Huishoudens zullen voorlopig moeten wennen aan sterke fluctuaties in de energieprijzen, zoals dat de afgelopen tijd het geval was. Dat zegt Martijn Hagens, de nieuwe topman van energieleverancier Eneco, in een toelichting op de jaarcijfers. Vooral mensen met dynamische energiecontracten voelen de prijsschommelingen.

"De energiemarkt is behoorlijk volatiel. De schommelingen zijn het gevolg van vraag en aanbod op een specifiek moment en het beperkte vermogen dat wij nu hebben om energie op te slaan. Dus dat betekent dat wij hier op korte termijn aan moeten wennen", zei Hagens.

Op de langere termijn kan de inzet van batterijen, zowel grootschalige opslagsystemen als thuisbatterijen, deze schommelingen helpen dempen. "Onze verwachting is dat de prijsverschillen daardoor weer kleiner worden. Op dit moment zijn die verschillen echter nog groot", zei de topman. De prijsschommelingen in de laatste maanden waren volgens hem het gevolg van het conflict in het Midden-Oosten.

europeanspaceagency posted a photo:

An exceptional heatwave is affecting countries across western Europe, with cities and regions of France, Spain and southern Italy experiencing unseasonal temperatures.

This image of land surface temperature was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission on Wednesday, 23 June. The data were captured in the late morning, local time.

You can watch a video about this image here.

The colours shown on the image range from purples and deep reds (indicating surface temperatures up to 55ºC, seen in parts of central Spain, western France and northern Africa) to light blues that indicate lower surface temperatures in mountainous regions. Some areas were covered by cloud – shown in white.

The satellite sensed temperatures on land of 48ºC in Madrid, 44ºC in Rome and 46ºC in both Poitier in France and Zaragoza in Spain. The ground temperatures in northern Africa are visibly higher, with temperatures on the ground in Tunis reaching 49ºC. Because surfaces such as rock, sand and asphalt retain the heat, ground temperatures are considerably higher than air temperatures.

Sentinel-3 carries four instruments, including its Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) – a powerful and highly accurate sensor that measures temperatures over both land and sea. It detects heat stress over land and its data are used in agriculture as well as monitoring urban heat islands and wildfires.

The current European heatwave is caused by an atmospheric pattern of persistent high pressure – a ‘heat dome’ – which is trapped over Europe between low pressure systems on each side. Summer heat in Europe is not normally associated with El Niño and therefore, although satellite data have detected early signs of the El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean, it is not the driver behind the current temperatures in Europe.

Credits: contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data (2026), processed by ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Een CIDI-onderzoek over online-uitingen voor en na 7 oktober 2023 toont een forse toename van antisemitisme in het Nederlandse taalgebied. Twee experts noemen het onderzoek „grondig en transparant”, maar plaatsen ook kanttekeningen.

joshuark shares a report from Car and Driver: A new study conducted by the New York Times shows that the increase in vehicle hood height seen over the last two and a half decades, mainly due to the rise in popularity of large SUVs and trucks, has resulted in several thousand deaths that otherwise may not have happened. The study shows that while automakers and regulators have focused on occupant safety, they have turned a blind eye to pedestrian safety, which has fallen since around 2009. Researchers looked at four main datasets in their investigation: crash test data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) from 2016 to 2024; NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS); vehicle measurement data from Expert AutoStats; and vehicle registration data from S&P Global from 2002 to 2024. The researchers concluded that the increased danger to pedestrians is caused by two main culprits.

First, large SUVs and trucks have taller hoods, raising the point of impact above most people's center of gravity and pushing them to the ground, typically hard asphalt, rather than up and onto the hood, which is designed to absorb impacts. Second, with larger A-pillars designed to protect occupants in rollover crashes, modern cars tend to have larger blind spots than cars sold at the turn of the century (presuming the 21st century). The shift toward vehicles with taller hoods led to roughly 3000 deaths between 2016 and 2024. This number is conservative because it does not include crashes that take place in parking lots, driveways, or private roads, which aren't part of the federal database.

The data also showed an estimated 2.8 percent increase in the odds of a pedestrian fatality for every one-inch increase in vehicle hood height. Between two different scenarios, one decreasing the hood height of every vehicle in the dataset by 3 inches, and the second using a random sampling of hood heights from 2002 across 10,000 simulated crashes, between 2624 (for scenario two) and 3077 (for scenario one) lives could have been saved from 2016 to 2024.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.