Climate not just threatening coffee, but Cocoa as well.
Below.
Month: February 2024
Super Bowl will Be Solar Powered
The Deep State has it wired.
Taylor Swift’s winning touchdown reception, under solar powered lights.
When the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers face off in Las Vegas this Sunday, they’ll be doing so under lights powered by renewable energy. Allegiant Stadium, this year’s Super Bowl host, gets 100% of its power from renewable sources.
The stadium actually achieved that milestone in October, according to a press release from the Las Vegas Raiders, the stadium’s main tenant. The team and the stadium’s website don’t clearly spell out what renewable sources helped them achieve that goal, but more recent reporting says a big chunk of it comes from a Nevada-based solar installation. The Las Vegas Raiders have agreed to purchase power from the solar farm for 25 years, CBS reported.
Nevada gets 23% of its energy from solar and 37% of its energy from all renewable sources combined, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Rapidly shifting from fossil fuels to renewable sources is one key step in avoiding the worst effects of human-caused climate change.
Tucker Carlson: Russian Tool and Climate Denier – Not a Coincidence
Not a coincidence that Tucker Carlson is a Climate Denier, a clean energy opponent, and the most shameless and invaluable shill for Vladimir Putin in the American media.
The anti-clean energy movement is a primary example of the Russian disinformation warfare being carried out on social media.
Climate Scientist Wins Big in Defamation Case
In a victory for climate scientists, jurors in Michael Mann’s defamation case against Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn awarded Mann $1 million in punitive damages for defamatory comments made in 2012.
In a unanimous decision, jurors agreed that both Simberg and Steyn defamed Mann in blog posts that compared Mann to convicted sex offender Jerry Sandusky, former assistant coach of football at Penn State University. They announced that Simberg will pay $1,000 in punitive damages and Steyn will pay the larger $1 million.
The trial, however, has proven to be about much more than defamation — the entire field and validity of climate science has been on trial.
Below, ABC News video shows how right wing media misinformation made Mann a favorite target for neo-Nazis more than a decade ago.
In closing arguments, Mann’s lawyer John Williams compared the climate deniers in this case to election deniers overall. “Why do Trumpers continue to deny that he won the election?” he asked the jury. “Because they truly believe what they say or because they want to further their agenda?”
He asked the jury to consider the same question about Steyn and Simberg, the two climate deniers found guilty of defaming Mann: Did they believe what they wrote was the truth, or did they just want to push their agenda?
Mann has “been attacked in all the ways that a climate scientist can be attacked,” Lauren Kurtz, the executive director of the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund, told DeSmog. “He’s been remarkably public about what’s happened to him, [and] willing to fight back in ways that other scientists haven’t necessarily wanted to take on.”
Continue reading “Climate Scientist Wins Big in Defamation Case”Scientist’s Defamation Trial Going to Jury
Leading the way as always.
Climate Scientists were Being Called “Groomers” before it Was Cool.
Climate scientist Michael Mann, (above, in my 2014 interview) well known for producing the original “Hockey Stick” graph, showing an abrupt increase in global temperatures, due to human caused warming, has been in court for the last few weeks pressing his case against right wing commentators who attacked his work as “fraudulent” (which has a specific legal meaning) and, he argues, libelously compared him to a high profile sexual offender.
The case has only now come before a jury after a decade simmering.
Meanwhile, Mann’s graph has been confirmed and extended multiple times by numerous research groups.
It’s been 12 years since a pair of conservative writers compared a prominent climate scientist to a convicted child molester for his depiction of global warming. Now, a jury is about to decide whether the comments were defamatory.
Closing arguments were made Wednesday in a lawsuit brought by Michael Mann, who rose to fame for a graph first published in 1998 in the journal Nature that was dubbed the “hockey stick” for its dramatic illustration of a warming planet. Mann’s graph showed average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere changing little for 900 years until they started to rise rapidly in the 20th century.
The work brought Mann, then at Penn State but now at University of Pennsylvania, wide exposure. It was included in a report by a United Nations climate panel in 2001, and a version of it was featured in Al Gore’s Oscar-winning 2006 climate change documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
It also brought him skeptics — two of whom Mann took to court for attacks that he said affected his career and reputation in the U.S. and internationally.
In 2012, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, published a blog post by Rand Simberg that compared investigations by Penn State University — then Mann’s employer — into Mann’s work as well as the case of Jerry Sandusky, a former assistant football coach who was convicted of sexually assaulting multiple children.
Mann’s research was investigated after his and other scientists’ emails were leaked in 2009 in an incident known as “Climategate” that brought further scrutiny of the “hockey stick” graph, with skeptics claiming Mann manipulated data. Investigations by Penn State and others, including The Associated Press’ examination of the emails, found no misuse of data by Mann, but his work continued to draw attacks, particularly from conservatives.
Continue reading “Scientist’s Defamation Trial Going to Jury”When Clean Energy is Blocked, Taxpayers are the Biggest Losers
I’ve been speaking to local farmers and former officials in Lenawee County, in Southeast Michigan, where a decade ago, a wind farm project was blocked by the usual combination of abuse, threats, flashmobs and disinformation. The developers of that project simply moved up to Gratiot County, 140 miles to the north, where they were welcomed with open arms. Since then, Gratiot has seen massive benefits, and welcomed more projects – while Lenawee struggles.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, a division of the U.S. Department of Education, Blissfield schools receive 73 percent of their money from the state and spend $10,978 per student.
Compare that to the Elkton-Pigeon-Bay Port-Laker School District in Huron County, which is home to a wind farm. There, the district receives only 36 percent of its money from the state while spending $15,201 per student each year. That’s 38 percent more per year than Blissfield school spends per student.
Much of that extra money is because of a $19.1 million bond issue passed in 2018 that helped the district build a new athletic facility, innovation center and school auditorium.
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Below, I’ve collected some accounts from counties that embraced wind development, and what the impact has been on tax revenues and improved services.
Continue reading “When Clean Energy is Blocked, Taxpayers are the Biggest Losers”Fossil Fuels Collapsing in Europe as Low Cost Renewables Soar
I like watching Sam Evans, the Electric Viking, not because he’s a great journalist, but because he’s an energizer bunny ferreting out the latest news that other journalists are reporting on clean energy. Also, because Australian accents are automatically engaging and fun to listen to.
Here he pointed me to useful update on fossil fuel’s ongoing collapse, especially in Europe.
Europe’s coal electricity generation tanked by 26% and gas by 15% in 2023, according to a new report from energy think tank Ember.
That collapse resulted in an impressive 19% reduction in the EU’s power sector emissions. What’s more, for the first time, wind power, which grew by 18%, surpassed gas, which only accounted for 17% of Europe’s electricity.
Wind and solar power are now taking center stage. Together, they hit a new high, generating 27% of the EU’s electricity in 2023. Solar covered 9% of the EU’s electricity needs. With hydroelectric power also bouncing back, renewables reached a record 44% share of the EU’s power mix.
The EU accelerated its shift away from fossil fuels in 2023, with record falls in coal, gas and emissions. Fossil fuels dropped by a record 19% to their lowest ever level at less than one third of the EU’s electricity generation. Renewables rose to a record 44% share, surpassing 40% for the first time. Wind and solar continued to be the drivers of this renewables growth, producing a record 27% of EU electricity in 2023 and achieving their largest ever annual capacity additions. Furthermore, wind generation reached a major milestone, surpassing gas for the first time.
Continue reading “Fossil Fuels Collapsing in Europe as Low Cost Renewables Soar”Where’s the Beef Going? Now We Know
Well, if we wait for all these old white guys to die of cardiovascular disease, that should cut beef consumption.
A new study has found that 12% of Americans are responsible for eating half of all beef consumed on a given day, a finding that may help consumer groups and government agencies craft educational messaging around the negative health and environmental impacts of beef consumption.
Those 12% – most likely to be men or people between the ages of 50 and 65 – eat what researchers called a disproportionate amount of beef on a given day, a distinction based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which suggest 4 ounces per day of meat, poultry, and eggs combined for those consuming 2200 calories per day.
The study, published in the journal Nutrients, analyzed data from the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which tracked the meals of more than 10,000 adults over a 24-hour period. The global food system emits 17 billion tons of greenhouse gases a year, equivalent to a third of all planet-warming gases produced by human activity. The beef industry contributes heavily to that, producing 8-10 times more emissions than chicken, and over 50 times more than beans.
“We focused on beef because of its impact on the environment, and because it’s high in saturated fat, which is not good for your health,” said the study’s corresponding and senior author Diego Rose, professor and nutrition program director at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Rose said the study’s purpose was to assist in targeting educational programs or awareness campaigns to those eating disproportionate amounts of beef. Honing messaging around the environmental impact of beef production is crucial at a time when climate change awareness is higher than ever.
Rose said he and fellow researchers were “surprised” that a small percentage of people are responsible for such an outsized consumption of beef, but it’s yet to be determined if the findings are encouraging for sustainability advocates.
“On one hand, if it’s only 12% accounting for half the beef consumption, you could make some big gains if you get those 12% on board,” Rose said. “On the other hand, those 12% may be most resistant to change.”
The study also found that those who were not disproportionate beef consumers were more likely to have looked up USDA’s MyPlate food guidance system.
“This might indicate that exposure to dietary guidelines can be an effective tool in changing eating behaviors, but it could also be true that those who were aware of healthy or sustainable eating practices were also more likely to be aware of dietary guideline tools,” said Amelia Willits-Smith, lead author on the paper and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Despite Oil Baron’s Bluster, Texas Decarbonizing
All those Greens and Hippies down in Texas may be on to something.
Josh Rhodes in the Houston Chronicle:
For more than six hours Sunday, nearly 80% of Texas’s electricity came from solar, wind or nuclear power, a phenomenon that is likely to become more common as the Texas power grid increasingly shifts to zero-emissions power generation.
“I don’t think it’ll be long before this would be a boring statistic,” said Joshua Rhodes, a University of Texas at Austin energy research scientist, “but right now, it’s pretty exciting.”
Starting at 9:45 a.m. Sunday, more than 78% of electricity running on the grid managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas came from either wind, solar or nuclear power. That percentage hovered between 78% and 80% until nearly 4 p.m., according to data from Grid Status, a site hosting public data from power grids across the country.
From 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., wind, solar and nuclear power were the top three resources providing electricity to the grid – except for a brief period from 10:20 a.m. to 10:45 a.m., when the amount of electricity from natural gas plants marginally eclipsed the amount from nuclear.
Natural gas and coal power plants have dominated electricity production for most of the power grid’s recent history. Though fossil fuel plants provided the majority of electricity to the ERCOT grid in 2023, wind and solar power have grown rapidly and accounted for nearly a third of resources fueling the grid last year.
Just last week, Texas broke a record for how much electricity it got from the sun, with solar power providing more than a third of the state’s electricity around 10 a.m. Jan. 28.
More solar energy powered Texas than ever before on Sunday morning, with over one third of the electricity running on the state’s power grid coming from the sun. Experts say it’s a Texas record that’s not expected to last very long.
Weather conditions were ideal for solar, with clear skies across most of the state, when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas recorded the record at 10:09 a.m. Sunday.
Continue reading “Despite Oil Baron’s Bluster, Texas Decarbonizing”Cat 6: When Cat 5 Just Doesn’t Cut it Anymore
Reposting this piece in light of Michael Mann’s commentary on the research mentioned here.
Michael Mann PhD in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science:
For a number of years, I have argued that we are now, thanks to the effects of human-caused warming, experiencing a new class of monster storms—”category 6” hurricanes. That is to say, we are witnessing hurricanes that—by any logical extension of the existing Saffir-Simpson scale—deserve to be placed in a whole separate, more destructive category from the traditionally defined (category 5) “strongest” storms. Up until now, that was really just a matter of opinion (1). There was no peer-reviewed research to justify the assertion. Now there is, with a new article by Wehner and Kossin in PNAS (2) that lays out a rigorous, objective case for expanding the scale to accommodate climate change-fueled tropical cyclones that are qualitatively stronger and more destructive than conventionally defined category 5 storms.
“Unprecedented Ferocity”.
When a Tropical Cyclone comes at you like a Velociraptor.
Hurricanes are getting so strong in a warming world that a Category 6 intensity should be added to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind scale, a new study finds.
Why it matters: The research shows how significantly climate change is altering storm intensity and other characteristics, as well as further underscoring the limitations of the scale.
Reality check: The paper, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, does not represent an official move by the National Hurricane Center to add another hurricane category.
- Instead, it offers scientific reasons for the new category to be considered.
- The researchers note that the top hurricane category — Category 5 — has no upper bound, despite the fact that the damage potential from such a storm’s maximum sustained winds increases exponentially.
The intrigue: The study comes as scientists are having to add new classifications and colors to marine heat stress maps, and alter axes on charts of ocean heat content and other climate variables as rapid, human-caused climate change brings large shifts around the globe.
- Last year was the warmest since instrument records began and very likely the hottest in at least 125,000 years.
- This year is expected to come near to or beat the record set in 2023.
- Early data shows January was likely the 9th-straight-hottest month.
Zoom in: Climate change increases ocean and air temperatures, along with atmospheric water vapor.
- Tropical cyclones tap into the energy from these sources to form and intensify.
- The greater amount of hurricane fuel in a warming world is already causing these storms to change in multiple ways that can make them more destructive, the study shows, relying on growing scientific evidence.
Over the past decade, five storms would have been classed at this new category 6 strength, researchers said, which would include all hurricanes with sustained winds of 192mph or more. Such mega-hurricanes are becoming more likely due to global heating, studies have found, due to the warming of the oceans and atmosphere.
Michael Wehner, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, said that “192mph is probably faster than most Ferraris, it’s hard to even imagine”. He has proposed the new category 6 alongside another researcher, James Kossin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Being caught in that sort of hurricane would be bad. Very bad.”
Continue reading “Cat 6: When Cat 5 Just Doesn’t Cut it Anymore”