Juice Media has done it again.
Month: March 2022
NASA: Global Temperature Rise Visualized
Teaser: Wind Turbines Prominent in Star Trek Future World
This is (Yet Another) Fossil Fuel War
Not a huge fan of Chris Mathews (where the hell did he go?) but he nailed it here.
The “Climategate” email fraud of 2009-10, was a disaster for humanity in the way it set back public understanding of climate science. Those stolen emails first showed up on a Russian server, and I know many of the scientists involved in the attack would tell you they believe that Russia had something to do with that attack.
The transition to clean energy and away from oil, gas and coal is unstoppable. Russia is a nightmarish combination of an outlaw government with nuclear weapons, all but completely reliant, like a global drug dealer, on maintaining the addiction to its product. That income stream is now in serious danger, and I’ve had nightmares for the last decade of what Russia’s end game might be as they see their livelihood slipping away.
For Svitlana Krakovska, Ukraine’s leading climate scientist, it was meant to be the week where eight years of work culminated in a landmark UN report exposing the havoc the climate crisis is causing the world.
But then the bombs started to crunch into Kyiv.
Krakovska, the head of a delegation of 11 Ukrainian scientists, struggled to help finalize the vast Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report ahead of its release on 28 February even as Russian forces launched their invasion. “I told colleagues that as long as we have the internet and no bombs over our heads we will continue,” she said.
But her team, scattered across the country, started to peel away – one had to rush to an air raid shelter in Kharkiv, others decided to flee completely, internet connections spluttered, one close friend of a delegate was killed in the fighting. International colleagues had to express their sympathies and press on with the report.
Krakovska’s four children sheltered with her in their Kyiv home as a missile struck a nearby building, emitting an ear-splitting roar. A fire from a separate strike sent up a plume of smoke that blotted the sky. “This blitzkrieg by [Vladimir] Putin is unbelievable, it is terrorism against the Ukrainian people,” she said.
Both the invasion and IPCC report crystallized for Krakovska the human, economic and geopolitical catastrophe of fossil fuels. About half of the world’s population is now acutely vulnerable to disasters stemming from the burning of fossil fuels, the IPCC report found, while Russia’s military might is underpinned by wealth garnered from the country’s vast oil and gas reserves.
“I started to think about the parallels between climate change and this war and it’s clear that the roots of both these threats to humanity are found in fossil fuels,” said Krakovska.
“Burning oil, gas and coal is causing warming and impacts we need to adapt to. And Russia sells these resources and uses the money to buy weapons. Other countries are dependent upon these fossil fuels, they don’t make themselves free of them. This is a fossil fuel war. It’s clear we cannot continue to live this way, it will destroy our civilization.”
Continue reading “This is (Yet Another) Fossil Fuel War”The IPCC report, described by António Guterres, the UN secretary general, as an “atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership”, is the most comprehensive catalogue yet of the consequences of global heating. Extreme heat and the spread of disease is killing people around the world, about 12 million people are being displaced by floods and droughts each year and the viability of food-producing land is shrinking.
Temperature Spikes in Arctic
Possible new mechanism for warming acceleration in Arctic, – Atmospheric River injecting large volumes of warmth and moisture.
A record-breaking “bomb cyclone” that began its development over the U.S. East Coast on Friday is bringing an exceptional insurgence of mild air to the Arctic. Temperatures around 50 degrees (28 Celsius) above normal could visit the North Pole on Wednesday, climbing to near the freezing mark.
It’s a highly unusual and extreme bout of circumstances, particularly considering the North Pole is still in a nearly six-month period of darkness known as “polar night.” The sun doesn’t fully rise above the horizon between fall and spring equinoxes, contributing to the bone-chilling temperatures customary to the inhospitable region.
Highs in the lower 30s (0 Celsius) are not terribly unusual in the summertime, but they’re far from the norm in winter. The mild temperatures are also accompanied by liquid rain at far northern latitudes, hastening the seasonal melting of sea ice.
“Looking back over the last few decades, we can clearly see a trend in warming, particularly in the ‘cold season’ in the Arctic,” Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, wrote in an email. “It’s not surprising that warm air is busting through into the Arctic this year. In general we expect to see more and more of these events in the future.”
Temperatures averaged over the high Arctic north of 80 degrees latitude are about 25 degrees (14 Celsius) above normal. Some forecast models indicate small areas in the Arctic, including near the North Pole, could experience temperatures as much as 45 to 54 degrees (25 to 30 Celsius) above normal Wednesday and Thursday.
In Hopen, an island off Svalbard in the Barents Sea at 76 degrees north latitude, the temperature recently hit 39 degrees (3.9 Celsius), its highest March temperature on record.
Arctic Ice Declining at “Frightening Rate”
Description:
The Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN 22) surface through thick polar ice. This video is from Exercise (ICEX) 2018 in BEAUFORT SEA, Arctic Ocean.
New satellite data has revealed the Arctic is melting at a “frightening rate” due to the excess heat caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.
End-of-season Arctic multiyear sea ice – the ice that persists over several years – was roughly 50 centimeters (1.6 feet) thinner in 2021 than it was in 2019, the figures show, a drop of around 16 percent in just three years. It’s being replaced by less permanent seasonal sea ice that melts completely every summer.
Over the past 18 years, Arctic Ocean winter sea ice has lost one-third of its volume – a staggering figure that may have been underestimated in the past, says the research. It’s the first study to use years of satellite data to estimate both ice thickness and the depth of snow on top.
“Arctic snow depth, sea ice thickness and volume are three very challenging measurements to obtain,” says polar scientist Ron Kwok, from the University of Washington.
“The key takeaway for me is the remarkable loss of Arctic winter sea ice volume – one-third of the winter ice volume lost over just 18 years – that accompanied a widely reported loss of old, thick Arctic sea ice and decline in end-of-summer ice extent.”
The data comes from the ICESat-2 and radar CryoSat-2 satellites orbiting Earth.
Continue reading “Arctic Ice Declining at “Frightening Rate””What makes the study important is the way it combines the LiDAR technology of ICESat-2, which was launched three years ago, and the radar technology of CryoSat-2. While LiDAR uses laser pulses and radar uses radio waves, they’re both detecting objects (in this case snow and ice) based on the reflections being bounced back at them.
Tracking the Price of Gasoline
Hugh Daigle is a Professor at the University of Texas.
I’ve been getting a lot of requests to explain what’s going on with oil/gasoline prices rn, so I made a plot of weekly average gasoline prices and WTI spot prices (both from @EIAgov) going back to May 2020 with some key dates.
First, notice how correlated the two trends are. Remember, according to EIA as of January 2022 56% of the cost of gasoline was crude costs:
There are 3 things going on: COVID, domestic politics, and international politics. Look at the increase in prices from November 2020 through January 2021. This corresponded w/ anticipated change in presidential administrations (& more COVID relief $$) and both @pfizer and @moderna_tx reporting vaccine test results. However, after the American Rescue Plan (ARP) was enacted in March 2021, the rate of increase really slowed down. I don’t have a good explanation for this.
Note the drops in WTI price corresponding to the Delta wave and the first reports of Omicron, along with plateaus in gasoline prices.
The start of the big price increase we are dealing with today seems to coincide with the @nytimes article that really first laid bare the US intelligence on what Russia was planning wrt #Ukraine: nytimes.com/2021/12/04/us/…
And then a huge increase after the start of the invasion. So, it’s not really one thing driving gasoline and oil prices: it’s domestic and global politics superimposed on a background of COVID recovery.
So then I get this email “Survey” from my singularly mediocre Republican Rep, John Moolenaar. (Michigan – 4th)
Continue reading “Tracking the Price of Gasoline”Chernobyl Update: How to Monitor Nuclear Plants in a War Zone?
Life in Hell: Senate Candidate asks “Why are there still Apes?”
And you thought that was only something you’d hear in a moronic discussion on your Cousin Fuzzy’s Facebook page.
Nope, now it’s part of the Senate campaign.
Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker cast doubt on the theory of evolution in recent remarks, saying the fact that apes and humans coexist disproves accepted science.
“At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not? … If that is true, why are there still apes? Think about it,” Herschel said in an appearance at Sugar Hill Church in Georgia on Sunday.
“Now you’re getting too smart for us, Herschel,” lead pastor Chuck Allen responded.
Walker is currently the front-runner in the GOP contest to challenge Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) in November. He’s a former NFL star who has the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, and he’s outspoken about his Christian faith.
Walker is hardly the first GOP candidate who has run for office questioning evolution.
Humans did not evolve from the apes that you see at the zoo. Rather, humans and apes have a common (and now extinct) ancestor that lived roughly 10 million years ago. Technically, all humans are apes, but that doesn’t mean that chimpanzees are one step away from becoming people. Walker’s summary of evolution is incorrect, and there’s nothing incompatible about humans coexisting with other apes.
Note: Mr Walker is not the first Georgia politician to be science-challenged.
Continue reading “Life in Hell: Senate Candidate asks “Why are there still Apes?””Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) tore into scientists as tools of the devil in a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet last month.
“All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell,” Broun said. “And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”
According to Broun, the scientific plot was primarily concerned with hiding the true age of the Earth. Broun serves on the House Science Committee, which came under scrutiny recently after another one of its Republican members, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), suggested that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses against pregnancy.
“You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth,” he said. “I don’t believe that the Earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.”
Broun — a physician, with an M.D. and a B.S. in chemistry — is generally considered to be among the most conservative members of Congress, if not the most. He drew national attention in 2010 for saying he did not know if President Obama was an American citizen.
Are Lithium Batteries as Bad as Oil? Spoiler, No.
Global coal production about 8 billion tons annually. Global Lithium production about 80,000 tons.
We literally are mining 100,000 times more coal than lithium, forgetting all the mountain tops and overburden that has to be stripped and blasted to get it.
Then add in all the oil drilling, fracking, etc.
Even if Lithium extraction goes up by 30 or 40x, which are the estimates I’ve seen, it’s orders of magnitude lower.
And Lithium can be recycled…..
Energy wonk Christian Roselund on Twitter:
There’s been a line that’s been going around the internet lately, it is various shades of “Lithium ion batteries require mining. Doesn’t that mean they are as bad as oil?”
The answer is: No. It doesn’t.
Internet trolls make this association in a crude form. But I also sometimes hear a more refined version of this false equivalency from knowledgeable people. I find the latter puzzling, but since it’s out there I’ll go into why downsides of lithium-ion & oil are not comparable.
First: climate. One of these things is a main contributor to the #climatecrisis-through the extraction, transport, and use (mostly burning) of petroleum in various forms.
Lithium ion has to be mined. That’s the problem. Even end of life disposal just isn’t that big a deal. (I’ll add, in fact, Lithium recycling is a growth industry)
But mining is also bad/damaging! I hear you say. Yes, mining is pretty bad.
This was the Deepwater Horizon oil “spill.” I was in New Orleans when it happened, with my pregnant ex. 210 *million* gallons of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico.
To hide the problem (not fix it), BP dumped 2 million gallons on a dispersant called “Corexit” on the spill and sprayed it over coastal communities.
National Institute of Health links some of the chemicals in Corexit w/ cancer & birth defects.
I could go on and on about how Deepwater Horizon devastated coastal communities and Louisiana’s fishing industry, the many tragic health outcomes of those who participated in the “Vessel of Opportunity” program, and so on.
But Deepwater Horizon was just one oil spill of many.
Continue reading “Are Lithium Batteries as Bad as Oil? Spoiler, No.”We could also talk about what oil companies like Shell have done in nations like Nigeria.