[FRIAM] Bad news about the climate

Mon Jan 29 22:35:53 EST 2024

Hi:

Generating electricity via power plants causes 25% of the GHGs and uses 45%
of the water in the US.  In less populated countries it is closer to
70/80%.  More EV will cause more need for electricity, so removing fossil
fuels from power plants is the key.  Solar and wind are helping.  But the
big issue is what happens when the sun is down or the wind has stopped.
This is solved by long duration energy storage.  That will allow everything
to work smoothly.  Still there are many political and resource
bottlenecks.

Mike

Mike

On Mon, Jan 29, 2024 at 8:21 PM Leigh Fanning <leigh at versiera.net> wrote:

> At some point we'll have SAF at scale.
>
> https://www.energy.gov/eere/bioenergy/sustainable-aviation-fuels
>
> Leigh
>
> On 29 Jan 2024 at 03:26 PM, glen related
> > I feel like individual actions (like sorting recycling, buying/using
> EVs, etc.) are a tiny drop in the bucket compared to institutional actions.
> For example, the NIH recently held a meeting in Maryland explicitly stating
> a *preference* for in person attendance. This seemed egregious to me. I
> mean, I know they're not a department of ecology or biology ... or climate
> science or whatever. But surely ... shirley they know that institutional
> pressure to fly around the earth is a part of the problem, right? Like, how
> are we supposed to compete for federal funds ... social network wise, when
> all the flesh-pressing rich people fly around pressing the flesh in
> meatspace?
> >
> > Similarly, ALife is in Copenhagen. Very cool. I've always wanted to go
> there. Luckily, IACAP (RussA mentioned) is in Eugene. I can take the train
> there. Maybe if we change your "life is at stake" to "career is at stake",
> we could make some interim progress. Anyone who flies to a conference is
> immediately spray-painted with a scarlet letter. But, really. It's not
> about us. It's about Amazon, Microsoft, P&G, Maybelline <
> https://www.beatthemicrobead.org/11-makeup-brands-exposed-with-the-use-of-microplastics/>,
> Dupont, etc. ... and maybe even the NIH. We should make it about their
> "corporate life is at stake" and execute the bad actors.
> >
> > Speaking of the death penalty for corporations:
> >
> https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/politics/2024/01/29/taking-away-trump-s-business-empire-would-stand-alone-under-new-york-fraud-law
> >
> > "An Associated Press analysis of nearly 70 years of civil cases under
> the law showed that such a penalty has only been imposed a dozen previous
> times, and Trump’s case stands apart in a significant way: It’s the only
> big business found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of
> obvious victims and major losses."
> >
> > Freewill? Agency? Pffft. The real touchstone is "identify the victim".
> >
> > On 1/29/24 14:41, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> > > I saw this article mentioned by Eliot Jacobson on his X/Twitter
> profile which argues that our actions will most likely not be enough until
> there is a big shock which motivates real change. It also uses the Covid
> pandemic to illustrate that people are able to change if they are convinced
> their lives are at stake
> > > https://time.com/6565499/apocalyptic-optimism-climate-change/
> > >
> > > It fits to my own observations here in Europe: there are more and more
> EVs and charging stations, but not enough. There are more heat pumps
> replacing gas heatings, but not enough. There is more use of renewable
> energy but not enough. I fear people will only start to change
> fundamentally if they feel their life is at stake. Will it be too late
> then? I don't know. Let's be optimistic. "Keep your face always toward the
> sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you"
> > > https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/03/05/sunshine/
> > >
> > > -J.
> > >
> > >
> > > -------- Original message --------
> > > From: Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
> > > Date: 1/28/24 8:16 PM (GMT+01:00)
> > > To: friam at redfish.com
> > > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Bad news about the climate
> > >
> > > I love me a good dose of Sabine... her flat-delivery of equally
> serious and glib lines is killer IMO... and for the most part I feel
> compelled to defer to her facts and analyses (almost) without reserve.
> (/around 13:30 she said "so mind-f#%#%ingly stupid" /). I'm surprised she
> didn't actually invoke the biblical "four horsemen"!  Her closing statement
> with the "stop gluing yourself to things" sorta made Sabine the
> anti-Greta?  Both of those made me choke on my coffee <grin>.
> > >
> > > The whole North-Atlantic circulation thing (AMOC tipping point)
> threatening to undermine the British Isles and Scandinavia's relatively
> mild winters (moderated by oceanic heat transport from the equator) is one
> of the things I expect to crash a lot of expectations (and economies and
> ???) around the industrial north.   New England is also implicated in a
> major/abrupt local climate change from this as well.
> > >
> > > I did a short stint with a pre-climate (atmospheric-ocean model
> coupling) modeling team at LANL in the 90s and what I enjoyed most was the
> cognitive dissonance amongst the researchers who on one hand felt they
> couldn't predict *anything* confidently but recognized the incredibly high
> stakes and the emerging awareness of the implications of dynamical systems
> theory on the domain... how many bifurcation points likely surrounded the
> relatively linear "basin" the climate has been wandering in since the
> Younger Dryas.
> > >
> > > Without exception, every scientist I worked with then privately
> declared "we have a problem!" even though they didn't feel they had
> anywhere near the evidence to say anything that strongly in their
> publications.
> > >
> > > Anecdotally, I've been experiencing a fairly steady winter-warming at
> my high-desert location 20 miles outside Santa Fe at about 5400ft where I
> catch the cold-air flow off of both the Sangre de Christo and the Jemez
> mtns.   Winters have gotten drier for the most part and while the lows
> still maintain (see above), the highs during the winter (and dead of
> summer) have risen consistently for the last 20 years I've lived at this
> location.
> > >
> > > The climate and long-range weather forecasts for the area that I've
> checked out are somewhat mutually contradictory and my half-full/half-empty
> biases lead me to smug satisfaction when my fruit trees promise to do
> better than historically, even if my tomatoes freeze on Oct 1 no matter
> what (I've tossed plastic film over them and had them keep on
> growing/ripening until Thanksgiving a few years when I've bothered)...
> root vegetables can now stay in the ground until I dig to eat and winter
> squash on the vine outside longer and longer.
> > >
> > > On the half-empty side, surface water is becoming more and more dear
> here, my AC-free summers are getting more uncomfortable and it is likely
> enough that all of this is a minor perturbation compared to what might hit
> this region in the next few decades as various major tipping points tip.
> > >
> > > <virtue signal>
> > >
> > >     If I were younger, I'd probably be more (personally) worried. I
> tell my 40-something progeny that they should plan on the possibility that
> they might live forever and their children are even more likely to.  Me,
> I'm just happy that when my hand-carved wooden chompers get too slimy and
> splintery to use that the folks with drills and novacaine can make me a
> "screw-in set" like Nicks!
> > >
> > >     Meanwhile the only thing I can think to do is keep lowering my own
> personal footprint and readying my home(stead) for another generation to
> pick up wherever I leave off with an equally lowered (residence-induced)
> footprint.  I'm not vegan (yet) but I try to buy my eggs from local
> home-raised sources and keep my agri-industry consumption of
> milk/cheese/butter down to a fraction of my former appetite.
> > >
> > >     I've lowered my heating demand (via wood-burning) to near
> net-zero, burning (almost) only the prunings and trimmings from my own (1.5
> acre high desert) property (and some from neighbors who CBB).   PV tech is
> mature enough that *used* gear on the order of $10k investment can probably
> allow me to quit spinning the hydro-turbines up the river (Abiqui Lake) and
> spewing coal-smoke out of the 4-corners plant my co-op draws primarily
> from.   A couple of mini-split heat-pumps might give me both relief from
> the worst summer heat and displace yet-more of the cellulose I (grow) and
> burn.   A little more PV and I can displace the 20lb propane cylinder I
> burn for cooking in the summer into induction cooking?
> > >
> > >     Nevertheless, I'm still a big "part of the problem" just by being
> a member of the first-world economy...   even if I quit burning any
> transportation fuel (jet or train or private auto) entirely and eat mostly
> plants (not too much as M. Pollan recommends).
> > >
> > > </virtue signal>
> > >
> > >
> > > On 1/27/24 1:59 PM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> > >> I apologize for this relatively mass email. It was prompted by a
> video <https://youtu.be/4S9sDyooxf4?si=_A767WzYTxriYGdl> by Sabine
> Hossenfelder, Sabine is a theoretical physicist who has spent much of her
> recent life as a popular science writer and video maker. See her Wikipedia
> page <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder>.
> > >>
> > >> The video linked to above talks about climate models. The bottom line
> is that it appears that most of the current models have underestimated how
> quickly earth will warm. The consequences are frightening.
> > >> _
> >
> >
> > --
> > ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
> >
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