October 2023 – Page 8 – This is Not Cool

Daisy World: Early Insight into Earth’s Balance

In Mike Mann’s new book, Our Fragile Moment, he does a good job reviewing a number of key concepts in Climate change – among them, the Daisy World hypotheses, that was an early, simplified model of how life on Earth, within limits, can operate to maintain climate stability.

Wikipedia:

Daisyworld, a computer simulation, is a hypothetical world orbiting a star whose radiant energy is slowly increasing or decreasing. It is meant to mimic important elements of the Earth-Sun system. James Lovelock and Andrew Watson introduced it in a paper published in 1983^[1] to illustrate the plausibility of the Gaia hypothesis. In the original 1983 version, Daisyworld is seeded with two varieties of daisy as its only life forms: black daisies and white daisies. White petaled daisies reflect light, while black petaled daisies absorb light. The simulation tracks the two daisy populations and the surface temperature of Daisyworld as the sun’s rays grow more powerful. The surface temperature of Daisyworld remains almost constant over a broad range of solar output.

Batteries Bolster Texas Grid for Eclipse (and Other Challenges)

The big eclipse show is still April 8, when a total eclipse will race across the heart of America, and will also cross Texas, though totality will only last for a few minutes.
But eclipses come in pairs, and Texas and the Southwest will see a warm up show next week.

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas):

An annular solar eclipse will pass over the ERCOT region on Saturday, Oct. 14, 2023, impacting solar generation between 10:15 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. CDT. ERCOT has planned for this forecasted reduced generation and expects grid conditions to be normal. You can monitor current and extended grid conditions on our dashboards at http://ercot.com.

Scientific American:

A battery boom is helping to stabilize the Texas power grid, offering a template for utilities that want to cut their greenhouse gases even as air conditioners hum wildly during heat waves.

The growth of batteries was evident last week when energy storage facilities injected a record amount of power into Texas’ electric system. It was badly needed on an evening when the state’s primary grid operator had called on consumers to conserve energy.

“I think it’s a really big deal. I think it’s underappreciated and under-talked about at this point,” said Doug Lewin, an Austin, Texas-based energy consultant who authors the Texas Energy and Power Newsletter. Without batteries, he said, “I think it’s likely that on Thursday night, we would have been in the emergency conditions.”

Global Carbon Emissions Plateau as Clean Energy Booms

Wind Power Monthly:

Ember’s ‘Global Electricity Mid-Year Insights 2023’ report found that global wind and solar energy generation increased by 12% over the first six months of 2023, while global power sector emissions grew by just 0.2% during the same period

The plateauing in fossil fuel emissions contrasted sharply with the rise in wind and solar energy over H1 this year, which were “the only two electricity sources that significantly increased their share in the global power mix” according to Ember.

Growth and generation

The report found that wind and solar together generated 14.3% of global electricity in the first half of 2023 – an increase of 1.5% compared with the same period last year.

However, the increase in both sources of clean power slowed in the first half of 2023 compared to a year ago.

Wind generation increased by 10% – down 6% year-on-year – with an additional 109TWh produced in H1 this year compared with 147TWh last year, the report said.

Meanwhile, increases in solar capacity grew by 16% in the first half of 2023, down from 26% last year.

China leads the world

China — by far the world’s largest energy consumer — continued to lead in wind and solar generation.

The country dominated the rise in wind energy generation in the first half of 2023 and accounted for 91% of the global growth in use of the technology, according to Ember.

The rest of the world lagged behind China, the report authors said.

“The EU, US and Japan are lagging behind China’s progress on wind generation. China achieved a 26% growth in wind generation in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period last year. In comparison, wind generation only grew 4.8% in the EU, while Japan recorded only a 2.4% increase from an already low baseline. The US saw wind generation fall 5.6% due to poor wind conditions,” the report stated.

Cause for concern

Ember warned that wind capacity additions were trending downwards.

According to its report, new wind additions peaked in 2020 when 111GW were added, and fell to 92GW in 2021, before dropping again to 73GW in 2022.

Wind-power generation saw its largest increase in 2021 with the addition of 268TWh, but this slowed to additions of 251TWh in 2022 and just 109TWh in the first half of this year.

The report cited long-standing structural issues which were impacting the rollout of new wind energy projects, including permitting and grid connection delays.

Rare Dolphins Dying in Amazon Heat, Drought

UPDATE:

Ramasmarmy Joins Anti-EV Battery Brigade

New York Times:

Vivek Ramaswamy will make a swing through Michigan on Wednesday as he seeks to capture voters in a swing state seen as a battleground for blue-collar workers.

Both President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump visited the state just days apart last week — Mr. Biden joined the picket line with striking members of the United Automobile Workers, while Mr. Trump spoke at a nonunion factory.

Mr. Ramaswamy’s return to the Great Lakes State on Wednesday will close with a rally opposing plans for an electric vehicle battery factory that has become a flashpoint in the state, heightening U.S.-China-related tensions.

Gotion, a Chinese subsidiary, has sought to a build $2.4 billion electric vehicle battery factory spanning 270 acres in Green Charter Township, a rural Michigan town. Despite the factory’s potential to bolster the local economy, “No Gotion” signs have popped up as residents fear an infiltration by the Chinese Communist Party — though the company insists it has no ideological ties to China or affiliations with political parties.

Big Rapids Pioneer:

“We are in the middle of a war in this country. And the first step to winning a war is knowing that you’re in one at all,” he said.

Washington Post Poll: Most Americans Happy Living with Clean Energy

Again, polling showing what I’ve seen all along.
Americans appreciate the need for clean energy, as well as the undeniable benefits that solar and wind projects bring to their communities.

Media has not been doing a good job of reporting this, as they have been drawn to the “man bites dog” story of “Oh, you mean people don’t want a clean environment? Wow, that’s news!”

Washington Post:

As renewable energy becomes more widespread in the United States, large and bipartisan majorities of Americans say they wouldn’t mind fields of solar panels and wind turbines being built in their communities, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

Three-quarters of all Americans say they would be comfortable living near solar farms while nearly 7 in 10 report feeling the same about wind turbines. And these attitudes appear to remain largely consistent regardless of where people live. According to the poll, 69 percent of residents in rural and suburban areas say they would be comfortable if wind turbines were constructed in their area, as do 66 percent of urban residents.

General comfort with green energy infrastructure crosses party lines, with 66 percent of Republicans saying they are comfortable with a field of solar panels being built in their community and 59 percent comfortable with wind turbines. Among Democrats, 87 percent are comfortable with solar farms and 79 percent with wind farms. By contrast, fewer than half of Democrats or Republicans would welcome a nuclear power plant in their community.

In the United States, widespread support for renewable energy appears to have been fairly consistent over the years, said Leah Stokes, an associate professor of environmental politics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. But while backing renewables remains popular among many Americans, experts say progress can be impeded by a small, yet vocal, opposition, which can be driven in part by the sentiment of “Not in My Backyard,” or NIMBYism.

“Deploying lots of renewable electricity is not a slam dunk,” said Doug Vine, director of energy analysis at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. “We know things like permitting reform and NIMBYism are a challenge for renewable electricity and transmission projects. The closer that these projects get to where many people are, the more challenges that can arise.”

Study: Wealthy and Privileged are Blocking Clean Energy

Leah Stokes of the University of California has a new study of opposition to wind energy that confirms what I’ve been seeing on the ground, and hearing from the farmers, landowners, and local officials I have been interviewing over the years.
Above, I heard over and over again in Montcalm County, Michigan, how wealthy “Lake People”, either retired, or with weekend getaways on local lakes, were active and bankrolling local efforts to shout down, harass, threaten, and bully farmers who wished to site clean energy, whether solar or wind.
As one told me, “When they drive up from Chicago or Detroit, they don’t want to look at them.”

Below, more on Stoke’s work.

University of California at Santa Barbara:

A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers from UC Santa Barbara, the University of Michigan and Gallup Inc. examined wind energy projects throughout the United States and Canada to determine how common opposition is and what factors predict it. The study found that nearly one in five projects faced opposition (17% of wind projects in the U.S. and 18% in Canada). It also found that opposition to wind farms involved small groups of local opponents, and was more likely in whiter communities in the United States and wealthier communities in Canada.

CNN:

Stokes and Rogers said communities of color who are situated closer to power plants running on coal or gas can end up bearing the brunt of the choices of these white and wealthy communities who reject wind power.

“We have coal plants, gas plants, that operate in these communities,” Stokes said. “If you stop building clean energy resources because you don’t want it, what you are doing is imposing pollution onto other people’s backyards.”

Rogers said that while wind projects need to get buy-in from the communities they’re developing in, the study shows that white and richer communities have more power to approve or kill projects.

“We need to be thinking about the way that energy privilege and whiteness and wealth come into decision-making,” Rogers said. “There are lots of people in lots of communities that see real value in wind power development, we shouldn’t allow whiteness or wealth to dictate how much of that gets to happen or doesn’t get to happen.”

GLOF: Lake Outburst Shows Increasing Flash Flood Dangers for India

Another acronym you’ll be hearing more frequently – GLOF – Glacial Lake Outburst Flood.
It’s in the news following a disaster in Northern India, in the Himalayan state of Sikkim.
Himalayan glaciers are melting at an increased rate, forming new meltwater lakes, or adding to existing ones. These lakes are fundamentally unstable, as they are dammed by ice or debris that can give away unpredictably, as happened this week.
Some good explainers below.

Why Tornado Damage is Increasing in the US

And around the world, for that matter. Above, new piece from CNBC.

Here, more in depth explainer of the forces changing the intensity and frequency of severe storms.

Below, I interviewed Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford, an expert in extreme convective storms.
How did his predictions hold up?

Gobsmackingly Bananas: When a Climate Scientist Shakes the Room

In 2014, John Cook and I were interviewing one of the planet’s most respected and widely quoted Glacier experts Eric Rignot, when he dropped a sentence that left our jaws on the floor, and had reverberations well beyond the room for some months.

Related to the West Antarctica Ice Sheet, he said, “Look, we’ve gathered enough information.. this sector is sort of doomed. It’s going to keep retreating, no matter what the climate does..it might retreat faster, if climate warming continues at this pace, it might retreat slower, we don’t know that absolutely for sure.
But the fuse is already blown.
The idea is still, probably, a little bit of a shock for some people in our community, but I’ve been looking at this area long enough to be quite sure about that.”

Dr Rignot, in our chat of 2017, walked that back just a tiny bit, but it almost seems like recent events have trended toward the more alarming side.

This week we had a similar moment, now on Twitter/X, with a post by Zeke Hausfather.
Zeke is one of the smartest people you’re ever going to meet, and also one of the most moderate and carefully spoken. So, this did jump out at me. (JRA-55, fyi is a Japanese temperature data set)

Mike Mann came out with some moderation and nuance, pointing out that the current El Nino (ENSO) that has been kicking in over the summer is causing quite a pop in the monthly and seasonal anomalies, so some eye catching, if not breathtaking, graphs.