It's ok, those of us in coastal cities can just sell our houses and move when the water is up to our ankles...
read about this on Twitter the other day, one of the first responses was, ‘ummmm, when you put ice in a glass it doesn’t raise the level when it melts, it just replaces it.’ Was followed with some response about the Arctic and ice. Which showed me exactly how we got to this point. If we can’t teach people that Antartica is a continent BECAUSE it’s land covered in ice (like Greenland!!!) and completely different than the North Pole, how the fuck can we teach these halfwits this is a huge problem. The half-assed attempt to educate the richest country in the world is a huge failure that’s going to doom us all.
In December we have record highs in Alaska, Tahoe is going through record December snowfall, my home state of Nebraska (and states around it) was in the 70’s several times and had a tornado outbreak with storms with 100 mph wind gusts, this was a few days after another tornado outbreak and possibly the longest tornado in recorded history among them. Taylor Twellman ‘what are we doing’ gif
Well according to my interpretation of the article the carbon capture facility captured 5 million tons of carbon over a 4 year period. Now some group called Global Witness alleges they emitted 7.5 million tons of carbon from their oil sands refining side over that same time period. So while Shell still emitted carbon, it was at a significant reduction.
The iodine is part of what PG&E has to do annually, same thing with creating a list of people that need help in the case of an evacuation, etc. all in all they are doing what they are supposed to do. The primary drivers behind the closure are just anti-nuclear backing in this state, yes there are fault lines (its California) around Diablo, but the plant is built to withstand larger tremors than the local surrounding ones are supposed to be able to produce.
that isn’t what I got out of it but even if that’s true, which fine ok, it’s still absurdly problematic to have a “future oriented” project billed and promoted to the public as a solution to emissions that is massively negative for emissions especially when you figure they make a killing off tax credits and a secondary market for carbon credits
Isn't a lot of the issue though still that these big new plants for batteries and etc take a huge amount of carbon (in the form of construction equipment running) to produce?
I’ve got bad news for you if you think construction equipment (loaders, excavators, etc) are gonna be getting off fossil fuels anytime soon
That facility will modify and find ways to capture the other gases being emitted. Shit there is a ton of money to be made in capturing methane emissions and im sure that plant is going to address that now that they realize it’s a problem (read: the public knows about it)
From that Vice article thats what it said, but I went hunting around for other sources of information. https://news.sky.com/story/climate-...-48-of-hydrogen-production-emissions-12520938 This was a far better article on the project and this seemed to be the meat and potatoes Spoiler: Article As Quest was, in effect, 'retrofitted' to an existing plant, it doesn't cover the emissions from the entire facility. Experts say that more modern, 'purpose built', blue hydrogen facilities can capture over 90% of a plant's emissions. The report found that this facility captures just 48% of its on-site carbon dioxide emissions. Once you include other emissions, such as from the fossil gas supply chain, only 39% are captured.
Any form of construction will require carbon. The problem with batteries is we have no fundamental way of recycling them, they end up directly in land fills, they take a lot of rare earth minerals (if we are to expand electric vehicles) which then requires a lot of mining for said materials. But they will be part of the solution going forward.
You are letting perfect be the enemy of good. Everything that is a realistic option going forward has flaws, whether its wind, solar, batteries, nuclear, etc. At this point if I can get a significant reduction in carbon emissions from an oil sands refining facility I will take it.
There’s a ton of battery recycling places popping up. South Korea has a pretty big battery recycling operation too with facilities in the US
Lol, you have to try certain things to see if they work, it’s R&D some will fail some will succeed. I’m not all aboard the CCS train, but I don’t know if I can say it’s an abject failure cause of a single retrofitted facility because a lobby group said it is.
Classic Nimby-ism/ Environmental groups getting in the way of progress This is on the back of Maine/New England voters blocking a Canadian transmission line that would provide them with 1,200 MW of Hydro power. So instead New England in cold snaps burns fuel oil for about 1/3rd of their power.
In more promising news Although this will take too long to become commercially viable its a interesting development for 20 years from now Would be nice to turn coal country into one of the leading spots for green energy creation.
latest IPCC report, not good! I've joined a local group for climate activism and it's helped the existential dread a bit.
An Adelie penguin is seen on ice floa over Penola Strait as the floes melt due to global climate change in Antarctica on February 7, 2022. (Photo: Sebnem Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Image UN Weather Agency Sounds Alarm on Extreme Events in Antarctica Among the events sparking concern was "freakish warming at Earth's South Pole" including "a mind-blowing" above-average reading at a research station. April 2, 2022 Scientists with the United Nations weather agency on Friday expressed fresh concern over the climate crisis following recent extreme events in Antarctica—an area they say should not be taken "for granted." "The Antarctic ice sheets hold almost 60 meters of potential sea-level rise. Understanding and properly monitoring the continent is therefore crucial for society's future well-being." The remarks from climate experts with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)—delivered just ahead of a key report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—follow last month's collapse of East Antarctica's Conger Ice Shelf, record warm temperatures, and rare rainfall. "Antarctica has often been referred to as a 'sleeping giant,'" said Mike Sparrow, head of the WMO co-sponsored World Climate Research Program, in a statement noting it's "the coldest, windiest, and driest continent and often thought of as being relatively stable." "However," he continued, "recent temperature extremes and ice shelf collapses have reminded us that we shouldn't take Antarctica for granted." "The Antarctic ice sheets hold almost 60 meters of potential sea-level rise. Understanding and properly monitoring the continent is therefore crucial for society's future well-being," said Sparrow. Catherine Walker, an Earth and planetary scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and NASA, made a similar point about East Antarctica. "All of the previous collapses have taken place in West Antarctica, not East Antarctica, which until recently has been thought of as relatively stable," Walker said to NASA's Earth Observatory. "This is something like a dress rehearsal for what we could expect from other, more massive ice shelves if they continue to melt and destabilize," she said. "Then we'll really be past the turnaround point in terms of slowing sea-level rise." The unprecedented high temperatures that hit the region last month were the result of an atmospheric river that originated near southeast Australia and "spread warmth-trapping clouds and moisture well inland across East Antarctica," as meteorologist Bob Henson wrote at Yale Climate Connections. It was, in fact, "freakish warming at Earth's South Pole," as he put it. Henson explained: At Vostok, a Russian weather station launched in 1958, the high of –17.7°C (0.1°F) on March 18 smashed the record for any March by 26.8°F and came in roughly 63°F above the average daily high. The 26.8°F represents the largest margin in world history for breaking a monthly record at any site with at least 40 years of data, according to Maximiliano Herrera, an expert on international weather records. It's also the only time Vostok has gotten above zero Fahrenheit outside of December or January, never mind mid-March. Vostok's all-time high is –14°C (6.8°F). About 350 miles away, on terrain and elevation roughly similar to Vostok, the French-Italian research site Concordia Station (staffed year-round, as is the case for Vostok) set its all-time record high of –11.5°C (11.3°F) on March 17. Data has been collected year round at this site only since 2005, a period too brief for an all-time record to carry too much weight. However, the reading was a mind-blowing 67°F above the daily average high of around –49°C (–56°F). Etienne Vignon and Christoph Genthon, experts with the WMO Global Cryosphere Watch, put the temperatures at Concordia, located in an area known as Dome C, in the context of the March rainfall and pointed to wide reverberations of such changes. "That it rains at the coast in March is a source of concern for everyone." "The warm temperature at Dome C, still much below freezing, is probably more a wake-up call, not having significant local impact in the inner ice sheet. On the other hand, the fact that the temperature was way above 0°C and that it rained at the coast upstream the previous day is more of a concern," said Vignon and Genthon, both with France's Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, IPSL/Sorbone Université/École Polytechnique/CNRS. They added that "rainfall is rare in Antarctica but when it occurs, it has consequences on ecosystems—particularly on penguin colonies—and on the ice sheet mass balance." While there are no penguin chicks at this time of the year, Vignon and Genthon cautioned that "the fact that this happens now in March is a reminder of what is at stake in the peripheral regions: wildlife, stability of the ice sheet." "Here the warm temperature at Dome C is a source of excitement for climatologists, that it rains at the coast in March is a source of concern for everyone," they said. The comments on the Antarctic developments came ahead of the expected Monday release of the IPCC's Working Group 3 report on climate mitigation. That report will land at "a crucial time," according to Greenpeace, "as countries, businesses, and investors must recalibrate plans for a faster transition away from fossil fuels, towards climate justice, and truly sustainable, more resilient food systems."
94 degrees in Dallas today, April 5th. Crushed the previous record high by 6 degrees for the day. Fuck everything.
This is a super under reported story outside of energy. Biden’s Department of Commerce has essentially killed work on solar projects until August when this is resolved.
The other side of that coin is we are making our energy supply chain dependent on China. China became the leading manufacturer of solar panels by using cheap coal and questionable labor practices to undercut everyone else on the global market for the past decade. Most of Chinas solar panels are poly silicon which is an energy intensive process. The best thing to do would be to build more solar facilities near the Appalachian natural gas fields in the US. Brings back manufacturing jobs to the heartland, uses a cleaner energy than coal for creation, and on boards our energy supply chain. Something like the WACKER plant in Tennessee, or push First Solar to manufacture more cadmium telluride panels.
What you described is what Hillary was pushing in 2016, unfortunately if a democrat proposes something it’s automatically deemed evil by the people in Appalachia.
"I DON'T WANT TO LEARN A NEW JOB, I WANT THINGS TO BE LIKE THEY WERE FOREVER, LIKE JESUS CHRIST SAID THEY WOULD BE!!!" - non-snowflakes in 2016