Month: April 2021

Google Earth Upgrade: Watch Decades of Climate Change in Seconds

Do we get it now?

Bloomberg Green:

Google Earth has partnered with NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, and Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab to bring users time-lapse images of the planet’s surface—24 million satellite photos taken over 37 years. Together they offer photographic evidence of a planet changing faster than at any time in millennia. Shorelines creep in. Cities blossom. Trees fall. Water reservoirs shrink. Glaciers melt and fracture.

“We can objectively see global warming with our own eyes,” said Rebecca Moore, director of Google Earth. “We hope that this can ground everyone in an objective, common understanding of what’s actually happening on the planet, and inspire action.”

Timelapse, the name of the new Google Earth feature, is the largest video on the planet, according to a statement from the company, requiring 2 million hours to process in cloud computers, and the equivalent of 530,000 high-resolution videos. The tool stitches together nearly 50 years of imagery from the U.S.’s Landsat program, which is run by NASA and the USGS. When combined with images from complementary European Sentinel-2 satellites, Landsat provides the equivalent of complete coverage of the Earth’s surface every two days. Google Earth is expected to update Timelapse about once a year. 

The Timelapse images are stark. In Southwestern Greenland, warmer Atlantic waters and air temperatures are accelerating ice melt.

Tree loss in Brazil in 2020 surged by a quarter over the prior year.

Continue reading “Google Earth Upgrade: Watch Decades of Climate Change in Seconds”

Facebook and Big Oil’s Two Faced Ads

Above: Ad on left served to Facebook users with liberal profiles. On right, ad served to more conservative users.

The Markup:

Liberals on Facebook are given one picture of ExxonMobil. To them, the multibillion-dollar oil giant sells itself as turning over a new leaf, exploring “carbon capture” techniques that put carbon back into the ground.

If you’re a conservative, Exxon has a very different message: “The oil and gas industry is THE engine that powers America’s economy,” reads one ad targeted at conservatives. “Help us make sure unnecessary regulations don’t slow energy growth.”

The Markup found 18 Exxon ads on Facebook targeted to political liberals and 15 to conservatives—many with messages implying a contradictory attitude toward the urgency of adapting to climate change. The ads—and information about their targeting—came from the Ad Observatory at NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy project.

Exxon is one of a handful of companies The Markup found targeting specific, and sometimes conflicting, Facebook ads to people of different political beliefs. Facebook offers a wide array of options for advertisers looking to hit specific groups of people with their messages—from things like “Engaged shopper” to “Friends of Soccer fans”—including several political options like “Likely engagement with US political content (conservative)” and people interested in “Democratic Party (United States).”

ExxonMobil did not respond to several requests for comment.

Much has been made of America’s seemingly growing political polarization, with some commentators blaming Facebook’s algorithmic push to encourage people to join groups that sometimes contain highly partisan, vitriolic content. But whatever the cause, experts say brands’ decisions to appeal to people because of their political leanings indicates that they’re using Facebook’s ad targeting system to take advantage of that polarization.

“As parties have become more sorted and distant from one another,” said Bridget Barrett, a Ph.D. student who researches political communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “political parties may become a market segment in their own right.”

Continue reading “Facebook and Big Oil’s Two Faced Ads”

Coral Sea’s Missing Coral

https://twitter.com/AenesidemusOZ/status/1382274136790102018?s=20

Back-to-back coral bleaching events on isolated atolls in the Coral Sea:

Abstract

Severe bleaching events caused by marine heat waves over the past four decades have now affected almost every coral reef ecosystem in the world. These recurring events have led to major losses of coral cover, with adverse consequences for tropical reef ecosystems and the people who depend on them. Here, we document two consecutive and widespread coral bleaching events on remote atolls in the Coral Sea in 2016 and 2017. In each year, the proportion of colonies that bleached was strongly related to heat exposure (measured as degree heating weeks, DHW, °C-weeks), depth and coral assemblage structure. Bleaching was more severe at higher DHW exposure and at sites with a higher proportion of susceptible taxa. Bleaching was also lower at 6 m than at 2 m depth. Despite the severe bleaching in 2016 on reefs in the central section of the Coral Sea Marine Park, total coral cover was not significantly reduced by 2017, suggesting that most bleached corals survived. Moreover, bleaching was less severe in 2017 despite a higher exposure to heat stress. These results indicate that while the isolation of these oceanic reefs provides no refuge from bleaching, low nutrient levels, high wave energy and proximity to cooler deeper waters may make coral on these reefs more resistant to bleaching-induced mortality.

Can Solar Get Even Cheaper?

Inside Clean Energy:

The plummeting price of electricity from solar panels is one of the driving forces aiding the transition to clean energy.

Government policies and scientific innovation around the world have helped to reduce the average cost of utility-scale solar power by more than 80 percent since 2010, making it the least expensive power source in many, if not most, places.

Now the Department of Energy has set a target of reducing the cost by more than half again by 2030, to an unsubsidized average of 2 cents per kilowatt-hour. That cost, which takes into account the price of construction and operation, would have seemed like a fantasy not long ago.

By taking the least expensive power source and making it much cheaper, the government would shake the foundation of many energy debates and help to hasten the transition away from fossil fuels.

But is the new goal achievable? To answer that, I went to Greg Nemet, a University of Wisconsin public affairs professor whose 2019 book, How Solar Energy Became Cheap, tells the story of how we got to this point.

“This really is an ambitious goal,” he said. “We might not meet it because it’s that ambitious.”

But the decision to prioritize this goal is a good one, even if success is not a forgone conclusion, he said.

For some perspective, the International Renewable Energy Agency listed 2 cents per kilowatt-hour by 2030 as the very lowest end of a range of possibilities in a 2019 report.

Nemet said it’s important to note, when talking about average prices, that the actual price would be lower in sunnier regions and higher in those that get less sun. The reason for the regional variation is that sunnier places can get more electricity per unit of system capacity than places with less sun. So solar panels are more efficient in, say, California, than they are in Seattle or Milwaukee.

But he expects that a continuing decrease in solar electricity costs will have the greatest effect in the northern, less sunny regions, because solar may not yet be the least expensive option there, and it would become the cheapest alternative, making projects more attractive to developers.

Nemet also anticipates benefits from providing access to electricity in poorer countries where power systems are not nearly as well-developed as they are here. Inexpensive solar power would increase access to electricity.

Canary Media:

Terabase Energy is on a mission to drive down utility-scale solar power prices to less than $0.01 per kilowatt-hour by 2025, by using software, automation and modeling to optimize power-plant operation. The VC-funded startup just acquired another startup to help realize that goal.

Terabase’s aggressive cost target far exceeds the U.S. DOE’s SunShot 2030 goal of $0.03 per kWh for utility-scale photovoltaics by 2025. The DOE’s most recent solar funding went toward hardware improvements in nonsilicon solar approaches such as perovskites, cadmium-telluride thin films and next-generation concentrated solar power. The DOE target cuts the cost of solar energy by 60% within the next 10 years.

Continue reading “Can Solar Get Even Cheaper?”

Texas Near-Miss Stems from Off-Line Fossil Plants

Above, TV news. report from WFAA Dallas-Ft Worth.
Below, KUT Austin.

KUT Austin:

Two months after blackouts gripped the state, killing hundreds, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas again warned of a possible energy emergency on the state grid Tuesday.

ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, said slightly warmer-than-expected weather was part of the problem. The modestly higher temperatures pushed electricity demand above what was expected and forced ERCOT to call on consumers to conserve.

But Dan Cohan is not buying that explanation.

Tuesday “should have been a very easy day for ERCOT to meet,” said Cohan, a professor of environmental engineering at Rice University. “Demand was only 49 gigawatts. They expect the peak in the spring to be 65 gigawatts, in the summer to hit 80.”

The real problem facing the grid, he said, was insufficient electricity supply. Drawing from U.S. Energy Information Administration data, Cohan said he thinks he knows where things went wrong.

“One of the state’s four nuclear reactors is down, and about 40 percent of our coal capacity is down, but the majority of the power capacity that’s down is coming from our gas power plants,” he said.

These generators comprise what analysts often call Texas’ “thermal fleet” of power plants. 

Spring is a normal time of year for them to undergo routine maintenance. In a press conference Tuesday evening, ERCOT described the outages as fairly typical for this time of year.

“This is typically the time of year where we allow a lot of maintenance outages for units that are getting ready for the summer,” said Woody Rickerson, vice president of grid planning and operations at ERCOT. 

“There are currently about 32,000 megawatts of outages on the system, maintenance outages,” he later said,” and that’s not an abnormal number for this time of year.”

But analysts, and even ERCOT’s own data, show that’s not true.

The number of power plant outages this spring is “higher than we’ve seen in previous years,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research associate at UT’s Webber Energy Group.

A graph shared at ERCOT’s Tuesday board meeting also showed increased power plant outages due to system growth and maintenance from February’s winter storm.

The reason why so many power plants have been offline remains opaque. ERCOT concedes that some generators and transmission infrastructure is still in need of repairs as a result of February’s storm and blackout.

But, again, ERCOT’s Rickerson said that was not a main factor for Tuesday’s near-miss on the grid.

That leaves the possibility that ERCOT simply allowed too many power plants to go offline for routine repairs at the same time. The grid operator says it automatically approves power plant outage requests it receives 45 days ahead of time.

Continue reading “Texas Near-Miss Stems from Off-Line Fossil Plants”

Why so Tight in Texas?

Daniel Cohan of Rice University has a Twitter Thread on yesterday’s tight electricity event in Texas.

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Back near $2,000/MWh on a mild spring day, with many of our power plants down for maintenance


Awfully tight for a mild spring day

Image

Power plant outages have remained high since the February blackouts
ercot.com/content/wcm/ke…

Continue reading “Why so Tight in Texas?”

Climate Conscious Corporations Clamor for Carbon Cuts. Cool.

If you want your grandchildren to have a life, you qualify as “woke”.

Major corporate leaders tell Biden he can “count on their support” for aggressive carbon cuts.

New York Times:

WASHINGTON — More than 300 businesses, including Google, McDonalds and Walmart, are pushing the Biden administration to nearly double the United States’ target for cuts to planet-warming emissions ahead of an April 22 global summit on climate change.

In a letter to President Biden released on Tuesday morning, chief executive officers from some of the nation’s largest companies will call on the administration to set a new Paris Agreement goal of slashing the nation’s carbon dioxide, methane and other planet-warming emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

That is roughly what most major environmental groups want, and the corporate executives called the target “ambitious and attainable.”

Former President Donald J. Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement, eradicating emissions reduction targets set by the Obama administration that many environmentalists had seen as too weak. President Obama had pledged to cut national emissions 26 percent to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

With Mr. Biden promising to tackle climate change intensely, climate change activists are watching to see how much more ambitious his targets will be than those set when he was vice president. Mr. Biden, who returned the United States to the Paris Agreement on Inauguration Day, has said the United States will announce fresh targets for the Paris Agreement on or before a virtual summit of world leaders he is hosting around Earth Day next week.

According to two administration officials familiar with the deliberations, the target is expected to be a range that will include a 50 percent reduction in emissions.

Organizers of the business letter said they hoped such a message coming from the private sector — including electric utilities like Exelon and Pacific Gas & Electric, as well as dozens of companies based in Republican districts — would resonate strongly with Congress. Other signatories include Target, Verizon and Altria Group, the parent company of the tobacco giant Philip Morris USA, which was once considered a firm ally of the Republican Party, and Philip Morris International.

The effort also underscores the delicate path corporate leaders are treading in the post-Trump era. Their decisions to break with Republicans on issues like voting rights and racial justice have rankled their traditional allies in the G.O.P. Pressing the Biden administration to aggressively combat climate change could further alienate Republicans, who have long fought emissions regulations as “job killers” that would make American business less competitive.

Text of Letter below:

Continue reading “Climate Conscious Corporations Clamor for Carbon Cuts. Cool.”

People Who Need Beeple: NFTs Yet Another Climate Headache

2 weeks ago I did not know what an NFT (Non Fungible Token) was.
Not sure I do today, but they’re yet another problem inflicted on us by people who have too much time on their hands.

Artnet:

After a string of high-profile sales in February and March, the red-hot market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is already showing signs of cooling—but whether this is a bursting bubble or merely a course correction remains to be seen.

On March 11, digital artist Mike “Beeple” Winkelmann shattered all expectations with the $69 million sale of his work Everydays—The First 5000 Days. Suddenly, he was the third-most-expensive living artist, ranked behind only Jeff Koons and David Hockney.

But around a month later, average daily NFT sales have fallen around 70 percent, from a high of $19.3 million in the second week of March to $5.5 million this week, according to Nonfungible.com, which tracks various NFT marketplaces (not including Christie’s).

“It’s whiplash,” Robert Norton, the chief executive and co-founder of NFT art company Verisart, told Artnet News. “The froth and excitement wasn’t sustainable at the levels we saw in February and March.”

New York Times:

When Chris Precht, an Austrian architect and artist, first learned about nonfungible tokens, the digital collectibles taking the art world by storm, he was so enthralled, he said, he “felt like a little kid again.”

So Mr. Precht, who is known for his work on ecological architecture, was devastated to learn that the artworks, known as NFTs, have an environmental footprint as mind-boggling as the gold-rush frenzy they’ve whipped up.

“The numbers are just crushing,” he said from his studio in Pfarrwerfen, Austria, announcing that he was canceling his plans, one of a growing number of artists who are swearing off NFTs, despite the sky-high sums some have fetched at auctions. “As much as it hurts financially and mentally, I can’t.”

Financially, for sure. Last month, a montage of art that had been turned into an NFT by the digital artist known as Beeple sold for more than $69 million at a Christie’s online auction. (Also last month, an NFT created from a New York Times technology column sold for more than $500,000, with the proceeds going to the Neediest Cases Fund, a Times-affiliated charity.)

But, by Mr. Precht’s own calculations, creating the 300 items of digital art that he had planned to sell, 100 each of three art pieces, would have burned through the same amount of electricity that an average European would otherwise use in two decades, he said in an Instagram video late last month.

What in the (warming) world?

An NFT is a piece of artwork stamped with a unique string of code and stored on a virtual ledger called a blockchain. Fanned by viral marketing, hubris and perhaps some pandemic ennui, interest in the NFT market has exploded, driving up the price of digital artworks to fantastical levels.

But blockchain technology, which also forms the basis of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, comes with enormous greenhouse-gas emissions.

Example of Beeple’s work
Continue reading “People Who Need Beeple: NFTs Yet Another Climate Headache”

Heads up Texas

UPDATE: Crisis averted

Dallas Morning News:

This is a developing story and is being continuously updated.

Texas’ power grid operator asked for customers to conserve energy Tuesday afternoon, adding it isn’t expecting outages but may enter emergency conditions this afternoon due to “higher-than forecasted demand” plus typical outages by power generators.

The request comes almost two months after Texas’ deep freeze in mid-February when millions of customers lost power and more than 100 people died, triggering legislation, resignations of top energy regulatory officials and lawsuits.

Temperatures across Texas Tuesday were mostly seasonable, in the 70s and 80s, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) issued the request, but the agency cited a stalled cold front that didn’t make its way through the state as predicted.

It also appeared that several thermal generating sources — natural gas, nuclear and coal — were offline due to maintenance. ERCOT said it did not expect power outages.

At the news conference, Woody Rickerson, ERCOT’s vice president of grid planning and operations, explained that a number of generators were undergoing planned maintenance today because forecasts estimated cooler temperatures for the day. However, he said when a forecasted cold front stalled, the higher Texas temperatures created a demand problem.

The maintenance going on now is expected for this time of year. April outages are already normally higher, but definitely a small number of generators are still out from the winter storm. Rickerson said this maintenance needs to be happening right now in order for the grid to be ready in the summer months, when ERCOT can’t afford for much generation to be offline.

Misty M on Twitter speaks for all of us:

https://twitter.com/mwi2lcox/status/1382112776873771011?s=20