Which is a bummer because Dead Pool 2 was a much better movie.
Below, the same NBC reporter, Jacob Soboroff, has a look at California’s largest reservoir, and the impacts on renewable energy production.
Continue reading “Drought Smacked Lake Mead Could Become “Dead Pool””Nice video about heat pumps, which explains well the advantages of using this energy efficient technology to great reduce electricity demand, but doesn’t answer the question that frequently comes up.
Do heat pumps, which are basically air conditioners that run bi-directionally ( will heat as well as cool) use HFC refrigerants, which are potent greenhouse gases?
Answer is yes, but that’s going to change. Scott Denning explains.
Scott Denning in the Conversation:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized a rule to start eliminating a class of climate-warming chemicals that are widely used as coolants in refrigerators, air conditioners and heat pumps.
If that plan feels like déjà vu, it should.
These chemicals, called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, were commercialized in the 1990s as a replacement for earlier refrigerants that were based on chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs. CFCs were destroying the ozone layer high in the Earth’s atmosphere, which is essential for protecting life from the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.
HFCs are less harmful than CFCs, but they create another problem – they have a strong heat-trapping effect that is contributing to global warming.
Several states have announced plans over the past few years for phasing out HFCs. Now the EPA, following a vote in Congress in 2020, has established federal regulations to cut HFC production and imports starting in 2022, and aims to reduce their production and use by 85% within 15 years.
If HFCs can be phased down globally – as many countries have agreed to do under the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol – that would avoid about half a degree Celsius of temperature rise compared to preindustrial times. China, a major producer of these chemicals, ratified the amendment effective Sept. 15, 2021.
Let’s take a closer look at what HFCs are and what might replace them next.
Refrigerators and air conditioning use a technology known as a heat pump. It sounds almost miraculous – heat pumps use energy to take heat out of a cold place and dump it in a warm place.
Here’s how a refrigerator works: A fluid – CFCs back in the old days, and now HFCs – circulates in the walls of the refrigerator, absorbing the ambient heat to keep the fridge cooled down. As that liquid absorbs the heat, it evaporates. The resulting vapor is pumped to the coils on the back of the refrigerator, where it is condensed back to a liquid under pressure. In the process, the heat that was absorbed from inside the fridge is released into the surrounding room. Air conditioners and home heat pumps do precisely the same thing: they use electric-powered compressors and evaporators to move heat into or out of a house.
Part of the Climate Night event put on by late night shows across networks last night.
The Arctic Ice visualization always puts a capper on the climate year.
Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and neighboring basins appears to have hit its annual minimum extent on September 16, 2021, after waning in the spring and summer. The summertime extent is the twelfth lowest in the satellite record, according to scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA.
The map at the top of this page shows the sea ice extent on September 16, 2021. The ice extent (white) on that day—defined as the total area in which the ice concentration is at least 15 percent—measured 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 million square miles)—higher than recent years. Sea ice extents in 2020 and 2019 were the second and third lowest on record at 3.74 million square kilometers in 2020 and 4.14 million in 2019.
Less sea ice melted in 2021 even as the planet as a whole was warmer than usual—with new temperature records in North America and Eurasia, drought in the U.S. West, and episodes of intense melting on Greenland’s ice sheet. But farther north, conditions stayed generally cool and stormy across the Arctic Ocean. For much of the summer, low pressure over the Arctic brought cloudy skies, which limits the amount of sunlight that can reach the ice and spur melting. Storms can also spread the ice out, slowing the decline of its extent.
Such differences from place-to-place and year-to-year are to be expected. “I don’t see any inconsistency with the Arctic sea ice extent not breaking any records this year despite global temperatures being high,” said Claire Parkinson, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “The key is that the Earth is large and there are differences regionally.”
“We don’t expect sea ice to be lower every year,” added Walt Meier, a sea ice researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, “just like we don’t expect temperatures to be warmer everywhere on Earth every year even with global warming.”
Everyone’s got an Uncle Ernie.
Katharine Hayhoe’s luminous personality shines thru here – we need 10 thousand more like her.
Beyond Alpo? I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And it turns out, some clever entrepreneurs have as well.
A couple of years ago, Anne Carlson — the founder of Jiminy’s, a dog food start-up — conducted a taste test with her dog, Timber.
She filled half of his bowl with the meat-based food the Great Dane was used to eating, and she filled the other half with Jiminy’s Cricket Crave, a kibble made from cricket powder, oats, quinoa, sweet potato and other plant-based ingredients. Then she stood back as he dug in.
Timber’s response was miraculous: He sniffed his options, then devoured the Cricket Crave and licked his lips contentedly, leaving the other side untouched.
“It was one of those moments when you’re like, ‘Oh, this is so good,’ ” Carlson said. This summer, Petco stocked shelves in 800 stores with Jiminy’s dog food. Along with the surprise of seeing pets wolf down insects, Carlson says customers often tell her, “I didn’t even realize I could be fighting climate change with my dog.”
Many pet owners reflexively bark “No!” when their dog or cat prepares to feast on a bug. But despite what scientists call the “yuck factor,” insects could be a sustainable secret ingredient for the booming pet food industry. About a quarter of Americans are cutting back on eating meat, many alarmed by the fact that livestock farming causes up to 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Yet for all the humans observing meatless Mondays, opting for Impossible burgers or swearing off meat entirely, 180 million furry members of U.S. households are fed beef, lamb, poultry or pork in just about every meal.
Continue reading “Cricket Cravings: Could Cootie Kibble Help Canines, Kitties Combat Climate Change?”Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles estimate that dogs and cats account for up to 30 percent of the environmental impact of U.S. meat consumption. If American pets made up their own country, they’d eat the fifth-most meat globally. And fueled by a surge of pandemic pet acquisitions, Americans now spend more than $40 billion annually on pet food and treats — with many stores offering almost exclusively traditional meat-based options.
But there are signs of a shift. Many pet food companies — including the two biggest, Mars and Nestlé — are developing insect-based alternatives for dogs and cats, and according to a Petco survey, 55 percent of customers like the idea of using sustainable alternative protein ingredients in pet food.
Millennials, the fastest-growing contingent of pet owners, are keen on buying environmentally friendly products and willing to pay a premium for them, according to Francesca Mahoney, Petco’s head of sustainability.
National Snow and Ice Information Center:
On September 16, Arctic sea ice likely reached its annual minimum extent of 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 million square miles). The 2021 minimum is the twelfth lowest in the nearly 43-year satellite record. The last 15 years are the lowest 15 sea ice extents in the satellite record. The amount of multi-year ice (ice that has survived at least one summer melt season), is one of the lowest levels in the ice age record, which began in 1984.
In the Antarctic, sea ice extent is now falling rapidly, but it is still too early to assume that the maximum has been reached. The maximum for Antarctic sea ice typically occurs in late September or early October. However, Antarctic sea ice extent is highly variable near the maximum because of storms acting to expand or compact the extended ice edge.
Please note that this is a preliminary announcement. Changing winds or late-season melt could still reduce the Arctic ice extent, as happened in 2005 and 2010. NSIDC scientists will release a full analysis of the Arctic melt season, and discuss the Antarctic winter sea ice growth, in early October.
Can’t happen fast enough.
I’m seeing it right here in my middle American suburban neighborhood. Even my Uber-conservative neighbor across the street went out of his way to show me his new green machine.
For Jared Anderman, of Croton-on-Hudson, New York, switching from gasoline-powered tools to electric ones for lawn care was a no-brainer.
“I’m concerned about climate change and wanted tools that are more eco-friendly, and also quieter. I like listening to music when I do yardwork and this way I can enjoy music or a podcast while I work,” he said. “I could never do that with gas-powered equipment.”
The biggest advantage of all, he says, is maintenance. “Gas mowers are a pain. With electric tools, they boot right up and there’s really no maintenance at all. It’s just about keeping the batteries charged.”
First, he bought an electric lawnmower. Then an electric string trimmer, hedge trimmer and leaf blower. “I don’t have an electric snowblower, yet. But when I do replace the gas snowblower, it’ll be with an electric one,” he says.
There’s a quiet transformation going on in yards across the country. Longstanding complaints about the roar and fumes from gas-powered leaf blowers, mowers and other equipment have grown even louder as more people work from home because of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the quality of zero- to low-emissions electric landscaping equipment has improved markedly, with battery packs that last longer.
“Batteries have changed a lot in the past year alone, and we are there in terms of technology. Now it’s just a matter of getting the word out to professionals and consumers,” says Kurt Morrell, associate vice president for horticulture operations at the New York Botanical Garden.
“Last year we were 90 percent electric on hedge trimmers and this year it’s 100 percent. My guys won’t even touch a gas hedge trimmer anymore,” says Morrell, who oversees the trimming of the garden’s 4,850 linear feet of hedges.
There are even autonomous lawnmowers akin to the Roomba vacuum cleaner.
“They are really taking off, and in the next four or five years you’ll see more robotic mowers in the private sector,” says Morrell.
Morrell, who also teaches aspiring landscaping professionals, says that while electric trimmers and mowers are now as good or better than gas-guzzling versions, cordless electric leaf blowers are still a challenge “because they require a lot of velocity and power, and the weight of the battery at this point is a lot heavier than gas.”
Continue reading “The Quiet Revolution: Electrification of Yard Tools”But the technology is evolving quickly, he says. “When I teach my landscaping management students, who will go on to manage large landscapes, I know they will be using electric equipment.”
