Monday, March 25, 2024
Wednesday, February 07, 2024
Two Solar Parabolic Troughs
Monday, December 11, 2023
100% Wind Water Solar Not "All of the Above"
Why We Must Focus on Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage, Not “All of the Above,” For Solving Global Climate, Air Pollution, and Energy Security Problems
A slide deck from Mark Z Jacobson presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting on December 11, 2023
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSNoMN/2312-AGU-MZJ.pdf
Conclusion
Carbon capture, direct air capture, blue hydrogen, non-hydrogen electro-fuels, and bioenergy even when powered by wind-water-solar (WWS), all increase CO2, air pollution, and social cost and either fossil mining and infrastructure or land use versus using the same WWS to replace a CO2 source CCS [Carbon Capture and Storage], DAC [Direct Air Capture] always increase CO2 and new nuclear increases cost, time-to-operation, emissions, and catastrophic risk versus new wind/solar.
However, a Wind, Water, Solar (WWS) Solution is practical and we can "electrify or provide direct heat for all sectors and provide [that] electricity and heat with 100% WWS. " The book “No Miracles Needed” explains how to transition to 100% WWS. https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSNoMN/NoMiracles.html
I believe Mark Z Jacobson is doing essential work.
Saturday, October 07, 2023
Stanford Scientists' Recommendations for a "True" School of Sustainability
A coalition of "Stanford scientists invested in helping the Doerr School of Sustainability achieve its full potential as a beacon of research excellence that accelerates the energy transition, with the speed and scale necessary to avert catastrophe" are making recommendations for a "true" school of sustainability:
Monday, August 28, 2023
Seeing Three Circles: A Fundamental Failure of Environmental Vision
3 circle image:
society
economy
environment
Usually seen as equal overlapping circles with a
sweet spot
in the middle
environment
society
economy
smallest circle economy inside
smaller circle society inside
largest circle environment
some MIT enviro scientists
were in Nepal & commissioned
a mandala
It was the usual 3 circles
all the same size
overlapping in the middle
I asked them why they didn't use
the 3 circle reality
The speaker said they considered it
but liked the usual Venn diagram better
8/28/23
Seems to me this confusion between the image where two human concerns, society and economy, are equivalent to all the rest of entire world and the reality where human economy is smaller than human society and human society is merely a subset of the entire world is the central difficulty in understanding the biosphere and our human place within it.
The three equal circles overlapping in the center is a design known as the Borromean Rings and is the logo for Ballantine Beer.
Friday, August 11, 2023
BBC Gets Real About Climate
I stumbled on a BBC documentary called "South Africa: On the edge of darkness" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofwx-kyxHq4) a week or so ago.
Wednesday, June 07, 2023
An Ecological Vision from Gary Snyder
From Gary Snyder's essay "Four Changes" [1969]
recast as a found poem,
still a fertile vision:
A technology of communication, education,
and quiet transportation,
land-use being
sensitive to the properties of each region...
Careful but intensive agriculture
in the great alluvial valleys,
deserts left wild for those
who would live there by skill.
Computer technicians who run
the plant part of the year
and walk
along with the Elk
in their migrations
during the rest.
Emergency electricity is technologically, economically, and practically trivial. You don't need to know how to build lightbulbs, batteris, PV cells... from scratch. They are all readily available for affordable prices as mass commodity products. If you get them now before the fertilizer really hits the ventilation system (which is as good a descriptpion of the greenhouse effect as any other, at least for me). If you also use them in your daily life, that will another infinitesimal drop out of the machinery of destruction and provide some personal security for yourself.
https://www.climatecrew.org
Lots of possibilities. In fact, we are surrounded by insurmountable opportunities. Who wants to go opportunity climbing?
"We remain alert so as not to get run down, but it turns out you only have to hop a few feet to one side and the whole huge machinery rolls by, not seeing you at all." Lew Welch