Climate Change Thread

[ReluctantSamurai]

I think this article link, which I first posted back in February, is worth a second look:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...istory/617793/

Today, atmospheric CO₂ sits at 410 parts per million, a higher level than at any point in more than 3 million years. And humans are injecting more CO₂ into the atmosphere at one of the fastest rates ever. When hucksters tell you that the climate is always changing, they’re right, but that’s not the good news they think it is. “The climate system is an angry beast,” the late Columbia climate scientist Wally Broecker was fond of saying, “and we are poking it with sticks.”

The beast has only just begun to snarl. All of recorded human history—at only a few thousand years, a mere eyeblink in geologic time—has played out in perhaps the most stable climate window of the past 650,000 years. We have been shielded from the climate’s violence by our short civilizational memory, and our remarkably good fortune. But humanity’s ongoing chemistry experiment on our planet could push the climate well beyond those slim historical parameters, into a state it hasn’t seen in tens of millions of years, a world for which Homo sapiens did not evolve.

When there’s been as much carbon dioxide in the air as there already is today—not to mention how much there’s likely to be in 50 or 100 years—the world has been much, much warmer, with seas 70 feet higher than they are today. Why? The planet today is not yet in equilibrium with the warped atmosphere that industrial civilization has so recently created. If CO₂ stays at its current levels, much less steadily increases, it will take centuries—even millennia—for the planet to fully find its new footing. The transition will be punishing in the near term and the long term, and when it’s over, Earth will look far different from the one that nursed humanity. This is the grim lesson of paleoclimatology: The planet seems to respond far more aggressively to small provocations than it’s been projected to by many of our models.

We’re more than 3 million years in the past now, and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at 400 parts per million, a level the planet will not again see until September 2016. This world is 3 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than ours, and the sea level is up to 80 feet higher. When we arrive in the middle of the Pliocene, just over 3 million years ago, CO₂ levels are high enough that we’ve escaped the cycle of ice ages and warm interglacials altogether. We are now outside the evolutionary envelope of our modern world, sculpted as it was by the temperamental northern ice sheets and deep freezes of the Pleistocene. But as to atmospheric carbon dioxide, 3 million years is how far back we have to go to arrive at an analogue for 2021.

The iconic quote from this well-written article is "Life has speed limits".

And this warning:

Humans are currently injecting CO₂ into the air 10 times faster than even during the most extreme periods within the age of mammals. And you don’t need the planet to get as hot as it was in the early Eocene to catastrophically acidify the oceans. Acidification is all about the rate of CO₂ emissions, and we are off the charts. Ocean acidification could reach the same level it did 56 million years ago by later this century, and then keep going.

This sauna of our early mammalian ancestors represents something close to the worst possible scenario for future warming (although some studies claim that humans, under truly nihilistic emissions scenarios, could make the planet even warmer). The good news is the inertia of the Earth’s climate system is such that we still have time to rapidly reverse course, heading off an encore of this world, or that of the Miocene, or even the Pliocene, in the coming decades. All it will require is instantaneously halting the super-eruption of CO₂ disgorged into the atmosphere that began with the Industrial Revolution.

We know how to do this, and we cannot underplay the urgency. The fact is that none of these ancient periods is actually an apt analogue for the future if things go wrong. It took millions of years to produce the climates of the Miocene or the Eocene, and the rate of change right now is almost unprecedented in the history of animal life.

[edit]

@Monty

I noticed your post just after mine back in February when I first linked the Atlantic article:

From the little reading on climate I've done over the past year, I've gleaned that consensus modeling has downgraded both the worst-case scenarios and the best-case scenarios. Thoughts?

So in which direction do you think consensus modeling has taken us?

[Montmorency]

IIRC the old target of +1.5 °C is considered unattainable, with the new hope being 2.5 °C, while the outer envelope of 5 °C is deprecated because it assumes no decarbonization and adaptation by countries, but you would probably be more diligent in tracking down the reports than I am.

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**

Artisanal handcrafted cultured soylent green.

[ReluctantSamurai]

...with the new hope being 2.5 °C...

I think even that is unlikely given the trillions still being poured into fossil fuels usage and development...


@spmetla

I have to admit that this has slipped under my climate change radar:

https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/06/ex...aii-this-year/

Climate change for Hawaii is often viewed in terms of sea level rise. But fire (outside of volcanic activity) looks to certainly be a problem. In terms of acreage affected, Hawaii leads the nation...even worse than the Western states, which has all the media coverage:

https://www.civilbeat.org/2019/08/ha...y-other-state/

The mean annual area burned in Hawaii from 2005 to 2011 accounted for 0.48 % of Hawaii’s total land area, which was greater than the proportion of land area burned across the entire U.S. mainland (0.30%), and even across the 12 states in the fire-prone western U.S. (0.46 %) over this same time period [...]

And it appears that land management, or lack thereof, is as responsible as climate change:

“Our real problem is a fuels problem,” Walker said. “We have all this open grassland that we’re not managing. And if we don’t manage them, these fires are going to continue.”

And why, in god's creation, are folks intentionally starting fires?

Humans are almost entirely to blame for wildfires in Hawaii, starting many of the fires. But unlike some global warming challenges, experts said this one is solvable at the local level. Lightning rarely sparks a blaze in the islands, and usually just on the Big Island. But arson and unintentionally set fires are rampant, particularly on the west side of Oahu.

Thoughts?

[spmetla]

Climate change is definitely here and part of the conversation, sea level rise isn't too much a concern outside those that are immediately near the shore and the resorts that have typically built right on the shore (especially Waikiki area as that was all marshland a century ago too).

Where I live in Kona, the last two years have been the wettest and most overcast in memory which has changed the harvest times and quantities of coffee and other crops. The other parts of the islands are seeing increased droughts which has led to the wildfires.

Land management is certainly the main problem. Where the fires are at used to be lightely forested 200 years ago, unfortunately the hawaiian chiefs chopped down those forests to sell the sandlewood which was traded by Americans and Brits to China and the rest turned into canoes, firewood, etc... The introduction of cattle, sheep, and goats by Vancouver led to the highland forests that had been chopped down turn into grassland as the livestock ate all the tree starts.
On Oahu, the once food growing (rice and taro) productive valleys on the Honolulu (southern) side of the island have been completely developed so suburbia is widespread with the watersheds, streams and so on all built over making it vulnerable to occasional flooding. The west side of the Oahu used to be all sugarcane fields up to the 1980s but is now turning into suburbia too.
I'm curious at what point the population on Oahu will exceed the ability for the watertable to produce drinking water.

As for the fire starting, there are a lot of homeless in Hawaii that do start fires in areas that they squat in revenge against other homeless and occasional local residents but primarily through carelessness in cooking and smoking. The cause of the wildfires last week are possibly from a chainsaw without a spark arrester as the paniolos (cowboys) do cut up some of the existing wood to make posts for fence repairs. Idiots throwing cigarettes is possible another culprit and there are campers that don't understand fire safety too, not to mention hunters though I don't see how they'd start a fire unless they are taking shots in the prone as opposed to kneeling which you need to do to see over the grass up there.

Hawaii is terrible in long range planning. That's why my island uses oil to make electricity instead of increased windmills or solar in our lava field deserts or more use of the Puna geothermal power plant. Our roads and highways are all built for the amount of people from twenty years ago when the projects start not to mention the laughable disaster that is the Honolulu elevated rail project. Unfortunately in this state the only way to make effect change quickly is when private industry leads which the anti-business attitudes in Hawaii (residents and govt policies) hinder leaving us with tourism and the military as our major industries, a big difference from 50 years ago when we exported sugar and pineapple throughout the world. Hell, even putting another telescope on Mauna Kea (the 30 meter telescope or TMT) is probably not going to happen due to local protests.
Properly managing land and having a long term plan to deal with climate change is beyond the capability of our short sighted and entrenched politicians and bureaucrats.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Gotta say, Spmetla, that any geo-active island like Iceland that isn't using the bejeebers out of geothermal is missing the boat.

[Montmorency]

Very apocalyptic video of people in Greece being evacuated from the forest fires by boat:

https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/stat...22302442889219

@Crandar

I think even that is unlikely given the trillions still being poured into fossil fuels usage and development...

Though typically less of a priority than hundreds of millions of eventual refugees, relevant to the heritage of this forum is the loss of historical and cultural patrimony to climate and oceanic disruption.

Fearful of a French invasion after breaking with Rome, Henry VIII erected a line of massive coastal forts along the English Channel, and one of the most imposing is called Hurst Castle. It has stood on its sandy spit since 1544, through the Napoleonic Wars and World War II. Its garrison protected the Allied forces on D-Day.

But earlier this year, a large section of the castle — a wing constructed in the mid-19th century by the best military engineers in the world — tumbled into the fast currents of the Solent strait.

Hurst Castle has done its duty, but it is hard to fight the sea — specifically, its caretakers say, the steadily rising waters and more intense winter storms of a warming world.

All nations stand to lose cultural monuments to climate change, including the United States. But Britain is especially vulnerable. The country is stuffed to the attic with heritage properties.

Whereas animals might migrate, seeking more hospitable habitats, a Norman church, Roman villa or neolithic stone circle cannot move. They’re stuck where they are, built for preindustrial climates, centuries ago.

Britain’s preservationists find themselves trying, sometimes struggling, “to protect the past for the future.” They know not everything can or will be saved. There will be triage — and loss.

Hawaii is terrible in long range planning. That's why my island uses oil to make electricity instead of increased windmills or solar in our lava field deserts or more use of the Puna geothermal power plant.

Didn't Hawaii enact like the most aggressive (relatively) carbon neutral mandate in the country? How do they plan to execute it with current 80+% petroleum reliance? NYC, for example, is banning natural gas in new construction, though on a long timetable - 2030 - along with investments in electrification and renewable energy.

Hawaii was the first state to set a deadline for generating 100% of its electricity from renewable energy sources, which is required to be achieved by 2045.
Despite being among the five states with the lowest total energy consumption, Hawaii uses about 11 times more energy than it produces. More than four-fifths of Hawaii's energy consumption is petroleum, making it the most petroleum-dependent state.
[...]
Hawaii has the highest average electricity retail price of any state, in part because it relies on petroleum for more than 60% of its electricity generation.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Gotta say, Spmetla, that any geo-active island like Iceland that isn't using the bejeebers out of geothermal is missing the boat.

You mean like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...ro-in-pictures

Geothermal is getting the short end of the stick, IMHO, and some of these numbers point that up:

https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/fea...ing-countries/

While the US leads the world in kWh produced, it's a far, far cry from the potential:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power

Estimates of the electricity generating potential of geothermal energy vary from 35 to 2000 GW depending on the scale of investments. This does not include non-electric heat recovered by co-generation, geothermal heat pumps and other direct use. A 2006 report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that included the potential of enhanced geothermal systems estimated that investing US$1 billion in research and development over 15 years would allow the creation of 100 GW of electrical generating capacity by 2050 in the United States alone. The MIT report estimated that over 200×10⁹ TJ (200 ZJ; 5.6×10⁷ TWh) would be extractable, with the potential to increase this to over 2,000 ZJ with technology improvements – sufficient to provide all the world's present energy needs for several millennia.

SEVERAL MILLENNIA.

[spmetla]

Gotta say, Spmetla, that any geo-active island like Iceland that isn't using the bejeebers out of geothermal is missing the boat

We are certainly missing the boat, though for us Geothermal would only be relevant to my island, we have seven separate populated islands and mine is the only one with active volcanoes.
The problem with the solar and wind is land is so expensive here that no one wants solar and wind farms ruining THEIR views. Rooftop solar would seem a solution but the electrical companies have put limits on how many can be put in per county as they haven't built the facilities to store energy so they really only use the solar created to offset some of the daytime power spikes.

Didn't Hawaii enact like the most aggressive (relatively) carbon neutral mandate in the country? How do they plan to execute it with current 80+% petroleum reliance? NYC, for example, is banning natural gas in new construction, though on a long timetable - 2030 - along with investments in electrification and renewable energy.

They enacted a deadline without a plan, the planners in this state are about as effective as people making weight loss goals for the new year.

Geothermal is getting the short end of the stick, IMHO, and some of these numbers point that up:

Geothermal is amazing in its potential where ever it is possible. Unfortunately a lot of the people that want a green world and no pollution in Hawaii tend to be of the ignorant type that think geothermal CAUSES volcanic eruptions. Then there's the hawaiian cultural people that something think its against their new interpretation of past hawaiian practices to have geothermal tapping the power of the Goddess Pele.

There's just too much incompetency and ignorance. My island could be energy independent and grow a lot of its own food as well as export food and be a scientific capital for astronomy, geology, and marine science. Instead our politicians are flirting with the idea of just legalizing gambling or weed for other sources of easy tax revenue.

[ReluctantSamurai]

My island could be energy independent and grow a lot of its own food as well as export food and be a scientific capital for astronomy, geology, and marine science. Instead our politicians are flirting with the idea of just legalizing gambling or weed for other sources of easy tax revenue.

I think everyone (well at least government leaders) on The Big Island should be offered a week vacation in Iceland. When folks see what their "distant cousins" are doing to reduce emissions, grow most of their own food year round, and produce income from non-traditional sources (the EGF produced from barley @ $10,000 per gram would make growing pot obsolete), they might return with a different perspective on what's possible on their home turf.

But then again, maybe not...

[ReluctantSamurai]

A case of "Not what I say, but what I do", or simply bowing to the reality that the biggest pollution on the planet just refuses to kick it's addiction to fossil fuels:

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ts-suggest-not

Some signs from Biden the candidate last year were encouraging. His promise to ban new drilling and fracking on federal lands – an action that would be a simple, decisive first step in curtailing new fossil fuel extraction – was unequivocal: “No more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”

And yet:

Yet since taking office, Biden’s interior department has approved more than 2,000 new permits for drilling and fracking on federal land. In May, it appealed a federal court order that had paused fracking in Wayne national forest. In June, it advanced a proposal for new oil and gas exploration at Dinosaur national monument – a proposal the Trump administration had actually suspended under immense pressure from activists.

There are other similar disappointments – from the shocking approval of Trump’s plan to open Alaska’s North Slope to new oil drilling to the approval of the infamous Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline. At precisely the moment when we must be forcefully rejecting new drilling, fracking and pipeline infrastructure, Biden isn’t just tolerating fossil fuels – he’s uplifting them.

And Green Energy proposals:

The Biden White House yanked much of its modest climate agenda from the bipartisan infrastructure package that just passed the Senate. Instead the White House proposes that a larger, separate spending package will include things like a national “clean energy payment program” that advocates claim will facilitate a speedy transition to renewables – apparently without any need for clear, enforceable emissions regulations. Climate activists should be skeptical; some of these proposals have even counted fracked gas power plants as a clean energy source.

However, the Reconciliation Bill's future is sketchy, at best.

A play-by-play of the Biden Administration rhetoric since taking office:

https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/20...21_second-hero

Some notable quotes:

During a Senate confirmation hearing, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm argued that fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere: “If we are going to get to net carbon zero emissions by 2050, we cannot do it without coal, oil, and gas being part of the mix.”

When announcing his executive order on public lands drilling, Biden declared: “Let me be clear, and I know this always comes up: We’re not going to ban fracking.”

In written answers submitted as part of her Senate confirmation hearings, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm promotes the export of fracked gas as a clean energy solution: “I believe U.S. LNG exports can have an important role to play in reducing international consumption of fuels that have greater contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.”

Climate envoy John Kerry tells a finance group: “No government is going to solve this problem…The solutions are going to come from the private sector.” He added: “What the government needs to do is create a framework within which the private sector can do what it does best, which is allocate capital and innovate.” Kerry was also quoted as saying, “I think we’re on the cusp of a massive transformation… And ultimately, the market is going to make the decisions, not the government.”

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was a surprise guest at an oil industry conference, where she reassured the audience: “We want to be a partner. And first, let me be clear, in our position as a global supplier of crude oil and natural gas and other forms of energy, that traditional fossil energy is going to remain important, even as we work to reduce carbon emissions.”

According to statistics from the Bureau of Land Management, from the start of February to the end of April, the administration approved 1,179 drilling permits on federal lands, not far from the four-year high of nearly 1,400 approved over a similar three-month period at the end of Trump’s term.

The Washington Examiner reports that Andrew Light — Biden’s nominee to be the deputy assistant secretary for international affairs at the Energy Department — wants to see more fracked gas exports: “My job in this role is to make sure U.S. gas is competitive around the world…Russia has the dirtiest source of gas right now. We’ve got to make sure ours is cleaner and that ours fill those markets around the world. That’s what I intend to do.”

Reporting from a G7 summit focused on climate action, Politico reports that the Biden administration helped to block more forceful action on phasing out coal: “The Biden administration — fixated on cultivating the Democrats’ razor-thin Senate majority and the coal mining sympathies of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin — was wary of any language specifically clamping down on coal.”

At a House committee hearing, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told lawmakers: “I don’t think there is a plan right now for a permanent ban” on oil and gas drilling on public lands. Those comments directly contradict Biden’s repeated promises to ban fracking on public lands. Haaland added that “gas and oil production will continue well into the future.”

The Associated Press reports that “approvals for companies to drill for oil and gas on U.S. public lands are on pace this year to reach their highest level since George W. Bush was president.” The Interior Department approved about 2,500 permits to drill on public and tribal lands in the first six months of the year — more than 2,100 drilling approvals since Biden took office on Jan. 20.

If the largest CO2 emitter on the planet has officials coming out with these kinds of questionable behavior, is it any wonder that keeping global warming under 2 degrees C is just a pipe dream?

More on another campaign promise broken:

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/13/10155...provals-are-up

[Crandar]

https://twitter.com/MazMHussain/stat...22302442889219

@Crandar

Well, on terms of space, it must be one of the worst, if not the worst, disasters. Very few casualties, at least, as only two died (a civilian and a volunteer firefighter). The man responsible for handling the crisis was pretty aggressive on his public speech and pretty much asked the society to apologise for disapproving of how he handled the crisis. As for the minister, he described himself as a hero, both fighting the fires off with a hose and managing the response. Both a firefighter and a strategist (his words)!

[ReluctantSamurai]

This trend bears watching:

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...s-for-30-years

Germany is forecast to record its biggest rise in greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 this year as the economy rebounds from the pandemic-related downturn, according to a report by an environmental thinktank.

It also shows a significant increase in consumption of fossil fuels across the building, industrial and transport sectors. If confirmed, the German government will be required by law to introduce urgent measures to reduce those sectoral emissions.

Back in December of last year, the Carbon Brief (a climate think-tank) published this report:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-c...ssions-in-2020

In it, the authors made this statement:

The peak of the decrease in emissions this year [2020] occurred in the first half of April, the researchers say in a briefing document. This was when lockdown measures in response to Covid-19 were at their most comprehensive – particularly in Europe and the US, they note. This year has also seen the first clear fall in global emissions since a 1.3% drop in 2009 – visible in the chart below – which was driven by the global financial crisis that started in 2008.

They went on to say this:

That crisis was followed by a “huge rebound” in emissions in the early 2010s, explained Peters. Global emissions subsequently plateaued between 2014 and 2016, he said, which started to get scientists “a little bit excited that maybe emissions were peaking”. However, emissions then “jumped up again” in 2017 and 2018 before levelling out in 2019.

However, the rebound in emissions seen in the aftermath of previous global crises suggests that the way countries stimulate their economies after Covid-19 lockdowns will play a key role in future emissions.

Fossil fuels are readily available now, and still at reasonable prices. So the logical conclusion is that countries will take the least painful way to get their economies back on track by using the energy sources they've always used---fossil fuels. Germany is the first EU nation with such data. What the other large emitters do remains to be seen, especially here in the US, the world's biggest emitter.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Although late to the party, at least there is some discussion finally happening in the US concerning recycling lithium ion batteries and other materials from EV's:

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...appens-to-them

A tsunami of electric vehicles is expected in rich countries, as car companies and governments pledge to ramp up their numbers – there are predicted be 145m on the roads by 2030. But while electric vehicles can play an important role in reducing emissions, they also contain a potential environmental timebomb: their batteries.

By one estimate, more than 12m tons of lithium-ion batteries are expected to retire between now and 2030.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are flowing into recycling startups and research centers to figure out how to disassemble dead batteries and extract valuable metals at scale.

There is big momentum behind lithium-ion battery recycling. In its impact report, published in August, Tesla announced that it had started building recycling capabilities at its Gigafactory in Nevada to process waste batteries.

Nearby Redwood Materials, founded by the former Tesla chief technology officer JB Straubel, which operates out of Carson City, Nevada, raised more than $700m in July and plans to expand operations. The factory takes in dead batteries, extracts valuable materials such as copper and cobalt, then sends the refined metals back into the battery supply chain.

Legislation could help. While the US has yet to implement federal policies mandating lithium-ion battery recycling, the EU and China already require battery manufacturers to pay for setting up collection and recycling systems. These funds could help subsidize formal recyclers to make them more competitive, Pennington said.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I'm not a big fan of EV's, but if this recent innovation, combined with fuel-cell technology can reduce emissions from rail transport, then that's a step in the right direction, IMHO:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...port-emissions

The new train, known as the FLXdrive battery-electric locomotive, underwent successful trials in California earlier this year where it was found to have cut fuel consumption by 11%, which meant reducing the amount of diesel used by 6,200 gallons. Wabtec said that the next iteration of the locomotive, to be rolled out within two years, will be able to cut the consumption of diesel, the fossil fuel traditionally used in freight rail, by nearly a third.

The company also said emissions will be entirely eliminated through the development of accompanying hydrogen fuel cells. If the technology is used worldwide, Wabtec estimates planet-heating emissions could be cut by 300m tons a year, with nearly half of those saved emissions occurring in the US.

Wabtec is betting the FLXdrive will change this dynamic. Housed in a traditional locomotive body, the new battery system drives the axles of the train and uses the kinetic energy of the train’s braking to recharge, meaning the batteries should never run out. The newest version will be a 7-megawatt battery locomotive, which is “100 times the power and energy within a Tesla – it’s dramatically more powerful”, said Eric Gebhardt, Wabtec’s chief technology officer.

That last part about using a train's own kinetic energy to recharge batteries is important, as currently many or most recharge stations are powered by fossil fuels, negating the benefits of EV's in the first place.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I'm not a big fan of EV's, but if this recent innovation, combined with fuel-cell technology can reduce emissions from rail transport, then that's a step in the right direction, IMHO:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...port-emissions {...less excerpts...}

That last part about using a train's own kinetic energy to recharge batteries is important, as currently many or most recharge stations are powered by fossil fuels, negating the benefits of EV's in the first place.

Nice. Despite our rail system's limitations, we move a huge amount of goods that way. I was never a fan of the hydrogen cells for cars thing, but this seems like a great usage.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I was never a fan of the hydrogen cells for cars thing

Fuel cells in general, or just for use in cars?

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Fuel cells in general, or just for use in cars?

Private auto usage is what I am leery of. They work well for fleet vehicles and heavier applications. I will admit that my view of this is also colored by my appreciation for the skills of the typical USA motorist.

[ReluctantSamurai]

I will admit that my view of this is also colored by my appreciation for the skills of the typical USA motorist

Actually, to date, the biggest danger is explosions of plants producing the H2, rather than the vehicles themselves. I don't particularly care for EV's much, not because of the cars themselves, but because of the glut of lithium and the 17 other rare-earth minerals that's needed to produce them. We've raped the land surface plenty to get these, but in order to feed the beast (so-to-speak) countries are going after deep-sea deposits. There is little to no regulations about how this mining will occur, and you know what that means...a SeaQuest DSV situation come to life.

The EU is ahead of the curve, somewhat, when it comes to recycling the minerals for all the planned EV's, but here in the US it's just talk, for the moment. I'm not holding my breath on that one as I remember how long it took to get lead-acid batteries into the recycle bin, but god only knows how many ended up in landfills or out in the back yard junk pile...

This is a pretty balanced discussion of the pro's and con's of BEV's vs FCV's:

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

[ReluctantSamurai]

I know you folks probably think I keep crying Wolf! on this topic, but none-the-less, world governments better wake the hell up before it's too late or we really will see seaQuest DSV come to life (somewhere in the ethos, Roy Scheider is smiling):

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...e-the-deep-sea

A short bureaucratic note from a brutally degraded microstate in the South Pacific to a little-known institution in the Caribbean is about to change the world. Few people are aware of its potential consequences, but the impacts are certain to be far-reaching. The only question is whether that change will be to the detriment of the global environment or the benefit of international governance.

In late June, the island republic of Nauru informed the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica of its intention to start mining the seabed in two years’ time via a subsidiary of a Canadian firm, The Metals Company (TMC, until recently known as DeepGreen). Innocuous as it sounds, this note was a starting gun for a resource race on the planet’s last vast frontier: the abyssal plains that stretch between continental shelves deep below the oceans.

The risks are enormous. Oversight is almost impossible. Regulators admit humanity knows more about deep space than the deep ocean. The technology is unproven. Scientists are not even sure what lives in those profound ecosystems. State governments have yet to agree on a rulebook on how deep oceans can be exploited. No national ballot has ever included a vote on excavating the seabed.

“This is now a test of governments who claim to want to protect the oceans,” she said. “They simply cannot allow these reckless companies to rush headlong into a race to the bottom, where little-known ecosystems will be ploughed up for profit, and the risks and liabilities will be pushed on to small island nations. We need an urgent deep-sea mining moratorium to protect the oceans.”

And here's the crux of the matter:

Mining companies also insist on urgency – to start exploration. They say the minerals – copper, cobalt, nickel and magnesium – are essential for a green transition. If the world wants to decarbonise and reach net-zero emissions by 2050, they say we must start extracting the resources for car batteries and wind turbines soon. They already have exploration permits for an expanse of international seabed as large as France and Germany combined, an area that is likely to expand rapidly. All they need now is a set of internationally agreed operating rules. The rulebook is being drawn up by the ISA, set up in 1994 by the United Nations to oversee sustainable seabed exploration for the benefit of all humanity. But progress is slower than mining companies and their investors would like.

So net-zero emissions is going to be the back pressure excuse to fuck up the world's deep-sea eco-systems, which we have little to no knowledge of, all in the name of "Green Energy".

History does not offer much encouragement to the denizens of the deep that the issue will be resolved in their favour. In modern times, particularly the great post-second world war acceleration of the past 70 years, more has probably been gouged from the Earth than in all of previous human history combined.

The materials for a built and manufactured environment are extracted at the expense of natural beauty, resilience and stability. For most of human history, this was considered a fair trade-off. The costs – cleared forests, scarred landscapes, polluted water, air filled with dust, carcinogens and greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere – were either unknown or deemed small compared with the gains. They rarely appeared on corporate or national balance sheets. Miners extracted oil, gas, coal, iron, gold, copper, lithium and other minerals, while leaving other species, remote communities and future generations to pay the price.

So we might see a return of the "Robber Baron" era of the 1870's, except that this time oversight will be extremely difficult. News agencies can't exactly send investigative reporters a mile or two beneath the ocean surface to film what's happening.

Stating the obvious:

Matthew Gianni, co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, said: “This is all about money – money for DeepGreen [TMC] and its shareholders and money for Nauru – and the fear that if DeepGreen doesn’t get a licence soon, investors will walk away from the company and both DeepGreen and Nauru will lose out on any revenue.” He said the case showed the need to shake up international governance. “The ISA’s decision-making process is seriously flawed and needs to be fixed.”

And who is the ISA (International Seabed Authority)?

https://www.isa.org.jm/about-isa

But, as usual, corruption abounds:

In theory, every country in the world is involved in the ISA’s decision-making. In practice, power lies with a small group of experts that is weighted in favour of mining. There is no specialist environmental or science assessment group to vet applications for new contracts. Instead, new contracts are initially made by the ISA’s Legal and Technical Commission (LTC), which comprises just 30 members. Their decisions can only be overturned by a super-majority of two thirds of the full council, which comprises 36 states.

That's like putting the fox in charge of overseeing the hen house...

The commission has a 100% record of approving exploration applications, for which ISA charges a $500,000 (£365,000) processing fee. Membership of the LTC is skewed towards extraction rather than environmental oversight – a fifth of the members work directly for contractors with deep-sea mining projects. They include Nobuyuki Okamoto, who established Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation, which has started its own seafloor exploration, and Carsten Rühlemann, who works for Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources, which holds exploration contracts in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Many others have a background in mining or oil and gas exploration. Among them are the chair of the commission, Harald Brekke, who is a senior geologist at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate; Pakistan’s representative, Khalid Mehmood Awan, who has worked for offshore oil and gas companies; and an Australian geologist, Mark Alcock, who is listed as working previously in surveying for petroleum and minerals exploration. By comparison, only three members are obviously focused on marine ecosystems, such as Gordon Lindsay Paterson, a zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London.

And, of course, shady deals already abound:

It is not just small island states that are complicit. Seabed resources are supposed to benefit all of humanity and promote sustainable development, but just three companies from wealthy nations have a hand in eight of the 10 contracts to explore for minerals in the Pacific’s Clarion-Clipperton zone that have been awarded since 2010: the Canadian-registered TMC (formerly DeepGreen), the Belgian corporation Dredging Environmental and Marine Engineering (DEME), and UK Seabed Resources, a subsidiary of the US arms manufacturer Lockheed Martin.

The role of these companies is opaque. None of the parent companies are included by the ISA in its list of contractors. A common practice is to operate through subsidiaries or by taking shares in partners in small island states, often in conjunction with national governments. This leads to concerns about accountability in the event of an accident: the subsidiaries are often small, which could leave poor nations with huge liabilities.

Look at the opening picture (in the article linked) of what typical deep-sea mining equipment looks like. Does that look like any of the companies currently involved in deep-sea mineral extraction gives a shit about environmental consequences? For that matter, has any mining company ever conducted business with the environment in mind?

Will McCallum, head of oceans at Greenpeace UK:

“Any claim of not being environmentally damaging is meaningless, as we have no idea now what that environment is.” “We have never entered a frontier and not fucked it up more.”

To date, the earth's oceans have mitigated global warming by absorbing nearly 90% of the excess heat caused by CO2 and other emitted gases since the 1870's. And noone has ANY idea how any of this proposed deep-sea mining will impact the earth's oceans ability to continue as a heat sink for our environmental irresponsibility. So here we are, about to gleefully run through the lush green meadow of net-zero carbon emissions, only to fall into the quicksands of exploitation and greed once again.

Today’s technology has moved on, but scientists and conservationists doubt that it is ready and the environmental risks are fully understood. They would like more time. Nauru and TMC have given them less. The countdown clock now has 21 months left, and counting.

[Montmorency]

Conceivably big news from China; ripe for a deep dive:

One year ago Xi declared a commitment to bring China to carbon neutrality by 2060, seemingly an improvement on previous goals. The news now is, he promises a precipitous end to Chinese investment in coal abroad.

Despite the country’s plans to become carbon neutral by 2060, its domestic coal production has nearly tripled since 2001. By contrast, the amount of coal produced in the United States and Europe has roughly halved over this time. China accounted for more than half of the 7.7 billion tonnes of coal produced globally in 2020, dwarfing the contributions of the next biggest producers (see ‘World’s biggest coal producers’).

[I can't get the chart on "World's Biggest Coal Producers, 2001-2020, to display, nor the other charts in the piece. Can anyone else?]

But China also finances the construction of coal-fired power plants in many other countries, to help Chinese energy businesses profit from overseas markets. Overall, China finances enough coal power abroad to produce 42 gigawatts of electricity — enough to power at least 30 million homes.

Most of this money flows to Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mongolia and Indonesia, but many African countries and some European nations also receive significant amounts (see ‘Coal-power financiers and recipients’).

China commissioned 38.4 GW of new coal plants last year, 76% of the global total of new coal-fired power plants, according to the non-profit organization Global Energy Monitor. Experts say that halting the financing of these coal-power projects is a good start, but add that the emissions they produce are dwarfed by those generated by the 1,000 GW of coal-power that China generates domestically. This is more than four times the capacity of either India or the United States, which are the next biggest generators of coal power.
[...]
Leaders of the G7 group of advanced economies — consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States [Ed. and South Korea apparently] — agreed in May to halt the international financing of coal projects.

Part of it may be that coal is far from the wave of the future it used to be 200 years ago.

Between 2014 and 2020, about $160 billion of Chinese-backed coal-fired power plants were planned or announced outside the country, according to the Green Belt and Road Initiative Center, which conducts research around China’s expansive infrastructure building push.

An analysis by the climate think tank E3G found that China commissioned 76 percent of the world’s coal in 2020, up from 64 percent in 2019.

But a decline in demand has dampened Chinese enthusiasm, as countries recognize the costs of continuing to invest in dirty energy. In some cases, the loans have gone to countries that don’t need them, and that’s led to the canceling of proposed plants.

Of the 52 Chinese-backed coal-fired power projects announced since 2014, 25 were suspended and eight were canceled, according to the Green BRI Center. In the first half of 2021, China did not announce any financing for new coal-fired power plants outside the country, it found.

There’s also the growing risk that coal investments will turn into stranded assets as coal becomes less competitive.

As of July, 37 countries were still considering new coal-fired power stations, a 43 percent drop from 2015, the E3G analysis found. Outside of China and India — which does not seek Chinese financing — Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan account for the bulk of the preconstruction coal pipeline, and all have announced some form of restriction on new coal projects.

China’s announcement could affect around 50 gigawatts of new Chinese-backed coal projects not yet under construction, according to Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst who covers China energy trends at the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

In Indonesia, for example, research by the Institute for Energy Economics & Financial Analysis (IEEFA) shows that more than 15 GW of full or partial Chinese financing has gone to plants that have been commissioned or are under construction and could come online if the policy only applies to new projects.
[...]
"Over the last three months, the Indonesian government and PLN [the state-owned power utility] have been pretty much telling the same story: There will be no more new coal power plants except those that have already signed contracts," said Elrika Hamdi, an Indonesian energy finance analyst for IEEFA.

But without filling the gap, predictably... so withdrawing funding for the one should always be coupled by alternative funding for renewables:

Climate groups have raised fears that China’s decision could give a boost to gas, with Bangladesh and Vietnam already increasing its role in their plans.

Alternatively, it could accelerate the energy transitions in countries that have relied on China if past financing for coal were redirected toward greener, low-carbon projects, as Xi said in his announcement.
[...]
In 2020, renewable energy investments made up the majority of Chinese overseas energy financing, an investment report from the Green BRI Center showed.
[...]
China has been heavily involved in building out solar and wind projects, including in places where it’s also continued to invest in coal, said Lin.

One example is Egypt, where the massive 6.6 GW Hamrawein coal plant was formally canceled in April 2020 amid concerns that its construction would far exceed new energy needs.

Last month the government signed a nearly $300 million deal with China Gezhouba Group to install 500 megawatts of solar power across the country.

Meanwhile in Bangladesh, the joint venture Bangladesh China Renewable Energy Company Ltd. launched a bid for a new solar park in which China is expected to invest $500 million, PV Magazine reported.

“Generally, these have not been directly connected to the cancellation of a specific coal project but instead are responding to a specific call for renewables project bids from the country governments,” Lin said.

There are obvious opportunities to one-up China here for mutual benefit - healthy competition in international financing - but we won't take them.

According to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center, China has provided roughly 17 percent of all overseas coal financing over the past five years and 11 percent of the planned coal plants in the pipeline.

The rest has come largely from the private sector. But much of that private financing has been leveraged through significant public funding and guarantees, said analysts.

Remove Japan, Korea and China and that’s virtually the death of coal, said Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies for Australia and South Asia at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

Meanwhile, many (e.g.) deride hydrogen energy hopes for being an illusion of clean or renewable energy.

“Blue” hydrogen – an energy source that involves a process for making hydrogen by using methane in natural gas – is being lauded by many as a clean, green energy to help reduce global warming. But Cornell and Stanford University researchers believe it may harm the climate more than burning fossil fuel.

The carbon footprint to create blue hydrogen is more than 20% greater than using either natural gas or coal directly for heat, or about 60% greater than using diesel oil for heat, according to new research published Aug. 12 in Energy Science & Engineering.

“Most of the hydrogen in the U.S. and Europe comes from natural gas, using steam and pressure to convert the methane from natural gas into a so-called ‘gray’ hydrogen and carbon dioxide,” said Robert Howarth, the David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology and Environmental Biology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Howarth, together with Mark Z. Jacobson, Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, authored “How Green is Blue Hydrogen?.”

Blue hydrogen starts with converting methane to hydrogen and carbon dioxide by using heat, steam and pressure, or gray hydrogen, but goes further to capture some of the carbon dioxide. Once the byproduct carbon dioxide and the other impurities are sequestered, it becomes blue hydrogen, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The process to make blue hydrogen takes a large amount of energy, according to the researchers, which is generally provided by burning more natural gas.

“In the past, no effort was made to capture the carbon dioxide byproduct of gray hydrogen, and the greenhouse gas emissions have been huge,” Howarth said. “Now the industry promotes blue hydrogen as a solution, an approach that still uses the methane from natural gas, while attempting to capture the byproduct carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, emissions remain very large.”

“Blue hydrogen is hardly emissions free,” wrote the researchers. “Blue hydrogen as a strategy only works to the extent it is possible to store carbon dioxide long-term indefinitely into the future without leakage back to the atmosphere.”

An ecologically friendly “green” hydrogen does exist, but it remains a small sector and it has not been commercially realized. Green hydrogen is achieved when water goes through electrolysis (with electricity supplied by solar, wind or hydroelectric power) and the water is separated into hydrogen and oxygen.

On Aug. 10, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which includes several billion dollars to develop, subsidize and strengthen hydrogen technology and its industry.

“Political forces may not have caught up with the science yet,” Howarth said. “Even progressive politicians may not understand for what they’re voting. Blue hydrogen sounds good, sounds modern and sounds like a path to our energy future. It is not.”

[ReluctantSamurai]

Two sort of conflicting issues concerning China's energy situation.

First---will China cave to renewed coal use to solve it's current energy crunch?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...e_iOSApp_Other

The situation is widespread. In recent days, factories in 20 of China’s 31 provinces have suffered a loss of power, forcing many to shut down production, at least for hours at a time. Millions of households in the north-east of the country have also lost power and found that they cannot use electricity to heat or light their homes.

Since the beginning of the year electricity production has increased by about 10% as the economy has bounced back from the pandemic. It’s just that the Chinese energy juggernaut has run out of steam after running down stocks of coal apparently in the hope that either Beijing would lift all environmental restrictions that increase the cost of producing electricity with coal or that world prices would fall. While Beijing has eased some emissions targets, world prices have carried on soaring.

Choyleva says Xi’s centralising zeal means regional governments have come under closer control from Beijing and resulted in a series of crises. A clampdown on bank lending led to the near collapse of several banks and earlier this month, pushed the property giant Evergrande close to insolvency. “It used to be that a crisis came up every couple of years and was dealt with. Now they are coming thick and fast,” she said. Evans-Pritchard said Xi’s determination to hurry through reforms forcing businesses to conform more closely to Beijing’s policy agenda is causing problems. “One broader takeaway is that the current disruption highlights the economic costs inherent in China’s push for self-sufficiency and decoupling with the west,” he said.

So if the energy crunch continues, is China willing to submit to a short-term slowing of economic growth, in return for renewable energy picking up the slack, or do they do what's easy and ramp up domestic coal production?

And this podcast is an interesting listen:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/aud...iction-to-coal

At about the 16 min. mark, the conundrum China is in (and other countries with large coal reserves like India), is what I referenced in an earlier post about how China, the US, Japan, and others respond to trying to jump-start their economies during and after COVID. In this article by CarbonBrief, after the financial crisis of 2008, the following years saw an increase in emissions as countries looked to cheap fossil fuels to help their economies back to growth conditions:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-c...ssions-in-2020

Personally, I expect to see a similar trend now...

I think Greta does too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwD1kG4PI0w

Meanwhile, many deride hydrogen energy hopes for being an illusion of clean or renewable energy.

I suspect this is a market generated opinion. Those with the funding and the means to produce EV's and other electric consumables, have the upper hand, at the moment. "Blue Hydrogen" is definitely not a viable solution to reducing carbon emissions as it obviously creates more emissions than it eliminates. "Green Hydrogen" produced by cracking water, is expensive, at the moment, and therefore at a disadvantage to BEV technology. But that's not to say Fuel Cells are a dead end:

https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-hydrogen

And this very overlooked synergy with solar and wind power:

Hydrogen can enable renewables to provide an even greater contribution. It has the potential to help with variable output from renewables, like solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind, whose availability is not always well matched with demand. Hydrogen is one of the leading options for storing energy from renewables and looks promising to be a lowest-cost option for storing electricity over days, weeks or even months. Hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels can transport energy from renewables over long distances – from regions with abundant solar and wind resources, such as Australia or Latin America, to energy-hungry cities thousands of kilometres away.

The "You can't trust solar or wind to produce 24/7" is one of the leading arguments used by the fossil fuel industry to push back against renewables. Storing excess electricity in the form of H2 would go a long way towards alleviating that.

I still think geothermal is getting short-shrifted, in part because of the prevailing notion that you can only generate power if you are located in an area with volcanic activity, which is anything but the truth. And look at the potential:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power

Geothermal power requires no fuel; it is therefore immune to fuel cost fluctuations. However, capital costs tend to be high. Drilling accounts for over half the costs, and exploration of deep resources entails significant risks. A typical well doublet in Nevada can support 4.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity generation and costs about $10 million to drill, with a 20% failure rate. In total, electrical station construction and well drilling costs about 2–5 million € per MW of electrical capacity, while the levelised energy cost is 0.04–0.10 € per kW·h. Enhanced geothermal systems tend to be on the high side of these ranges, with capital costs above $4 million per MW and levelized costs above $0.054 per kW·h in 2007.

Getting the cost of drilling down is the biggest hurdle. But:

A 2006 report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that included the potential of enhanced geothermal systems estimated that investing US$1 billion in research and development over 15 years would allow the creation of 100 GW of electrical generating capacity by 2050 in the United States alone. The MIT report estimated that over 200×10⁹ TJ (200 ZJ; 5.6×10⁷ TWh) would be extractable, with the potential to increase this to over 2,000 ZJ with technology improvements – sufficient to provide all the world's present energy needs for several millennia.

All the world's present---as in current gluttony---for several millennia...

In the aforementioned MIT report, the conclusion (after 330 pages of analysis...) is interesting given the recent Congressional handout of an additional $1 billion dollars to Israel's defense budget:

Analysis suggests that, with significant initial investment, installed capacity of EGS could reach 100,000 MWe within 50 years, with levelized energy costs at parity with market prices after 11 years. It is projected that the total cost, including costs for research, development, demonstration, and deployment, required to reach this level of EGS generation capacity ranges from approximately $600 -$900 million with an absorbed cost of $200-$350 million.

Adjusted for inflation, that about equals what we just authorized for military purposes to Israel. Jeezus we are so effing stupid....

[spmetla]

So if the energy crunch continues, is China willing to submit to a short-term slowing of economic growth, in return for renewable energy picking up the slack, or do they do what's easy and ramp up domestic coal production?

I can't imagine China putting economic stability/growth over the economy. As a one party state failure to deliver basic goods such as electricity; especially with Autumn here and Winter approaching seem non-starters.

Last thing I can imagine the PRC tolerating is power cuts that led to discontent right before the highly visible Winter Olympics.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Last thing I can imagine the PRC tolerating is power cuts that led to discontent right before the highly visible Winter Olympics.

Meaning you see them dipping into their coal reserves to bolster economic growth?

[Montmorency]

And this very overlooked synergy with solar and wind power:

This scenario would require pretty extensive uptake of solar/wind/geo, to produce excess energy at scale. But in that case, I've heard from hydro-skeptics that efuels would be a more efficient conversion. What do you think of efuels in general?

Meanwhile, pace a more hopeful article you once shared, insurance companies appear to be struggling to price fossil fuels and related investments appropriately, for cultural and for short-term financial reasons mostly.
https://prospect.org/environment/oil...-flannel-suit/

[ReluctantSamurai]

And we have our answer:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...s-power-crunch

Chinese officials have ordered more than 70 mines in Inner Mongolia to increase coal production by almost 100m tonnes, with the country battling its worst power crunch and coal shortages in years. The move is the latest attempt by Chinese authorities to boost coal supply amid record high prices and shortages of electricity that have led to power rationing across the country, crippling industrial output.

The 72 mines listed by the Inner Mongolia energy bureau, most of which are open pits, had previously authorised annual capacity of 178.45m tonnes. The notice proposed they increase their production capacity by 98.35m tonnes combined, according to Reuters calculations.

Meanwhile, coal consumption is climbing as north-eastern China has kicked off the winter heating season, with major power plants having stockpiles for about 10 days of use, down from more than 20 days last year. To ensure power and heating supply to residential users, China has reopened dozens of other mines and approved several new ones.

Not a surprise...

[Seamus Fermanagh]

China wants to keep its high single-digit/double-digit growth rate. I suspect they view it as both a growth in strategic power AND as the best means of keeping internal dissent to a minimum.

But I fear that the vast majority of governments will choose economy and jobs over longer term "green" goals when an economic crisis looms.

[ReluctantSamurai]

But I fear that the vast majority of governments will choose economy and jobs over longer term "green" goals when an economic crisis looms.

Which is exactly what the authors of this article predict:

https://www.carbonbrief.org/global-c...ssions-in-2020

An interesting visual look at what famous sites around the world might look like at a 3 degree C rise in global temp vs a 1.5 degree rise:

https://picturing.climatecentral.org/

And China isn't the only country solving an energy crunch by ramping up coal production:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...critically-low

Over the past two decades, domestic coal production in India has continued to rise exponentially, though there was a minor dip in production of less than 1% from 2019 to 2020 due to the pandemic.

[...] more coal is usually imported to bridge the gap in production. But due to a global energy crisis, which has seen international prices hit record highs, it has been more of a financial challenge to import more coal, leading to greater shortages than usual.

[...] over the past year “renewable energy installation also slowed down” and that, if the Indian government had focused on increasing the capacity of renewables such as solar, wind and hydro, “the increased demand could have been met through renewable energy and this crisis could have been averted”.

So a coal addict will do what coal addicts often do:

However, there are concerns that the shortages will be used by to justify pushing more domestic coal production, with some state governments already putting on the pressure for expedited clearance for new coalmines in protected areas. India already has plans to boost its domestic coal production to 1bn tons by 2024.

***sigh***

[Montmorency]

The world surface has officially warmed by 1° C since the Soviet Union collapsed. At 4° C cooler than that benchmark, 20000 years ago, most of the land north of the Tropic of Cancer was covered in ice. Between the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, there had been around 0.5° C of warming. I wonder what a plausible 4° C of warming by the end of the century would be like. But I'll be mercifully dead by then...

[ReluctantSamurai]

Money talks, and all the bullshit about Net-Zero by 2050 walks:

https://www.energypolicytracker.org/region/g20

Policies are classified as “fossil unconditional” if they support production and consumption of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal, “grey” hydrogen or fossil fuel-based electricity) without any climate targets or additional pollution reduction requirements.

Policies are classified as “fossil conditional” if they support production or consumption of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal, “blue” hydrogen or fossil fuel-based electricity) with climate targets or additional pollution reduction requirements.

Policies are classified as “clean conditional” (“potentially clean”) if they are stated to support the transition away from fossil fuels, but unspecific about the implementation of appropriate environmental safeguards. ... Without appropriate environmental safeguards, such policies can still have significant impacts.

Policies are marked as “clean unconditional” if they support production or consumption of energy that is both low-carbon and has negligible impacts on the environment if implemented with appropriate safeguards.

Alternative ("Other") energy sources include geothermal power, wave energy, hydroelectric energy, solar thermal energy and even space solar energy. Geothermal energy is that generated in the earth and harnessed, while wave and hydroelectric energy harness the power of water.

There is considerable investment in renewable energy, to be sure, but the recent energy crunch in various countries-most notably China & India-are leading to a renewed usage of coal and other fossil fuels to make up the difference. It's a tough spot to be in, and one can't simply transition to renewable energy if you haven't made infrastructure commitments well beforehand.

Maybe the pandemic was Mother Earths' way of showing humans what this planet would look like free of fossil fuel (recalling all the stories and photos of clear skies and cleaner water during the world-wide lockdowns last year)...

[Montmorency]

When I was young,

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

the old Russian lady who cared for me told me that one of the most suprising things about moving to America was the abundance of squirrels even in the urban core. In Eastern Europe, apparently, squirrels were an entirely-rare sight outside the forests. (She also suspected that street vendors were secretly peddling fried squirrels in their wraps, hot dogs, and kebabs, but that's another story).

Reflecting on recent years, unless I'm just ever more unobservant, I notice a decline in the number of squirrels out and about. I wonder if that's a thing.