Climate in the 21st Century

Cummins did a naughty

I saw this story tonight on Newshour Weekend. Air travel is by far the most carbon intense form of travel.

injinji said:

I saw this story tonight on Newshour Weekend. Air travel is by far the most carbon intense form of travel.

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I’m guessing the 70% figure has to do with the Diesel used to grow, harvest and process the feedstock.

cannabineer said:

I’m guessing the 70% figure has to do with the Diesel used to grow, harvest and process the feedstock.

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I think so. Now it would cost way too much. But with large scale production. . . .

We need to tax carbon like tobacco. Money is all that will change how folks live their life.

injinji said:

I think so. Now it would cost way too much. But with large scale production. . . .

We need to tax carbon like tobacco. Money is all that will change how folks live their life.

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The tobacco analogy is spot-on. It was a rush at first, a convenient habit in the middle, and slow corrosive death after that.

Ironic that the big tobacco counties are red.

An interesting talk given to rich middle east oil types. Tony Seba, has been right before, and he should be making these guys think! This guy makes me sound like a pessimist!

The shift in focus of the renewable energy market has gone from “saving the planet” to making money. This is a good thing since money makes the world go round and gets most people off their asses to do things and things need to be done. It is the alignment of economics with environmental issues driving policy that will cause the biggest changes over the next decade or two. Renewables and storage and particularly solar energy generation will simply out compete fossil fuels on costs alone. EVs and their batteries are getting rapidly better and will compete with ICE cars on price and performance too.

Solar is rapidly deployed by utilities and individual home and business owners and as long as they have a reasonable net metering policy, the cost benefit is in the prosumers (those who both generate and use power) favor and this will increase as solar and battery storage costs drop. The rise of EVs will lead to low-cost mass-produced better batteries that can also be used for electrical storage. Home energy and cars are about to be transformed over the next decade or two. When the change happens later with heavier rail and road transport it will be even faster because businesses have to react to market forces or die. The railroads went from steam to diesel in about 15 years after WW2 in North America and shortly after in most of the rest of the world. Economics drove the change; diesels were far less labor intensive and had other technical advantages. Other changes like going from horses to cars took about as long and look what happened to the internet or cellphones in 20 years.

Once the cost benefit ratio reaches a certain point, technologies take off on their own and solar has reached that point. The electric power industry started in the late 1880s, but by around 1900 there were power poles in many Nova Scotia towns, or they were being built. In fact, a mere 30 months after Edison had his first DC power system in NY, there was one in Halifax NS too. The electric grid spread almost as fast as the internet did a century later, because it was so useful, empowering, cut costs and was more convenient. I think it will be the same for solar and EVs, despite the teething problems both are having right now, solar with connecting to the grid and EVs with batteries that aren't quite there yet.

It should also lead to less concentrated economic power in the energy market as more people and countries have the option to make and store their own power. This should have major geopolitical implications as well as economic ones as countries and companies scramble for a piece of the future. That energy and transportation future has become much clearer over the last few years, and it will increasingly influence government and international policy.


A peek into the next decade and how change happens.


"The Great Transformation" - TAQA 20th Anniversary Celebration / Dhahran, Saudi Arabia [16 Oct 2023]

Phase Change Disruptions of Energy, Transportation, Food & Implications for Humanity.

Pity The Poor Climate-Aware Billionaire Oligarchs

As we celebrate the passing of another year with the rituals of our religions, our families and our cultures, spare a thought for a poor benighted billionaires who are trying and failing miserably to address climate change. They have a place to stand, a lever long enough, yet cannot move the world. Everyone around them keeps telling them that they are right, yet nothing that they do succeeds.

Lots of battery factories going up now and lots of jobs.

Cold weather finally arrives in Manitoba
After a mild few weeks, the cold weather has arrived in Manitoba, and experts with Environment Canada say if you don’t have the winter gear out already, it may be time to bust out the toques, mitts, and scarves.

“We’re just approaching the beginning of Winter,” said Terri Lang, National Forecaster.

“The jet stream is sitting right overtop of Manitoba now, and the jet stream being that delineator between the really cold air to the north, and the really warm air on the south, and we’re right on the cusp, so the cold air is really starting to sink in.”

Lang says temperatures dipped to what felt like -21C with the windchill on Friday morning and says for Manitoba, it’s one of the first tastes of winter.

“Everybody across the prairies has been quite lucky when it comes to the temperatures, we’ve had some snow, but it’s melted.”

She says a lack of Colorado Lows has been contributing to the lack of snow on the ground for this time of year, but says now is the time to start paying attention to extreme weather warnings and watches from the national forecaster.

“Cold will kill you.”

The City of Winnipeg also cautions members of the public about the arrival of the cold, which can put vulnerable community members at risk, saying:

• Older adults and very young children should avoid prolonged outdoor exposure.
• Residents should check on older friends, relatives, and neighbours who live alone.
• You should be able to recognize the symptoms of hypothermia, which should include confusion, shivering, difficulty speaking, sleepiness, stiff muscles.
• And it’s time to bring pets inside and limit the amount of time they spend outdoors.

The city stresses if the symptoms of hypothermia are present, members of the public should seek immediate medical attention, as it can be fatal, and are encouraged to call 911 if they see someone who needs help in the cold, staying with the person and telling dispatchers their condition and location.

“We’ve seen within the last five years the wettest year on record and the driest year on record,” said Scott Kehler, lead scientist at Winnipeg-based forecasting firm WeatherLogics.

Keller says this type of a cool down is normal for the province, but says due to El Nino — which produces a drier, warmer season — extreme precipitation patterns are likely to continue in Manitoba, noting forecasters are monitoring for a Brown holiday season, not seen since the 90s, stressing while it’s too early to predict for sure, there is a correlation in conditions.

“It’d be the first time since 1997 since we had a brown Christmas, and a Brown Christmases in Winnipeg are very rare, only about one or two in every 200 hundred years, there’s a Brown Christmas, and the interesting correction is that 1997 was also a strong El Nino, so we may see that pattern repeat.”

Seem to get a lot of 200-1,000 year events more often.

First real snow here in CB was yesterday, about 4".

There are tariffs on Chinese Solar panels in North America, in Canada they are 165%, so the prices quoted are outside America and Canada.

A Dangerous 'Factor X' Could Be Lurking in Earth's Ice, Scientist Warns.

Earth's rapid defrosting is putting our ecosystems and our own personal health at risk of a litany of threats, including a slew of potential pathogens that may once have wreaked havoc among our ancestors.

As reported by Newsweek's Pandora Dewan, scientists are increasingly concerned that viruses successfully reawakened after tens of thousands of years preserved in permafrost could be a sign of worse things to come.

"There is a Factor X that we really don't know very much about," Umeå University infectious disease specialist Birgitta Evengård told Dewan.

As speculative as such future threats happen to be, what researchers have uncovered in recent years warrants serious consideration into improving surveillance and investigation of potential spillover events in the Arctic.

Thanks to the very way infectious diseases work, most epidemics are likely to come from a novel source, such as a population of wild animals. Studies have shown outbreaks of zoonotic diseases are on the increase, both in number and in diversity, with deaths expected to continue to rise by an average of nearly 10 percent each year.

Statistics like these don't even take into account spikes caused by catastrophic events like COVID-19, which are also expected to occur with greater frequency as the climate shifts and humans encroach on a greater diversity of animal habitats.

While history can tell us a thing or two about diseases spilling across from one host to another through space, the possibility of a pathogen making a giant leap through time is new territory for researchers.

More at the link.

It's behind a pay wall. Apologies up front to those who can't access it.


Key point regarding solar power: The inflation reduction act is a sweeping piece of legislation to decarbonize the US economy, to re-shore supply chains and break dependence on China.

Fogdog said:

It's behind a pay wall. Apologies up front to those who can't access it.

How Biden's Inflation Reduction Act changed the world | FT Film

The US was for decades the exemplar of free market globalisation. That changed with Donald Trump’s 'America first' agenda. President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act continues the push for re-industrialisation by using tax credits, loans and grants in a bid to create a domestic clean...

www.ft.com

Key point regarding solar power: The inflation reduction act is a sweeping piece of legislation to decarbonize the US economy, to re-shore supply chains and break dependence on China.

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How Biden's Inflation Reduction Act changed the world | FT Film

OldMedUser said:

A Dangerous 'Factor X' Could Be Lurking in Earth's Ice, Scientist Warns.

Earth's rapid defrosting is putting our ecosystems and our own personal health at risk of a litany of threats, including a slew of potential pathogens that may once have wreaked havoc among our ancestors.

As reported by Newsweek's Pandora Dewan, scientists are increasingly concerned that viruses successfully reawakened after tens of thousands of years preserved in permafrost could be a sign of worse things to come.

"There is a Factor X that we really don't know very much about," Umeå University infectious disease specialist Birgitta Evengård told Dewan.

As speculative as such future threats happen to be, what researchers have uncovered in recent years warrants serious consideration into improving surveillance and investigation of potential spillover events in the Arctic.

Thanks to the very way infectious diseases work, most epidemics are likely to come from a novel source, such as a population of wild animals. Studies have shown outbreaks of zoonotic diseases are on the increase, both in number and in diversity, with deaths expected to continue to rise by an average of nearly 10 percent each year.

Statistics like these don't even take into account spikes caused by catastrophic events like COVID-19, which are also expected to occur with greater frequency as the climate shifts and humans encroach on a greater diversity of animal habitats.

While history can tell us a thing or two about diseases spilling across from one host to another through space, the possibility of a pathogen making a giant leap through time is new territory for researchers.

More at the link.

A Dangerous 'Factor X' Could Be Lurking in Earth's Ice, Scientist Warns

Earth's rapid defrosting is putting our ecosystems and our own personal health at risk of a litany of threats, including a slew of potential pathogens that may once have wreaked havoc among our ancestors.

www.sciencealert.com

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I'm more concerned about methane trapped in permafrost than bugs getting lose, Antarctic ice melting along with Greenland's glaciers seem more a threat.

After looking at recent events and the volume of R&D in renewable energy and batteries I'm optimistic about our ability to reduce our carbon emissions over the next couple of decades. It is economic factors that give me the most hope, the dropping cost of solar and battery storage per watt. Money makes the world go round and gets things done or not. Solar is the cheapest form of power generation now and about to get much cheaper by the watt over the next couple of years, even without perovskites, with perovskites the cost per watt will get stupid cheap. As efficiencies increase the cost per watt also drops and multi junction (layer) panels that can absorb more of the solar spectrum promise higher efficiencies. We are approaching the theoretical limits of silicon cells, but perovskites can be used in tandem with silicon and have a much higher theoretical energy limit.

Puck bugs. Im fighting 2 of them right now, COVID negative but haven't slept in 3 days

Grandpapy said:

Puck bugs. Im fighting 2 of them right now, COVID negative but haven't slept in 3 days

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What’s a puck bug?

The Climate Change We've Already Created Will Last 50,000 Years, Scientists Warn

In February 2000, Paul Crutzen rose to speak at the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Mexico. And when he spoke, people took notice. He was then one of the world's most cited scientists, a Nobel laureate working on huge-scale problems – the ozone hole, the effects of a nuclear winter.

So little wonder that a word he improvised took hold and spread widely: this was the Anthropocene, a proposed new geological epoch, representing an Earth transformed by the effects of industrialised humanity.

The idea of an entirely new and human-created geological epoch is a sobering scenario as context for the current UN climate summit, COP28. The impact of decisions made at these and other similar conferences will be felt not just beyond our own lives and those of our children, but perhaps beyond the life of human society as we know it.

The Anthropocene is now in wide currency, but when Crutzen first spoke this was still a novel suggestion. In support of his new brain-child, Crutzen cited many planetary symptoms: enormous deforestation, the mushrooming of dams across the world's large rivers, overfishing, a planet's nitrogen cycle overwhelmed by fertiliser use, the rapid rise in greenhouse gases.

As for climate change itself, well, the warning bells were ringing, certainly. Global mean surface temperatures had risen by about half a degree since the mid-20th century. But, they were still within the norm for an interglacial phase of the ice ages. Among many emerging problems, climate seemed one for the future.

A little more than two decades on, the future has arrived. By 2022, global temperature had climbed another half a degree, the past nine years being the hottest since records began. And 2023 has seen climate records being not just broken, but smashed.

By September there had already been 38 days when global average temperatures exceeded pre-industrial ones by 1.5°C, the safe limit of warming set by the UN Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the Paris agreement. In previous years that was rare, and before 2000 this milestone had never been recorded.

With this leap in temperatures came record-breaking heatwaves, wildfires and floods, exacerbated by other local human actions. Climate has moved centre stage on an Anthropocene Earth.

Why this surge in temperatures? In part, it's been the inexorable rise in greenhouse gases, as fossil fuels continue to dominate human energy use. When Crutzen spoke in Mexico, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were about 370 parts per million (ppm), already up from the pre-industrial 280 ppm. They're now around 420 ppm, and climbing by some 2 ppm per year.

More at the link.

cannabineer said:

What’s a puck bug?

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Sunni approved response?

You need to be careful in the desert, Bakersfield, is seeing an up tick in valley fever.
Symptoms of Valley Fever (Coccidioidomycosis)

• Fatigue (tiredness)
• Cough.
• Fever.
• Shortness of breath.
• Headache.
• Night sweats.
• Muscle aches or joint pain.
• Rash on upper body or legs.

Symptoms of Valley Fever - Types of Fungal Diseases - CDC

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (.gov)
https://www.cdc.gov › diseases › coccidioidomycosis › s...

New dirt getting turned over all the time.
Dont get too close up to those anthills! Here at RIU, we care!

Grandpapy said:

Sunni approved response?

You need to be careful in the desert, Bakersfield, is seeing an up tick in valley fever.
Symptoms of Valley Fever (Coccidioidomycosis)

• Fatigue (tiredness)
• Cough.
• Fever.
• Shortness of breath.
• Headache.
• Night sweats.
• Muscle aches or joint pain.
• Rash on upper body or legs.

Symptoms of Valley Fever - Types of Fungal Diseases - CDC
View attachment 5357269
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (.gov)
https://www.cdc.gov › diseases › coccidioidomycosis › s...

New dirt getting turned over all the time.
Dont get too close up to those anthills! Here at RIU, we care!

Click to expand...

but

the ants

they whisper power