Climate Change Thread

[Seamus Fermanagh]

It will be a long transition. Especially with reluctance over nuclear power leaving it as something of an either or choice. Still, the growth in efficiency of renewable power generation has been heartening -- the more cost effective it becomes, the easier to transition.

[ReluctantSamurai]

A rather under-the-radar negotiation...or put another way...an outright attempt at environmental extortion, is set to occur during President Biden's environmental summit set to kick off today [Earth Day]:

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...to-save-amazon

The US is negotiating a multi-billion dollar climate deal with Brazil that observers fear could help the reelection of president Jair Bolsonaro and reward illegal forest clearance in the Amazon.

Senior US officials are holding weekly online meetings about the Amazon before a series of big international conferences. Ministers and ambassadors from Britain and Europe are also involved. But rather than those who know forest protection best, their Brazilian interlocutor is Bolsonaro’s environment minister, Ricardo Salles, who has overseen the worst deforestation in more than a decade.

Salles is asking for a billion dollars every 12 months in return for which, he says, forest clearance would be reduced by 30-40%. Without the extra foreign cash, he says Brazil will not be able to commit to a reduction target.

That sounds like it could come out of any Hollywood mob movie...'pay us, or else...'

There is also potential cannon fodder for Biden's political opponents:

This is a risk for Biden, who is on the verge of doing what Trump never did: give cash to a Brazilian president who has eviscerated forest protection agencies, lethally mismanaged the Covid crisis, and is seen as a danger not only to Brazil, but the world.

Izabella Teixeira, the former Brazilian environment minister, said the US and the UK were poised to pay off a government that is holding the planet to ransom. “They have to offer money to Bolsonaro’s government so he doesn’t block the Cop meetings,” said Teixeira, who represented Brazil in several international conferences during the administrations of Dilma Rousseff.

Opening the hen-house door for the fox:

But Salles, who became environment minister in 2019, has no credibility with those who defend the forest. He has tried to monetise the region and promoted mining and agribusiness, and under his watch the rulebook for Amazon protection, which reduced deforestation by 80%, has been shelved, monitoring agencies have been eviscerated, 15,000 sq km of forest have been cleared, and Brazil has backtracked on its international commitment to cut carbon emissions.

Salles already has access to substantial international funds. About $500m from Norway and Germany sits idle in the Amazon Fund, which was frozen by the environment minister because he disliked the strict conditions on deforestation that came with it. This raises questions about what any new funds would be used for, and by whom.

In other words, give us your money, but don't tell us how we can spend it.

Time pressures could weaken resolve. Biden wants a success to announce at his climate summit later this month and the UK will be looking for progress at Cop26 in November. Environmentalists fear a rushed deal with an insincere negotiating partner could be worse than no agreement. Unless payments are tightly pegged to emissions-reduction results, they could be frittered away on dubious carbon credits, vague development plans, benefits to land-grabbers and a huge new greenwashing system for fossil-fuel companies.

An indication of just which way the wind blows on Brazil's intentions:

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...-deforestation

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions has never been a priority for the Brazilian government. Take its own climate fund, from which about $100,000 was channelled into sanitation measures rather than the mitigation of national carbon emissions. Of course, sanitation is essential to health and wellbeing in our cities, but it is far from a significant source of emissions. The government also slashed the budget of the Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), the department within the environment ministry responsible for monitoring deforestation. In the first half of 2019, £2.2m was allocated for inspections; last year, the figure was £700,000.

What the government is missing is not cash, but a commitment to the truth. It denied the existence of fires in the Amazon as the flames were burning. Brazilian news is saturated with scandals that show persistent government action to weaken environmental bodies, roll back legislation, and ignore international agreements. Two years ago, it dismissed the head of the INPE – the National Institute of Space Research – for the simple fact that the institution had compiled data on the rise of deforestation. Last week, it dismissed the head of the office of the federal police, who had led the largest investigation into the illegal extraction of wood in the history of the Amazon. It has replaced experienced civil servants with individuals without any forestry expertise in several departments, and it intends to effectively shut down ICMBio, Brazil’s foremost institution dedicated to the protection of natural reserves.

It will be interesting to see if the environmental gangster gets what he wants...more money to continue the destruction of the Amazon....

[spmetla]

If it was another President of Brazil besides Salles it'd make great sense. As you've pointed out we couldn't trust him one bit to use the money to not just burn more forest.

There is actually a point to paying them to keep the forests undeveloped as for developing nations the economic incentive to exploit lucrative land versus a global benefit that is good for the climate but not the bottom line. Sorta like the endangered species throughout the world, it seems hard to justify to people in or on the edge of poverty to preserve animal X because we like them and their important to the broader ecosystem. The national park systems in Africa make those countries a good bit of money which offsets higher patrols to try and stop poachers. Something similar needs to be done for forests, reefs, etc.. Unfortunately doing it through the UN would be slow, inefficient, and undoubtedly corrupt. Direct nation to nation though is extremely uneven too though as the globe benefits while select countries may choose to pay or not pay.

the more cost effective it becomes, the easier to transition.

I know a lot of people that are looking into the electric cars now just for practicality, no longer a 'statement' because the costs are finally near the same costs as the gas versions and the ranges are far enough for most consumers.

I know once they have electric pickup trucks with a range of about 500 miles that aren't more than a few thousand dollars more than gas pickups I'll probably get one of those too.

Same with the electric rooftops, especially here in hawaii where we have some of the highest kw/hour costs in the nation. It's economical to go solar into the grid despite the high upfront cost so a lot of people have done that.

[ReluctantSamurai]

There is actually a point to paying them to keep the forests undeveloped as for developing nations the economic incentive to exploit lucrative land versus a global benefit that is good for the climate but not the bottom line.

I actually don't disagree with that. The global impact of further decimation of the Amazon probably exceeds $1 billion a year. What I'm mostly concerned about is who that money is being given to...which is why I provided the second link showing just how unconcerned the current Brazilian regime is with climate change. It's a billion dollars wasted if Bolsonaro and Salles just continue to burn forest land without any repercussions...

And sorry Brazil...a 30-40% reduction in deforestation just doesn't cut it. For that kind of money, it'd better be double that amount....

[ReluctantSamurai]

This is precisely why Brazilian strongman Bolsonaro cannot be entrusted to do anything that remotely resembles contributing to climate change policy:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...e-talks-pledge

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has approved a 24% cut to the environment budget for 2021 from the previous year’s level, just one day after vowing to increase spending to fight deforestation.

Speaking on Thursday to the summit organised by US President Joe Biden, Bolsonaro pledged to double the budget for environmental enforcement and end illegal deforestation by 2030.

Bolsonaro vetoed a list of environmental budget provisions worth 240 million reais, including outlays for environmental enforcement.

Can't believe a single word that falls out of his mouth....

[ReluctantSamurai]

A sad state of affairs (literally):

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...lican-governor

A new state law has created a $1.2m fund to be used by Wyoming’s governor to take legal action against other states that opt to power themselves with clean energy such as solar and wind, in order to meet targets to tackle the climate crisis, rather than burn Wyoming’s coal.

“We have seen a spike in states trying to block Wyoming’s access to consumer markets to advance their political agenda,” said Jeremy Haroldson, a Republican state legislator who introduced the new law. Fellow Republicans previously proposed banning the closure of any coal plants in the state. Haroldson said phasing out coal would risk the sort of disastrous power blackouts suffered by Texas in February. “It is time we start truly caring about the future,” he said.

While the US constitution’s commerce clause prevents one state from banning goods and services based upon their state of origin, there is nothing to prevent them banning certain things, such as coal, as long as the measure is not targeted at one specific state.

The future is cleaner energy, Wyoming, deal with it....

[Shaka_Khan]

[ReluctantSamurai]

With EV's taking the front and center in many countries push to reduce carbon emissions, there is a hidden caveat to producing EV's (and the electronics industry in general) that is not often mentioned...what to do with all those batteries and other electronic components when they've reached the end of their useful life. Given the mixed results for recycling waste products in other industries, the repurposing of all the rare earths and lithium used in EV manufacturing should be a topic at the top of the list for any country considering producing millions of these vehicles. It will also bring to the forefront disputes between countries as the search for rare earths and other minerals takes the the ocean bottoms (SeaQuest DSV anyone?):

https://www.theguardian.com/sustaina...s-transparency

Although rare earths are abundant in the earth's crust, they are difficult to find in commercially viable concentrations. Extracting individual elements from the host mineral's chemistry is a complex and energy-intensive process, involving strong acids and other hazardous chemicals. Radioactive materials such as uranium and thorium are often found alongside rare earth elements, and these can end up in the "tailings" – a toxic stew of waste products from the refinement process.

Japanese researchers claim to have discovered vast deposits of rare earth minerals in the seabed in international waters, east and west of Hawaii and east of Tahiti in French Polynesia. The high upfront costs of establishing a mine, and potentially long and complex approval processes, could prevent many of these deposits from being exploited in the near-term.

In Greenland, the government has overturned the country's 25-year ban on uranium and rare earth mining in the hope of boosting the country's cash-strapped economy. But there are concerns that the proposed mines will harm fragile ecosystems, and damage the traditional Inuit fishing and hunting trades. And several years on from China's rare earth export restrictions, which kick-started the hunt for alternative supply chains, smuggling and environmental damage is still an issue.

Recycle rates of rare earths from existing products, [which are] very low because of the expense and complexity involved, may also increase in future (Honda has already begun extracting more than 80% of its rare earth materials from nickel-metal hydride batteries).

An extensive summary on recycling done by CEWaste (use the public final report link):

https://cewaste.eu/wp-content/upload...lic-Raport.pdf

Secure access to critical raw materials (CRMs) is crucial to sustain our high-tech lifestyle and secure the competitiveness of European firms. CRMs also play a big role in the defence and renewables industry. Europe remains too reliant on foreign supply and, therefore, its access to some raw materials remains uncertain. Even though recycling is one of the important means to mitigate the criticality of CRMs, recycling rates of most of them are close to zero. Recycling is not economically attractive for most CRMs, due to, on the one hand, huge capital required in the development of technologies and, on the other, low and volatile prices of CRMs.

The CEWASTE consortium believes that the responsibility of undertaking actions to increase recycling of CRMs lies with various actors in the value chain; it is a societal challenge. Considering this, the relevant authorities must make the recovery of CRMs economically viable.

CEWASTE did not develop the new voluntary scheme from scratch nor formally amend existing standards. The project focussed on developing the scheme based on the current developments in recovery technologies and on the existing normative landscape in the field of waste treatment and responsible sourcing of raw materials. It has also presented a clear roadmap for the large-scale roll-out of the scheme noting the wider policy, legislative and fiscal alterations that also need to be made to support the increased recovery of CRMs.

Volumes of Li-ion batteries in electrical (hybrid) vehicles have increased in the past years. Extending this trend to 2025 would mean that around 7,900 tonnes of Co will be generated from Li-ion batteries in electric ELVs, while 13,900 tonnes of Co will be contained in Li-ion batteries for newly registered electric vehicles.

Lack of financing prevents the recycling of CRMs even in cases where this would be technically feasible with acceptable additional effort at a reasonable cost-benefit balance. Currently, recycling of CRMs is not economically attractive for CRMs other than palladium and, to a certain degree, cobalt and antimony under the present economic framework conditions.

In addition, new traceability and sustainability requirements could be needed as well to ensure the sound collection and processing where the collection, transport, handling and treatment of KCE are related to specific health, environmental and safety risks that are not yet covered in the analysed normative requirements. Eliminating or at least mitigating the identified obstacles would reduce the efforts to recycle the CRMs from the KCE and thus reduce the cost. If EU member states and states outside the EU want CRMs to be recycled, it will be critical to establish a stable and reliable financing mechanism. Without such a financing mechanism, the recycling of CRMs from NdFeB-magnets, fluorescent powders, and in part from batteries, cannot be achieved.

The report goes on to identify critical areas of ensuring the recycling of CRM's (Critical Raw Materials), and what needs to be done to accomplish this. The EU seems to be ahead of the curve in this respect.

This describes current and future outlooks of CRM's (view full report):

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role...gy-transitions

An energy system powered by clean energy technologies differs profoundly from one fuelled by traditional hydrocarbon resources. Solar photovoltaic (PV) plants, wind farms and electric vehicles (EVs) generally require more minerals to build than their fossil fuel-based counterparts. A typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional car and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant. Since 2010 the average amount of minerals needed for a new unit of power generation capacity has increased by 50% as the share of renewables in new investment has risen.

The shift to a clean energy system is set to drive a huge increase in the requirements for these minerals, meaning that the energy sector is emerging as a major force in mineral markets. Until the mid-2010s, for most minerals, the energy sector represented a small part of total demand. However, as energy transitions gather pace, clean energy technologies are becoming the fastest-growing segment of demand. In a scenario that meets the Paris Agreement goals (as in the IEA Sustainable Development Scenario [SDS]), their share of total demand rises significantly over the next two decades to over 40% for copper and rare earth elements, 60-70% for nickel and cobalt, and almost 90% for lithium. EVs and battery storage have already displaced consumer electronics to become the largest consumer of lithium and are set to take over from stainless steel as the largest end user of nickel by 2040.

[...] a concerted effort to reach the goals of the Paris Agreement (climate stabilisation at “well below 2°C global temperature rise”, as in the SDS) would mean a quadrupling of mineral requirements for clean energy technologies by 2040. An even faster transition, to hit net-zero globally by 2050, would require six times more mineral inputs in 2040 than today.

Today’s supply and investment plans are geared to a world of more gradual, insufficient action on climate change (the STEPS trajectory). They are not ready to support accelerated energy transitions. While there are a host of projects at varying stages of development, there are many vulnerabilities that may increase the possibility of market tightness and greater price volatility.

These risks to the reliability, affordability and sustainability of mineral supply are manageable, but they are real. How policy makers and companies respond will determine whether critical minerals are a vital enabler for clean energy transitions, or a bottleneck in the process.

"Let the mineral wars begin." (and it's already underway):

https://www.euronews.com/2021/04/23/...-carbon-energy

[ReluctantSamurai]

A hopeful sign:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...climate-491104

In the space of a few hours, Exxon Mobil Corp. was bested by an upstart shareholder seeking to shake up the company’s board. Chevron Corp. investors instructed the company to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to slash emissions by 45 percent. And while the oil industry was taking its hits, longtime ally Ford Motor Co. widened its distance from fossil fuels.

The rebukes signal that climate concerns, once confined to environmental activists and barely registering with some Washington lawmakers, have become mainstream thinking in C-suites and on Wall Street, analysts said. The visible effects of climate change, action by governments, and shifting consumer sentiment are transforming the world in which companies do business.

That BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, back's candidates more in line with carbon emission reduction, is significant.

But then we get this from a supposedly environmentally friendly administration:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...t-trump-491132

The Willow project, consisting of five wells that collectively could produce up to 160,000 barrels of oil a day, would be one of the first major new oil projects in Alaska in years. The development would include a new gravel mine, airstrip, more than 570 miles of ice roads and nearly 320 miles of pipeline to the Alaskan landscape. The Justice Department, in a court filing with the U.S. District Court of Alaska, defended the Trump-era decision to allow the project against environmental advocacy groups' allegations that Interior had failed to adequately assess the project's environmental impacts.

The Biden administration defended a proposed ConocoPhillips oil development in Alaska on Wednesday, backing the project pushed by Alaskan Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the centrist lawmaker the administration has wooed as a potential swing vote.

"One step up, and two step's back":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkFQHScyti0

[Seamus Fermanagh]

We need the oil.

Sadly, we burn it rather than the multitude of other uses to which those large hydrocarbon molecules may be put.

[ReluctantSamurai]

We need the oil.

Like an addict needs their drugs, no matter how bad for them they are...


.....I would dispute that the US "needs" oil....

[edyzmedieval]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-stay-relevant

Something I'm looking forward to. I'm thoroughly disliking EVs because of their lack of sound & soul, so while we really need to switch our climate tactics, switching to hydrogen or biofuels or ethanol to me is the right compromise for those who want cool sounding cars without burning the house down.

[ReluctantSamurai]

A couple of brief discussions about the differences between fuel-cell and battery-driven vehicles. One declares victory for EV's (quite likely true), and the other a bit more optimistic about the future of PEV's:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmo...electric-cars/

But ten years later, it’s very clear that battery electric vehicles (BEVs) are dominating the shift towards more environmentally friendly transport instead. By the end of 2019, only 7,500 hydrogen cars had been sold around the world. But by the end of 2018, there were already over 5 million plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) globally, and sales have been accelerating considerably since then. The BEV segment within this has never been less than 55% and is now more like 75%. In the UK, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, BEVs were up to 4.3% of the overall car market year-on-year by May 2020, representing a 131.8% increase since 2019. The BEV is starting to challenge fossil fuel cars, and their fuel cell alternatives are getting nowhere.

I'd be extremely interested to see what ties Forbes has to the industries producing PEV's, and all the related technology. They don't even consider that advances in fuel-cell technology will occur, and that one of the looming problems of PEV's is the fact that they require 6 times the minerals to produce (particularly rare earth minerals), and that currently there is no system in place to recycle these minerals (see post #488).

And then there's this, concerning what lithium mining looks like in its' current state:

https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/lithium-mining

It ain't pretty....

A more optimistic view on FCV's, that lays out the biggest differences between PEV's and FCV's:

https://youmatter.world/en/hydrogen-...ability-28156/

Cars with hydrogen fuel cells instead of the typical lithium-ion batteries from electric cars offer an attractive value proposition that seems to get rid of the problem of the end of the lithium batteries life cycle. This is a plus as for now, at a time when there’s still some uncertainty about the future of these batteries (from cars, but also from solar panels, cellphones and others) once they no longer serve their main purpose. They’re hard to recycle and some projects are being developed to reuse them as back up generators in urban buildings like hospitals.

Some studies also show the hydrogen economy has the potential to decrease global CO2eq emissions between 0 and 27%. This potential can be met once 1) methane leakages from natural gas are relatively low, 2) methane cracking is employed to produce hydrogen, and 3) a hydrogen fuel cell is applied.

In its' current state, FCV's seemed destined for the commercial market...fleet vehicles, aircraft, and shipping, where lithium-ion power disadvantages like charging times and range, come into play to favor the fuel-cell.

[Montmorency]

A couple of brief discussions about the differences between fuel-cell and battery-driven vehicles. One declares victory for EV's (quite likely true), and the other a bit more optimistic about the future of PEV's:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmo...electric-cars/



I'd be extremely interested to see what ties Forbes has to the industries producing PEV's, and all the related technology. They don't even consider that advances in fuel-cell technology will occur, and that one of the looming problems of PEV's is the fact that they require 6 times the minerals to produce (particularly rare earth minerals), and that currently there is no system in place to recycle these minerals (see post #488).

I hardly know anything about these emerging technologies, nor about the credibility of the author, but Forbes famously lets pretty much anyone blog on their platform (who needs Substack?), so if there's an angle it's with the contributor.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I hardly know anything about these emerging technologies

Post #488 is a starting point, at least as far as what resources go into PEV's and FCV's, and the different ways H2 is produced, and some of the problems associated with PEV's...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Like an addict needs their drugs, no matter how bad for them they are...


.....I would dispute that the US "needs" oil....

You did rather take my words out of context you realize?

[ReluctantSamurai]

I'm not sure how, but I certainly have been known to be rather dense on occasion....

[edyzmedieval]

Something I am very very excited about, and 100% looking forward to in the future - fake meat with cellular agriculture. If some of you know about Beyond Meat & Impossible Foods, cellular agriculture in fact replaces vegan proteins by using animal cells developed in a bio-reactor, creating the tissue necessary for chicken nuggets & other popular food staples.

https://logicmag.io/distribution/labriculture-now/

But if chicken nuggets are emblematic of contemporary capitalism, then they are ripe for disruption. Perhaps their most promising challenger is a radically different sort of meat: edible tissue grown in vitro from animal stem cells, a process called cellular agriculture. The sales pitch for the technology is classic Silicon Valley: unseat an obsolete technology—in this case, animals—and do well by doing good.

Intensive animal agriculture, which produces nuggets and most of the other meat that Americans consume, keeps the price of meat artificially low by operating at huge economies of scale and shifting the costs of this production onto people, animals, and the planet. The industry deforests the land, releases hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse gases every year, creates terrible working conditions at slaughterhouses, and necessitates abhorrent animal treatment on farms, all while engaging in price fixing, lobbying for environmental and labor deregulation, and pushing for unconstitutional anti-whistleblower laws.

The problem is that people love eating meat, with global production and consumption growing steadily and little sign of a collective vegan epiphany on the horizon. This makes intensive animal agriculture a wicked problem: something so obviously detrimental, and yet so politically and socially entrenched, that it is unclear where reformers should even start. Cellular agriculture, however, seems to offer a potential socio-technological hack: it could eliminate much of the damage that system causes, without requiring consumers to sacrifice meat.

[Furunculus]

wasn't one of the problems with lab grown muscle the lack of resistance training to break and reform the tissue in response to linear exercise, such that it generates a texture we recognise as 'meat'?

i.e. the absence of this training process results in something that has all the delicious texture of a tumour, instead of the chicken fillet we were hoping for...

**imagines giant bio-vat factories with endless rows of gelatinous cubes of muscle being tirelessly stretched between two piston driven slabs**

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Ever have salt-water taffy?

[Montmorency]

Just give me my all-in-one nutrient pastes, patties, purees, and potations already (gotta have variety).

[edyzmedieval]

Just give me my all-in-one nutrient pastes, patties, purees, and potations already (gotta have variety).

There's plenty of that already available, including one with a rather... ominous name. Soylent. Plus many others getting into powder meal replacements, not just them.

[Montmorency]

I'll switch to Soylent if I ever need my colon removed.

[Montmorency]

I know exactly the meme to build with this, but I can't find the right materials.

This will have to do.

[ReluctantSamurai]

In an earlier post, I made reference to mineral wars, and to the early '90s TV series SeaQuest DSV. Well, here we go:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-un-ultimatum

Deep-sea mining has been given the go-ahead to commence in two years, after the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru notified the UN body governing the nascent industry of plans to start mining. Triggering the so-called “two-year rule”, which some have called the nuclear option, the International Seabed Authority (ISA) now has two years to finalise regulations governing the controversial industry. If it is unable to do so, the ISA is required to allow mining contractors to begin work under whatever regulations are in place at the time.

DeepGreen is looking to extract polymetallic nodules from the seabed. The nodules, which resemble potatoes and are thought to take millions of years to form, are rich in manganese, nickel, cobalt and rare earth metals, key components of batteries for electric vehicles. DeepGreen argues deep-sea mining is a less environmentally and socially damaging alternative to terrestrial mining, and is crucial for transitioning to a greener economy.

DeepGreen is in the process of merging with blank-cheque company Sustainable Opportunities Acquisition Corp (SOAC) to become The Metals Company. The Metals Company plans to list on the Nasdaq in the third quarter.

But SOAC said in a filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week it was not yet known whether mining the seabed would have less impact on biodiversity than mining for the same quantity of metals on land.

“We cannot predict ... whether the environment and biodiversity is impacted by our activities, and if so, how long the environment and biodiversity will take to recover,” it said.

Imagine if that last highlighted phrase was used in a congressional hearing as part of a land-based, open-mine environmental impact statement... People in the affected area (in this case an area the size of Romania) would be having a hizzy-fit...

So instead of SeaQuest's UEO (United Earth's Ocean Organization) we have the ISA (International Seabed Authority). A quick synopsis of the initial SeaQuest plot-line:

The storyline begins in the year 2018, after mankind has exhausted almost all natural resources, except for the ones on the ocean floor. Many new colonies have been established there and it is the mission of the seaQuest and its crew to protect them from hostile nonaligned nations and to aid in mediating disputes as well as engage in undersea research[...]

And instead of DSV's baddies like the Macronesian Alliance and Deon International, we get Deep Green, Sustainable Opportunities Acquisition Corp (SOAC), and the cryptic The Metals Company. Are you effing kidding me with those names??? As noted above, The Metals Company plans to list on Nasdaq sometime later this year....

So here we have an undersea mining company, with no idea of the environmental impact its' mining will have on deep sea biosystems, and with little to no regulatory systems in place, set to begin providing the world with all those precious rare and expensive minerals it needs for a "carbon zero" future by 2050.

The prescience of Rockne S. O'Bannon (DSV's creator), is uncanny...

[Shaka_Khan]

[Shaka_Khan]

[Beskar]

There's plenty of that already available, including one with a rather... ominous name. Soylent. Plus many others getting into powder meal replacements, not just them.

Problem is volume as they all typically taste bad and it is about trying to tolerate as much as you can before you give up.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Leave it to the Aussie's to come up with a discussion about climate change that even a grade school student can understand:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-...ange/100020944

In Australia we've been talking about climate change for over a century …

As decades go by and emissions rise, the politics has stayed the same. Each time it bubbles up we're told taking action will result in job losses and disruption to the Australian way of life, and we're better off waiting.

But strip away all the politics, and the maths tells a different story: reducing emissions now will buy us more time to get to zero, but inaction dramatically cuts the time we have to act. This is why the next five years are so important.

By the 1980s, scientists (including those who worked for fossil fuel companies) had a pretty clear idea what was going on in the climate, and could start to measure increases in CO₂ and increases in global temperatures. So we knew even then that one day we'd have to stop using fossil fuels.

Coal industry representatives [insert oil and gas representatives here in the US] have fought back strongly against any plans to cut greenhouse emissions from burning coal, saying it would be an expensive move which would undercut one of Australia's strongest export industries.

This opposition was accompanied by familiar framing: "Advocating a moderate and pragmatic response on global warming."

Those reasonable sounding words, repeated by politicians and fossil fuel companies year after year, make it sound like we're gradually solving the problem. But again, strip away the politics, and see what is happening to emissions globally.

So this is where we are now. We're at a point where the effects of climate change [...] can no longer be ignored, and globally the emissions tap has gone from dripping, to flowing, to full bore. The only thing that hasn't changed is the political message.

That century the world had to get on top of this problem has been squandered in a few short decades.

We can't just keep emitting until 2050 and be fine; that date only works if we all start reducing emissions now. If we spend the next five years not reducing emissions, that gives us just 17 years to make that transition.

If you live in a part of Australia that's reliant on fossil fuel jobs, it is easy to see the appeal of the message "we can't turn things off tomorrow". But if we keep following that thinking, tomorrow won't be in 2050 — it will be just around the corner.

I highly recommend reading the Deloitte Access Economics report that blows the doors off the argument by the energy industry that "green energy" will cost thousands of jobs, and be economically ruinous:

https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/page...te-growth.html

What this report reveals is a fundamental flaw in how we are viewing the debate on climate change; we are all missing the point. We view the costs of action against an economic future where the basic assumption is that the economy will keep growing with unconstrained emissions. It is no wonder, then, that any debate about climate change turns up a large cost of action with scant benefits from change.

The economic baseline that we are conducting this debate against is fundamentally flawed. In its place, this report develops a baseline where unconstrained emissions are not consistent with unconstrained growth.

[edyzmedieval]

Given the fact that in Eastern Europe, today was marked in some places by record breaking heat... we need to act fast. And the problem is that individual steps, like recycling, going biking instead of a car and installing solar panels, will not be enough. Political action is required.

Romania had 41 degrees today, apparently Bulgaria and Greece experienced 43. And Turkey is literally burning.