Tác giả: Đào Thu Hằng

I'm from Hanoi, Viet Nam. I'm an author of Dot Chuoi Non (dotchuoinon.com/author/hangbelu/), a blog on Positive thinking, founded by Dr. Tran Dinh Hoanh, an attorney in Washington DC. I'm a co-founder of Conversations on Vietnam Development - cvdvn.net, a virtual think tank; a co-founder of POTATO - potato.edu.vn, working on outdoor education programs for kids in Vietnam. My English blog: hangbelu.wordpress/. I'm studying the Buddha's teaching and the teaching of Jesus. I practice mindful living including meditation. I hold a PhD on Sustainable Energy Systems from University of Lisbon and Aalto University. I graduated from Hanoi University of Technology on Environmental Engineering. I obtained a Master degree of the same major from Stanford University and Nanyang Technological University. I play table tennis as a hobby.

Nhiều thủy điện ồ ạt xả lũ, dân trở tay không kịp

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Plo.vn

Thứ Tư, ngày 1/12/2021 – 06:30

(PLO)- Nhiều thủy điện ở Tây Nguyên thuộc lưu vực sông Ba bất ngờ xả lũ xuống hạ du, gây ngập nặng nhiều vùng ở Phú Yên, người dân không kịp ứng phó.

Thông tin với Pháp Luật TP.HCM, ông Trần Hữu Thế, Chủ tịch UBND tỉnh Phú Yên, cho hay đến tối 30-11, nhiều vùng ven sông Ba thuộc TP Tuy Hòa, các huyện Phú Hòa, Sơn Hòa, Tây Hòa, Đông Hòa đã bị ngập nặng. Hàng ngàn căn nhà bị ngập sâu trong nước, hàng loạt xã, khu dân cư bị lũ cô lập. Quốc lộ 25, quốc lộ 29 từ TP Tuy Hòa đi Tây Nguyên, phần lớn các tuyến giao thông trọng yếu đã bị tê liệt, ách tắc do ngập sâu trong nước, sạt lở.

Tiếp tục đọc “Nhiều thủy điện ồ ạt xả lũ, dân trở tay không kịp” →

Can the world’s most polluting heavy industries decarbonize?

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Grist.org

The production of steel, cement, and ammonia emit about one-fifth of all human-caused CO2. Technologies are emerging to decarbonize these problem industries, but analysts warn that big challenges remain.

A blast furnace at a steel mill in Salzgitter, Germany.
A blast furnace at a steel mill in Salzgitter, Germany. PLUS49 / CONSTRUCTION PHOTOGRAPHY / AVALON / GETTY IMAGES

This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360 and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

We know how to decarbonize energy production with renewable fuels and land transportation with electric vehicles. Blueprints for greening shipping and aircraft are being drawn up. But what about the big industrial processes? They look set to become decarbonization holdouts — the last and hardest CO2 emissions that we must eliminate if we are to achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century. In particular, how are we to green the three biggest globally-vital heavy industries: steel, cement, and ammonia, which together emit around a fifth of anthropogenic CO2? 

Our modern urban environments are largely constructed from concrete — which is made from cement — and steel. Most of our food is grown through the application of fertilizer made from ammonia. These most ubiquitous industrial materials are produced at huge expense of energy and carbon dioxide emissions. 

Tiếp tục đọc “Can the world’s most polluting heavy industries decarbonize?” →

Is it possible to make steel without fossil fuels?

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Greenbiz.com

By Josh Owens

September 24, 2020

Steel production
Steel production is an incredibly energy intensive process.

Steel is arguably the single most important resource when it comes to constructing infrastructure.

From roads to railways and the skeleton of most buildings, it is at the very heart of nearly every city on earth. Within those cities, the cars on the road, the cutlery in our kitchens and the furniture in our offices all rely on steel production. Steel production, however, is an incredibly energy intensive process, and the vast majority of this energy comes from fossil fuels.

Globally, steel is responsible for 7-9 percent of all direct emissions from fossil fuels. Most of those emissions come from the burning of coal, which makes up 89 percent of the energy input for blast furnace-basic oxygen furnace (BF-BOF) and 11 percent of the energy input of electric arc furnaces (EAF). Of those two types of steel production, BF-BOF is far more common, making up 75 percent of steel that is produced compared to 25 percent from EAF. Globally, steel is responsible for 7-9% of all direct emissions from fossil fuels.

Tiếp tục đọc “Is it possible to make steel without fossil fuels?” →

The Facebook whistleblower says its algorithms are dangerous. Here’s why.

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

technologyreview.com

Frances Haugen’s testimony at the Senate hearing today raised serious questions about how Facebook’s algorithms work—and echoes many findings from our previous investigation.

By Karen Hao

October 5, 2021

Frances Haugen testifies during a Senate Committee
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testifies during a Senate Committee October 5.DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

On Sunday night, the primary source for the Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files, an investigative series based on internal Facebook documents, revealed her identity in an episode of 60 Minutes.

Tiếp tục đọc “The Facebook whistleblower says its algorithms are dangerous. Here’s why.” →

Southeast Asia risks stumbling toward a South American future

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

asia.nikkei.com

Current trajectory suggests region will struggle to escape middle-income trap

William Bratton November 28, 2021 05:00 JST

Workers arrange blades at an assembly line in Rayong province, east of Bangkok, in April 2016: many of the necessary ingredients for productivity-led development are missing across much of  Southeast Asia.   © Reuters

William Bratton is author of “China’s Rise, Asia’s Decline.” He was previously head of equity research, Asia-Pacific, at HSBC.

It is easy to forget that it was South America, not Asia, that was once seen as the world’s emerging economic hot spot.

Many of the region’s countries were relatively prosperous in the first half of the 20th century. Argentina, for example, was then one of the world’s richest countries. They also achieved impressive growth rates in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

But South America has fallen far since those halcyon days. The region’s combined gross domestic product, in constant dollar terms, was 22% of the U.S.’s in 1980 but just 17% in 2020. This relative decline is even more stark on a per capita basis. Brazil’s GDP per capita was 22% of the U.S.’s in 1980 but only 14% in 2020, while Mexico’s fell from 25% to 15% over the same period.

Tiếp tục đọc “Southeast Asia risks stumbling toward a South American future” →

Pandemic deters human trafficking to China, but fight far from over

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

e.vnexpress.net

By Viet Anh   November 30, 2021 | 10:32 am GMT+7

Measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic have also curtailed human trafficking from Vietnam to China, but traffickers are looking for other routes.

In the fall of 2020, when officials in a remote province in China began to check identities to combat Covid transmission, they found a 50-year-old woman in a poor family without any identity papers.

“It turned out she was a Vietnamese victim trafficked to China around 35 years ago,” Dinh Thi Minh Chau, a senior psychologist at the Blue Dragon Foundation, a Hanoi organization that works to rescue trafficking victims, said.

The woman from northern Vietnam had agreed to go with a person in her village to find a job because her family was too poor.

Tiếp tục đọc “Pandemic deters human trafficking to China, but fight far from over” →

Wildlife trade hub Vietnam is also hub of impunity for traffickers, report says

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

mongabay.com

by Sheryl Lee Tian Tong on 25 November 2021

  • Only one in every seven wildlife seizures made in Vietnam in the past decade has resulted in convictions, a new report by the U.K.-based Environmental Investigation Agency has found.
  • Low numbers of arrests and prosecutions highlight problems of weak enforcement and a lack of coordination between law enforcement agencies, the researchers said.
  • Three-quarters of the shipments originated from African countries, they found, with numerous large-scale seizures indicating transnational organized crime.
  • With pandemic-related restrictions easing, the worry is that the cross-border wildlife trade will come roaring back even as Vietnam struggles to follow up on investigations into past and current seizures.

Tiếp tục đọc “Wildlife trade hub Vietnam is also hub of impunity for traffickers, report says” →

The shifting sands of ‘gain-of-function’ research

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

nature.com

The mystery of COVID’s origins has reignited a contentious debate about potentially risky studies and the fuzzy terminology that describes them.

Conceptual illustration showing a virus being edited.
Illustration by Kasia Bojanowska

In Greek mythology, the Chimaera was a fire-breathing monster, a horrifying mishmash of lion, goat and snake that laid waste to the countryside. In 2015, virologists led by Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill reported the creation of their own chimaera. They took a version of the coronavirus responsible for the deadly outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in the early 2000s — now known as SARS-CoV — and adorned it with surface proteins from a different coronavirus taken from Chinese horseshoe bats. In the laboratory, this particular mash-up was able to break into human cells and also make mice ill1. This chimaera came with a message: other coronaviruses have the potential to spark a human pandemic. In just a few years’ time, that warning would prove prescient, as a distant cousin of SARS-CoV has now killed more than 4.9 million people worldwide.

Tiếp tục đọc “The shifting sands of ‘gain-of-function’ research” →

Integrating modern and traditional medicine: Facts and figures

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

scidev.net

TraditionalMedicine_Darfur_Flickr_UNAMID_Photo_2500X1624

Copyright: Flickr/UNAMIDPhoto-Albert Gonzalez Farran

Trad Med advert 2.jpg

Traditional medicine (TM) is due a revival. For millennia, people around the world have healed the sick with herbal or animal-derived remedies, handed down through generations.

In Africa and Asia, 80 per cent of the population still uses traditional remedies rather than modern medicine for primary healthcare.

And in developed nations, TM is rapidly gaining appeal. Estimates suggest up to 80 per cent of the population has tried a therapy such as acupuncture or homeopathy. And a survey conducted earlier this year found that 74 per cent of US medical students believe that Western medicine would benefit by integrating traditional or alternative therapies and practices. [1]

Tiếp tục đọc “Integrating modern and traditional medicine: Facts and figures” →

Seven Transformations for More Equitable and Sustainable Cities

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ 1 bình luận

WRI.org

Foreword

Our planet needs successful cities-cities that are centers of innovation and productivity, cities where every family thrives, cities that realize the promise of low-carbon prosperity.

We are not yet building the cities we need. One in two people live in cities and 2.5 billion more will do so by 2050. Cities produce over 80% of GDP but also 70% of global GHG emissions. Our cities are growing, while inequality widens and livelihoods dwindle. Urban infrastructure is not keeping pace with the surge in residents. With many cities already struggling to meet people’s basic needs, global development and climate challenges are increasingly urban challenges. A sustainable future depends on whether cities can transform. Is there a path to transformative change that can make cities more prosperous, more equal, and low-carbon at the same time?

Tiếp tục đọc “Seven Transformations for More Equitable and Sustainable Cities” →

Trẻ em Việt Nam có “nguy cơ cao” chịu tác động của khủng hoảng khí hậu – UNICEF

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

Children in Viet Nam at ‘high risk’ of the impacts of the climate crisis – UNICEF

Unicef.org

Lần đầu tiên, UNICEF xếp hạng các quốc gia dựa trên nguy cơ rủi ro và mức độ dễ bị tổn thương của trẻ em trước các cú sốc về khí hậu và môi trường; trong đó, trẻ em Việt Nam xếp thứ 37 trên thế giới về mức độ dễ bị tổn thương

Trẻ em và thanh thiếu niên Việt Nam là một trong những nhóm đối tượng có nguy cơ cao nhất trước các tác động của biến đổi khí hậu; điều này đe dọa đến sức khỏe, giáo dục và sự an toàn của các em.
UNICEF Việt Nam\Trương Việt HùngTrẻ em và thanh thiếu niên Việt Nam là một trong những nhóm đối tượng có nguy cơ cao nhất trước các tác động của biến đổi khí hậu; điều này đe dọa đến sức khỏe, giáo dục và sự an toàn của các em.
  • Ngôn ngữ tài liệu bằng:
  • English
  • Tiếng Việt

NEW YORK, HÀ NỘI ngày 20/8/2021 – Theo báo cáo của UNICEF phát hành ngày hôm nay, thanh thiếu niên Việt Nam là một trong những nhóm đối tượng có nguy cơ cao nhất trước các tác động của biến đổi khí hậu; điều này đe dọa đến sức khỏe, giáo dục và sự an toàn của các em.

‘Khủng hoảng khí hậu là cuộc khủng hoảng về quyền trẻ em: Giới thiệu chỉ số rủi ro khí hậu liên quan tới trẻ em’ là phân tích toàn diện đầu tiên được thực hiện về rủi ro khí hậu từ góc độ của trẻ em. Trong phân tích này, các quốc gia được xếp hạng dựa trên nguy cơ rủi ro của trẻ em trước các cú sốc về khí hậu và môi trường, chẳng hạn như lốc xoáy và các đợt nắng nóng, cũng như mức độ dễ bị tổn thương của trẻ em trước các cú sốc, dựa trên khả năng tiếp cận các dịch vụ thiết yếu của trẻ em.

Báo cáo được thực hiện và phát hành với sự hợp tác của tổ chức Fridays for Future nhân dịp kỷ niệm ba năm phong trào biểu tình vì khí hậu toàn cầu do thanh niên lãnh đạo. Báo cáo cho thấy khoảng 1 tỷ trẻ em – gần một nửa trong số 2,2 tỷ trẻ em trên toàn thế giới – sống tại 33 quốc gia được phân loại là có “nguy cơ cực kỳ cao”. Các kết quả của báo cáo cho thấy số lượng trẻ em hiện đang bị ảnh hưởng; các con số có thể trở nên tồi tệ hơn khi tác động của biến đổi khí hậu tăng nhanh.

Tiếp tục đọc “Trẻ em Việt Nam có “nguy cơ cao” chịu tác động của khủng hoảng khí hậu – UNICEF” →

China, India, other big coal users missing from COP26 phase-out deal

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

reuters.com

By Kate Abnett and Elizabeth Piper

Summary

  • Poland, Indonesia sign up to phase out coal
  • China, India, U.S., Australia not included
  • COP26 mini deals aim to add up to big climate win

GLASGOW, Nov 4 (Reuters) – Indonesia, Poland, Vietnam and other nations pledged on Thursday to phase out use of coal-fired power and stop building plants, but their deal at the COP26 climate summit failed to win support from China, India and other top coal consumers.

Britain has said one of its main aims for the United Nations summit is “consigning coal power to history”. The deal saw 23 nations making new commitments, a move the president of the COP26 summit, Alok Sharma, said put the end of coal “in sight”.https://17f4ab6d574607e1c63d4da62d7a4666.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

“Today I think we can say that the end of coal is in sight,” Sharma told the Glasgow meeting.

Tiếp tục đọc “China, India, other big coal users missing from COP26 phase-out deal” →

More than 40 countries agree to phase out coal-fired power

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

theguardian.com

Critics say pledge to end use of dirtiest fuel source in 2030s and 40s does not go far enough

Steam and smoke rise from Bełchatów power station in Poland.
Steam and smoke rise from Bełchatów power station in Poland, one of the countries that has agreed to phase out coal-fired power. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Fiona Harvey, Jillian Ambrose and Patrick Greenfield in GlasgowWed 3 Nov 2021 22.30 GMT

More than 40 countries have agreed to phase out their use of coal-fired power, the dirtiest fuel source, in a boost to UK hopes of a deal to “keep 1.5C alive”, from the Cop26 climate summit.

Major coal-using countries, including Canada, Poland, South Korea, Ukraine, Indonesia and Vietnam, will phase out their use of coal for electricity generation, with the bigger economies doing so in the 2030s, and smaller economies doing so in the 2040s.

Tiếp tục đọc “More than 40 countries agree to phase out coal-fired power” →

Creating the new hydrogen economy is a massive undertaking

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

It is also a delicate one

economist.com

Oct 9th 2021

NEW YORK

Today’s hydrogen business is, in global terms, reasonably small, very dirty and completely vital. Some 90m tonnes of the stuff are produced each year, providing revenues of over $150bn—approaching those of ExxonMobil, an oil and gas company. This is done almost entirely by burning fossil fuels with air and steam—a process which uses up 6% of the world’s natural gas and 2% of its coal and emits more than 800m tonnes of carbon dioxide, putting the industry’s emissions on the same level as those of Germany.Listen to this story

Enjoy more audio and podcasts on iOS or Android.

Tiếp tục đọc “Creating the new hydrogen economy is a massive undertaking” →

Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary

~ Đào Thu Hằng ~ Bình luận về bài viết này

UN

Adopted by the Seventh United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders held at Milan from 26 August to
6 September 1985 and endorsed by General Assembly resolutions 40/32 of 29 November 1985 and 40/146 of 13 December 1985

Whereas in the Charter of the United Nations the peoples of the world affirm, inter alia , their determination to establish conditions under which justice can be maintained to achieve international co-operation in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms without any discrimination,

Whereas the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines in particular the principles of equality before the law, of the presumption of innocence and of the right to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent and impartial tribunal established by law,

Whereas the International Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and on Civil and Political Rights both guarantee the exercise of those rights, and in addition, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights further guarantees the right to be tried without undue delay,
Tiếp tục đọc “Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary” →