This is Not Cool

Is Google that confident in Geothermal? Or that desperate for power?
Probably both.
What strikes me is the fast timeline – generating for the grid in ’26-’27 time frame.
I’ve been saying for years that Geothermal is the dark horse, and it might be breaking from the pack right now.

Utility Dive:

• Enhanced geothermal company Fervo Energy announced Tuesday that it has made a 396-MW power purchase agreement with Google, the largest-ever geothermal PPA, with Google planning to use that power as a “foundational building block” for a potential data center in Utah.
• “As part of the PPA, Fervo will offer Google an option to expand its offtake by approximately 600 MW, for a total of nearly 1 GW, by June 2030,” Fervo said. “Final data center plans remain subject to a variety of factors including engineering feasibility, state and local approvals, and commercial conditions.”
• In a Tuesday research note, financial services company William Blair said the PPA deal “increases contracted revenue across Fervo’s portfolio by about 65% and strengthens our belief that Fervo’s enhanced geothermal systems provide a critical solution to address our ‘baseload imperative’ thesis by delivering firm, dispatchable power to fuel AI data centers.”

Wall Street Journal:
The agreement for nearly 400 megawatts of electricity is enough to power a midsize city and would be Fervo’s largest-ever power deal. Fervo plans to begin selling power to Google in 2028 from its Cape Station project in southwestern Utah.

Google intends to buy the power for a data center in Utah—though it has yet to determine the location. The company still needs to work with local communities and go through state and local regulatory approvals before it can move forward with the plans.

Continue reading “Google’s Big Geothermal Bet”

Climate deniers are furiously peddling the idea that Nepal’s disaster was perfectly normal – but research and experience shows that as mountain permafrost softens due to rising temperatures, collapses become more frequent.
Researchers have been documenting these changes for at least 20 years.

Journal of Geophysical Research June 2007:

 Permafrost in steep bedrock is abundant in many cold-mountain areas, and its degradation can cause slope instability that is unexpected and unprecedented in location, magnitude, frequency, and timing. These phenomena bear consequences for the understanding of landscape evolution, natural hazards, and the safe and sustainable operation of high-mountain infrastructure. Permafrost in steep bedrock is an emerging field of research. Knowledge of rock temperatures, ice content, mechanisms of degradation, and the processes that link warming and destabilization is often fragmental.
In this article we provide a review and discussion of existing literature and pinpoint important questions. Ice-filled joints are common in bedrock permafrost and possibly actively widened by ice segregation. Broad evidence of destabilization by warming permafrost exists despite problems of attributing individual events to this phenomenon with certainty. Convex topography such as ridges, spurs, and peaks is often subject to faster and deeper thaw than other areas. Permafrost degradation in steep bedrock can be strongly affected by percolating water in fractures.

Continue reading “Melting Mountains a Global Climate Impact”

Poet Wendell Berry has died at age 92.

Manifest: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
    vacation with pay. Want more
    of everything ready-made. Be afraid
    to know your neighbors and to die.
    And you will have a window in your head.
    Not even your future will be a mystery
    any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
    and shut away in a little drawer.
    When they want you to buy something
    they will call you. When they want you
    to die for profit they will let you know.

    So, friends, every day do something
    that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
    Love the world. Work for nothing.
    Take all that you have and be poor.
    Love someone who does not deserve it.
    Denounce the government and embrace
    the flag. Hope to live in that free
    republic for which it stands.
    Give your approval to all you cannot
    understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
    has not encountered he has not destroyed.

    Ask the questions that have no answers.
    Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
    Say that your main crop is the forest
    that you did not plant,
    that you will not live to harvest.
    Say that the leaves are harvested
    when they have rotted into the mold.
    Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Continue reading “Wendell Berry 1934 – 2026”

Climate change’s impact on the Hoover Dam, slowly, slowly, then all at once.

Gemini says:

Critical Threshold: When the water level falls below 1,035 feet, 12 of the dam’s 17 main turbines will lose enough water pressure to operate.
Power Loss: This drop will slash the dam’s electricity generation capacity by 70% to 80%.
Remaining Capacity: Only five specially modified wide-head turbines can function below 1,035 feet, down to a lower limit of 950 feet. 

World Atlas:

“Dead pool” sounds like the end of the story, but it has a specific meaning. It is the point at which a reservoir drops so low that water can no longer flow out past the dam and continue downstream. The lake is not empty when this happens. There is still plenty of water in it. That water just sits there, stuck below the dam’s outlets, unable to reach the cities and farms that depend on it. 

Formed by holding back the Colorado River with Hoover Dam, Lake Mead was designed to hold up to 28.9 million acre-feet (roughly 9.4 trillion gallons or 36 trillion liters) of water at full capacity. A multi-decade megadrought across the American Southwest, combined with heavy municipal and agricultural water demand, has severely depleted the reservoir. It now sits below 30% of capacity, and in August 2026 it fell to its lowest level since the lake first filled in the 1930s, leaving a deficit of roughly 20 million acre-feet. 

That deficit raises an obvious question: how long would it take to refill Lake Mead to its designed capacity? In purely theoretical terms, cutting the outflow or boosting the inflow could do it in as few as two to three years. Under a more realistic scenario that depends on vastly improved water management and favorable weather, a refill could take 30 to 50 years, and even that may be optimistic. It is entirely possible that the reservoir never again reaches full capacity.

God I hate this.

Sarawak Tribune:

KETAPANG (West Kalimantan): An adult male orangutan believed to have been overcome by prolonged haze exposure was rescued after being found unconscious at an oil palm plantation in Indonesia’s West Kalimantan, highlighting the growing toll of forest and peatland fires on wildlife.

The orangutan, named Sampurna, was discovered by villagers in Desa Laman Satong, Matan Hilir Utara, on Sunday (Aug 30) before a joint rescue team from Indonesia’s Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) and the Foundation for International Animal Rescue Indonesia (YIARI) responded to the scene.

BKSDA in a joint statement said Sampurna is believed to have left his forest habitat after fires swept through the surrounding area, with thick smoke blanketing the region for several days.

“Early that morning, we received information from the community about an orangutan near the plantation. We immediately went to the site and found it in a weakened condition,” said BKSDA Ketapang Conservation Section officer Sarbandi.

Veterinarians from YIARI sedated the orangutan before administering oxygen and intravenous fluids after it showed signs of respiratory distress. Initial examinations found no evidence of burns or external injuries.

YIARI veterinarian Dr Komara said smoke from forest and peatland fires can have severe consequences for orangutans, particularly when exposure is prolonged.

“Smoke contains particles and substances that can enter the respiratory tract and impair lung function. Heavy exposure over several days can cause breathing difficulties and oxygen deprivation,” he said.

Continue reading “Borneo Fires Impacting those Least Responsible”

Blackbirds singing in the light of day, as well as the dead of night.
New vocabulary – Conservoltaics.

The Pulse:

A row of panels throws a long stripe of shade across the ground at midmorning.

Underneath it the vegetation is knee high and messy, grasses and flowering plants tangled together, nothing in rows.

Nobody mows it and nobody sprays it.

Fifty feet away, past the fence, the corn runs to the horizon in clean parallel lines.

Birds that will not nest in the corn are nesting on this side of the wire, some of them on the steel itself.

So what does the fence line actually change for a bird?

The answer is not the panels. It is what was planted under them.

A solar site seeded with native grasses and forbs and then left alone gives a ground nesting bird everything a crop field withholds.

Cover that stands from spring through fall, so a nest built in May is still hidden in July.

Insects in numbers a sprayed monoculture cannot match, which is what the chicks eat.

Perches at every height, because the racking is a lattice of horizontal steel.

Continue reading “What Bird Songs in Solar Fields can Teach Us”

A deep analysis of what may have lead to the Nepal glacial collapse and a breakdown of how the flood overtook communities in a matter if minutes. #Nepal #flood #weather pic.twitter.com/L2On7g9a7Q

— Mike Bettes (@mikebettes) August 29, 2026

Some new information here, better satellite resolution of glacial collapse site, which scientists seem to have zeroed in on specifically.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA conducts regular “Office Hours” YouTube sessions where he discusses current climate issues and answers questions.
Last night I followed his discussion of this week’s Nepal Glacier disaster, and recorded some of the more striking and informative passages.
First one, above, contains some of the most triggering footage you may have already seen, with Swain’s admonition that, while difficult to watch, it is worthwhile as a reminder of the scale of forces the natural world can bring.

Second clip, Swain puts this week’s events into a more historical perspective, comparing similar disasters in other locations and times.

Below, Swain discusses astounding footage of a gigantic boulder being pushed along in the torrent. The forces involved are immense and irresistible.

Continue reading “The Weekend Wonk: Daniel Swain’s Walk-Through of Nepal’s Apocalypse”