6621

Yeah I was looking for an objective article that wasn’t behind a paywall and this is the best I found.

I think there’s definitely a possibility that solar/wind is facing insurmountable issues. It’s really hard to know when you’re getting straight facts and when it’s just spin. Nuclear may be the way to go. But there’s just no ideal solution anywhere yet, which is frustrating.

6622

How about things like “hundreds of $millions”.

6623

Article sounds like it was written by an anti-green power true believer, probably on a site subsidized by Australian fossil fuel interests.

Be that as it may, you can learn the basic facts. It is a shame, but perhaps not too surprising, that an energy plant that was down for months at a time due to engineering problems with its new-technology thermal storage solution went bankrupt. One can hope that the lessons learned about engineering thermal storage will one day make up for the lost investment.

6624

That website is very slanted, explicitly designed to try and push anti renewable messaging.

Take that article with a bonneville salt flat sized serving of salt.

6625

It’s really really difficult to get a handle on where Boris is on climate change. He and the people around him are instinctively suspicious of the people who are most vocal about climate change and come up with most of the suggested ways to address it in the public sphere, but at the same time they don’t have much time for climate deniers beyond taking political advantage of them, and the idea of funding lots of science and engineering in some kind of extropian bid to science the shit out of the climate problem really appeals to them (especially if they can bung a few billion to british industry in the process, spend lots of money in “The North”, and put a union jack on the side of whatever gets built).

Of course vaguely wanting something like that and actually getting organised and funding and enabling it are poles apart.

6626

The numbers I’ve seen for wind in the UK suggest that wind (especially offshore wind) + gas (when the wind isn’t blowing) is a very very decent stopgap at least. I mean obviously gas is bad, but gas plants that are only going a quarter of the time are like 10-20x better than coal plants that are going all the time.

The fact that Japan are building new coal plants is just mind boggling.

6627

Yup, natural Gas is 1/2 the CO2 of even modern coal plants, less than that for old plants. Gas plants and peaker plant to supplement renewable is a perfectly reasonable approach to providing energy for the medium term. I’m guess Japan has no natural gas, (but it does have a decent amount of coal still).

In the long-term I suspect the coal power plants to replace the nuclear power will result in more deaths than the devastating 9.1 earthquake and monster Tsunami.

6628

They found a global increase in wind speed over the ocean of about 2 percent per decade since the 1990s, which translates into about a 5 percent increase per decade in the speed of ocean currents.

Since these currents do not move very fast to begin with, the change would not be noticeable from, say, the bow of a ship. One current, the Pacific’s South Equatorial Current, typically moves at about a mile per hour, so the speed increase over one decade would only be to around 1.05 miles per hour, McPhaden said.

Still, taken across the entire planet, this represents an enormous change and a tremendous input of wind energy. And it was not expected to happen yet.

The study notes that in extreme climate warming scenarios, a speedup of global winds also occurs — but the change was expected to peak at the end of this century, after vastly more warming than has happened so far. This suggests the Earth might actually be more sensitive to climate change than our simulations can currently show, McPhaden said.

The researchers admit they cannot prove that the change they’ve detected is driven solely by greenhouse gases. The oceans, particularly the Pacific, have natural cycles that drive them as well. However, they argue that the changes that have occurred are “far larger than that associated with natural variability.”

And this is not happening in isolation — multiple large changes have been detected in the world’s oceans of late.

“It’s analogous to the changes in sea level in terms of the accelerated rise over the last 25 years,” McPhaden said. “And these may be connected, and likely are.”

6629
6630

Climate protest is now regarded as potential terrorism by the UK.

6631

Good news:
Your bottled water is treated to remove arsenic!

Bad news:
The bottler dumped 15 yrs+ of untreated arsenic waste into California sewers

6632

So we’re all gonna die but the surfing’s gonna rule!

6633

It’s the first week of February, and Antarctica is warmer than Las Vegas.

6634

Im shocked to find Boris Johnson is a useless fucking shitstain and causing concern at COP26

6635

Fuck, at least he acknowledges it! From where I’m sitting that looks pretty nice.

6637

Some good news is that carbon emissions may have peaked (especially with China econ slow down I woulnd’t be surprised to see 2020 fall below 2019).

USA is the global leader in carbon emissions reduction due to switch from coal/natural gas. Switching to cheaper/cleaner natural gas is such a no brainer that I don’t take serious anyone who talks down natural gas.

Biggest challenge with new carbon emissions remains developing world actually developing.

6638

About 10% of his net worth, if it matters.

6639

The most cynical I will get is saying “it’s about damn time.” Being the richest man on Earth while it collapses in on itself would have made him one of the very worst of us.

Otherwise, this is great news! I really hope the grants will be holistic in that they won’t just tackle emissions from electricity generation, but also help curb deforestation.

We’ll see what happens, cautiously optimistic.

6640

I suspect folks are gonna give Bezos shit about this, rather than applauding him.

6641

Et hoc modo est de hoc mundo.