REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

human actions, global climate change, global human solutions

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Thursday, April 18, 2024 10:21
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Monday, November 1, 2021 10:16 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


NASA study warns farmers must quickly adapt to climate change

https://www.slashgear.com/nasa-study-warns-farmers-must-quickly-adapt-
to-climate-change-01697799/

The science everyone needs to know about climate change, in 6 charts

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/394688

Jonah Goldberg: To fight climate change seriously, nuclear power must be on the table

https://www.postbulletin.com/opinion/columns/7262897-Jonah-Goldberg-To
-fight-climate-change-seriously-nuclear-power-must-be-on-the-table

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Monday, November 1, 2021 10:36 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Nuclear Power is fine until they Six Sigma it.

--------------------------------------------------

Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."

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Wednesday, November 10, 2021 9:57 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


This Simple Story Can Save the Planet

According to the best reports I’ve read, if we now start investing 2 percent of global annual G.D.P. in developing eco-friendly technologies and eco-friendly infrastructure, that should be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. The beautiful thing about 2 percent is that even though it’s a lot of money, it’s completely feasible. If it was 20 percent then I would tell you forget about it, it’s too late. But 2 percent? The job of the average politician is to shift 2 percent of the budget from here to there. We know how to do it. We need to stay away from the apocalyptic thinking that it’s too late and the world is ending and move toward a more practical thing: 2 percent of the budget. That’s it.

Is shifting 2 percent of global G.D.P. a sufficiently compelling story?

The thing about 2 percent of G.D.P., it’s not very impressive, but that’s the whole point. It’s hopeful. It’s not like we have to completely change the entire economy and go live in caves. We just need to shift 2 percent. That’s all. So I think it’s a powerful message. And there are other stories: If you look at movements like Greta Thunberg’s and the whole youth movement, what the young people are telling the world is that you are sacrificing us on the altar of your greed and irresponsibility. It’s no longer something hazy like CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s a human drama of the old sacrificing the young. That’s a powerful story.

https://web.archive.org/web/20211110053707/https://www.nytimes.com/int
eractive/2021/11/08/magazine/yuval-noah-harari-interview.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, November 13, 2021 7:09 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


COP26 was a failure. Here’s what we should do instead.

Author Kevin Drum Published on November 12, 2021 – 9:14 am

The COP26 climate conference in Glasgow has been a failure. There have been a few agreements here and there, but nothing very impressive for a conference that was supposedly "make or break" for humanity.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. COP26 merely confirms what we've known for a long time: nations won't agree to cut back on profitable fossil fuel extraction and politicians don't dare promise to do anything that will annoy their constituents. This has been true for decades and it's still true.

If I were your benevolent dictator, here's what I would do:

1. Aggressively roll out wind, solar, and nuclear power. This would probably get us about halfway toward our goal of net zero carbon emissions.

2. Pour trillions of dollars into R&D looking for new technologies to reduce atmospheric CO2. This would include things like cement production and chemical manufacturing that don't benefit from green electricity, and carbon capture, which is a necessary part of meeting our goals.

3. Begin seeding the atmosphere with aerosols. If we start now, it could be done very slowly while we test for larger effects on the planet. If, instead, we wait until 2040 or 2050 to do this, it will be an emergency operation with unknown impacts.

I understand this is not a popular proposal. Hell, I don't like it much myself. But all the evidence in the world suggests that nothing else has any real chance of success. It's time to face up to that.

https://jabberwocking.com/cop26-was-a-failure-heres-what-we-should-do-
instead/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, November 13, 2021 10:13 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Net Zero carbon emissions is as much of a fucking dream as eradicating Covid is.

Attempting to do either will destroy the world economy, let alone both.

--------------------------------------------------

Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."

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Saturday, November 13, 2021 10:18 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
3. Begin seeding the atmosphere with aerosols. If we start now, it could be done very slowly while we test for larger effects on the planet. If, instead, we wait until 2040 or 2050 to do this, it will be an emergency operation with unknown impacts.


https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/study-solar-geoengineering-may-not-
be-long-term-solution-climate-change

That sounds like pure insanity.

Especially when they spent decades telling you that the aerosols from your hair spray were going to rip a hole in the ozone and turn us all into mutants.

Scientists need to be unemployed. Their jobs are not essential.

--------------------------------------------------

Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."

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Saturday, November 13, 2021 2:03 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


If I were benevolent dictator, I would ...

Oh, BTW, did you know that ONE space joyride by one of those trillionaires creates as much greenhouse gas emissions as the LIFETIME emissions of the poorest BILLION people????
END SPACE JOYRIDES.

And what about that COP26 (whatever the fuck THAT stands for!) hobnob? All all those jets flying hither, thither and yon, with their retinues of cars going this way and that? A bit counterproductive, wouldn't you say? I would prolly just eliminate all private jets as being far too wasteful per person-mile.

END USA MILITARY OVERSEAS DEPLOYMENT, AND END OUR CARRIER GROUPS STEAMING ALL OVER THE GLOBE. The USA military is the largest single user of energy on the globe.
ONE military jet takeoff (full afterburner) uses 96 pounds - about 14 gallons - of fuel PER SECOND.
https://www.quora.com/How-much-fuel-is-burned-by-a-fighter-plane-in-on
e-second?

Not only would there be direct fuel savings, all of that MIC production would throttle back as well. We could take all of those tanks and humvees that we have stored out in the desert and turn them into scrap for infrastructure projects.

I would REALLY work on hardening our forests against fires. That means sending crews out into the forest for months at a time, hand-thinning two-mile-wide firebreaks (to start), and definitely experiment with creating "black soil" in-situ. You could use the energy released to charge batteries, for example.

Farming and soil management is another great oppty to manage carbon. I would pay farmers who sucessfully increase the carbon content of their soils (there are all kinds of ways, such as cover crops and "green manure", but since there are SO MANY ways I would simply survey their soil over time and pay them for each increase per year, and a stipend to maintain.)

I would also create south-to-north connected biopreserves to allow species to migrate, and pre-plant some warmer-climate natives further north.

Engineers are already looking at ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from things like cement and steel production, but ... what I don't understand is why they don't use more flyash in concrete than they do now. https://www.everything-about-concrete.com/fly-ash-concrete.html You can reduce flyash waste, create a better product, and substitute out some of that energy-intensive cement.

Aside from the military, the next-biggest user of energy in the USA is transportation.

There are several components to that.
The first is that the USA has miles and miles... of miles and miles. Like Australia, Canada, and Russia, there is concentration on the coasts and a lot of emptiness in between. So a lot of miles to transit. Maybe increase railroad traffic by repairing and improving the rails, which are in a sad state of disrepair, requiring trains to go very slow on many segments. (Same can be said for east coast commuter lines. Since Superstorm Sandy, many switches and lines got flooded and degraded, never repaired, and require slow speed travel.)

Another factor is that many USA cities grew in the era of the automobile. Los Angeles is a perfect example. Spread-out populations can't be effectively served by mass transit. Part of the answer is better land use planning: mixed development. For example, my fair city approved a 100+ townhome development. Would it have killed them to require a set-aside for a coffee shop/ATM, with a pickup space for school buses and Uber/Lyft? Maybe even a small convenience store so people wouldn't have to get in their cars to pick up that last-minute bottle of milk/box of diapers/bottle of wine?


The second part would be to require better fuel efficiencies.

Also, the USA depends on extremely long supply chains. Regionalizing supply chains would require less transportation.

Plant more trees in cities. They cool the temperature (requiring less AC), soak up CO2, trap dust, and absorb noise. What's not to like?

Use solar panels on the roofs of large commercial buildings like warehouses. In windy areas, you can put "eggbeater" windmills on skyscraper roofs as well.

And,as scary as Chernobyl and Fukushima we're, we have to start considering nuclear power. The boiling water reactor is prolly the least safe design.

Not that the DOE cared, because THEIR interest was to get as many reactors going as possible, so they could extract as much plutonium as possible, for our nuclear bomb program. (Which BTW is what Hanford did, which is why there's such a nightmare mess there. There actually IS a solvent extraction for uranium and plutonium from nuclear waste called the PUREX process - Plutonium URanium EXtraction- but it leaves you with a crap ton of spent solvent contaminated with other radionuclides. What a mess.) Supposedly the Russians are working on a fusion/fission reactor which uses fusion energy to prompt the complete decay of radionuclides. Maybe some American geniuses should figure that one out.

Also ... how about lithium battery recycling? The lithium content in ore is pretty low. Seems like spent batteries would be a FAR more concentrated source of lithium than rock.

And, as a personal beef, and nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions: outlaw plastic packaging. Some call our era the Plasticine. We are going to plastic our world to death.


Seriously, there are so many possibilities, large- and small-scale, it doesn't require a genius to make a significant dent in emissions and improve carbon capture.

It just requires the will to spend the money on reasonable, sensible things.

And stop spending so much money our hyper-aggressive military, and on the upper 0.01%


----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Sunday, November 14, 2021 10:52 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Pope Francis again calls for climate action. U.S. bishops have been all but silent

Pope Francis on Sunday once again urged political and business leaders "to act now with courage and vision" to care for the planet and its people in the face of the global climate crisis. His remarks, made at St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, came just hours after the close of a two-week United Nations climate change summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

The pope has been insistent about the importance and urgency of climate action, six years ago dedicating a major document — known as Laudato Si' — to the importance of environmental stewardship.

By contrast, Catholic bishops in the United States have generally been mum or misleading about climate change in their messaging to their congregations.

A study out last month by scholars from Creighton University in Nebraska analyzed more than 12,000 official, written communications sent to parishioners in nearly every U.S. diocese over five years beginning in June 2014.

The authors found that on the infrequent occasions that bishops mentioned climate change, they often "diminished and distanced themselves from Church teaching on this issue" and downplayed parts of Pope Francis's Laudato Si' document that conflict with American conservative political ideology.

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/14/1055679802/pope-francis-again-calls-for
-climate-action-u-s-bishops-have-been-all-but-silent


U.S. Catholic bishops' silence and denialism on climate change

The Catholic Church recognizes climate change as a moral issue, has called for social action, and has the institutional potential to meaningfully address climate change. Many hoped Pope Francis's 2015 encyclical Laudato Si' would spark widespread climate action. However, our quantitative and qualitative content analyses show that U.S. Catholic bishops responsible for leading the Church were silent and denialist about climate change around Laudato Si'.

As a group, when U.S. Catholic bishops did mention climate change, they often: (a) diminished and distanced themselves from Church teaching on this issue; (b) downplayed parts of Laudato Si' that conflict with a conservative political identity/ideology; and (c) emphasized parts of Laudato Si' that correspond to a conservative political identity/ideology. On climate change, our findings indicate individual U.S. Catholic bishops' diocesan communications have collectively snuffed out the spark of Laudato Si'. Our findings suggest politics may trump religion in influencing climate change beliefs even among religious leaders, and that the American Catholic Church subtly engages in climate denialism even though its top religious leader (Pope Francis) has emphasized the scientific reality and urgency of climate change.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac25ba

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, November 14, 2021 11:52 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Maybe if scientists didn't lie all the time people would believe them.

--------------------------------------------------

Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."

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Monday, November 15, 2021 6:36 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Maybe if scientists didn't lie all the time people would believe them.
You went there, but with less subtlety than Trump and the Republican Party: Climate Change is a Hoax.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Climate+Change+is+a+Hoax

What does Trump actually believe on climate change?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51213003

There are 139 elected officials in the 117th Congress who still deny the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/climate-deniers-117th-congres
s/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, November 15, 2021 8:19 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Hydrogen and Hybrids: Toyota CEO Defends Combustion Engines, Saying 'The Enemy Is Carbon'

This weekend Toyota's president drove a specially-equipped Corolla powered by an in-house hydrogen engine, reports Bloomberg. "Along with Mazda Motor Corp., Toyota showcased vehicles running on carbon-neutral propellants in a three-hour road race this weekend in Okayama."

Toyota's hydrogen-powered car underscores the automaker's belief that a wide variety of vehicle types — including hybrids and hydrogen-powered cars, in addition to electric vehicles — will play a role in decarbonizing its fleet over the coming decades. That puts the company in contrast to others, such as General Motors Co., Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo Car AB, which say they'll sell only EVs two decades from now. "The enemy is carbon, not internal combustion engines," Toyoda said at a briefing Saturday. "We need diverse solutions, that's the path toward challenging carbon neutrality."

Toyota says that that different emissions-reducing car technologies are needed for different regions of the world. EVs are a good option for places like Europe, where batteries can be charged with electricity derived largely from renewable sources, the automaker says. Other options, such as hydrogen or hybrids, may be a better fit in other regions.

The technology is separate from the company's other big bet on hydrogen — hydrogen fuel cells such as those that power the Mirai passenger car. While fuel cells use the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity, which in turn runs a motor, the hydrogen engine burns the element just like gasoline. Traditional engines only need to be tweaked in minor ways, such as changing out the fuel supply and injection systems, to make them capable of running on hydrogen, Toyota Chief Engineer Naoyuki Sakamoto said in a briefing last month. That also makes the technology a way to save some of the hundreds of thousands of jobs making parts related to combustion engines that are predicted to disappear in Japan if the automotive sector makes a full shift to EVs, according to Toyoda.

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/21/11/15/0220200/hydrogen-and-hybr
ids-toyota-ceo-defends-combustion-engines-saying-the-enemy-is-carbon

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, November 15, 2021 8:51 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Maybe if scientists didn't lie all the time people would believe them.
You went there, but with less subtlety than Trump and the Republican Party: Climate Change is a Hoax.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Climate+Change+is+a+Hoax

What does Trump actually believe on climate change?
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-51213003

There are 139 elected officials in the 117th Congress who still deny the scientific consensus of human-caused climate change.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/climate-deniers-117th-congres
s/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Do something about it then. You're the party with all the money.

--------------------------------------------------

Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."

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Monday, November 15, 2021 9:01 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Do something about it then. You're the party with all the money.
Billions of people know that dumping their CO2 into the air is the cheapest way to get rid of it. Not so long ago, billions of people knew that dumping their sewage into lakes and rivers was the cheapest way to get rid of it. There is a long story about why people stopped dumping their sewage into their drinking water and there will be a long story about why people eventually stop dumping their wastes into their breathing air.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, November 15, 2021 11:23 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.






https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/big-green-push-get-rid-coal-had
-opposite-effect

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Monday, November 15, 2021 11:33 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Hydrogen doesn't have anywhere near the energy density of methane, let alone gasoline.


LAST I SAW ...

Therefore, it must be stored at something like 10,000-15,000 psi in order to stuff enough into a container to get meaningful energy out.

In addition, hydrogen is incredibly "leaky" - it is a very small molecule that not only escapes thru fittings, it even escapes thru container material itself. At high pressures it seeps into metal and embrittles it, and (when the metal is coated inside) acts as a solvent and peels the coating off.

MAYBE FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
There have been various attempts to store hydrogen as a metal hydride (but then you'd need to haul a fuel tank around as heavy as the vehicle itself) or combining it with boron, or developing new container material. Perhaps some of these approaches have come to fruition. But given the difficulty of fueling with, and storing hydrogen, it doesn't seem like a suitable choice for vehicles, so I'm surprised at automakers commitment to it.
It would probably work better in stationary applications, where it can be produced in situ or nearby, and used as it's produced.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake


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Monday, November 15, 2021 3:55 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Hydrogen doesn't have anywhere near the energy density of methane, let alone gasoline.
The Toyota Mirai features 402 miles of driving range. You will also get free $15,000 hydrogen fuel for the first 3 years. (Complimentary fuel for up to six years or $15,000 per https://www.toyota.com/mirai/ )

The 2021 Mirai has a tank capacity of 5.6 kilos. The current 2021 price of hydrogen per kg is about $13 – $16. This high cost of hydrogen fuel may not be an immediate concern. Since this car gets 74 MPGe, this will effectively bring the cost down in half compared to an average sedan. In addition, you will get 3 years or $15,000 worth of free hydrogen when you purchase your 2021 Toyota Mirai. And the cost of hydrogen fuel after this time period is expected to be much lower.

Driving the 2021 Toyota Mirai too fast, particularly on curvy roads can lead to high consumption of hydrogen. Mirai’s fuel consumption is measured in Miles Per Gallon Equivalent (MPGe).

Its estimated fuel consumption is about 74 MPGe. However, driving too fast has been shown to drop the consumption to 40 MPGe. On very steep hills the MPGe tends to drop up to 20 MPGe, which can drastically affect the range.

The Price

The 2021 Toyota Mirai XLE is 20-percent cheaper than the 2020 model ($9,000). The price is about $49,500 or $499 on lease agreement. You will also get an APR credit of about $10,000 if you purchase your Mirai XLE before February 1, 2021.
https://www.toyota.com/mirai/

https://www.hydrogencarsnow.com/index.php/2021-toyota-mirai/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, November 15, 2021 4:08 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.



Many years ago there was a great self-heating catalyst that turned dirty-wet ethanol (and some if its water) into hydrogen to fuel fuel cells, at over 100% efficiency (due to it catalyzing some water). The previous limitations to that category of catalyst were that the catalyst had to be externally pre-heated to 500F operating temperature, and that the ethanol had to be analytically clean at the ppm/ ppb level and completely dry (ie, the kind you get from a specialty chemical manufacturer in small quantities. One of the biggest problems with dry ethanol is that it sucks water out of the air until it reaches roughly 95% ethanol concentration).

As a fuel source, ethanol handles well - far better than hydrogen. You store it and pump it at ambient temperatures and pressures. And while it burns, it's not toxic unless you ingest it in large quantities, and it doesn't explode like hydrogen. (In my own direct professional experience, I know what happens when a high-pressure hydrogen vehicle-refuel unit explodes nearby.)

Nothing ever came of that catalyst, which should have been a complete game-changer for direct-electric-drive vehicles.


It's not like there aren't better, less expensive, cheaper, easier answers than hydrogen.

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Monday, November 15, 2021 4:37 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

It's not like there aren't better, less expensive, cheaper, easier answers than hydrogen.
About 19.64 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) are produced from burning a gallon of gasoline that does not contain ethanol.

About 12.72 pounds of CO2 are produced when a gallon of pure ethanol is combusted.

About 0 pounds of CO2 from hydrogen. That's why Toyota is burning hydrogen. If cheapest is the goal, then gasoline will always be the only possibility. By the way, gasoline can be made from coal. There is far more coal than petroleum in the world, if you are worried that cheap gasoline won't be available.
http://www.patagoniaalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/How-much-c
arbon-dioxide-is-produced-by-burning-gasoline-and-diesel-fuel-FAQ-U.S.-Energy-Information-Administration-EIA.pdf

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, December 8, 2021 4:52 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Today, the National Academy of Sciences released a new report about ways to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it in the ocean.

The world emits about 35 gigatons of CO2 every year. This is the end result of an enormous global infrastructure dedicated to drilling, refining, shipping, pumping gasoline into cars, etc. As a rule of thumb, you can figure that removing CO2 is a project with a similar scale. Think about that. The NAS report estimates that we'll need to remove at least 10 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year, which means a global infrastructure about a third the size of the emission infrastructure.

https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/a-research-strategy-for-oce
an-carbon-dioxide-removal-and-sequestration



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, December 8, 2021 5:56 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.



"About 12.72 pounds of CO2 are produced when a gallon of pure ethanol is combusted."

But if that ethanol is made from plants - which pull carbon from the atmosphere rather than out of the ground - the net atmospheric ethanol CO2 contribution - is zero. All it does is cycle existing CO2 from the atmosphere, to usable fuel.

It doesn't pull additional carbon from underground fossil fuels, where it's been stored for millions of years, and dump it into the air.

Plant-based ethanol is just as good as hydrogen in terms of CO2, but it doesn't require dangerous high-pressure systems and a specially-built, entirely new, infrastructure to use it. Existing pipelines, underground fuel tanks, gas-stations and so on will do the job at normal environmental temperatures and pressures, without significant personal and environmental toxicity or risk.

Putting ethanol fuel into place - faster, better, cheaper - and less risky - than hydrogen.

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Thursday, December 9, 2021 7:15 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Plant-based ethanol is just as good as hydrogen in terms of CO2, but it doesn't require dangerous high-pressure systems and a specially-built, entirely new, infrastructure to use it. Existing pipelines, underground fuel tanks, gas-stations and so on will do the job at normal environmental temperatures and pressures, without significant personal and environmental toxicity or risk.

Putting ethanol fuel into place - faster, better, cheaper - and less risky - than hydrogen.
If you really wanted to keep fuel distribution infrastructure unchanged AND everything the same mechanically for autos, without even going electric or ethanol or hydrogen, but still go green, there is a way: The Methanol-to-Gasoline Process. MTG process normally take place into two steps, first methanol is transformed into a mixture of dimethyl-ether (DME) and water with some unreacted methanol over a non-zeolitic catalyst usually.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/methanol-to-gasoline-
process

From 1,000 tons of methanol, the process will produce 387 tonnes of gasoline, 46 tonnes of LPG, 7 tonnes of fuel gas and 560 tonnes of water, which is recycled as process water.
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/12/dkrw-selects-ex.html

What is so green about methanol over ethanol? Biomass sources are preferable for biomethanol than for bioethanol because bioethanol is a high-cost and low-yield product. This is a promising alternative, with a diversity of fuel applications with proven environmental, economic, and consumer benefits. A mixture of gases from organic waste materials is converted to methanol in a conventional steam-reforming/water-gas shift reaction followed by high-pressure catalytic methanol synthesis.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15567030600817167

If you want to keep billions of the same old gasoline engines running and the same old gasoline stations/convenience stores, but go green, there is a way to make gasoline from biomass, but you have to spend trillions of dollars building the hydrocarbon chemical plants to do it and that is not going to happen naturally and organically. It will be a very deliberate political decision involving many decades of raucous, even violent, conflict between groups for and against. Then it takes decades to build it all, once a decision is made.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, December 9, 2021 7:20 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


Norway again shows the all-electric car future is closer than people think
https://electrek.co/2021/12/03/norway-again-shows-all-electric-car-fut
ure-closer-than-people-think/

EU taxonomy for sustainable activities – Should nuclear energy be left out?
https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/video/eu-taxonomy-
for-sustainable-activities-should-nuclear-energy-be-left-out/

Why companies are embracing sustainability
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sponsored/PkqB18UxpLwez9s8lc7s/why-co
mpanies-are-embracing-sustainability/

Quote:
According to Dr de Hoog, “almost every time you use an app on your phone, it's basically connecting to a data center somewhere that is storing data and running some computational workloads that need to be powered by electricity. Every country in the world, even every region, has a set of generation sources for electricity in that region, which could be a mix of coal, gas, nuclear, solar, wind, biomass, multiple other sources.


Biden Orders Federal Government To Become Carbon Neutral By 2050
https://www.forbes.com/sites/annakaplan/2021/12/08/biden-orders-federa
l-government-to-become-carbon-neutral-by-2050/

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Thursday, December 9, 2021 7:48 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Biden Orders Federal Government To Become Carbon Neutral By 2050


Biden* could even order a Value Meal at McDonalds at the drive thru unless he had a teleprompter in front of him in the car.

--------------------------------------------------

Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."

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Sunday, December 12, 2021 10:29 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


“Don’t Look Up” Is as Funny and Terrifying About Global Warming as “Dr. Strangelove” Was About Nuclear War

If you’re wondering whether we’ll do anything about global warming before it destroys civilization, think about this ominous fact: It occupies barely any space in popular culture.

This contrasts with the gusher of movies and books in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s about nuclear war. Anyone old will remember “The Day After,” “War Games,” “The Planet of the Apes,” “99 Luftballons,” and many, many more in which nuclear terror was the central subject or background.

All of this helped generate a worldwide anti-nuclear movement, which in turn generated a larger audience for anti-nuclear culture, which in turn strengthened the movement — all in a virtuous circle. In other words, we avoided atomic Armageddon in part because we spent lots of time imagining it and so were motivated not to experience it in reality. But with global warming, there are few indications that we’re imagining it at all. We’re blithely stumbling forward in a fog, with little comprehension of the catastrophe we’re stumbling toward.

The fountainhead of nuclear war culture in the U.S. was Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,” released in 1964. It pried open space into which countless other creators rushed. “Don’t Look Up” has the potential to do the same thing for global warming.

Taken literally, the movie is about a huge comet heading directly toward us. It’s the same size as the one that hit the Gulf of Mexico in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, which wiped out three-quarters of all species on the planet. But this is the most thinly disguised metaphor in the history of metaphors. It is in fact about our profound commitment to cooking ourselves to death. Pretending it’s about a comet, however, makes it possible for “Don’t Look Up” to fit the format of a standard blockbuster that the median moviegoer will love.

More at https://theintercept.com/2021/12/12/dont-look-up-review-adam-mckay-dr-
strangelove/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, December 13, 2021 5:00 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


World Petroleum Congress speakers prophesy a dark energy crisis to stall progress on the climate crisis

In a dozen speeches at the World Petroleum Congress in Houston, and no one denied fossil fuels are causing life-threatening global warming. Everyone agreed we must reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane levels.

Where the people inside the heavily-fortified convention center disagree with most of the world is how to slow emissions. The industry’s talking points called for more oil and natural gas extraction paired with expensive carbon capture technology financed with tax credits.

The World Petroleum Congress opened with a children’s choir singing the saccharine Disney tune “It’s a Small World (After All)” and ended with a menacing warning: Give us what we want, and there won’t be any trouble. Failure to provide the industry with $11.8 trillion in capital between now and 2045 will trigger an energy crisis that they insist will make the public forget all about the climate crisis.

Investors and governments are refusing to finance big fossil fuel projects with an aim to neutralizing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Big Oil is paying more for capital as investors shower clean energy companies with resources.

Petroleum executives know capital investment is a zero-sum game, and they are worried about losing the two things they need most: low-cost capital and a social contract to operate. The execs are not above implied threats if they don’t get the money they want at the price they want to pay.

Keep in mind, conferences like the World Petroleum Congress are marketing exercises, not intellectually rigorous attempts to address issues. The main goal is to inspire investors to buy shares in the event’s corporate sponsors.

Like any pep rally, cheerleaders recited standardized propaganda: An energy transition that slashes fossil fuels will be messy and potentially violent. Climate mitigation efforts are causing the current energy shortfalls. Environmental regulations are scaring away investors. Switching to other fuel sources is too damn complicated. Big Oil has all the answers.

All they need is $11.8 trillion.

They want to spend the money on drilling new wells and building massive carbon capture projects. Capturing that investment would also hobble development of clean energy, their main competitors who have made amazing progress in winning market share.

Investments in wind turbines have brought down prices by 90 percent. Solar costs are down 70 percent. A trillion dollars spent on new batteries and new mines to extract critical metals would similarly bring energy storage costs down.

Clean energy executives insist that with a fraction of $11.8 trillion they can replace fossil fuels and meet growing global demand, no matter what the oil industry’s scientists claim. They also have clever engineers and new technologies.

This debate is about money. Oil CEOs want government handouts in the form of tax credits to capture the carbon they make money releasing. They also want the federal government to pay for their research.

We cannot allow oil executives to blackmail us. They are not prophets; they are business people looking for profits.

Governments should set limits on emissions, level out the subsidies and let the industry that supplies the most affordable, reliable and clean energy win.

More at https://web.archive.org/web/20211211054142/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Tomlinson-Don-t-fall-for-Big-Oil-s-16688970.php

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, December 13, 2021 5:00 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


The IMF estimates that U.S. fossil fuel subsidies totaled $662 billion in 2020

What does $662 billion a year look like?*

Affordable child care & free universal Pre-K $47 billion/year

Tuition free public universities $80 billion/year

12 weeks national paid leave $55 billion/year

Publicly owned broadband $15 billion/year

Homes for all guarantee $150 billion/year

100% renewable in the U.S. by 2050 $270 billion/year

Add dental, hearing, vision to Medicare $36 billion/year

$9 billion remainder.

*10 year estimates except 100% renewable

SOURCES

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Still-Not-Get
ting-Energy-Prices-Right-A-Global-and-Country-Update-of-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-466004

https://berniesanders.com/issues/free-child-care-and-pre-k-all/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/19/business/tuition-free-college.html

https://berniesanders.com/issues/high-speed-internet-all/

https://www.filesforprogress.org/reports/homes_for_all.pdf

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-02/hr1185_2.pdf

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-12/hr3_complete.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/20/upshot/democrats-trim-r
econciliation-bill.html

https://e360.yale.edu/digest/the-global-price-tag-for-100-percent-rene
wable-energy-73-trillion

https://www.reddit.com/r/ProEarth/comments/qldfxg/what_could_fossil_fu
el_subsidies_pay_for/


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, December 13, 2021 9:47 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


"My friend the Communist.
Holds meetings in his office.
I can't afford his gas.
So I'm stuck here watching TV"

--------------------------------------------------

Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."

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Friday, December 17, 2021 7:02 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Rising coal consumption could bring global coal-fired power demand to a new all-time high this year, undermining efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Friday.

The IEA said global power generation from coal was expected to reach 10,350 terawatt-hours in 2021, up 9%.

According to a report published this week by researchers with China's State Grid Corporation, energy security concerns mean the country is likely to build as much as 150 gigawatts (GW) of new coal-fired power capacity over the 2021-2025 period, bringing the total to 1,230 GW.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/17/business/coal-climate-energy-iea-report
-intl/index.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, December 20, 2021 10:22 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


The Controversial Plan to Vacuum Carbon Out of the Atmosphere

How much does it cost to do this?

The estimate that I most often heard is that right now the cheapest they can do is about $500 per ton of CO2. Everyone who looks at this field basically says that that is way too much. That is way too expensive to be able to do what we need to do. Because the IPCC was talking about removing 10 gigatons a year, which is billions of tons. So at $500 per ton, you’re talking about trillions and trillions of dollars. ($5 trillion to remove 10 billion metric tons of CO2. A metric tonne weighs 2,204.62 pounds or 1,000 kilograms. United States emitted 5.1 billion metric tons of energy-related carbon dioxide in 2019, while the global emissions of energy-related carbon dioxide totaled 33.1 billion metric tons.)

So, what price does it need to get to? No one really knows. But if it were around $100 per ton, then there starts to be a more of a market for this stuff. If you got it down to $50 or $10 a ton, then you’re really talking.

More at https://slate.com/technology/2021/12/direct-air-carbon-capture-technol
ogy-clive-thompson.html

https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does-united-states-a
nd-world-emit-each-year-energy-sources

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, December 23, 2021 8:50 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


The death of the Build Back Better Act would truly be a disaster for the environment.

The Build Back Better Act might be dead. Or maybe it’s just on life support. Nobody but Joe Manchin can say for sure. The West Virginia senator ambushed his party on Sunday by announcing he was a hard no on the bill, imperiling the core of the Biden administration’s domestic agenda. After the initial furious reaction, both the White House and Democrats in Congress have begun trying to rescue negotiations, but their chance of success is unclear.

One thing is quite certain, though: If the defibrillators fail and President Joe Biden can’t resuscitate a deal, it will be an absolute catastrophe for America’s attempts to combat global warming. The bill that House Democrats passed in November was not everything clean energy and environmental activists had hoped, since some of its most aggressive proposals to limit greenhouse gasses were stripped to appease Manchin. But by providing hundreds of billions of dollars to speed up the country’s green transition, it would have been an absolutely crucial and historic step toward meeting the climate goals Biden announced when the U.S. rejoined the Paris accords earlier this year. Without it, the country is unlikely to come anywhere near those targets, even if in an abstract, technical sense they’d still be within reach.

“Let me put it this way. The U.S. can still achieve its [Paris commitments] through pathways that don’t require Build Back Better, which lean heavily on federal regulation and state action,” Anand Gopal, executive director of strategy and policy at the climate think tank Energy Innovation, told me. “But it will be damn hard.”

Here’s a simple way to think about the blow U.S. climate policy is facing. The Biden administration has pledged to reduce U.S. emissions 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. Under the House legislation, the United States would cut its carbon footprint by 44 percent, according to an analysis by the REPEAT Project at Princeton’s Zero Lab. But under current law, the U.S. would only cut emissions by 27 percent—not even in the ballpark.

It is possible that the Princeton analysis is overly optimistic about the impact Build Back Better would have. For instance, it factors in reductions from a fee on methane included in the House bill, which looked like it would be pared back in any final version. But almost every analysis of the bill’s key pieces has found that it would have a dramatic impact and potentially put our Paris targets within reach, thanks to roughly $325 billion of green energy, electric vehicle, and other tax credits that anchor its climate section (the bill’s total spending on climate amounts to $555 billion). Those subsidies would bring down the cost of a new solar or wind plant by 30 percent, and shave thousands from the price of an EV, making clean tech even more competitive than it already is .

Without Build Back Better, the Biden administration will be left to rely almost exclusively on its regulatory powers to curb emissions.

More at https://slate.com/business/2021/12/manchin-build-back-better-environme
nt-biden.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, December 23, 2021 9:30 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.



Normally when a thread devolves to endless trolling between you and Jack I don't scroll up much. But I'm glad I made an exception and found an on-topic reply from you!

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
If you really wanted to keep fuel distribution infrastructure unchanged AND everything the same mechanically for autos, without even going electric or ethanol or hydrogen, but still go green, there is a way: The Methanol-to-Gasoline Process.

FWIW I think IC engines are far too inefficient. So I wouldn't necessarily want to keep everything the same.


The whole thing about ethanol being inefficient was supposedly proved once-and-for-all by calculations done at - iirc - Cornell. At the time the paper came out I actually wrote to them because I was curious about their assumptions behind their calculations. (To get it out of the way, I never got an answer.)

But first of all, they based their calculation on corn. They didn't seem to consider any other kind of plant material. And they based their 'efficiency' calculations on unstated inputs to corn cultivation.

My question to them was about the corn cultivation specifically.

Corn grown for human food has extremely high inputs. It has to be a popular edible kind, it has to be perfect (no blemishes), and if dried, it has to be dried well-enough to not have mold growing on it (Aspergillus flavus - the source of liver-cancer-causing aflatoxin).

Even corn grown for animal feed has a low part per BILLION USDA limit for aflatoxin (20ppb).

To get that high yield of high-quality food/ feed corn many growers resort to planting expensive GMO corn with Bt DNA (Bacillus thuringiensis) genes (to kill off caterpillars and worms that dare munch on the corn plants), and with additional GMO genes for resistance to as many as 5 herbicides. And of course it has to be cultivated, fertilized, 'herbicided', and often irrigated. And after harvesting, unless it's sold fresh as table corn, it needs to be dried enough to not support mold. Just the drying alone requires a huge amount of energy.

That's a lot of energy inputs for traditionally grown corn! My question to the researchers was, did they assume those inputs? Or did they assume that growers might plant generic corn on marginal lands with few, if any, cultivation input$$$? To me, the assumptions behind their calculations could make all the difference in their conclusion.

But as I said, I never did get an answer.



Anyway, the other problem I have is with IC engines. They're terribly inefficient. And even if you're burning biomethanol-sourced fuel you're still putting out fuel vapors and 'products of combustion' - CO, NOx, SOx, aldehydes, ketones, PM10/2.5/0.1 etc.

The self-heating catalyst I read about is over 100% efficient at converting ('reforming') dirty, wet ethanol into hydrogen (because it converts some of the water as well). And of course once you have electricity from your hydrogen fuel-cell, direct electric drive eliminates the need for a transmission (and it has maximum torque at zero rpm), along with regenerative braking that helps reduce energy loss during stopping.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure remains completely intact. And during the transition, it would only need to be partially converted for ethanol, to serve both traditional hydrocarbon fuels and ethanol.

Ethanol/ electric transportation really is "faster, better, cheaper".

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Wednesday, December 29, 2021 12:31 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Arctic sea ice reaches its minimum each September. September Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 13% per decade, relative to the 1981 to 2010 average. This graph shows the annual Arctic sea ice minimum each September since 1979, derived from satellite observations.

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/arctic-sea-ice/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, December 29, 2021 1:41 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Anyway, the other problem I have is with IC engines. They're terribly inefficient.
Hyundai shuts down its engine development team amid focus on electric cars

Hyundai reportedly had 12,000 people working on engines, but they are now being transferred to EV powertrain development: "Researchers at the engine design unit have moved to the electrification design center, leaving only some to modify existing engines. The powertrain system development center is transforming into an electrification test center, while the powertrain performance development center is becoming an electrification performance development center."

https://electrek.co/2021/12/28/hyundai-shuts-down-engine-development-t
eam-focus-electric-cars/

In 2021 Hyundai will sell about 675,375 units, representing 5.27% of the USA market.
https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/hyundai-us-sales-figures/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, December 30, 2021 7:13 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


New data suggests a massive collapse of Antarctic’s Thwaites Glacier in as little as five years

One thing that’s hard to grasp about the climate crisis is that big changes can happen fast. In 2019, I was aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer, a 308-foot-long scientific research vessel, cruising in front of the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. One day, we were sailing in clear seas in front of the glacier. The next day, we were surrounded by icebergs the size of aircraft carriers.

As we later learned from satellite images, in a matter of 48 hours or so, a mélange of ice about 21 miles wide and 15 miles deep had cracked up and scattered into the sea.

It was a spooky moment. Thwaites Glacier is the size of Florida. It is the cork in the bottle of the entire West Antarctic ice sheet, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 10 feet. The mélange that disintegrated was not part of the glacier itself, but a mix of icebergs and sea ice that had cozied up next to it. Still, the idea that it could just fall apart overnight was mind-blowing.

As it turns out, the ice breakup I witnessed was not a freak event. A few weeks ago, scientists participating in the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a $25 million five-year-long joint research program between the National Science Foundation in the U.S. and the Natural Environment Research Council in the U.K., presented their latest research. They described the discovery of cracks and fissures in the Thwaites eastern ice shelf, predicting that the ice shelf could fracture like a shattered car window in as little as five years. “It won’t scatter out into sea as quickly as what you saw when you were down there,” Erin Pettit, a glaciologist at Oregon State University and one of the lead principal investigators in the ITGC, later told me. “But the basic process is the same. The ice shelf is breaking up and could be gone in less than a decade.”

Given the ongoing war for American democracy and the deadly toll of the Covid pandemic, the loss of an ice shelf on a far-away continent populated by penguins might not seem to be big news. But in fact, the West Antarctic ice sheet is one of the most important tipping points in the Earth’s climate system. If Thwaites Glacier collapses, it opens the door for the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet to slide into the sea. Globally, 250 million people live within three feet of high tide lines. Ten feet of sea level rise would be a world-bending catastrophe. It’s not only goodbye Miami, but goodbye to virtually every low-lying coastal city in the world.

More at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/doomsday-glaci
er-thwaites-antarctica-climate-crisis-1273841/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, December 31, 2021 1:36 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


The case for a more radical climate movement

Author Andreas Malm on the failures of climate activism and the need for escalation.

Has the climate movement failed?

It’s hard to look at the world at this moment and not conclude that the answer is yes. Despite all the activism, despite all the protests, despite all the warnings, the world is still in many ways hostage to the fossil fuel industry.

A new book by Andreas Malm, a professor of human ecology at Sweden’s Lund University, asks a simple but perplexing question: Given the stakes, why hasn’t the global climate movement become far more radical than it is?

It’s a fair question. If we as a species were serious, if we really believed what we already know about climate change, we would be doing everything humanly possible to shift course. And yet we’re not. Even the most ambitious policy proposals on the table, with little chance of passing, are scarcely sufficient. This is the starting point of Malm’s book, and if you follow his logic it leads to some conclusions you may find uncomfortable.

He says it bluntly: We should “damage and destroy new CO2-emitting devices. Put them out of commission, pick them apart, demolish them, burn them, blow them up. Let the capitalists who keep investing in the fire know that their properties will be trashed.” For Malm, we have a choice: Destroy the property that’s destroying the planet, or sacrifice the Earth on the altar of that property.

Malm’s book — it’s titled How to Blow Up a Pipeline — is obviously meant to provoke. But embedded in the provocation is a morally serious challenge to how we think about, and act on, the crisis humanity faces. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how I feel about it. For instance, I think his summons to violence vastly overstates our ability to “control” such violence once it’s unleashed. I’m also less confident in the strategic utility of violence (even if it’s limited to the destruction of property, as Malm recommends) considering the enormous blowback that might result from it.

I reached out to him for this week’s episode of Vox Conversations to talk about how we got here, why he says it’s time to escalate, and the problems — both obvious and subtle — with such a radical approach.

More at https://www.vox.com/vox-conversations-podcast/22691428/vox-conversatio
ns-climate-change-andreas-malm

Download the free book by Andreas Malm, How To Blow Up A Pipeline -- Learning to Fight in a World on Fire from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.tv/search.php?req=Andreas+Malm+Pipeline

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

https://getcomics.info/other-comics/firefly-35-2021/

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Monday, January 17, 2022 7:56 AM

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Greetings from COP26

Before arriving in Glasgow, the phrase I heard most in connection with the twenty-sixth Conference of the Parties for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) wasn’t “just transition” or “sustainability” or “resilience.” It wasn’t “carbon capture and storage” or “green hydrogen” or “renewable energy.” It was “shitshow.”

I heard this from friends, activists, university colleagues. Everyone agreed that COP26 would be some kind of performance, the needle on the end of delusion. Greta Thunberg put it best in a speech she delivered one month before the conference at the Youth4Climate summit in Milan: “Green economy blah blah blah, net zero by 2050 blah blah blah . . . climate neutral blah blah blah . . . Our hopes and dreams drown in their empty words and promises.” Only nonsense named the truth of what would take place. Of what wouldn’t take place.

The heads of state themselves seemed primed for failure. On October 25, a week before COP26 began, British prime minister Boris Johnson addressed twenty-five of the planet’s future leaders at the Children’s Climate Press Conference in Downing Street. Hunched over a desk, his tie twisted, he lowered his eyes and mumbled discouraging words. “I’m very worried,” he said, “because it might go wrong, and we might not get the agreements that we need.”

A few days later, President Biden announced a much anticipated “framework” for the Build Back Better Act. A bargaining chip of sorts, robust regulations at home would restore confidence in the United States as a climate leader abroad. Unfortunately, its promised clean energy standard was now missing the key mechanism to transition the entire electricity sector (the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after transportation) to renewable energy by 2035. Gone, too, were penalties for polluting industries and a border tax on imports from polluting nations. Without these, the goal of halving 2005-level emissions by 2030 was unlikely. Gutted, the bill would bleed out little more than $300 billion in tax incentives for new-fangled technology.

Even the president of COP26, Alok Sharma, admitted that the “overarching ambition” of the conference wasn’t to prevent more than 1.5ºC of warming, which the 2015 Paris Agreement warned against, but simply to sustain belief that achieving the target was possible. Forget a more rigorous plan or more just policies: just don’t renege on a (nonbinding) promise you made six years ago. Banners proclaiming “Keep 1.5ºC Alive” were hung around the city. Inside the conference, a mural showed a young brown girl with gold earrings, wearing a black shirt that read “1.5 TO STAY ALIVE.” She stood in water up to her neck. Behind her, a mountain blazed.

More at https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-shitshow-in-glasgow-dean-wilson

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, February 5, 2022 12:18 AM

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All the Beijing Winter Olympics snow is human-made. In an Olympic first, though not an achievement to boast about, climate variability has forced the Winter Games to be virtually 100% reliant on artificial snow. The venues are surrounded by an endless brown, dry landscape completely devoid of snow -- part of a trend that is taking place across winter sports venues around the world.

Just one of the 21 cities that have hosted the Winter Olympics in the past 50 years will have a climate suitable for winter sports by the end of the century, a recent study found, if fossil fuel emissions remain unchecked.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/04/weather/artificial-snow-beijing-olympic
s-climate/index.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, February 14, 2022 2:25 PM

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The Western U.S. and Northern Mexico are experiencing their driest period in at least 1,200 years, according to the new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The last comparable – though not as severe – multi-decade megadrought occurred in the 1500s.

Williams looked at tree-ring data from thousands of sites to conduct the research. They sampled data collected from live trees, dead trees and wood beams preserved at Native American archeological sites. The tree rings gave Williams an insight into drought events dating back to the year 800 AD.

Williams said roughly one-fifth of the current megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions are warming the world, speeding evaporation, and disrupting weather patterns.

https://www.npr.org/2022/02/14/1080302434/study-finds-western-megadrou
ght-is-the-worst-in-1-200-years

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, March 13, 2022 2:02 PM

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Options for storing wind and solar energy go beyond batteries

Most people only think of batteries when imagining how to store renewable energy. But there are many more ways to hold onto wind and solar power during those times when the wind blows too fast, and the sun shines too bright.

Green hydrogen from Mitsubishi’s Utah facility is already profitable in the electricity markets in the Western Interconnection grid. Green hydrogen could also make money in Europe, where natural gas prices are currently 10 times higher than in the United States.

Mitsubishi Power is developing an Advanced Clean Energy Storage system in Delta, Utah for making green hydrogen. The company plans to use surplus wind and solar power to make green hydrogen, then store it for times when wind and solar run short. Modified natural gas turbines can blend in hydrogen with minimal emissions.

Gas turbine driven electric generators burn natural gas with up to 30 percent green hydrogen without trouble, but Mitsubishi hopes to deliver 100 percent hydrogen pollution-free turbines by 2030. For now, standard gas turbines release highly-polluting nitrous oxides when burning more than 30 percent green hydrogen because the flame is too hot. https://insideepa.com/share/227828

Bloom Energy, a California fuel cell manufacturer, has spent the last decade selling modules that turn natural gas and biogas into electricity. But the same cells operated in reverse become electrolyzers, converting electricity and water into hydrogen and oxygen. https://www.bloomenergy.com/

“Our costs have come down almost every year, on a curve of 12 percent per year,” said Sharelynn Moore, executive vice president of strategy and business development. “We can take excess wind here in Texas, excess solar, and with our electrolyzer, we can produce hydrogen.”

Instead of relying on natural gas from frozen wellheads during the next Arctic blast, Texas could instead rely on free-flowing green hydrogen stored in salt caverns.

More at https://web.archive.org/web/20220313173523/https://www.houstonchronicl
e.com/business/article/Options-for-storing-wind-and-solar-energy-go-16992090.php

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, March 26, 2022 6:45 AM

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Comparing the Operating Costs of Electric Vehicles and Gas-Powered Vehicles

Gasoline prices are inherently volatile—and they always will be

Overall, as of March 2022, driving an EV is dramatically cheaper per mile than driving a gas-powered vehicle. Nationally, EVs are 3-5 times cheaper to drive per mile than gas-powered vehicles. In Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, some EVs are 5–6 times cheaper to drive.

The sticker price for EVs are nearing parity with gas-powered vehicles

The lifetime cost of ownership for EVs is thousands of dollars cheaper than gas-powered vehicles, saving EV owners anywhere between $6,000 and $10,000 over the lifespan of the car, according to Consumer Reports.

EVs will become even more affordable if Congress passes clean energy tax incentives—the proposed base EV tax credit in President Biden’s clean energy plan would reduce EV sticker prices by up to $7,500. Congress should pass these clean energy provisions to deliver even greater cost savings for EVs compared to gas-powered vehicles.

https://www.zeta2030.org/news/electric-vehicles-are-delivering-marked-
cost-savings-for-drivers-and-surging-gasoline-prices-are-making-the-cost-savings-increasingly-apparent

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, April 16, 2022 8:05 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


On March 29, wind became the second largest source of daily electricity in the US, surpassing coal and nuclear for the first time on record (but still trailing far behind natural gas).

This highlights the rise of renewable energy and the fall of coal in the US. The country’s combined wind and solar output doubled in the decade between 2008 and 2018, while coal electricity generation fell by more than half over the same period. Since March 2019, wind and solar output have nearly doubled again, according to data from the US Energy Information Administration.

Natural gas remains the dominant (and growing) energy source in the US, despite a US goal of net-zero emissions no later than 2050 (and carbon-free electricity by 2035). The US Energy Information Administration predicts renewables will still make up just 44% of the US energy mix by 2050, up from 21% in 2021. If the US net-zero targets are going to succeed, the country will need far more months like this past March.

https://qz.com/2155659/wind-surpassed-nuclear-power-output-in-the-us-f
or-the-first-time/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 9:01 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


If the Amazon Rain Forest reaches tipping point, containing global warming will be 'blown out of the water'

The area of tropical forest burned in 2021 was enough to send more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than India does in an entire year from burning fossil fuels, according to an analysis published today.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/28/world/forest-loss-deforestation-fire-wr
i-climate-intl/index.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, April 28, 2022 12:21 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Cool.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Tuesday, May 31, 2022 8:47 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


This New Style of Climate Denial Will Make You Wish the Bad Old Days Were Back

The bizarre claim that what we need, right now, is more fossil fuels.

If you are concerned about our warming world, you should know who Alex Epstein is. The libertarian intellectual, who’s presented himself as the “next generation in energy thought,” has long hammered at a thesis that’s the next big thing in climate denial: Fossil fuels are not leading to an uninhabitable Earth but have actually improved Earth’s natural and built habitats, and contributed to “human flourishing.” Because of this, the unfettered development of oil and gas and coal is a “moral” imperative; if you oppose this “irrefutable” fact, you’re a genocidal, racist, anti-human, and anti-science fool who would rather have billions of people slip into poverty and/or die for the benefit of “nature,” which, Epstein argues, kills more humans on its own than any climate effects do. It’s a set of ideas he’s boosted for the past two decades through work with the Ayn Rand Institute, the Cato Institute, and his own “for-profit” think tank, the Center for Industrial Progress.

Epstein, a master at having it both ways, realizes that you, the average Slate reader, probably consider his mission to achieve unlimited fossil fuel production to be at odds with global concerns over human-influenced impacts on climate and nature. And trust him, he shares your concerns and would not like to be described as a “denier.” But he’s also really worried about how our “knowledge system”—big newspapers, prominent scientists, the United Nations—distorts scientific findings and exaggerates climate-related warnings and predictions, which is why he pals around with conspiracy theorists like Lauren Boebert, Dennis Prager, Scott Adams, and Candace Owens. By the way, as much as Epstein respects the Koch brothers, his ideology would never be influenced by their dark money network, even though he’s worked for decades at multiple institutions financially supported by the oil and policy magnates. Plus, he wants to debate opponents in good faith and is opposed to “ad hominem” attacks, which is why he refers to climate-concerned politicians as “fascists” and “monsters” while mobilizing his supporters to demand the termination of journalists who perform factual analyses of his oeuvre.

More at https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/alex-epstein-fossil-future-climat
e-change-argument.html

Download for free Alex Epstein’s The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.blue/search.php?req=Alex+Epstein+Fossil

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, May 31, 2022 7:45 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
This New Style of Climate Denial Will Make You Wish the Bad Old Days Were Back

The bizarre claim that what we need, right now, is more fossil fuels.


Oh yeah? How much money do you make in a year, Nitish?

Fuck Slate. Fuck Nitish Pahwa.


Democrats are losing the black and Mexican vote.

Good luck winning anything when all you've got left is rich white people and some token minorities that you're paying extremely well for the bullshit propaganda you've got them spewing for you.




And just wait until all the people you know who still drive gas cars around have to pay a buck a kWh on top of the high gas prices because you just can't get enough of the smell of your own farts, retard.


Democrats are DOOMED.

--------------------------------------------------

Me: "Remember Covid?"

Useless Idiots: "What's Covid, durr? Russia, Ukraine, Putin, NATO *drool*. DURRRR!!!!"

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Friday, June 3, 2022 1:31 PM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


The US’s New Record in Renewables
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02062022/inside-clean-energy-renewa
bles-2022/



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, June 14, 2022 5:53 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


What a Dying Lake Says About the Future

A few days ago The Times published a report on the drying up of the Great Salt Lake, a story I’m ashamed to admit had flown under my personal radar. We’re not talking about a hypothetical event in the distant future: The lake has already lost two-thirds of its surface area, and ecological disasters — salinity rising to the point where wildlife dies off, occasional poisonous dust storms sweeping through a metropolitan area of 2.5 million people — seem imminent.
( https://web.archive.org/web/20220614101334/https://www.nytimes.com/202
2/06/07/climate/salt-lake-city-climate-disaster.html )

As an aside, I was a bit surprised that the article didn’t mention the obvious parallels with the Aral Sea, a huge lake that the Soviet Union had managed to turn into a toxic desert.

In any case, what’s happening to the Great Salt Lake is pretty bad. But what I found really scary about the report is what the lack of an effective response to the lake’s crisis says about our ability to respond to the larger, indeed existential threat of climate change.

If you aren’t terrified by the threat posed by rising levels of greenhouse gases, you aren’t paying attention — which, sadly, many people aren’t. And those who are or should be aware of that threat but stand in the way of action for the sake of short-term profits or political expediency are, in a real sense, betraying humanity.

That said, the world’s failure to take action on climate, while inexcusable, is also understandable. For as many observers have noted, global warming is a problem that almost looks custom-designed to make political action difficult. In fact, the politics of climate change are hard for at least four reasons.

First, when scientists began raising the alarm in the 1980s, climate change looked like a distant threat — a problem for future generations. Some people still see it that way; last month a senior executive at the bank HSBC gave a talk in which he declared, “Who cares if Miami is six meters underwater in 100 years?”

This view is all wrong — we’re already seeing the effects of climate change, largely in the form of a rising frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, like the megadrought in the American West that is contributing to the death of the Great Salt Lake. But that’s a statistical argument, which brings me to the second problem with climate change: It’s not yet visible to the naked eye, at least the naked eye that doesn’t want to see.

Weather, after all, fluctuates. Heat waves and droughts happened before the planet began warming; cold spells still happen even with the planet warmer on average than in the past. It doesn’t take fancy analysis to show that there is a persistent upward trend in temperatures, but many people aren’t convinced by statistical analysis of any kind, fancy or not, only by raw experience.

Then there’s the third problem: Until recently, it looked as if any major attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have significant economic costs. Serious estimates of these costs were always much lower than claimed by anti-environmentalists, and spectacular technological progress in renewable energy has made a transition to a low-emission economy look far easier than anyone could have imagined 15 years ago. Still, fears about economic losses helped block climate action.

Finally, climate change is a global problem, requiring global action — and offering a reason not to move. Anyone urging U.S. action has encountered the counterargument, “It doesn’t matter what we do, because China will just keep polluting.” There are answers to that argument — if we ever do get serious about emissions, carbon tariffs will have to be part of the mix. But it’s certainly an argument that affects the discussion.

As I said, all of these issues are explanations for inaction on climate, not excuses. But here’s the thing: None of these explanations for environmental inaction apply to the death of the Great Salt Lake. Yet the relevant policymakers still seem unwilling or unable to act.

Remember, we’re not talking about bad things that might happen in the distant future: Much of the lake is already gone, and the big wildlife die-off might begin as early as this summer. And it doesn’t take a statistical model to notice that the lake is shrinking.

In terms of the economics, tourism is a huge industry in Utah. How will that industry fare if the famous lake becomes a poisoned desert? And how can a state on the edge of ecological crisis still be diverting water desperately needed to replenish the lake to maintain lush green lawns that serve no essential economic purpose?

Finally, we aren’t talking about a global problem. True, global climate change has contributed to reduced snowpack, which is one reason the Great Salt Lake has shrunk. But a large part of the problem is local water consumption; if that consumption could be curbed, Utah needn’t worry that its efforts would be negated by the Chinese or whatever.

So this should be easy: A threatened region should be accepting modest sacrifices, some barely more than inconveniences, to avert a disaster just around the corner. But it doesn’t seem to be happening.

And if we can’t save the Great Salt Lake, what chance do we have of saving the planet?

https://web.archive.org/web/20220614000745/http://www.nytimes.com/2022
/06/13/opinion/great-salt-lake.html/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, June 14, 2022 7:17 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


Fusion is coming?

Who will get there

also

Researchers discover new isotope thorium-207 and odd-even staggering in a-decay energies
https://phys.org/news/2022-05-isotope-thorium-odd-even-staggering-deca
y.html
A research team at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), together with their collaborators, has recently synthesized a new isotope

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Thursday, June 23, 2022 6:03 AM

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The actual cost of preventing climate breakdown

https://www.ted.com/talks/yuval_noah_harari_the_actual_cost_of_prevent
ing_climate_breakdown/

As the climate crisis worsens, too many people are swinging from denial straight to despair. But we should not lose hope. Humanity has enormous resources under its command, and by applying them wisely, we can still prevent ecological cataclysm.

00:20
Let's talk numbers. What would it cost to prevent catastrophic climate change? Would we have to commit 50 percent of our total budget? Thirty percent? Ten percent? Naturally enough, no one knows for sure. My team and I have spent weeks poring over various reports and academic papers living in a cloud of numbers. But while the models behind the numbers are dizzyingly complex, the bottom line should cheer us up. Most experts converge on the number two percent.

00:58
If humanity increases our annual investment in clean technologies and infrastructure by around two percent of global GDP, that should be enough to prevent catastrophic climate change.

01:12
If you want to see how experts got to that number, you're welcome to visit the Sapienship website. https://www.sapienship.co/

01:20
We can, of course, argue endlessly about the exact number, tweaking the models this way and that way. But we should look at the big picture. The crucial news is that the price tag of preventing the apocalypse is in the low single digits of annual global GDP. Even the more pessimistic models generally estimate it at below five percent. And most models say it requires investing only an additional two percent of global GDP in the right places.

01:57
And note the word investing. We are not talking about burning piles of banknotes in some huge sacrifice to the spirits of the Earth. We are talking about making investments in new technologies and infrastructure, such as advanced batteries or other technologies to store solar energy and updated power grids to distribute it. These investments will create lots of new jobs and economic opportunities and are likely to be economically profitable in the long run, in part by reducing health care expenditures and saving millions of people from sickness caused by air pollution. In addition, since oil and gas often prop up autocratic and militaristic regimes, reducing our dependence on fossil fuels will be a huge boon to democracy and to peace. All this can be translated into a concrete political plan of action.

03:05
We have learned in recent years to define our goal in terms of one number: 1.5 degrees Celsius. We can define the means to do this with another number: two percent. Increased investment in clean technologies and infrastructure by two percentage points of global GDP, above 2020 levels. Of course, unlike the 1.5 Celsius figure, which is a scientifically robust threshold, the two-percent figure represents only a rough guesstimate. It should be understood as a ballpark figure that can help to frame the kind of political project humanity requires. It tells us that preventing catastrophic climate change is a totally feasible project, even though it would obviously cost a lot of money.

04:05
Since global GDP in 2020 was about 85 trillion US dollars, we are talking about a number around 1.7 trillion US dollars. But that's still just two percent. This means that to save the environment, we don't need to completely derail the economy or to abandon the achievements of modern civilization. We just need to get our priorities right.

04:36
Committing two percent of annual global GDP is far from the whole story, of course. It won't solve all our ecological problems, such as oceans brimming with plastic or the continued loss of biodiversity. And even to prevent catastrophic climate change we'll need to make sure that the funds are invested in the right places and that the new investments don't cause their own negative ecological or social fallout. We will also need to change some of our behaviors and ways of thinking from what we eat to how we travel.

05:14
None of that will be easy. But that's exactly why we have politicians. Their job is to deal with the hard stuff. And politicians are actually very skilled at shifting two percent of resources from here to there. It's what they do all the time. The difference between the policies of right wing and left wing parties often amounts to a few percentage points of GDP. When faced by a major crisis, politicians swiftly shift far more resources to fight it.

05:50
For example, in 1945, the US spent about 36 percent of its GDP on winning the Second World War. During the 2008-2009 financial crisis, the US government spent about 3.5 percent of GDP to save financial institutions that were deemed "too big to fail." Maybe humankind should also treat the Amazon rainforest as too big to fail.

06:22
Let's try a thought experiment. Given the current price of cleared rainforest land in South America and the size of the Amazon rainforest, buying the [whole] of it in order to protect local forests, biodiversity and human communities from destructive business interests would cost about 800 billion dollars, or a one-off payment of less than one percent of global GDP.

06:54
In just the first nine months of 2020, governments around the world announced stimulus measures worth nearly 14 percent of global GDP to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. If citizens pressed them hard enough, politicians can do the same to deal with the ecological crisis. So can investment banks and pension funds. Pension funds hold over 56 trillion US dollars. What's the point of having a pension if you don't have a future? At present,

07:34
most businesses and governments are unwilling to make the additional two-percent investment necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change. Where does that money go instead? Well, every two years, approximately 2.4 percent of global GDP is spent on food that goes to waste. Governments also spend about 500 billion US dollars annually on -- wait for it -- direct subsidies for fossil fuels. That means that every 3.5 years governments write a nice fat check for an amount equivalent to two percent of annual global GDP and gift it to the fossil fuel industry. And it gets worse when you factor in the social and environmental costs that the fossil fuel industry causes but isn't asked to pay for, the value of these subsidies actually reaches a staggering seven percent of annual global GDP.

08:42
Now consider tax evasion. It's estimated that the money hidden by the wealthy in tax havens is worth around 10 percent of global GDP. Every year, another 1.4 trillion dollars in profits is stashed offshore by corporations, which is equal to 1.6 percent of global GDP. To prevent the apocalypse, we'll probably need to impose some new taxes. But why not start with collecting the old ones?

09:17
Such examples can be multiplied. But you get the picture. The money is there. Of course, collecting taxes, stopping food wastage and slashing subsidies is easier said than done, especially when faced by some of the most powerful lobbies in the world. But it doesn't require a miracle. It just requires determined organization.

09:44
So we shouldn't succumb to defeatism. Whenever someone says, "It's too late, the apocalypse is here," reply, "Nah, we can stop it with just two percent." And when COP 27 convenes in Egypt in November 2022, we should tell the attending leaders that it's not enough to make vague future pledges about 1.5 degrees Celsius. We want them to take out their pens and sign a check for two percent of annual global GDP.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Thursday, June 23, 2022 7:24 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


TED needs to stop talking. Get fucked, TED.

--------------------------------------------------

Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus

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