Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web.
Nelson Bennett, reporter:
There was a lot of excitement this week when scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) announced a major milestone in fusion energy: They had achieved net energy gain. Using lasers focused on a pellet of heavy hydrogen, they achieved 3.15 megajoules (MJ) of energy from 2 MJ of laser energy input. Few reporting on this milestone mentioned that getting that 2 MJ of laser energy actually required 400 MJ of electricity. Physicist Tom Hartfield was among the few writers who picked up on this. As he writes, “If you gave me $400 and I gave you $3.15, would you consider yourself wealthier?” So, yes – net energy gain is a big milestone, but there is a long way to go before laser confinement fusion becomes a practical source of generating power. – Bigthink
https://bigthink.com/the-future/fusion-power-nif-hype-lose-energy/
Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:
News flash: World heading to hell in a handbasket on hold as we consider some of the things that went right on the environmental front this week.
Starting with some encouraging tales of eco-success from euronews.green that include Jonathan the tortoise turning 190 and a recyclable house made of wood flour. – EuroNews
And when it comes to environmental reasons to be cheerful, it is hard to beat what appears to be a significant breakthrough in harnessing the clean energy potential of nuclear fusion. – Forbes
Developing commercially viable sustainable aviation fuel would also be cause for celebration considering that the airline industry is the third largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions in North America. – Rhodium Group
https://rhg.com/research/sustainable-aviation-fuels/
Glen Korstrom, reporter:
One of the stories I found curious this week was what happened behind the scenes of the large counterterrorism bust in Germany. Prosecutors say a 71-year-old, well-off descendant of a 700-year-old noble family was the ringleader behind the Reichsbürger – group that wanted to overthrow the German government because they allegedly believed that Germany was not actually a country, but rather a corporation set up by the Allies. – New York Times
Business news channels are filled with pundits discussing what stocks they think will rise. It’s always fun to look at their past picks from a specific date and compare their returns to the S&P500. (Something that shows like BNN’s Market Call strangely never does) The pundit guests’ average return usually underperforms the market.
This article further backs up the wisdom of index-fund investing. Out of 2,132 actively managed mutual funds, not one outperformed the stock market in each of the past five years. – New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/business/stock-market-index-funds.html?searchResultPosition=1
