July 25 Hot Air Climate News Roundup

Something to keep in mind…

According to its website, an XNRGI cell uses existing silicon semiconductor manufacturing technology to engineer a “porous” silicon battery. “Think of a traditional silicon wafer that we use for all of our electronics today,” Hallquist says. “They etch a 20 x 20 micron honeycomb into that silicon to make a porous silicon. They use the same wafer for the anode and the cathode.” The idea behind the XNRGI battery is an unconventional one, depicted in a two-minute explainer video and five-page white paper [PDF] from the company. The etched silicon wafers, which are later coated with lithium and other metals to form anodes and cathodes, contain forests of micro-sized batteries on each silicon wafer. Think of each “micro-battery” as an elongated hollow box with a 20 x 20 micron footprint. The cathode and anode are the top and bottom half of that hollow box, separated by some distance from each other. No individual micro-battery, Hallquist says, contains enough charge current to form substantial dendrites or other structures that could arc the positive and negative ends of the battery. And each 12-inch silicon wafer consists of some 36 million of these vertical “micro-batteries”

[VIDEO] 

A basic battery guide…

Three battery technologies that could power the future
SAFT

The world needs more power, preferably in a form that’s clean and renewable. Our energy-storage strategies are currently shaped by lithium-ion batteries – at the cutting edge of such technology – but what can we look forward to in years to come?
 

Let’s begin with some battery basics. A battery is a pack of one or more cells, each of which has a positive electrode (the cathode), a negative electrode (the anode), a separator and an electrolyte. Using different chemicals and materials for these affects the properties of the battery – how much energy it can store and output, how much power it can provide or the number of times it can be discharged and recharged (also called cycling capacity). Battery companies are constantly experimenting to find chemistries that are cheaper, denser, lighter and more powerful. We spoke to Saft Research Director Patrick Bernard, who explained three new battery technologies with transformative potential.

Could we use sand or concrete as batteries?
Yale Climate Connections 7-18-19

The sun does not always shine, and the wind does not always blow, so energy storage is key to getting the utility grid to rely more heavily on renewables. But batteries are expensive. So one company is experimenting with storing energy in sand – because it’s cheap and readily available. Jason Miller is engineering manager at Echogen Power Systems, a company that uses heat energy to generate power. … Miller says the system would not be as efficient as lithium-ion batteries. But, because it relies on cheap materials, it could lower the cost of long-term energy storage.

Lithium Ion Battery
Clean Energy Institute

A lithium-ion battery is an advanced battery technology that uses lithium ions as a key component of its electrochemistry. During a discharge cycle, lithium atoms in the anode are ionized and separated from their electrons. The lithium ions move from the anode and pass through the electrolyte until they reach the cathode, where they recombine with their electrons and electrically neutralize.

10 disruptive battery technologies trying to compete with lithium-ion batteries
Solar Power World 1-21-19

The modern world runs on lithium-based batteries. Numerous chemistries and novel technologies are being developed to counter the limitations of lithium-ion batteries though, including the high cost, raw materials sourcing and overheating. Chicago-based research intelligence firm PreScouter recently released a report detailing 10 new battery technologies poised to disrupt the market over the next decade and usher in the next wave of high-performance batteries. Here’s a high-level look at the report findings.

New generation of lithium-ion batteries could hold more charge—without catching fire
Science 5-8-19

Lithium-ion batteries power everything from laptops to lawn mowers. But they can ignite when damaged because they rely on flammable components. Now, researchers report they’ve redesigned these batteries to work with nonflammable materials. As a bonus, the new batteries might even store more power than current models.

European team discovers new top-performing solid-state fast ionic conductor for Li-ion batteries
Green Car Congress 7-18-19

[Researchers] have discovered a new solid-state fast ionic conductor—LiTi2(PS4)3 or LTPS—that exhibits a Li-ion diffusion coefficient (a direct measure of lithium mobility) about an order of magnitude higher than that of current state-of-the-art Li superionic conductors (Li10GeP2S12). .. including all-solid-state lithium (Li)-ion batteries. The move to solid state batteries offers a number of advantages, including safety, but lithium ions in solids are less mobile than in liquids. This lower mobility limits the battery performance in terms of charge and discharge rate. Understanding how crystal structure dictates ionic diffusion is at the root of the development

New Metal-Air Battery Design Offers a Potential Boost to Electric Vehicles
Tech Breifs 11-19-18

Metal-air batteries are light, compact power sources with a high energy density, but they have had a major limitation: They corrode. A new design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology uses oil to reduce the corrosion and extend the shelf life of single-use metal-air batteries. The key: Oil.

New generation of ‘flow batteries’ could eventually sustain a grid powered by the sun and wind
Science 10-31-18

Batteries already power electronics, tools, and cars; soon, they could help sustain the entire electric grid. With the rise of wind and solar power, energy companies are looking for ways to keep electrons flowing when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind ebbs. Giant devices called flow batteries, using tanks of electrolytes capable of storing enough electricity to power thousands of homes for many hours, could be the answer. But most flow batteries rely on vanadium, a somewhat rare and expensive metal, and alternatives are short-lived and toxic.

High-performance energy storage solutions based on breakthrough graphene material
Skeleton Technologies

Ultracapacitors, or supercapacitors as they are also known, are a novel energy storage technology that offers high power density, almost instant recharging and very long lifetimes. Ultracapacitors have been in development for well over a decade but the technology has developed rapidly in the recent years. This development has been driven by advances in nanomaterials, the electrification of infrastructure and industry and increased concerns around fuel efficiency. Ultracapacitors are now delivering significant economic benefits across a wide range of markets including motorsports, automotive, aerospace, heavy industry, heavy transportation, maritime, and renewables and grid.

Ultracapacitors
Electronics Tutorials

Unlike the resistor, which dissipates energy in the form of heat, the ideal capacitor does not loose its energy. We have also seen that the simplest form of a capacitor is two parallel conducting metal plates which are separated by an insulating material, such as air, mica, paper, ceramic, etc, and called the dielectric through a distance, “d”.

New high-capacity sodium-ion could replace lithium in rechargeable batteries
Science Daily 9-12-18

Scientists are paving the way to swap the lithium in lithium-ion batteries with sodium, according to newly published research.

HOT AIR NEWS ROUNDUP

June 2019 was the hottest June on record across the globe – NOAA
Reuters 7-18-19

the global average sea surface temperature was 1.46 degrees F above the 20th-century monthly average of 61.5 F (16 C), tying with 2016 as the highest global ocean temperature for the month on record while Antarctic sea ice fell to its smallest level on record, 8.5% below the 1981 to 2010 average, NOAA data showed.

The latest temperature records provided fresh evidence that the buildup of carbon emissions in the atmosphere is destabilizing Earth’s climate system faster than scientists had expected, said Stephan Harrison, a professor of climate and environmental change at Britain’s University of Exeter.

“If we continue to break instrumental records all around the world, it does suggest that the climate system is more sensitive to the level of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere than some of our earlier models had suggested,” Harrison told Reuters.

He pointed to the rapid melting of ice sheets in Antarctica as an example of how climate impacts were materializing faster than had once been forecast.

Huge swathes of the Arctic on fire, ‘unprecedented’ satellite images show
Independent 7-23-19

North of the Arctic circle, the high temperatures are facilitating enormous wildfires which are wreaking ecological destruction on a colossal scale. It comes after the world’s hottest June on record which has been followed by a devastating heatwave in the US, with Europe forecast for the same treatment later this week. Satellite images reveal fires across Greenland, Siberia and Alaska, with warm dry conditions following ice melt on the enormous Greenland icesheet commencing a month earlier than average. … Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast, said the amount of CO2 emitted by Arctic wildfires between 1 June and 21 July 2019 is around 100 megatonnes and is approaching the entire 2017 fossil fuel CO2 emissions of Belgium. … The average June temperature in the region of Siberia where wildfires are raging was almost 10  degrees higher than the 1981 – 2010 long-term average.

I think it’s fair to say July Arctic Circle
#wildfires are now at unprecedented levels having surpassed previous highest
#Copernicus GFAS estimated July total CO2 emission (2004/2005), & last month’s 50 megatonnes (
https://t.co/pGPoLaz2Q0
), and still increasing
@DrTELS
pic.twitter.com/c1usbimzG7

— Mark Parrington (@m_parrington)

 

July 22, 2019

”Models suggest large areas of land are needed for forests and biofuel crops to halt climate change, but this risks worsening hunger, draft tells policymakers…”

Alaska Chokes on Wildfires as Heat Waves Dry Out the Arctic
Inside Climate News 7-11-19

Under the choking black smoke from the bog and forest fires in Siberia and Alaska, it can feel like the Earth itself is burning. The normally moist, black organic peat soil and lush forests have been drying, and when they catch fire, they burn relentlessly. Global warming has been thawing tundra and drying vast stretches of the far-northern boreal forests, and it also has spurred more thunderstorms with lightning, which triggered many of the fires burning in Alaska this year. … The large Arctic fires in June could be a sign of a climate tipping point, said Thomas Smith, a climate researcher at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Responding to a post about the record Arctic wildfire activity on Twitter, Smith wrote that if temperatures stay above a certain temperature threshold long enough, fuels dry out and become ignitable. “It really is unprecedented, a word we should not use lightly,” he wrote. “It may be that in most previous years, temperatures have never been warm enough to drive off moisture from the winter frost and snowpack. The ground is likely covered in mosses that act as a sponge, staying moist all summer long before freezing again in winter. But now that sponge is drying out.”

Do we need an Apollo program for climate change?
Yale Climate Connections 7-19-19

If America can put humans on the moon, then it should be able to solve the scientific and technical problems posed by climate change. Political challenges then would remain to be addressed. … An Apollo-like program on climate change would require a ready answer for critics who question whether the money would be better spent on lifting up the poor. Ironically, one now hears this argument more from the right than the left, based on the faulty supposition that only fossil fuels can provide the low-cost energy impoverished regions need for their development.

A righteous rant about capitalism and its environmental repercussions…

Why Catastrophic Climate Change is Probably Inevitable Now
Eudiaimonia 10-10-18

But biological life was not the only unpaid cost — “negative externality” — of capitalism. It was just one. And these unpaid costs weren’t to be additive: they were to multiply, exponentiate, snarl upon themselves — in ways that we would come to find impossible to then untangle. (And all this was what economists and thinkers, especially American ones, seemed to whistle at and walk away, anytime someone suggested it.) …You see, capitalism promised people — the middle classes which had come to make up the modern world — better lives. But it had no intention of delivering — its only goal was to maximize profits for the owners of capital, not to make anyone else one iota richer. So first it ate through people’s towns and cities and communities, then through social systems, then through their savings, and finally, through their democracies.

Definitely food for thought. Read this if you read nothing else…

Some Like It Hot
Global Research 7-18-19

What to say to a bright and sensitive, ten-year-old? And I have to say, I’m obsessing about it. I couldn’t get to sleep that night and I can’t get her question out of my mind. What have we done?! If, and right now it looks like a big if, we survive as a species, what will our descendants make of the mess industrial capitalism has made of the planet in the pursuit of private profit and power and will they curse us for our inaction and our greed? Probably and rightly so. … I asked an old friend and he immediately said to me, ‘Well you must speak to her! You have a responsibility to speak to her and tell her what the issues are.’ The situation is without precedent. There’s nothing in our collective past to guide us. We rightly, I think, call it an existential threat, yet the real threat is not climate change per se but capitalism itself! …

The real problem we confront is that those in control really don’t care about anything except their class and preserving their privilege. … Their indifference to human (and animal) suffering is self-evident and as the crisis of capitalism intensifies, so does its demonisation of the working class, of people of colour, of immigrants, the young, the old and the defenceless. This is the true face of ‘democracy’. … Well, failing anything else, that start has already been made by XR and I know this sounds heretical but is climate change actually the right target to start the transformation with, without linking it to capitalism? … But of course, this mustn’t stop us from trying, indeed it’s imperative that we do and for a two reasons; one, we have no choice and two, it’s my estimation that if the UK actually manages to reduce its carbon emissions significantly, this might have a ‘knock-on’ effect on other countries but will ‘net zero carbon’, by itself, actually address the crisis? I think I’ve made it plain that it won’t, not only because it’s only a part of the problem but because a country like the USA, the planet’s largest producer of greenhouse gases, and because its military produces more carbon than a bunch of countries combined (140+), have bowed out because such an action threatens the profits of the big corporations.

LEGISLATION, ELECTIONS & POLICY

We have 18 months to save world, Prince Charles warns Commonwealth leaders
Telegraph 7-16-19

The leaders of Commonwealth countries will gather next year in Rwanda for a week-long summit, at which they will discuss the “unparalleled challenges caused by rapid climate change and biodiversity loss”. … On Thursday his son, the Duke of Sussex, also undertook duties as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador at a roundtable meeting at Marlborough House, in which he heard from ministers about the issues facing young people in their countries. In a statement issued through a spokesman afterwards, the Duke said: “It’s up to all of us to ensure young people’s voices are heard and their interests protected, but it’s the people who have the power to shape policy for young people – all of you – that must champion them at the highest levels.”

Extensive research…

Thousands of Fossil Fuel “Observers” Attended Climate Negotiations – UNFCCC Data 2005-2018 COP1-COP24
Climate Investivagtion Center 7-19-19

In the GCC meeting minutes and press releases exhibit numerous interventions at the UN meetings along with their strategies, budgets and debriefs. CIC catalogued every fossil fuel company and trade group delegate that who ever attended UNFCCC meetings. This research debuted in an Agence-France Press AFP piece and on Yahoo News this week during a UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, Germany.

Von der Leyen offers 55% CO2 cuts by 2030 in bid for EU top job
Climate Home News 7-15-19

Von der Leyen, an ally of German chancellor Angela Merkel, faces a struggle to secure support for her candidacy in a parliamentary vote scheduled for Tuesday evening. She needs socialists and liberals as well as her centre-right base to get a majority. Greens, the fourth largest contingent, rejected her after she failed to satisfy their demands at a hearing last week.

Climate a ‘signature issue’ as Ursula von der Leyen anointed EU chief
Climate Change News 7-16-19

She will be held personally accountable for delivering on her promises regarding climate action,” Charveriat said, adding she faces an “uphill battle” to achieve consensus on decarbonisation measures. … In her final proposal to MEPs ahead of the vote, that commitment was watered down to a “two-step approach” to “reduce CO2 emissions by 2030 by 50, if not 55%”. … “[The plan] she has presented is the lowest common denominator for climate action and is aligned with the EPP, her own party.”As part of her climate package, von der Leyen pledged to present a “green deal” for Europe in her first 100 days in office but gave little indication about what the deal would entail. … National leaders nominated von der Leyen to replace outgoing commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, rejecting the lead candidates put forward by parliamentary blocs. She had just two weeks to present her plans to parliament and win majority support.

Worth reading…

The Case for Declaring a National Climate Emergency
New Yorker 7-11-19

On Tuesday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders announced their proposal for a resolution declaring a national climate emergency. … For example, the authors of the Rhodium Group report found that the biggest reductions in emissions will occur in the power sector, where the coal fleet will shrink to a third of its current size by 2025, due to the continually falling costs of natural gas and renewables. But this country’s natural-gas boom (proudly touted on Monday by Energy Secretary Rick Perry) presents its own threat. Although the spread of renewable-power plants will continue to increase—thanks to steady declines in costs, tax incentives, and the increasing number of states with ambitious renewable-power requirements—they will still not spread fast enough if natural gas is as cheap as it is today.

“Who Is the DNC Loyal To?”: Dahr Jamail Questions DNC Veto of Primary Climate Debate
Democracy Now 7-16-19

In our extended interview with independent climate journalist Dahr Jamail, he talks about the Democratic National Committee’s decision not to have a debate on the climate crisis, and to bar anyone who participates in an unsanctioned debate from participating in future official Democratic primary debates.

[VIDEO]

California Energy Commission awards nearly $70M to replace diesel school buses with electric school buses throughout state
Green Car Congress 7-16-19

The California Energy Commission approved nearly $70 million in funding to replace more than 200 old diesel school buses with all-electric buses that will reduce school children’s exposure to harmful emissions and help the state reach its climate and air quality goals. …The Energy Commission’s School Bus Replacement Program is providing more than $94 million to public school districts, county offices of education, and joint power authorities to help transition from diesel school buses to zero- or low-emissions vehicles. Together with the newly approved funding, the Energy Commission has awarded $89.8 million of the program’s funds to schools in 26 California counties. The electric buses approved today will eliminate nearly 57,000 pounds of nitrogen oxides and nearly 550 pounds of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions annually.

THE ARCTIC

‘Arctic heat wave’ hits world’s northernmost settlement
AFP 7-17-19

Temperatures hit a record 69.8 degrees Fahrenheit in Alert, the northernmost permanently inhabited spot on the planet less than 600 miles from the North Pole, the Canadian meteorology service said Tuesday. “It’s quite phenomenal as a statistic, it’s just one example among hundreds and hundreds of other records established by global warming,” Armel Castellan, a meteorologist at the Canadian environment ministry told AFP.

Great article…
Multiple studies demonstrate global warming is melting glaciers faster
WSWS 7-24-19

The study was far more comprehensive than any previously conducted, examining ground and satellite data from 19,000 glaciers. It does not include the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The rate of loss varies by region, with the fastest melting taking place in central Europe, the Caucasus region, western Canada, the lower 48 states of the United States, New Zealand and near the tropics, where the rate is more than 1 percent per year. Of the 19 regions studied, only one—southwestern Asia—showed no significant glacial shrinkage. … Another recently published study predicted that even if global temperature rise was kept to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Himalayas would lose one third of their glacial ice, but if current trends continue the loss could double. In either case, there will be dire consequences for downstream populations regarding agriculture, ecology, and hydropower.

Scientists Wrote a Eulogy for Iceland’s First Glacier Lost to Climate Change
Gismodo 7-22-19

Iceland has lost its first glacier to rising temperatures. Now, scientists from Rice University and Iceland are planning to install a plaque near the sad pile of ice and snow formerly known as Ok Glacier. The researchers say it’s the first memorial to a disappearing glacier, but climate change ensures it almost certainly will not be the last.

Geoscientists discover mechanisms controlling Greenland ice sheet collapse
Science Daily 7-19-19

New radar technology allowed geoscientists to look at Greenland’s dynamic ice-ocean interface that drives sea level rise. … The team ventured to Greenland in the summer of 2016 to install a new radar system to better understand the process. In particular, they wanted to monitor formations known as pro-glacial “mélange” (from the French word for mixture), a combination of sea ice and icebergs in front of the glacier. The mélange can be tightly packed in the long, narrow fjords that front many of Greenland’s glaciers that meet the sea.

Strong storms also play big role in Antarctic ice shelf collapse
EurekAlert 7-18-19

a new study suggests that intense storms may help push the system over the edge. A research team led by U.S. and Korean scientists deployed three moorings with hydrophones attached seaward of the Nansen Ice Shelf in Antarctica’s Ross Sea in December of 2015, and were able to record hundreds of short-duration, broadband signals indicating the fracturing of the ice shelf. The “icequakes” primarily took place between January and March of 2016, with the front of the ice sheet calving into two giant icebergs on April 7. The day the icebergs drifted away from the shelf coincided with the largest low-pressure storm system the region had recorded in the previous seven months, the researchers say.

Researchers discover ice is sliding toward edges off Greenland Ice Sheet
PHYS ORG 7-19-19

Ice on the Greenland Ice Sheet doesn’t just melt. The ice actually slides rapidly across its bed toward the ice sheet’s edges. As a result, because ice motion is from sliding as opposed to ice deformation, ice is being moved to the high-melt marginal zones more rapidly than previously thought. … Additionally, the ice slides over the bedrock much more than previous theories predicted of how ice on the Greenland Ice Sheet moves. … “Our measurements of sliding-dominated flow over a hard bed in a slow-moving region were quite surprising because people don’t typically associate these regions with high sliding,” Maier adds. “Generally, people associate lots of sliding motion with regions that have soft beds (mud) or exceptionally high-sliding velocities, such as ice streams. Yet, in this relatively boring region, we found the highest fraction of sliding measured to date.”

FOSSIL FUELS

The Ten Countries With The Greatest Fossil Fuel Production
Oil Price 7-20-19

The U.S. was the world’s leading oil producer, which is consistent with my recent article detailing the Review’s findings on global oil production and consumption. The biggest surprise for some might be that China is one of the world’s Top 5 oil producers, ahead of all Middle Eastern countries except for Saudi Arabia.

 

Total natural gas production: The U.S. was in first place here as well, consist with my previous report. Canada, China, and Norway were among the countries represented in the Top 10.

Total coal production: China is by far the world’s leading producer of coal, with 46% of the global total in 2018. I think the biggest surprise in the Top 10 is the presence of Germany, which is widely considered to be one of the world’s “greenest” countries.

Total fossil fuel production: It shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, given its top spot in both oil and natural gas production, that the U.S. took the top spot overall. Russia in second place was also not a surprise, but Iran in third place will be a surprise to many.

Giving ‘Upper Hand to Corporate Polluters,’ EPA Drops Surprise Inspections
Common Dreams 7-10-19

“Taking the element of surprise away from inspections decreases their effectiveness, for obvious reasons,” stated PEER executive director Tim Whitehouse, a former EPA enforcement attorney. “I fear that EPA’s ‘no surprises’ posture masks a ‘see no evil’ approach to corporate polluters.” “Basing enforcement on inter-agency consensus places politics above pollution control,” added Whitehouse. “Nobody opposes cooperation or supports duplication, but this policy risks environmental protection by giving the upper hand to corporate polluters and states that don’t want to enforce environmental laws.” … “If it were up to me,” he wrote, “I’d want the people who own power plants and chemical factories to wake up every morning in cold dread that someone from the Environmental Protection Agency might drop buy to see what corners we’ve been cutting recently. That way, I suspect, fertilizer plants would be less likely to blow up and take entire towns with them.”

America’s Big Bet on Selling Fracked Gas to China and the World
Desmog 7-19-19

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is getting a lot of attention these days, with U.S. producers making major investments in the infrastructure to produce and export LNG to China and the rest of the world for the next several decades. That’s despite LNG looking like a big bet that may not ever pay off. A common question about the super-chilled, easier-to-ship form of natural gas is whether LNG will become “the next coal.” This is a reference to the U.S. coal market’s failure, in part due to climate concerns, but mainly because it can’t compete economically with other sources of electricity, including renewables.  … Another disconnect the panel did not address was the IEA’s prediction that natural gas prices will remain low. Because current prices are at historical lows and many gas producers in the U.S. are losing money at these prices, this trend is an unlikely scenario. As recently reported by DeSmog, Steve Schlotterbeck, the former CEO of shale gas producer EQT, pointed out that the economics of gas production mean prices will have to go much higher and the only question is whether that happens gradually or quickly.

Environmentalist Sounds Alarm On Fracking & Gov. Corruption – The Jimmy Dore Show
[VIDEO] 

‘Our paychecks bounced’: US workers in limbo as coalmines suddenly close
The Guardian 7-22-19

She said several Blackjewel-operated mines in Appalachia racked up various environmental violations and citations as the company operated at a loss and tried to keep costs as low as possible. She added: “None of these mines were making money and he was paying himself before any of the lenders, and basically running these mines at very low cost.” Because Blackjewel LLC is privately owned, Anderson noted there is less public disclosure into what’s going on with the company, leaving many questions unanswered for workers, their communities and if Hoops will be held accountable.

WEATHER

June 2019: Earth’s Hottest June on Record
Category Six 7-18-19

The global heat in June is especially impressive and significant given that only a weak (and weakening) El Niño event was in place. As human-produced greenhouse gases continue to heat up our planet, most global heat records are set during El Niño periods, because the warm waters that spread upward and eastward across the surface of the tropical Pacific during El Niño transfer heat from the ocean to the atmosphere. Global ocean temperatures during June 2019 were tied with 2016 for warmest on record, according to NOAA, and global land temperatures were the warmest on record.

How Airplane Contrails Are Helping Make the Planet Warmer
Yale Environment 7-18-19

New research shows that condensation trails from aircraft exhaust are playing a significant role in global warming. Experts are concerned that efforts to change aviation engine design to reduce CO2 emissions could actually create more contrails and raise daily temperatures even more. …Civilian aircraft currently emit about 2 percent of anthropogenic CO2 and, once the effects of contrails are included, cause 5 percent of warming. But there is a key difference. While CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere and has a long-lasting effect, contrails last a matter of hours at most, and their warming impact is temporary.

‘This is What the Climate Crisis Looks Like’: One Day After Crushing Heat Wave, Flash Floods Inundate New York City
Common Dreams 7-23-19

On Monday evening, a rain storm that hit the area at 8pm caused flash flooding. Streets in Brooklyn were impassable as water rose to people’s waists, leading at least one Uber driver, Walid Shawon, and his customer in Brooklyn’s South Slope neighborhood to flee the vehicle from a window and swim to safety. “My car was floating in the water,”  Shawon told The New York Daily News. “We put it in neutral and it floated like a boat.” As Twitter user @brahmsposting noted, the water that Shawon and his fare forded comes from the Superfund site Gowanus Canal, making the flooding potentially toxic.

Lots of pictures…

Monsoon floods kill dozens and displace millions in India
BBC 7-23-19

Millions have been stranded or displaced as devastating floods continue to ravage large parts of India, Nepal and Bangladesh. In India, the eastern state of Bihar and the north-eastern state of Assam have been the worst hit. Local officials told BBC Hindi that nearly 100 people have been killed in both states. The region was hit by monsoon rains which triggered floods and landslides, submerging homes and transport links.

South Asia floods force millions to flee homes as death toll rises to 300
Independent 7-22-19

At least 120 are missing and feared dead following severe floods and landslides in mostly mountainous Nepal, authorities said, while flash foods floods killed 23 people Pakistan last week. Torrential rains in Bangladesh have killed more than 47 people in the last two weeks, with at least 700,000 others forced to flee their homes. Rain-swollen rivers have broken through at least four embankments, submerging dozens of villages, in one of the worst floods to hit the country in years.

HEALTH

Babies Born Near Oil and Gas Wells Are Up to 70% More Likely to Have Congenital Heart Defects, New Study Shows
Common Dreams 7-19-19

Proximity to oil and gas sites makes pregnant mothers up to 70 percent more likely to give birth to a baby with congenital heart defects, according to a new study. … The researchers studied more than 3,000 newborns who were born in Colorado between 2005 and 2011. The state is home to about 60,000 fracking sites, according to the grassroots group Colorado Rising. In areas with the highest intensity of oil and gas extraction activity, mothers were 40 to 70 percent more likely to give birth to babies with congenital heart defects (CHDs).

ADAPTION AND RESILIENCE

Scotland’s Wind Farms Generate Enough Electricity to Power Nearly 4.5 Million Homes
Yale Environment 7-17-19

Wind turbines in Scotland produced enough electricity in the first half of 2019 to power every home in the country twice over, according to new data by the analytics group WeatherEnergy. The wind farms generated 9,831,320 megawatt-hours between January and June — equal to the total electricity consumption of 4.47 million homes during that same period.
The electricity generated by wind in early 2019 is enough to power all of Scotland’s homes, as well as a large portion of northern England’s.

Funds managing $2 trillion urge cement makers to act on climate impact
Reuters 7-17-19

European funds managing $2 trillion in assets called on cement companies to slash their greenhouse gas emissions on Monday, warning that a failure to do so could put their business models at risk. With the extreme weather and natural disasters associated with climate change intensifying around the world, some asset managers are ramping up engagement with heavy polluters to demand a faster transition to a cleaner economy. “The cement sector needs to dramatically reduce the contribution it makes to a cleaner economy.

Should I offset my summer holiday flights?
BBC 7-18-19

If you don’t want to add to the carbon in the atmosphere, you could, like Greta, take the train instead. But if you are have already booked your fight, or if flying is the only way of getting to your destination, you can instead donate to a carbon offsetting scheme. These allow individuals and businesses to give money to environmental projects around the world in order to balance out their carbon footprints. … First you calculate how much carbon you’ve emitted. Then you buy an “offset.” These are part shares in projects that work to reduce carbon being emitted elsewhere, usually in poorer parts of the world. These can be schemes to plant trees, install renewable energy technology, or to change people’s lifestyles, such as providing them with more fuel-efficient cooking equipment.

Cut Beef Consumption in Half to Help Save the Earth, Says New Study
EcoWatch 7-18-19

The world’s population will hit 10 billion in just 30 years and all of those people need to eat. To feed that many humans with the resources Earth has, we will have to cut down the amount of beef we eat, … Right now, Americans consume an equivalent of three hamburgers per week, but beef meqonly provides 3 percent of the calories Americans consume while it is responsible for nearly half of the agricultural land and greenhouse gas emissions associated with U.S. diets. .. While the report has many recommendations for dealing with the world’s impending food crisis, the authors suggest that the most impactful way to keep the climate crisis at bay and to feed the world is to simply cut back on ruminant meat,

Expiring U.S. solar subsidy spurs rush for panels
Reuters 7-18-19

America’s biggest solar power developers are stockpiling panels to lock in a 30% federal tax credit set to start phasing out next year, a strategy that could backfire if projects do not materialize or panel prices slide substantially. … China’s Trina Solar estimated about 20% of current U.S. demand for solar panels is being fueled by tax considerations. That heavy up-front spending has been good news for global panel manufacturers.

It’s Just Good Business: Even Red States Are Dumping Coal for Solar
Common Dreams 7-22-19

Arizona, despite being GOP-dominated, is number 3 in the US for residential solar power production. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, Arizona homeowners put in 52.83 megawatts of new solar installations.
… All five members of Georgia’s Public Service Commission are Republicans, and they just decided to double their order for new solar power and to close a coal plant. … New Orleans has decided to add 90 megawatts of solar power, nearly doubling Louisana’s current 99 MW. … Texas has been, inexplicably, a laggard in the solar sector. It is a wind giant. But precisely for that reason, solar installations are increasing and the state has jumped to sixth in the country for solar production. That is because wind typically blows harder at night, so that putting in solar farms helps smooth out energy production and take up the slack. … So, to summarize: Republican decision-makers increasingly see solar as just a good business investment that produces electricity more cost-effectively than coal. One important consideration is that the fuel is free, so that municipalities that want 25-year bids favor renewables over fossil fuels. Who knows how expensive natural gas will be in 2044? But sun and wind will still be free.

Kicking the Diesel Habit, With Glass Solar Cells
Tripple Pundit 7-22-19

The new glass solar cell research could help provide solar stakeholders with an edge, by enabling solar cells to serve double duty as windows. That’s a win-win for energy consumers. Glass windows (such as the one shown above at the Bejar Market in Salamanca, Spain, which Onyx Solar designed) allow daylight into rooms, helping to reduce the use of electricity during peak daytime hours. Having a window that also produces electricity is icing on the cake. Ideally, the overall effect on the bottom line is to absorb part of the cost of solar cells into the energy profile of a building. That would help property owners and other stakeholders calculate the potential for significant, long term savings compared to diesel generators.

WILDLIFE & THE ENVIRONMENT

Study reveals unusually high carbon stocks and tree diversity in Panama’s Darien forest
EurekAlert 7-18-10

Forests in Darien, an eastern province of Panama, are crucial for carbon storage, biodiversity conservation and the livelihoods of indigenous groups, yet they are under threat due to illegal logging. Through a participatory forest-carbon monitoring project, scientists … uncovered sources of above-ground biomass (AGB) variation and explored considerations for implementing Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. … This led researchers to ascertain that the main determinant of AGB variation is the level of disturbance in the forest. That is, the amount of organic matter above the ground–in standing trees– and the amount of carbon it stores, is mainly affected by the selective extraction of large trees rather than by differences across forest types or any other factors. The study also revealed that even when disturbed forests lost half of their carbon as compared to undisturbed ones, they maintained the same tree species richness.

Ag’s Climate Challenge: Grow 50% More Food Without More Land or Emissions
Inside Climate News 7-18-19

To feed a global population that’s hurtling toward 10 billion people, the world’s farms will have to increase output faster and more efficiently than at any point in history—or risk wiping out the world’s forests, driving thousands of species to extinction and blowing past global goals for limiting temperatures. In a sweeping study published Thursday, the World Resources Institute (WRI), along with the United Nations and other groups, outlines the challenges facing the world’s farmers and prescribes a suite of solutions. “If we want to both feed everybody and solve climate change, we need to produce 50 percent more food by 2050 in the same land area and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture by two-thirds,” the report’s lead author, Tim Searchinger of Princeton University and WRI, told InsideClimate News. “That’s a big job.”

Leaked UN science report warns of clash between bioenergy and food
Climate Home News 7-18-19

There is rising demand for fuels derived from plants as a source of renewable energy. The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), describes modern bioenergy as the “overlooked giant” of renewables, predicting it will outpace solar, wind and hydropower in the next five years. However, converting land to bioenergy production could deprive countries of valuable agricultural soil and displace crops and livestock to less productive regions. Populations most at risk of food insecurity were sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, the IPCC draft said. To minimise the conflict, scientists advised governments to limit the scale of bioenergy.

Joshua trees facing extinction
Science Daily 7-16-19

They outlived mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. But without dramatic action to reduce climate change, new research shows Joshua trees won’t survive much past this century. … Using multiple methods, the study arrived at several possible outcomes. In the best-case scenario, major efforts to reduce heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere would save 19 percent of the tree habitat after the year 2070. In the worst case, with no reduction in carbon emissions, the park would retain a mere 0.02 percent of its Joshua tree habitat.

Long thorough read…

The California coast is disappearing under the rising sea. Our choices are grim
LA Times 7-7-19

But lines in the sand are meant to shift. In the last 100 years, the sea rose less than 9 inches in California. By the end of this century, the surge could be greater than 9 feet. … There are only so many ways to play against the rising sea. Seawalls are one option, but they come with a hidden cost — forcing the sand before them to wash away. For every new seawall protecting a home or a road, a beach for the people is sacrificed. Adding sand to disappearing beaches is another tactic, but that race against nature lasts only so long as there’s money and enough sand. Then there’s what scientists and economists and number-crunching consultants call “managed retreat”: Move back, relocate, essentially cede the land to nature. … In hundreds of pages of planning documents, officials concluded that moving inland in future decades might pencil out to be the most cost-effective option for a number of neighborhoods. Seawalls keep failing, they said, and the ocean is winning. Much of the shoreline protection could be overwhelmed with as little as 1 foot of sea level rise.

Good Job, Humans: Bees Are Making Nests Entirely Out of Plastic
Motherboard 5-31-19

In a huge embarrassment for humankind, scientists found a bee nest made out of plastic bags in Argentina. According to the researchers, the plastic nest resulted in a lower survival rate for the bees. The researchers set out “hotels” for solitary wild bees—structures with long, hollow tubes that the bees can build nest in for their young—in the spring and summer of 2017 and 2018. Usually, these bees will create their nests in the tubes out of mud, leaves, stone, petals, tree resin, and whatever else they can scavenge.

Ocean acidification could boost shell growth in snails and sea urchins
Science Mag 7-23-19

Often called climate change’s “evil twin,” acidification happens when the ocean absorbs atmospheric CO2. As CO2 dissolves, the process releases hydrogen ions, lowering the water’s pH and increasing its acidity. That acidic water also removes many floating carbonate ions that organisms like mussels and clams use to build their sturdy shells. Under these conditions, it takes more energy for these creatures to make shells thick enough to withstand the added stress. But some lab studies suggest more food, such as algae, could help strengthen marine organisms’ shells, and thus offset some of the damage caused by ocean acidification. Scientists predict climate change will do just that, because extra CO2 increases the availability of nutrients, like nitrogen, essential to algal growth.

PROTESTS • EXTINCTION REBELLION • RESISTANCE

Excellent article…

As Costs of Climate Crisis Grow, Protest Movement Escalates
Consortium 7-13-19

A longtime labor and climate activist, Jeremy Brecher, describes the climate movement entering a third phase. In the first phase, the man-made climate crisis was confirmed and the movement focused on international agreements and lobbying governments. The second phase arose when the Copenhagen agreement failed, leading to a protest movement against fossil fuel infrastructure, protests of fossil fuel corporations and against investors funding climate-destroying infrastructure. The third phase centers around a global Green New Deal. It involves protests,  electoral demands, and challenging inaction of fossil fuel-funded politicians.

Fridays for Future

West Texas girl to lead Texas Future Farmers of America
Chron 7-23-19

Carlye Winfrey, from Seminole, was elected Friday at the end of this year’s Texas FFA Convention — held over four days at the Fort Worth Convention Center. … Most of the state’s 130,000 FFA members are from urban or suburban schools, with girls comprising around 47% of the membership, Large said. Among the organization’s regional leadership groups — the state is divided into 12 areas — nearly two-thirds of the area officers from the 2018-19 year were young women. “They are taking the organization by storm,” Large said. “They are often the ones who want to be at the helm — and we want them there, because they do incredible work.” … What she discovered was a love for science and agriculture policy, turning an “introvert in the back of the room” into someone willing to go through nine rounds of interviews in the state officer election process. “What I love about FFA is how intentional the organization is,” Garcia said. “Everything we learn here is always supplemental to something that we learn in class.”

Greta Thunberg

Merkel says Greta Thunberg ‘drove us’ to move on climate change
AFP 7-19-19

German Chancellor Angela Merkel conceded Friday that her government was driven to act faster on climate change by young activists like teenaged Greta Thunberg, who was speaking at rally in Berlin the same day. “They certainly drove us to speed up” efforts to change policy, said Merkel at a press conference while nearby in the German capital the 16-year-old Swedish activist addressed the latest “Fridays for Future” rally.

Teen climate activist gets Normandy’s first Freedom Prize
Seattle PI 7-19-19

Thunberg, 16, received the award in Caen on Sunday, posing alongside D-Day veterans Charles Norman Shay and Léon Gautier. Thunberg said that “I think the least we can do to honor them is to stop destroying that same world that Charles, Leon and their friends and colleagues fought so hard to save.” She sent out a warning that “we are currently on track for a world that could displace billions of people from their homes, taking away even the most basic living conditions.

Teenage climate campaigner Thunberg honoured in France
AFP 7-19-19

“This prize is not only for me,” Thunberg said. “This is for the whole Fridays for Future movement, because this we have achieved together.” She said she would donate the 25,000 euro ($28,000) prize money to four organisations working for climate justice and helping areas already affected by climate change. The prize was awarded before an audience of several hundred people and in the presence of several WWII veterans, including France’s Leon Gautier and US native American Charles Norman Shay. Both are sponsors of the prize.

Extinction Rebellion

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Extinction Rebellion launches London ‘tax strike’
Aljazeera 9-16-19

More than 20 activists have been arrested so far for blocking traffic by glueing themselves to a pink bathtub on a Bristol highway, and for trespassing and disrupting businesses in London. Calling on volunteers to make themselves available for arrest is part and parcel of the group’s tactics, aimed at achieving maximum impact and taking the battle to the courts.

Extinction Rebellion Are Back and This Time They’ve Got More Boats
Vice 7-15-19

Today in the Welsh capital, Extinction Rebellion (XR) protesters turned up outside Cardiff Castle at around 8AM with a green boat and a load of signs, to kick off what will be at least three days of peaceful protest. As usual, many of the XR protesters interviewed said they’re prepared to be arrested.

Extinction rebellion: Six climate activists arrested for disrupting London’s biggest concrete supplier
Independent 7-15-19

Around 50 protesters blocked the gates to London Concrete – the capital’s biggest supplier of ready-mixed concrete and which is supplying the £1bn Silvertown Tunnel project being built under the Thames. The works in Bow is planning to expand to meet demand for concrete. Activists said the protest was to highlight the “devastating effects the expansion will have on the health of local residents”.

Extinction Rebellion: Climate activists stage ‘die-in’ outside Daily Mail and Evening Standard offices
Independent 7-19-19

Extinction Rebellion activists staged a dramatic “die-in” outside the offices of some of the UK’s largest newspapers to demand they “tell the truth” and declare a “climate and ecological emergency”. The group urged editors at the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard and The Independent to make the environment their “top editorial issue”. Around 100 protesters laid down as if dead outside the entrance of Northcliffe House in Kensington, west London, on Friday. It comes at the end of the group’s five-day “summer uprising” in five cities across the UK to demand faster action to tackle climate change.

Expect Disruption As U.S. Millionaires Start Backing Extinction Rebellion Activists
Forbes 7-22-19

A group of wealthy U.S. philanthropists has raised £500,000 ($638,000) for a British non-violent climate activist group, Extinction Rebellion, with plans to increase that “a hundred times” more. The funds came from the Climate Emergency Fund, a joint effort between two wealthy scions: Rory Kennedy, the daughter of Robert Kennedy, and Aileen Getty, granddaughter of J. Paul Getty. This is money that will be deployed on the streets of U.S. cities. The funds have been earmarked for bullhorns and printed banners and “activist starter kits”, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

CLIMATE STUDIES

Breaching a ‘carbon threshold’ could lead to mass extinction
PHYS ORG 7-8-19

[Scientists have] found that when the rate at which carbon dioxide enters the oceans pushes past a certain threshold—whether as the result of a sudden burst or a slow, steady influx—the Earth may respond with a runaway cascade of chemical feedbacks, leading to extreme ocean acidification that dramatically amplifies the effects of the original trigger. … It didn’t matter what initially caused the events; for roughly half the disruptions in his database, once they were set in motion, the rate at which carbon increased was essentially the same. Their characteristic rate is likely a property of the carbon cycle itself—not the triggers, because different triggers would operate at different rates. What does this all have to do with our modern-day climate? Today’s oceans are absorbing carbon about an order of magnitude faster than the worst case in the geologic record—the end-Permian extinction.

Paul Beckwith breaks the above paper down…

[VIDEO] 

Researchers find cooling effect of aerosols in cumulus and MSC clouds twice as high as thought
PHYS ORG 7-18-19

Global warming is very much in the news of late, as the planet continues to heat up. But one of the factors at play is very seldom mentioned—the role of clouds in cooling the planet. They do so by reflecting heat from the sun back into space. But how much of the reflecting occurs due to water in the clouds and how much is due to aerosols? … The researchers found that clouds containing more aerosols reflected more heat than prior estimates had suggested—more than twice as much. More specifically, they found that approximately three-quarters of the amount of heat reflected was due to aerosols. They suggest that such a large percentage shows that the radiative cooling capacity of clouds is much more sensitive to the presence of aerosols than has been thought.

Rising CO2, climate change projected to reduce availability of nutrients worldwide
Science Daily 7-18-19

The most comprehensive synthesis of climate change impacts on the global availability of nutrients to date finds that, over the next 30 years, climate change and higher CO2 could significantly reduce the availability of critical nutrients, representing another challenge to global development and the fight to end undernutrition.

Tiny granules can help bring clean and abundant fusion power to Earth
EureAlert 7-2-19

Beryllium, a hard, silvery metal long used in X-ray machines and spacecraft, is finding a new role in the quest to bring the power that drives the sun and stars to Earth. Beryllium is one of the two main materials used for the wall in ITER, a multinational fusion facility under construction in France to demonstrate the practicality of fusion power. … In the present experiments, the researchers injected granules of carbon, lithium, and boron carbide — light metals that share several properties of beryllium — into the DIII-D National Fusion Facility that General Atomics operates for the DOE in San Diego. “These light metals are materials commonly used inside DIII-D and share several properties with beryllium,” said PPPL physicist Robert Lunsford, lead author of the paper that reports the results in Nuclear Materials and Energy. Because the internal structure of the three metals is similar to that of beryllium, the scientists infer that all of these elements will affect ITER plasma in similar ways. The physicists also used magnetic fields to make the DIII-D plasma resemble the plasma as it is predicted to occur in ITER. These experiments were the first of their kind.

Himalayan Glaciers’ Melt Doubled Since Year 2000
ENS 7-21-19

The analysis from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, spanning 40 years of satellite observations across India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, indicates that glaciers there have been losing the equivalent of a vertical foot and half of ice each year since 2000 – double the amount of melting that took place from 1975 to 2000. “This is the clearest picture yet of how fast Himalayan glaciers are melting over this time interval, and why,” said lead author Joshua Maurer, a PhD candidate at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. … The Himalayas contain the world’s third largest mass of ice which is a source for more than 10 major rivers in Asia that support immense agricultural and industrial economies. Major Himalayan rivers such as the Ganges and Yamuna water almost half of India and support a vast industrial base, while the Indus, Sutlej and their tributaries serve a similar function in Pakistan and northwest India. The Mekong, Padma and Brahmaputra rivers are vitally important to the populace and economies of Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh, while major Chinese rivers such as the Yangtze and Yellow rivers also originate in the Himalayas.

Using El Niño and Antarctic Oscillation data to predict air pollution levels in northern India
PHYS ORG 7-19-19

In recent years, northern India has experienced poor air quality, particularly in the winter months, to the extent that the country has some of the worst air quality in the world—surpassing even China. Researchers have also noted that in some years, pollution levels seem worse than normal due to weather conditions. In this new effort, the researchers looked at two natural weather events that are known to have a clear impact on winter weather in northern India—El Niño and the Antarctic Oscillation.

”Research corrects decades of data and suggests that ocean warming occurred in a much more homogenous way.” Facinating…

Correcting historic sea surface temperature measurements
Science Daily 7-18-19

Why did the oceans warm and cool at such different rates in the early 20th century? New research points to an answer both as mundane as a decimal point truncation and as complicated as global politics. Part history, part climate science, this research corrects decades of data and suggests that ocean warming occurred in a much more homogenous way.

Global Warnings

Paul Beckwith: “I declare a global climate change emergency to claw back up the rock face to attempt to regain system stability, or face an untenable calamity of biblical proportions.”

Kevin Hester: “There is no past analogue for the rapidity of what we are baring witness to. There has been a flood of articles … 2C is no longer attainable and that we are heading for dangerous climate change”

Magi Amma: We need to turn on a dime at mach nine! …
Equivalencies:
• 1 gigatonne equals one billion tons
• 1 gigatonne of carbon equals 3.67 gigatonnes of CO2
• 1 part per million of atmospheric CO2 is equivalent to 7.81 gigatonnes of CO2