As time permits, I'm going to put the esoterica I encounter related to climate change
here rather than trying to update the various pages. So this will be in reverse chronological rather
than logically organized within the structure of the rest of this website. Please don't
rely on this as a consistent and current source for climate change information updates.
Sadly, we cannot rely on our corporate-controlled mass media for good information on this, and my time is limited.
Past blog pages:
2019: May June
July August
September October
November December
2020: January February
March April
May June
July [COVID gap]
2021: October-December
2022: January-February March
April May-August
September October
November-December
2023: January February
March-April May-July
August-September October-November
December
2024: January February
March April
May
The 10n10 Catastophic Climate Change Blog - November-December 2022
2022.12.29 Pumped storage (water) is essentially gravity storage.
You lift water when energy is abundant
or cheap, and drop it again taking kinetic energy from the potential energy. However, conventional water energy
storage takes up a lot of space. Why not use materials heavier than water (e.g. scrap lead) which take up less
space, don't have evaporation, freeze-up or potential flooding issues? These could be fitted to abandoned mines, either
shaft type or open pit. All you need is the vertical elevation. Even some ski resorts might qualify.
The ‘Sleeping Giant Of Energy Storage’ Is Waking Up (Forbes)
2022.12.29 It's past time for agrivoltaics. New revenue for farmers, better energy supply for everyone.
Also past time for the Ontario government to get out the way and get with the program.
Doubting farmers, here is proof solar panels and sheep get along just fine (National Observer)
2022.12.29 Canadian banks and government like to talk about fixing climate change, but when their money
talks, it's the opposite message. We know which story actually matters.
2022 connected the dots between fossil fuel finance and climate chaos (National Observer)
2022.12.24 Return of the geo-engineering rogue cowboys
A startup says it’s begun releasing particles into the atmosphere, in an effort to tweak the climate (MIT Technology Review)
The amount released was trivial, but the fact that the launch was done without appropriate instrumentation
or any oversight by actual experts is concerning. What are the impacts of releasing unrecoverably helium
into the atmosphere and balloon (likely mylar plastic), compared to the supposed reflective benefit of the
sulphur dioxide dispersed? The problem of massive injections of CO2 into the atmosphere is largely a
function of profit-driven companies spawned from rogue operators of wildcat wells. It's hard to believe
that a parallel genesis will solve this tragedy of the commons problem.
2022.12.23 When it comes to sustainability, it seems we can't even get the simple definitions right.
Canada’s biggest certifier of sustainable forests faces greenwashing accusations (National Observer)
2022.12.22 Just remember, as the citizens of the developed and developing nations, through our
consumer habits and repeatedly voting for the fairy tale that catastropphic climate change is a hoax,
we chose this path. We had the data; we chose the disinformation. Now we will reap the whirlwind,
in some cases, literally.
Climate and the holiday storms of 2022: ‘I don’t think people realize just how much trouble we’re in’
(National Observer)
2022.12.21 Unfortunately the wood pellet industry has proved not to be that picky about what wood
it uses for its pellets - virgin old growth has been used.
Australia rejects forest biomass in first blow to wood pellet industry (Mongabay)
2022.12.20 Puerto Rico invokes the RICO Act to go after climate change fraudsters
Big oil is behind conspiracy to deceive public, first climate racketeering lawsuit says (The Guardian)
Government jawboning never affected oil industry behaviour, but the industry does care about money,
so this frontal assault on its wallet will get its attention.
2022.12.20 Yet, somehow the social vibe in Canada is that the 'carbon tax' is too high.
Overheated — Canada’s gasoline emissions are surging out of control (National Observer)
(Mandatory fact: Canada does not have a 'carbon tax'. It has a feebate system, where the nominal
amount Canadians pay on fossil fuels is returned to them quarterly by the federal government.)
2022.12.18 A decommissioned nuclear power plant from the 1980s is repurposed for agrivoltaics and prairie restoration.
Agrivoltaics Goes Nuclear On California Prairie (CleanTechnica)
2022.12.15 Fuel for thought as you fill up at the pumps next time.
Coal is extremely CO2-intensive. Gasoline is far worse (National Observer)
2022.12.15 Don't panic over this headline; this is what renewables maturity looks like.
California pulls the plug on rooftop solar (PV Magazine)
The Public Utilities Commission approved Net Energy Metering 3.0, slashing payments for sending rooftop solar
production to the grid. New rooftop solar projects are now considered uneconomical without an attached battery.
Rooftop solar was an easy, early market, and now it produces enough power in California that
local storage is preferred to over-supplying the grid. So, it's time for PV to find new fields
to harvest, like agrivoltaics. (see Dec. 18th entry)
2022.12.15 Sea level rise could me moving a lot faster than we thought
Greenland's glaciers might be melting 100 times as fast as previously thought (Phys.Org)
2022.12.14 You can unknot your knickers now. The fusion announcement is actually a nothing-burger.
US scientists just announced a major nuclear fusion breakthrough that could be ‘one of the most impressive
scientific feats of the 21st century’ (Yahoo finance)
What they got right: for microseconds, in a military nuclear weapons test facility, they managed to
get more energy out of the reaction than they put in.
But it's irrelevant to civilian energy or climate change in the time we have left. (OK, it could
be exciting if your objective is building bigger fusion weapons.) It's irrelevant for a few reasons.
a) The kinds of energy used and produced matter. The input energy started from very high quality,
expensive electricity, transformed into even higher quality and more expensive focused, synchronized,
multi-point laser light beam sourcds. The energy produced was very hot (as in hard to contain hot),
very short duration heat, which is typically the end point for entropy, or the lowest quality form of energy.
So it doesn't get captured (stored) or available to do useful work. Something we don't need on this
planet now is more heat, especially really expensive heat.
b) If it can be scaled up successuully in the next 2-5 decades, it will be highly centralized, while
our forward direction should be to more distibuted energy sources which minimize waste heat and GHG
emissions. If the electricity that powered the lasers was generated from coal or natural gas, then
this not a GHG-free energy source.
c) No matter how much money the US DOE funnels to this from their weapons budget, it won't be even
near ready within a decade, which is the maximum time we have left to turn the corner on GHG emissions
to avert catastrophic climate change. (Very expensive and harmful climate change is already baked in,
we're not going to avoid that, no matter what we do next.)
d) If you think that getting more energy out of a device than you put in is exciting, you need to
buy a heat pump. It can can also convert high quality electricity into low quality heat, but it
can be bought off the shelf today, does not cost billions of dollars, and can operate continously
for years. Also, very distributed (decentralized), and can be run from locally-sourced electricity
(like an in-house battery charged from solar panels).
2022.12.12 The world's permafrost is rapidly thawing and that's a big climate change problem
The world's permafrost is rapidly thawing and that's a big climate change problem (CBC)
They buried the word 'methane' so hard in this article I missed it on my first read. But they
finally let this sentecne make it to print:
"Olefedt says those emissions can be carbon dioxide or, if the area is near water, methane, a more potent greenhouse gas."
Pity they didn't expand on why methane is the bigger problem than CO2 as the permafrost melts.
2022.12.11 We seem to have signed a global suicid pact on catastrophic climate change through inaction
World Unlikely to Avert Climate Catastrophe, New Zealand Minister Says (Yahoo News)
2022.12.11 Curb your enthusiasm when reading the headline. Note 'international' and 'exceptions'.
Canada to end international fossil fuel financing, with few exceptions (National Observer)
However, the exceptions are big enough to sail a fleet of oil tankers through. Canada's bankers can
rest easy that their world-leading lending for climate destruction can continue 'unabated', just like
the fossil fuel industry's drive to maximize profits and externalizing costs will also continue 'unabated'.
As before, if you want a survivable planet, you can't rely on the captured Canadian governments to do the job,
we'll have to do it ourselves.
2022.12.09 The news here isn't that anything will come of this; it's that the moribund U.S. Senate
is even writing letters on the topics of fossil fuel greenwashing on climate change and windfall profits
(i.e. gouging consumers).
Democratic lawmakers accuse big oil companies of ‘greenwashing’ (CNBC)
2022.12.06 Before you dismiss this as another greenie rant, note the article appears in one of the
top automotive performance magazines in the U.S.: MotorTrend. Now, go read the article.