The life span of a wind turbine, power companies say, is between 20 and 25 years. But in Europe, with a much longer history of wind power generation, the life of a turbine appears to be somewhat less.

In Texas, there are approximately 12,000 turbines operational in the state. Decommissioning these turbines could cost as much as $2.3 billion.

"The blades are composite, those are not recyclable, those can't be sold," Linowes said. "The landfills are going to be filled with blades in a matter of no time."

Wardle, who is now a macOS and iOS security expert at Digital Security, said he was perplexed when a friend first reported her fully patched, non-jailbroken device crashed every time she typed Taiwan or received a message with a Taiwanese flag.

He eventually found that the crashes were being caused by code that classified messages based on emojis they contained. He also noticed that the error seemed to be triggered when iOS had country codes that included China or language settings including Chinese (his friend’s phone specified the region as the US and the language as English, followed by Chinese.)

At first glance, this electronic device looks exactly like a traditional, stamped metal license plate. The new digital plate has the same scripted CALIFORNIA icon up top and uses the exact same size and font to show the numbers and letters.

The device also contains an RFID and GPS chip that allow me to see where my car is at any given moment, to voluntarily track my trips (think an Uber or Lyft-style ride map), and to even optionally display DMV-approved customized messages in a small font below the plate number itself.

In recent weeks, the city has fielded complaints about people zooming down crowded sidewalks instead of riding in the street and parking scooters in front of driveways or leaving them tipped over outside stores.

To respond to the surge in scooter ridership, San Jose has reached out to a number of different entities for advice, including cities such as Seattle and Washington, D.C., which have also grappled with scooter regulations. The city is also working with the San Jose Police Department on a plan to, among other things, curb riding on sidewalks.

In electrolysis, a device powered by electricity is used to split H2O, producing hydrogen gas. Several chemical modifications to this process have been proposed that can also grab CO2 from the atmosphere. Like the idea of using biofuels, this represents a "win-win" by producing an energy resource while capturing CO2, bringing the cost down.

Obviously, this scheme has its drawbacks. Quarrying rock has its own localized environmental impact, as could pumping all that extra bicarbonate into the ocean. But the researches argue that the idea is worth studying much more closely. The more options for removing atmospheric CO2 we work up, the more likely it is that one catches on when serious incentives finally arrive.

What you get for all that extra cash will be the ability to go 0 to 60 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds, with 155 mph top speed and at range of 310 miles. "Cost of all options, wheels, paint, etc is included (apart from Autopilot)," Musk tweeted.

It's been a rocky year, with Musk admitting early on that his California and Nevada factories were in "production hell" as quarter after quarter slipped by with disappointing Model 3 production numbers. Only recently has the company been able to push out a significant number of cars per week, although investors have remained wary of Musk's often overly-optimistic projections.

If you thought the US Department of Defense's procurement adventures with the F-35 and other big-budget weapons systems are bad, you might want to check out what's going on in Europe, where defense procurement battles have left most of the German Luftwaffe grounded for lack of parts.

In fact, only 10 aircraft currently have all their systems functioning, because of a problem that has plagued the defensive aid subsystem (DASS) of Germany's version of the Typhoon.

And as Der Spiegel's Matthias Gebauer was told by a Bundeswehr source, "We can say with a good conscience that large parts of the [German armed forces] are mission ready, because there is currently no mission."

This venture is the latest in a broad set of steps Apple has taken to become more environmentally friendly.

"Apple is committed to advancing technologies that are good for the planet and help protect it for generations to come," CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.

China had about 99 percent of the 385,000 electric buses on the roads worldwide in 2017, accounting for 17 percent of the country’s entire fleet. Every five weeks, Chinese cities add 9,500 of the zero-emissions transporters—the equivalent of London’s entire working fleet, according Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

For every 1,000 battery-powered buses on the road, about 500 barrels a day of diesel fuel will be displaced from the market, according to BNEF calculations.

"Excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake," Musk tweeted recently. "To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated."

Robots are supposed to allow production of more cars with fewer workers, but one ironic consequence of over-automation is that it can actually require more workers. Ingrassia and White report that GM's Hamtramck plant had around 5,000 workers on its payroll in the mid-1980s, compared to 3,700 workers at a nearby Ford plant with many fewer robots. Yet the Ford plant was "outproducing Hamtramck by a wide margin."