Month: September 2023

Fox News: Solar Panels are Racist

Neo-Nazis are “very fine people”.
Solar panels? Now, those are racist.

New York Times:

With its abundant sunlight, natural resources and undeveloped land, Africa has 60 percent of the world’s solar energy potential and almost a third of the minerals that will be needed to electrify transportation and the power grid.

But much of that potential is untapped. Africa produces just a sliver of its electricity with renewable technologies such as wind and solar.

Climate change is expected to take a deadly toll on the vulnerable countries that have produced only a tiny fraction of the emissions that are dangerously heating the planet. And 600 million people in Africa, or about 43 percent of the continent’s population, have little or no access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency.

These are among the many reasons that the world’s industrialized countries, which are largely responsible for the pollution that is causing climate change, need to invest in Africa’s renewable energy transition, Mwangi said.

As the world seeks to limit additional global warming, powering Africa with renewables rather than fossil fuels is an easy way to avoid new emissions. “The cheapest fossil fuel infrastructure to shut down is the one you haven’t built yet,” he said. “The cheapest agricultural system to clean up is the one that was regenerative from the start.”

If Africa can build its clean power infrastructure from the ground up, it will be cleaner to operate energy-intensive industries like manufacturing on the continent, Mwangi added. And with much of Africa’s wilderness still intact, the continent is also primed to be a leader in carbon removal.

Below: more on the “benefts” of fossil fuels for Africa’s poor.

Continue reading “Fox News: Solar Panels are Racist”

Stronger Storms Mean MUCH Higher Damage Potential

A Cat 5 storm is 5 x more damaging than a Cat 1 storm, right?

Nope. 429 x more damage potential.

Meteorologist Chris Gloninger on Storm Lee’s rapid intensification.

Below, “It’s the high end events that are most destructive”.

If you have not seen Kerry Emanuel’s discussion of hurricanes and climate, do so.

Hardening the Grid for Climate Impacts

There is no economic leadership for the United States without an urgent restructuring of the power grid with distributed energy, solar, wind, and storage, in mind.

Just last week, the Texas grid came perilously close to crashing yet again.

NBC Ft Worth:

Besides low reserves, ERCOT said it issued Wednesday’s emergency alert because of a “drop in frequency,” which refers to the generation of electrical power. A spokesperson for ERCOT did not immediately return an email seeking comment on what caused the drop in frequency.

Thomas Overbye, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Texas A&M University, said such a frequency drop is usually caused by a large power plant going offline, which could have a significant impact.

“These generators have been running, you know, a lot all summer. So that means that maintenance that we might want to do on a generator, they’re probably deferring into the time when the temperatures are a little cooler,” said Overbye, who also is director of the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Smart Grid Center.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said improvements since 2021 have stabilized the grid. Earlier this year, Texas lawmakers passed bills aimed at luring developers to generate more “on-demand” electricity, but the legislation did not extend to renewable sources.

Many Texans remain skeptical of the grid’s reliability.

San Antonio Express News:

The state’s grid operator pinned the blame for a hiccup that led to a grid emergency this week on inadequacies in the infrastructure it uses to move power across the state.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas said late Thursday that speculation that a gas- or coal-fired power plant tripped offline was incorrect. Rather, it pointed to what it called “transmission limitations” that restricted its ability to move power from South Texas — where wind power was plentiful — to where it was needed elsewhere in the state.

“Limitations,” grid experts said, could either mean a transmission line failed or that a pathway for power became so overloaded during the evening’s high-demand period that it ceased being able to function.

Continue reading “Hardening the Grid for Climate Impacts”

New Heat Pumps Use Sound to Heat/Cool

BlueHeart Energy‘s system works like Equium’s, with acoustic drivers compressing and expanding helium within a sealed tubular circuit to achieve heat exchange. (Credit: BlueHeart Energy)

New Tech could disrupt Heat Pump industry.

Direct Industry:

Residential heating systems are a major source of carbon emissions in the European Union, with fossil fuel-based heating accounting for approximately 80% of heating systems. If electric heat pumps are a more environmentally friendly option, they are not always efficient enough to warrant replacing gas heating in every household, especially when compared to newer boilers. Two European start-ups are developing a new generation of heat pumps that use thermoacoustic technology. They could offer a more efficient and eco-friendly solution. 

Residential heating systems are one of the main culprits of carbon emissions in the European Union. According to recent estimates, about 80% of residential heating is still based on fossil fuel, as most houses use gas boilers to heat water. Electric heat pumps, especially when paired with renewable energy sources, would represent a better option, but their efficiency, when compared to recently developed boilers, is not always high enough to justify swapping out gas heating in every home. 

French Company Equium Develops Thermoacoustics Heat Pumps

A new generation of heat pumps based on thermoacoustic technology could soon change all that. French startup Equium sits at the forefront of the new wave of startups applying thermoacoustics to heat pumps. The company recently unveiled a new heat pump core that can produce about 3 to 4 kW of heat for every kW of power drawn into the system. The device makes it possible to build refrigerant-free heat pumps capable of heating water for domestic usage up to 80° Celsius while also reaching lower temperatures for air cooling.

The ability to reach higher or lower temperatures and the lack of an on/off cycle are two main advantages of Equium’s thermoacoustic heat-pump solution and the main reason why thermoacoustic heat pumps can reach a better Season Coefficient of Performance (SCOP) than traditional pumps. 

In the pump core, an acoustic wave emitted by hi-fi speakers is used to compress or expand helium contained within a vessel at a pressure of 30 bars, which heats or cools down the water in the pump core. Using a non-toxic and non-flammable gas such as helium instead of refrigerants is another benefit compared to traditional pumps’ HFC/HFO fluids.

According to Philippe Loyer, Product Manager at Equium,

“At Equium, we develop the ‘core’ of the heat pump that will be integrated by our pump manufacturing partners. One of our partners is ARKTEOS, a medium-sized company based in France. We are also in discussion with a bigger company for scaling, and we expect to go to market in 2024”. 

Continue reading “New Heat Pumps Use Sound to Heat/Cool”

Climate Protests: Productive or No?

My biggest peeve against climate radicals is the tendency to lump potential allies in with obvious fossil fuel villains. Targeting is important.

Above, climate protesters at the US Open rubbed some fans the wrong way.
Did it help the cause?

Below, Tennis player Coco Gauff, whose match was interrupted, says she sympathizes with the protesters goals.

In another incident, protesters showed up at an orchestra concert

Continue reading “Climate Protests: Productive or No?”

“Prophet” – Maui Fire Caused by Demonic Dragon

Right Wing Watch – Description:

Self-proclaimed “prophet” Charlie Shamp claims that he had a prophetic vision of a fire-breathing dragon unleashing a “demonic attack” on Hawaii one year before the recent wildfires. The reason for the attack? The legality of abortion, of course.
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This is the cutting edge of Climate Denial. Write it down.
Slightly different wrinkle from WRAL, which I honestly can’t tell if it’s satire or not:

If a proper volcanic eruption could occur right now, it would have two positive effects. First, it would cool the planet down for a year or two without any human action required. Humanity could benefit from this respite. Otherwise, the heat waves we experienced this summer will continue getting worse. Second, it would show humanity that planetary cooling through stratospheric injection of aerosols can work. Humanity might be far more likely to start artificially injecting aerosols itself, rather than experience the temperature rebound that occurs once the effects of the eruption clear out. The eruption would show humanity what is possible in terms of global cooling through aerosol injection.

So please, if you are religious and praying anyway, please pray for a proper volcanic eruption to occur. The sooner the better. Otherwise, global heating will continue to get worse and worse in the years to come. The only alternative is for world leaders to get their collective acts together and start an organized, well-funded, globally-supported aerosol injection program. But what is the chance of this happening anytime soon?

Trailer: “Hotshot” – the Ultimate Wildfire Experience

No trailer on youtube yet.

It’s Never Over:

Hollywood has taken a few whacks at capturing the wildland fire experience. They’re visually excellent, but consistently unauthentic — a complaint I have heard and read countless times — and those movies have ranged from okay to terrible. Now, out of the blue — or the black — comes Hotshot, a genuinely fine documentary about what it’s like to work on a hotshot crew and fight some truly nasty fires. Be glad you can’t feel the heat. This movie rewrites the definition of getting a little too close to the action.

The person you see most in the film is Justine Gude, who was a squad boss on the Texas Canyon IHC. The crew is one of five hotshot crews on southern California’s Angeles National Forest. She goes the extra mile in all aspects to ensure she’s up to snuff to fight wildfires, and to make sure everyone survives each shift. Based on the footage in the film, no one gives Justine any more or any less crap than anyone else gets.

The narrator is Gabriel Kirkpatrick Mann, who also wrote, directed, and shot the film. The project took six years to complete. He finished shooting in 2020 and completed editing in 2022; the film has only recently been released for streaming.

“If I had only two years [to complete the film] it may have been more like Top Gun, more like rah rah stuff,” said Mann. As the movie turned out, it is haunting, intimate, wrenching, and absolutely gorgeous.

The film is unusual in that it is a documentary without interviews. A big part of that was because, when working with hotshots when you’re not a hotshot, it can be difficult to get them to open up. “They don’t want to be on camera. I was the fly on the wall shooting candid video.”

“There were things they didn’t want to say on camera, so I was saying it for them. I was saying what they told me.” And it works well. Watching Hotshot is like an illustrated story: the visuals dovetail perfectly with what Mann is saying. The narration has a conversational tone and an easy pace.