Today’s Big Story

Can We Reverse Pollution?

The world’s largest carbon removal plant is here, and bigger ones are on the way

It sounds like something out of the movies. Around 2021, the first carbon removal test plant started sucking CO2 from the air in a remote corner of Iceland. Now Climeworks, the company behind it, has opened a version that’s 10 times larger. It’s the biggest of its kind in the world.

Inside shipping-container-size boxes, fans pull outside air through filters that capture the CO2. The process, known as direct air capture, or DAC, runs on renewable energy from a neighboring geothermal plant. After the CO2 is captured, a company called Carbfix dissolves it in water and pumps that deep underground, where it naturally reacts with basalt rocks and turns permanently into stone.

Next-gen climate solutions like DAC are gaining more attention from governments and private industry as humans continue to burn fossil fuels. Concentrations of planet-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2023.

And it’s not just in Iceland. The Biden administration is funneling $3.5 billion of federal funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law into developing at least four DAC hubs. Two large projects have been selected so far to receive up to $1.2 billion of funding. That includes an initiative in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana using DAC technology from Climeworks and a California-based startup called Heirloom Carbon Technologies. Microsoft is already one of the first customers for that Louisiana hub. Each federally funded hub is supposed to have the capacity to capture at least a million metric tons of CO2 a year. Climeworks set up a new headquarters in Austin, Texas earlier this year to speed up growth in the U.S.

But carbon removal technologies such as DAC are still controversial. They have been criticized as expensive, energy-hungry and unproven at scale. Some climate advocates are also concerned they could distract from policies to cut fossil fuels. This technology “is fraught with uncertainties and ecological risks,” Lili Fuhr, director of the fossil economy program at the Center for International Environmental Law, told CNN.

Mike Johnson Survives Ouster Attempt

Hardline Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tried and failed

Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday easily batted down an attempt by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia to oust him from his post, after Democrats linked arms with most Republicans to fend off a second attempt by G.O.P. hard-liners to strip the gavel from their party leader.

It’s the second time in a matter of months that Republicans have worked to oust their own speaker, an unheard of level of party turmoil with a move rarely seen in U.S. history. Johnson spoke briefly with reporters following the vote, calling Greene’s campaign against him “misguided” and thanking colleagues for a show of confidence. “As I’ve said from the beginning, and I’ve made clear here every day, I intend to do my job,” Johnson said afterward. “And I’ll let the chips fall where they may. In my view, that is leadership.”

Congress only has a handful of significant priorities that need to be passed before the end of the 118th Congress, with government funding and FAA reauthorization expected to be addressed before the election. According to Axios, Greene's efforts to oust him was met with pushback from the majority of the House GOP, with some fearing that it will hinder their ability to hold the majority or pick up seats in November.

Scientists Find an ‘Alphabet’ in Whale Songs

What are they saying? Researchers might have a clue.

We knew that whales are highly intelligent species. In fact, sperm whales’ brains are the largest on the planet—with its weight being almost five times as much as a human’s. They’re also highly social and chatty. Ever since the discovery of whale songs almost 60 years ago, scientists have been trying to decipher their lyrics. Are the animals producing complex messages akin to human language? Or sharing simpler pieces of information, like dancing bees do? Or are they communicating something else we don’t yet understand?

Sperm whales don't sing in the melodious way humpback whales are known for. Instead, they make clicks in long exchanges that sound like a blend of Morse code and popcorn popping. Now, MIT scientists using machine learning have identified a bigger lexicon of sound patterns, like an “alphabet,” one they say could possibly be combined in ways that convey meaning, as a language does.

“We’re now starting to find the first building blocks of whale language,” David Gruber, founder of the Cetacean Translation Initiative, told the Associated Press. Gruber, a biology professor at the City University of New York, said sperm whales seem to have sophisticated social ties and deciphering their communication systems could reveal parallels with human language and society.

The Day You Buy a Plane Ticket Matters

According to a new study, it is a major factor in snagging flight deals

Travel is always a worthy expenditure, but no one wants to overpay, right? One of the best ways to start your trip off right is by scoring a good deal on a flight—but how do you do that? According to a recent study, different airlines have, on average, different “cheap days” to book.

“Long held to be a myth, it turns out that there actually is a best day to book a flight if you want to save money,” Keri Stooksbury, editor-in-chief of Upgraded Points, said in a statement. After analyzing Google Flights data, the researchers found that for American Airlines, that would be Friday, where the average price for the day is $271.85, compared to $285.60 on other days. In Delta Air Lines' case, the cheapest day to book is Thursday, when the average price is $181.05, and travelers should avoid booking with the airline on Friday when ticket prices rise to $216.67. For those flying JetBlue or Spirit, the earlier in the week, the better. According to the study, JetBlue prices tend to increase by $50 from Monday to Friday, while Spirit flights cost roughly $30 more on Saturdays than Mondays.

Now might be the best time to buy, as plane ticket costs hit a 15-year low going into April. In fact, it’s the first “normal” year of U.S. travel since the pandemic began back in 2020, CNN explained. Travel expert Katy Nastro told the news outlet that airfare is nearly a quarter less today than it was prepandemic and “hasn’t been this cheap since 2009.”

The Long Read

Can turning office towers into apartments really save downtowns?

Choose wisely.