai, has raised £3.65 million in a funding round. The group said the investment will accelerate its delivery of AI-ready insights that transform the management of critical national infrastructure. The […]
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Build an Inference Cache to Save Costs in High-Traffic LLM Apps
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Large language models (LLMs) are widely used in applications like chatbots, customer support, code assistants, and more.
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Waste profiling system selected by TIME as one of the best inventions of 2025
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An AI-powered camera system that profiles waste streams within recycling facilities has been included among a selection of Best Inventions by TIME. To compile this year’s list, the news and current affairs magazine solicited nominations from across the globe with a special focus on emerging fields such as AI. Inventions were evaluated on several key […]
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Report details staggering extent of water leaks problem, and how real-time monitoring can help
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European properties are losing millions of euros annually due to water leakages, according to the latest Annual Water Report from Smartvatten, a firm that provides data about the sector. The document highlights the critical role of real-time water monitoring in mitigating both financial and environmental risks. The report analysed water usage across 5,370 properties in […]
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Ray Kurzweil ’70 reinforces his optimism in tech progress
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Innovator, futurist, and author Ray Kurzweil ’70 emphasized his optimism about artificial intelligence, and technological progress generally, in a lecture on Wednesday while accepting MIT’s Robert A. Muh Alumni Award from the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS). Kurzweil offered his signature high-profile forecasts about how AI and computing will entirely blend with human […]
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Systems-thinking study identifies agricultural practices that threaten soil health and global food supply
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The global food system faces growing risks as modern farming practices undermine the resilience of the world’s soils, according to new research. Soil resilience is the ability of soils to withstand, adapt to, and recover from disturbances, ranging from everyday management practices to more severe shocks such as extreme weather events. A major review of […]
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IEA: Renewables have cut fossil-fuel imports for more than 100 countries
More than 100 countries have cut their dependence on fossil-fuel imports and saved hundreds of billions of dollars by continuing to invest in renewables, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). It says nations such as the UK, Germany and Chile have reduced their need for imported coal and gas by around a third since […]
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New carbon standard risks killing nature projects before they start, warns ndustry
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The Project Developer Forum (PD Forum)1 has issued a strong warning to the UN body overseeing carbon market rules under the Paris Agreement, saying a proposed standard for ensuring the permanence of emissions reductions could cripple the emerging market for nature-based climate solutions. In a formal submission to the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body (SB), the […]
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MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and MBZUAI launch international collaboration to shape the future of AI
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The MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) recently celebrated the launch of the MIT–MBZUAI Collaborative Research Program, a new effort to strengthen the building blocks of artificial intelligence and accelerate its use in pressing scientific and societal challenges. Under the five-year agreement, faculty, students, and research […]
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Using generative AI to diversify virtual training grounds for robots
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Chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude have experienced a meteoric rise in usage over the past three years because they can help you with a wide range of tasks. Whether you’re writing Shakespearean sonnets, debugging code, or need an answer to an obscure trivia question, artificial intelligence systems seem to have you covered. The source of […]
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Cropped 8 October 2025: US government shutdown; EU loses green space; Migratory species extinction threat
We handpick and explain the most important stories at the intersection of climate, land, food and nature over the past fortnight. This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s fortnightly Cropped email newsletter. Subscribe for free here. Key developments Forest fund delays and cuts TFFF BEHIND SCHEDULE: Brazil’s flagship forest fund, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility […]
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Is ChatGPT-5 Able to Provide Proofs for Advanced Mathematics?
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One of the claims made by OpenAI regarding its latest model, GPT-5 , is a breakthrough in reasoning for math and logic, with the ability to “think” more deeply when a prompt benefits from careful analysis.
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Q&A: How countries are using biofuels to meet their climate targets
From canola farmers in Canada to car owners in India, biofuels have become the subject of everyday debate across the world. Liquid biofuels feature heavily in the climate plans of many countries, as governments prioritise domestic energy security amid geopolitical challenges, while looking to meet their climate targets and bolster farm incomes. Despite a rapid […]
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Experts: The key ‘unknowns’ of overshooting the 1.5C global-warming limit
Last week, around 180 scientists, researchers and legal experts gathered in Laxenburg, Austria to attend the first-ever international conference focused on the controversial topic of climate “overshoot”. This hypothesised scenario would see global temperatures initially “overshoot” the Paris Agreement’s aspirational limit of 1.5C, before they are brought back down through techniques that would remove carbon […]
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Overshoot: Exploring the implications of meeting 1.5C climate goal ‘from above’
The first-ever international conference on the contentious topic of “overshoot” was held last week in a palace in the small town of Laxenburg in Austria. The three-day conference brought together nearly 200 researchers and legal experts to discuss future temperature pathways where the Paris Agreement’s “aspirational” target to limit global warming to 1.5C is met […]
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First UK-accredited carbon accountants training courses set to launch
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In what seems an important professionalisation milestone for carbon accounting, UK trade body the Institute of Sustainability and Environmental Professionals (ISEP) has launched a new course specification for the sector, allowing training providers to develop and run accredited courses for the first time. This attempt to set professional standards is expected to help efforts to […]
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Green chemicals firm in Grangemouth offers thoughts on demand trends
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Celtic Renewables biorefinery in Grangemouth. Demand is increasing for green chemicals that do without fossil fuel-derived ingredients, says Celtic Renewables, a Scottish firm focused on the sector, which attributes the growth to regulatory pressure to reduce carbon emissions in manufacturing supply chains together with growing demand from the public for greener, sustainably made products. The […]