New Scientist reports:
Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that closed Europe’s airspace and stumped English-speaking newscasters trying to pronounce its name, is estimated to have emitted between 150,000 and 300,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a day. That’s less than the grounded flights would have emitted, making it the first carbon-negative volcano.
How do you pronounce that?
Continue reading “Climate Fun Facts: First Carbon Negative Volcanic Eruption”
What passes for a killer graphic in the denialist community is a pastiche of Time Magazine covers that purports to make the point that “Those Crazy Warmers – No matter what happens, it’s always due to Global Warming!”
No, that is not it below. You can find the real one in the usual places, but I only post reality on this blog.
It appeals to the bonehead base, I get that. And for those Palin-drones at the office cooler, it’s as far as the reasoning process is going to go. Call me elitist, but rather than distorting images from Pop culture, I prefer to actually learn from the advanced technology we’ve spent so much money on over the last 50 years, and find out what it’s telling us about how the Planet is behaving.
That’s why the image above, from the Physical Science Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Lab appeals. It shows us what is really happening. See my take on denialist logic below.
“Can we design something that begins to replicate what a plant does?… in principle, we can design something better….. Can we go from water, to oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, to hydrocarbon fuel?”
Steven Chu’s description at the National Press Club of exciting new prospects for creating carbon neutral, or maybe even carbon negative(?) fuel using sophisticated solar processes. The invaluable Greencarcongress has a diagram of the emerging technology.
But I thought increased CO2 would cause crops to double and triple! After all, indoor hemp growers pump CO2 into their basement grow rooms to increase their output. Isn’t the planet just like a fluorescent lit closet in a lab, or your neighbor’s basement?
When Russia had to ban wheat exports this past summer due to losses from the worst heatwave in 1000 years, – grain prices shot up around the planet. Now, according to the Telegraph, the worst spring floods in Australian history are raising questions about another major grain exporter’s output.
This video covered the paradox.
YERT – Your Environmental Road Trip is a project, a film, an event, and a small group of very creative and enthusiastic people pushing a simple message. Humans can not only survive in this century, but thrive. This is a clip from their evolving film project, soon to be screening near you.
In a speech at the University of Oregon, James Hansen, NASA’s chief atmospheric scientist, walks listeners thru the most recent geologic periods, and speaks to the commonly heard climate canard, “It’s been hotter in earth’s history before – so what’s the big deal?’
For the first century of the electrified age – one fundamental principle has shaped the way electricity is generated and used. The moment a pulse of electrical energy is created, it will instantly be put to use. Electrical Grids are built with this fundamental physical fact in mind, and the idea of being able to generate power at one moment, and use it sometime later has never been an assumption for engineers, economists, or designers.
Now, that’s changing. The tired repetition of “What do you do when the sun/wind stops shining/blowing?” that anti-science types think is a showstopper has been left behind by reality quite a while ago. We are entering the age of energy storage, when energy will be stored, saved, and moved around in ways unimaginable decades ago.
Think of this disruptive technology as Tivo for Megawatts.
Continue reading “Tivo for Megawatts. Storing the Sun in Salts.”
NPR Story:
Days of pounding rain last week left much of northeastern Australia swamped by a sea of muddy water, with flooding affecting about 200,000 people in an area larger than France and Germany combined. The rain has stopped, but rivers are still rising and overflowing into low-lying communities as the water moves toward the ocean.
I haven’t been able to find the audio, but the host interviewed a Red Cross operative in the area, resolutely avoided the question of what might have caused this, except to ask, rhetorically, “What might have caused this?..”
Continue reading “Queensland Floods. “An area the size of France and Germany Combined””
Project Gulf Impact is working to keep this story alive. Here’s a sampling of their work. Full channel here.
A clean up worker relates his experience – uploaded in August.
Now a new, December 31 interview with Kindra Arnesen, the fisherman’s wife who has become the public face of the impacted gulf post population.
Continue reading ““People are actually getting sick, all over the gulf coast…””
