Tag Archives: Carbon Emissions

Climate Solutions, News

These energy innovations could transform how we mitigate climate change, and save money in the process – 5 essential reads

Building solar panels over water sources is one way to both provide power and reduce evaporation in drought-troubled regions. Robin Raj, Citizen Group & Solar Aquagrid

Stacy Morford, The Conversation

To most people, a solar farm or a geothermal plant is an important source of clean energy. Scientists and engineers see that plus far more potential.

They envision offshore wind turbines capturing and storing carbon beneath the sea, and geothermal plants producing essential metals for powering electric vehicles. Electric vehicle batteries, too, can be transformed to power homes, saving their owners money and also reducing transportation emissions.

With scientists worldwide sounding the alarm about the increasing dangers and costs of climate change, let’s explore some cutting-edge ideas that could transform how today’s technologies reduce the effects of global warming, from five recent articles in The Conversation.

1. Solar canals: Power + water protection

What if solar panels did double duty, protecting water supplies while producing more power?

California is developing the United States’ first solar canals, with solar panels built atop some of the state’s water distribution canals. These canals run for thousands of miles through arid environments, where the dry air boosts evaporation in a state frequently troubled by water shortages.

“In a 2021 study, we showed that covering all 4,000 miles of California’s canals with solar panels would save more than 65 billion gallons of water annually by reducing evaporation. That’s enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people,” writes engineering professor Roger Bales of the University of California, Merced. They would also expand renewable energy without taking up farmable land.

Research shows that human activities, particularly using fossil fuels for energy and transportation, are unequivocally warming the planet and increasing extreme weather. Increasing renewable energy, currently about 20% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation, can reduce fossil fuel demand.

Putting solar panels over shaded water can also improve their power output. The cooler water lowers the temperature of the panels by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius), boosting their efficiency, Bales writes.

2. Geothermal power could boost battery supplies

For renewable energy to slash global greenhouse gas emissions, buildings and vehicles have to be able to use it. Batteries are essential, but the industry has a supply chain problem.

Most batteries used in electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage are lithium-ion batteries, and most lithium used in the U.S. comes from Argentina, Chile, China and Russia. China is the leader in lithium processing.

Geologist and engineers are working on an innovative method that could boost the U.S. lithium supply at home by extracting lithium from geothermal brines in California’s Salton Sea region.

Brines are the liquid leftover in a geothermal plant after heat and steam are used to produce power. That liquid contains lithium and other metals such as manganese, zinc and boron. Normally, it is pumped back underground, but the metals can also be filtered out. https://www.youtube.com/embed/oYtyEVPGEU8?wmode=transparent&start=0 How lithium is extracted during geothermal energy production. Courtesy of Controlled Thermal Resources.

“If test projects now underway prove that battery-grade lithium can be extracted from these brines cost effectively, 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea alone could have the potential to produce enough lithium metal to provide about 10 times the current U.S. demand,” write geologist Michael McKibben of the University of California, Riverside, and energy policy scholar Bryant Jones of Boise State University.

President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act on March 31, 2022, to provide incentives for U.S. companies to mine and process more critical minerals for batteries.

3. Green hydrogen and other storage ideas

Scientists are working on other ways to boost batteries’ mineral supply chain, too, including recycling lithium and cobalt from old batteries. They’re also developing designs with other materials, explained Kerry Rippy, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Lab.

Concentrated solar power, for example, stores energy from the sun by heating molten salt and using it to produce steam to drive electric generators, similar to how a coal power plant would generate electricity. It’s expensive, though, and the salts currently used aren’t stable at higher temperature, Rippy writes. The Department of Energy is funding a similar project that is experimenting with heated sand. https://www.youtube.com/embed/fkX-H24Chfw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Hydrogen’s challenges, including its fossil fuel history.

Renewable fuels, such as green hydrogen and ammonia, provide a different type of storage. Since they store energy as liquid, they can be transported and used for shipping or rocket fuel.

Hydrogen gets a lot of attention, but not all hydrogen is green. Most hydrogen used today is actually produced with natural gas – a fossil fuel. Green hydrogen, in contrast, could be produced using renewable energy to power electrolysis, which splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, but again, it’s expensive.

“The key challenge is optimizing the process to make it efficient and economical,” Rippy writes. “The potential payoff is enormous: inexhaustible, completely renewable energy.”

4. Using your EV to power your home

Batteries could also soon turn your electric vehicle into a giant, mobile battery capable of powering your home.

Only a few vehicles are currently designed for vehicle-to-home charging, or V2H, but that’s changing, writes energy economist Seth Blumsack of Penn State University. Ford, for example, says its new F-150 Lightning pickup truck will be able to power an average house for three days on a single charge.

How bidirectional charging allows EVs to power homes.

Blumsack explores the technical challenges as V2H grows and its potential to change how people manage energy use and how utilities store power.

For example, he writes, “some homeowners might hope to use their vehicle for what utility planners call ‘peak shaving’ – drawing household power from their EV during the day instead of relying on the grid, thus reducing their electricity purchases during peak demand hours.”

5. Capturing carbon from air and locking it away

Another emerging technology is more controversial.

Humans have put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past two centuries that just stopping fossil fuel use won’t be enough to quickly stabilize the climate. Most scenarios, including in recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, show the world will have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well.

The technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air exists – it’s called direct air capture – but it’s expensive.

Engineers and geophysicists like David Goldberg of Columbia University are exploring ways to cut those costs by combining direct air capture technology with renewable energy production and carbon storage, like offshore wind turbines built above undersea rock formations where captured carbon could be locked away.

The world’s largest direct air capture plant, launched in 2021 in Iceland, uses geothermal energy to power its equipment. The captured carbon dioxide is mixed with water and pumped into volcanic basalt formations underground. Chemical reactions with the basalt turn it into a hard carbonate.

Goldberg, who helped developed the mineralization process used in Iceland, sees similar potential for future U.S. offshore wind farms. Wind turbines often produce more energy than their customers need at any given time, making excess energy available.

“Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment,” Goldberg writes.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Stacy Morford, Environment + Climate Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, Earth and Ecology, Sustainable Energy

Electrifying homes to slow climate change: 4 essential reads

The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that to avoid massive losses and damage from global warming, nations must act quickly to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that experts believe it’s possible to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 through steps such as using energy more efficiently, slowing deforestation and speeding up the adoption of renewable energy.

Many of those strategies require new laws, regulations or funding to move forward at the speed and scale that’s needed. But one strategy that’s increasingly feasible for many consumers is powering their homes and devices with electricity from clean sources. These four articles from our archives explain why electrifying homes is an important climate strategy and how consumers can get started.

1. Why go electric?

As of 2020, home energy use accounted for about one-sixth of total U.S. energy consumption. Nearly half (47%) of this energy came from electricity, followed by natural gas (42%), oil (8%) and renewable energy (7%). By far the largest home energy use is for heating and air conditioning, followed by lighting, refrigerators and other appliances.

The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from home energy consumption is to substitute electricity generated from low- and zero-carbon sources for oil and natural gas. And the power sector is rapidly moving that way: As a 2021 report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory showed, power producers have reduced their carbon emissions by 50% from what energy experts predicted in 2005.

“This drop happened thanks to policy, market and technology drivers,” a team of Lawrence Berkeley lab analysts concluded. Wind and solar power have scaled up and cut their costs, so utilities are using more of them. Cheap natural gas has replaced generation from dirtier coal. And public policies have encouraged the use of energy-efficient technologies like LED light bulbs. These converging trends make electric power an increasingly climate-friendly energy choice.

The U.S. is using much more low-carbon and carbon-free electricity today than projected in 2005. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, CC BY-ND

2. Heat pumps for cold and hot days

Since heating and cooling use so much energy, switching from an oil- or gas-powered furnace to a heat pump can greatly reduce a home’s carbon footprint. As University of Dayton sustainability expert Robert Brecha explains, heat pumps work by moving heat in and out of buildings, not by burning fossil fuel.

“Extremely cold fluid circulates through coils of tubing in the heat pump’s outdoor unit,” Brecha writes. “That fluid absorbs energy in the form of heat from the surrounding air, which is warmer than the fluid. The fluid vaporizes and then circulates into a compressor. Compressing any gas heats it up, so this process generates heat. Then the vapor moves through coils of tubing in the indoor unit of the heat pump, heating the building.”

In summer, the process reverses: Heat pumps take energy from indoors and move that heat outdoors, just as a refrigerator removes heat from the chamber where it stores food and expels it into the air in the room where it sits.

Another option is a geothermal heat pump, which collects warmth from the earth and uses the same process as air source heat pumps to move it into buildings. These systems cost more, since installing them involves excavation to bury tubing below ground, but they also reduce electricity use.

3. Cooking without gas – or heat

For people who like to cook, the biggest sticking point of going electric is the prospect of using an electric stove. Many home chefs see gas flames as more responsive and precise than electric burners.

But magnetic induction, which cooks food by generating a magnetic field under the pot, eliminates the need to fire up a burner altogether.

“Instead of conventional burners, the cooking spots on induction cooktops are called hobs, and consist of wire coils embedded in the cooktop’s surface,” writes Binghamton University electrical engineering professor Kenneth McLeod.

Moving an electric charge through those wires creates a magnetic field, which in turn creates an electric field in the bottom of the cookware. “Because of resistance, the pan will heat up, even though the hob does not,” McLeod explains.

Induction cooktops warm up and cool down very quickly and offer highly accurate temperature control. They also are easy to clean, since they are made of glass, and safer than electric stoves since the hobs don’t stay hot when pans are lifted off them. Many utilities are offering rebates to cover the higher cost of induction cooktops.

4. Electric cars as backup power sources

Electrifying systems like home heating and cooking made residents even more vulnerable to power outages. Soon, however, a new backup system could become available: powering your home from your electric vehicle.

With interest in electric cars and light trucks rising in the U.S., auto makers are introducing many new EV models and designs. Some of these new rides will offer bidirectional charging – the ability to charge a car battery at home, then move that power back into the house, and eventually, into the grid.

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Only a few models offer this capacity now, and it requires special equipment that can add several thousand dollars to the price of an EV. But Penn State energy expert Seth Blumsack sees value in this emerging technology.

“Enabling homeowners to use their vehicles as backup when the power goes down would reduce the social impacts of large-scale blackouts. It also would give utilities more time to restore service – especially when there is substantial damage to power poles and wires,” Blumsack explains. “Bidirectional charging is also an integral part of a broader vision for a next-generation electric grid in which millions of EVs are constantly taking power from the grid and giving it back – a key element of an electrified future.”

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Jennifer Weeks, Senior Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

How fast can we stop Earth from warming?

The ocean retains heat for much longer than land does. photo / adobe stock / lynxotic

Richard B. (Ricky) Rood, University of Michigan

Global warming doesn’t stop on a dime. If people everywhere stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, stored heat would still continue to warm the atmosphere.

Picture how a radiator heats a home. Water is heated by a boiler, and the hot water circulates through pipes and radiators in the house. The radiators warm up and heat the air in the room. Even after the boiler is turned off, the already heated water is still circulating through the system, heating the house. The radiators are, in fact, cooling down, but their stored heat is still warming the air in the room.

This is known as committed warming. Earth similarly has ways of storing and releasing heat.

Emerging research is refining scientists’ understanding of how Earth’s committed warming will affect the climate. Where we once thought it would take 40 years or longer for global surface air temperature to peak once humans stopped heating up the planet, research now suggests temperature could peak in closer to 10 years.

But that doesn’t mean the planet returns to its preindustrial climate or that we avoid disruptive effects such as sea level rise.

I am a professor of climate science, and my research and teaching focus on the usability of climate knowledge by practitioners such as urban planners, public health professionals and policymakers. Let’s take a look at the bigger picture.

How understanding of peak warming has changed

Historically, the first climate models represented only the atmosphere and were greatly simplified. Over the years, scientists added oceans, land, ice sheets, chemistry and biology.

Today’s models can more explicitly represent the behavior of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. That allows scientists to better separate heating due to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the role of heat stored in the ocean. https://www.youtube.com/embed/_WUNMzC98jI?wmode=transparent&start=0 Why global warming is ocean warming.

Thinking about our radiator analogy, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere keep the boiler on – holding energy near the surface and raising the temperature. Heat accumulates and is stored, mostly in the oceans, which take on the role of the radiators. The heat is distributed around the world through weather and oceanic currents.

The current understanding is that if all of the additional heating to the planet caused by humans was eliminated, a plausible outcome is that Earth would reach a global surface air temperature peak in closer to 10 years than 40. The previous estimate of 40 or more years has been widely used over the years, including by me.

It is important to note that this is only the peak, when the temperature starts to stabilize – not the onset of rapid cooling or a reversal of climate change.

I believe there is enough uncertainty to justify caution about exaggerating the significance of the new research’s results. The authors applied the concept of peak warming to global surface air temperature. Global surface air temperature is, metaphorically, the temperature in the “room,” and is not the best measure of climate change. The concept of instantly cutting off human-caused heating is also idealized and entirely unrealistic – doing that would involve much more than just ending fossil fuel use, including widespread changes to agriculture – and it only helps illustrate how parts of the climate might behave.

Even if the air temperature were to peak and stabilize, “committed ice melting,” “committed sea level rise” and numerous other land and biological trends would continue to evolve from the accumulated heat. Some of these could, in fact, cause a release of carbon dioxide and methane, especially from the Arctic and other high-latitude reservoirs that are currently frozen.

For these reasons and others, it is important to consider the how far into the future studies like this one look.

Oceans in the future

Oceans will continue to store heat and exchange it with the atmosphere. Even if emissions stopped, the excess heat that has been accumulating in the ocean since preindustrial times would influence the climate for another 100 years or more.

Because the ocean is dynamic, it has currents, and it will not simply diffuse its excess heat back into the atmosphere. There will be ups and downs as the temperature adjusts.

The oceans also influence the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because carbon dioxide is both absorbed and emitted by the oceans. Paleoclimate studies show large changes in carbon dioxide and temperature in the past, with the oceans playing an important role.

The chart shows how excess heat – thermal energy – has built up in ocean, land, ice and atmosphere since 1960 and moved to greater ocean depths with time. TOA CERES refers to the top of the atmosphere. Karina von Schuckman, LiJing Cheng, Matthew D. Palmer, James Hansen, Caterina Tassone, et al., CC BY-SA

Countries aren’t close to ending fossil fuel use

The possibility that a policy intervention might have measurable impacts in 10 years rather than several decades could motivate more aggressive efforts to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It would be very satisfying to see policy interventions having present rather than notional future benefits.

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However, today, countries aren’t anywhere close to ending their fossil fuel use. Instead, all of the evidence points to humanity experiencing rapid global warming in the coming decades.

Our most robust finding is that the less carbon dioxide humans release, the better off humanity will be. Committed warming and human behavior point to a need to accelerate efforts both to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to this warming planet now, rather than simply talking about how much needs to happen in the future.

Richard B. (Ricky) Rood, Professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

Rebellious Climate Scientists Have Message for Humanity: ‘Mobilize, Mobilize, Mobilize’

In face of the “escalating climate emergency,” the advocacy group Scientist Rebellion warns that IPCC summary to global policymakers remains “alarmingly reserved, docile, and conservative.”

Amid a weeklong global civil disobedience campaign to demand climate action commensurate with mounting evidence about the need for swift decarbonization, Scientist Rebellion is highlighting specific gaps between what experts say is necessary and what governments allowed to be published in a summary of the United Nations’ latest climate assessment.

“We need a billion climate activists…The time is now. We’ve waited far too long.”

The landmark report on mitigation by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—part of the U.N.’s sixth comprehensive climate assessment since 1992 and possibly the last to be published with enough time to avert the most catastrophic consequences of the planetary crisis—was compiled by 278 researchers from 65 countries.

The authors, who synthesized thousands of peer-reviewed studies published in the past several years, make clear over the course of nearly 3,000 pages that “without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach.”

Meanwhile, a 64-page Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the report—a key reference point for governments—required the approval of all 195 member states of the IPCC and was edited with their input.

Following a contentious weekend of negotiations in which wealthy governments attempted to weaken statements about green financing for low-income nations and fossil fuel-producing countries objected to unequivocal language about the need to quickly eliminate coal, oil, and gas extraction, the IPCC document was published several hours later than expected on Monday.

“Despite the escalating climate emergency and the total absence of emissions cuts, the framing of the final version of the SPM is still alarmingly reserved, docile, and conservative,” Scientist Rebellion, an international alliance of academics who are advocating for systemic political and economic changes in line with scientific findings, said Tuesday in a statement.

“The science has never been clearer: to have any chance of retaining a habitable planet, greenhouse gas emissions must be cut radically now,” the group continued. “Limiting warming to 1.5°C and responding to the climate emergency requires an immediate transformation across all sectors and strata of society, a mobilization of historic proportions: a climate revolution.”

“The IPCC [has] avoided naming the major culprits for 30 years, which is one reason for the absence of real emissions cuts,” the group added. “Facts detailing the complicity of the world’s richest countries in fueling the climate crisis have been watered down by the IPCC’s political review process.”

Scientist Rebellion proceeded to contrast the final version of the SPM—”the document that garners almost all attention”—to an early draft of a summary of the Working Group III report on mitigation that IPCC authors associated with the group leaked last August out of concern that their conclusions would be diluted by policymakers.

Peter Kalmus, a Los Angeles-based climate scientist and author who is participating in this week’s direct actions, told Common Dreams that the shortcomings of governments and policymakers have driven him to act.

Kalmus said he was willing to engage in civil disobedience and risk arrest this week, “because I’ve tried everything else I can think of over the past decade and nothing has worked. I see humanity heading directly toward climate disaster.”

With humanity “currently on track to lose everything we love,” he said, the scientific community must intensify its efforts.

“If we don’t rapidly end the fossil fuel industry and begin acting like Earth breakdown is an emergency, we risk civilizational collapse and potentially the death of billions, not to mention the loss of major critical ecosystems around the world,” said Kalmus. “This is so much bigger than me. Expect climate scientists to be taking such actions repeatedly in the future and in large numbers.”

On Wednesday, direct actions by scientists took place in Berlin, Germany; The Hague, Netherlands; Bogata, Colombia, and other cities.

https://twitter.com/wirereporter/status/1511705115517935617?s=20&t=LlCjWCRAmgFIMD1RfOn4uw

In its Tuesday assessment, Scientist Rebellion documented how the political review process weakened or eliminated language about carbon inequality and the need for far-reaching socio-economic transformation to slash greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in the final SPM:

Example 1: Section B6 of the report originally stated that “institutional inertia and a social bias towards the status quo are leading to a risk of locking in future GHG emissions that may be costly or difficult to abate.” This has been replaced with “global GHG emissions in 2030 associated with the implementation of nationally determined contributions… would make it likely that warming will exceed 1.5°C during the 21st century.” The final version also no longer mentions that “vested interests” and a focus on an “incremental rather than a systemic approach” are limiting factors to ambitious transformation.

Example 2: The leaked SPM stated that “within countries, inequalities increased for both income and GHG emissions between 1970 and 2016, with the top 1% accounting for 27% of income growth,” and that “top emitters dominate emissions in key sectors, for example the top 1% account for 50% of GHG emissions from aviation.” Neither statement appears in the final version.

“While the SPM—being approved line-by-line by all governments—is reserved, docile, and conservative, the situation is clear,” said Scientist Rebellion.

The group went on to quote U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who said Monday that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster.”

As Common Dreams reported Monday, more than 1,000 scientists in at least 25 countries on every continent in the world are expected to participate in strikes, occupations, and other actions this week to highlight “the urgency and injustice of the climate and ecological crisis,” and several demonstrations are already underway. 

Guterres, for his part, said Monday that “climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals, but the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”

For his part, Kalmus acknowledged it was going to take much more than a series of direct actions by scientists to turn the tide against inaction.

“We need a billion climate activists,” Kalmus said. “I encourage everyone to consider where we’re heading as a species, and to engage in civil disobedience and other actions. The time is now. We’ve waited far too long.”

“Mobilize, mobilize, mobilize,” he said, “before we lose everything.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

These energy innovations could transform how we mitigate climate change, and save money in the process – 5 essential reads

To most people, a solar farm or a geothermal plant is simply a power producer. Scientists and engineers see far more potential.

They envision offshore wind turbines capturing and storing carbon beneath the sea, and geothermal plants producing essential metals for powering electric vehicles. Electric vehicle batteries, too, can be transformed to power homes, saving their owners money.

photo credit / pexels

With scientists worldwide sounding the alarm about the increasing dangers and costs of climate change, let’s explore some cutting-edge ideas that could transform how today’s technologies reduce the effects of global warming, from five recent articles in The Conversation.

1. Solar canals: Power + water protection

What if solar panels did double duty, protecting water supplies while producing more power?

California is developing the United States’ first solar canals, with solar panels built atop some of the state’s water distribution canals. These canals run for thousands of miles through arid environments, where the dry air boosts evaporation in a state frequently troubled by water shortages.

“In a 2021 study, we showed that covering all 4,000 miles of California’s canals with solar panels would save more than 65 billion gallons of water annually by reducing evaporation. That’s enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people,” writes engineering professor Roger Bales of the University of California, Merced. They would also expand renewable energy without taking up farmable land.

Research shows that human activities, particularly using fossil fuels for energy and transportation, are unequivocally warming the planet and increasing extreme weather. Increasing renewable energy, currently about 20% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation, can reduce fossil fuel demand.

Putting solar panels over shaded water can also improve their power output. The cooler water lowers the temperature of the panels by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius), boosting their efficiency, Bales writes.

2. Geothermal power could boost battery supplies

For renewable energy to slash global greenhouse gas emissions, buildings and vehicles have to be able to use it. Batteries are essential, but the industry has a supply chain problem.

Most batteries used in electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage are lithium-ion batteries, and most lithium used in the U.S. comes from Argentina, Chile, China and Russia. China is the leader in lithium processing.

Geologist and engineers are working on an innovative method that could boost the U.S. lithium supply at home by extracting lithium from geothermal brines in California’s Salton Sea region.

Brines are the liquid leftover in a geothermal plant after heat and steam are used to produce power. That liquid contains lithium and other metals such as manganese, zinc and boron. Normally, it is pumped back underground, but the metals can also be filtered out. https://www.youtube.com/embed/oYtyEVPGEU8?wmode=transparent&start=0 How lithium is extracted during geothermal energy production. Courtesy of Controlled Thermal Resources.

“If test projects now underway prove that battery-grade lithium can be extracted from these brines cost effectively, 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea alone could have the potential to produce enough lithium metal to provide about 10 times the current U.S. demand,” write geologist Michael McKibben of the University of California, Riverside, and energy policy scholar Bryant Jones of Boise State University.

President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act on March 31, 2022, to provide incentives for U.S. companies to mine and process more critical minerals for batteries.

3. Green hydrogen and other storage ideas

Scientists are working on other ways to boost batteries’ mineral supply chain, too, including recycling lithium and cobalt from old batteries. They’re also developing designs with other materials, explained Kerry Rippy, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Lab.

Concentrated solar power, for example, stores energy from the sun by heating molten salt and using it to produce steam to drive electric generators, similar to how a coal power plant would generate electricity. It’s expensive, though, and the salts currently used aren’t stable at higher temperature, Rippy writes. The Department of Energy is funding a similar project that is experimenting with heated sand. https://www.youtube.com/embed/fkX-H24Chfw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Hydrogen’s challenges, including its fossil fuel history.

Renewable fuels, such as green hydrogen and ammonia, provide a different type of storage. Since they store energy as liquid, they can be transported and used for shipping or rocket fuel.

Hydrogen gets a lot of attention, but not all hydrogen is green. Most hydrogen used today is actually produced with natural gas – a fossil fuel. Green hydrogen, in contrast, could be produced using renewable energy to power electrolysis, which splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, but again, it’s expensive.

“The key challenge is optimizing the process to make it efficient and economical,” Rippy writes. “The potential payoff is enormous: inexhaustible, completely renewable energy.”

4. Using your EV to power your home

Batteries could also soon turn your electric vehicle into a giant, mobile battery capable of powering your home.

Only a few vehicles are currently designed for vehicle-to-home charging, or V2H, but that’s changing, writes energy economist Seth Blumsack of Penn State University. Ford, for example, says its new F-150 Lightning pickup truck will be able to power an average house for three days on a single charge. https://www.youtube.com/embed/w4XLBOnzE6Q?wmode=transparent&start=0 How bidirectional charging allows EVs to power homes.

Blumsack explores the technical challenges as V2H grows and its potential to change how people manage energy use and how utilities store power.

For example, he writes, “some homeowners might hope to use their vehicle for what utility planners call ‘peak shaving’ – drawing household power from their EV during the day instead of relying on the grid, thus reducing their electricity purchases during peak demand hours.”

5. Capturing carbon from air and locking it away

Another emerging technology is more controversial.

Humans have put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past two centuries that just stopping fossil fuel use won’t be enough to quickly stabilize the climate. Most scenarios, including in recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, show the world will have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well.

The technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air exists – it’s called direct air capture – but it’s expensive.

Engineers and geophysicists like David Goldberg of Columbia University are exploring ways to cut those costs by combining direct air capture technology with renewable energy production and carbon storage, like offshore wind turbines built above undersea rock formations where captured carbon could be locked away.

The world’s largest direct air capture plant, launched in 2021 in Iceland, uses geothermal energy to power its equipment. The captured carbon dioxide is mixed with water and pumped into volcanic basalt formations underground. Chemical reactions with the basalt turn it into a hard carbonate.

Goldberg, who helped developed the mineralization process used in Iceland, sees similar potential for future U.S. offshore wind farms. Wind turbines often produce more energy than their customers need at any given time, making excess energy available.

“Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment,” Goldberg writes.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Stacy Morford, Environment + Climate Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Hot-Lynx

‘Rapid’ reduction in greenhouse gas emissions needed to curb climate change, U.N. chief says

Image by Sumanley xulx from Pixabay

The head of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres warned governments, calling out for “immediate, rapid and large-scale” cuts to greenhouse gas emissions in order to curb impacts already negatively affecting the climate.

As reported by PBS News, U.N. Chief said that global warming and climate change is happening on a much faster pace than predicted. The long-lasting effects from already released emissions into the atmosphere are inevitable.

“These changes are just the beginning of worse to come,” Guterres said, with hopes the dire message will appeal to governments to meet the goals that were originally created at the Paris Climate Accord back in 2015.

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Climate Solutions, Earth and Ecology

Climate Crisis: Report Reveals New and more extreme Dangers to our Oceans

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International Report Documents Expanded Risks from All Sides…

For decades, the human species has been treating its oceans poorly. Oil spills, pollution, overfishing, melting ice caps, and above all climate change have made our seas into perpetual punching bags. As a recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows, however, the ocean is now at its most fragile. If we do not help it, then it will soon start punching back.

The report is based on an extensive review of more than six thousand studies from scientists in 36 countries and the results are voluminous and, frankly, very scary for any sane observer. These compounded dangers are becoming harder to dispute, and previously challenged assertions such as how to measure the acceleration of the rising sea levels are being more clearly defined and more confidently confirmed by scientists.

The ocean has always been one of the earth’s most crucial natural deterrents to global warming. As a pool of water that covers over seventy percent of the world’s surface, the ocean is an enormous carbon drain. Like a forest, it sucks in lots of our carbon emissions and uses it to sustain its ecosystem.

Unfortunately, as climate change evolves and accelerates, the ocean’s ability to absorb that carbon diminishes. There is so much CO2 in the atmosphere that the ocean is all but overwhelmed. Simultaneously, other kinds of pollution—such as plastic or oil—are also taking their tolls on the seas’ ecosystems. 

Rising Sea Levels, Extreme Weather Events, other threats are in Extreme Acceleration

The biggest threat that the ocean poses if climate change is not effectively combatted is rising water levels. The IPCC report shows that with our current level of carbon emissions, arctic ice will start to melt at a more rapid pace, and sea levels will rise significantly. By the next century, certain coastal communities and entire island nations could be uninhabitable. As a huge percentage of the world lives by the water, this could leave millions of people incredibly vulnerable. 

The water is not only getting higher, though. It is also getting warmer. As the world’s temperature increases with an oversaturation of atmospheric carbon, the oceans follow suit. Water temperatures are rising and the rate of that rise is increasing. 

Warmer water has already brought with it a whole new line of ecological issues. When the temperature changes, it affects marine life behavior and migratory patterns. This is impacting everything from the food chain to the fishing industry, making it a far greater issue than just a few confused fish ending up on the wrong side of the sea.

Furthermore, hurricanes thrive off of warm water, so as the ocean gets hotter, we are already seeing larger and more brutal storms washing up on our coasts. The IPCC report underscores an increased occurrence of powerful storms, with category 4 and 5 hurricanes becoming far more frequent. Flooding will also continue to occur more frequently, and beachside infrastructure will find itself in dire straits all-year around.

Photo / © Adobe Stock

Dangers Lurk beyond rising Sea Levels: Pollution, Disease and Contagions Threaten to Rise as well

Then, there is also the fact that our oceans are getting dirtier. Acidification and pollution have led to the extinction of certain species, the eradication of coral reefs, and numerous health problems that find their way to the surface. More foodborne illnesses are turning up in seafood; Marine heat waves affect seabirds and amphibious mammals as well as fish; And a summer dip in the ocean may soon become a grimy bath that leaves you sick and dirty.

The ocean is powerful and beautiful. Ever since humankind evolved out of its depths millions of years ago, the great blue saltwater haven has been helping sustain us on land. Its wondrous waves and illustrious currents have inspired many, and mystified even more. Conscienceless as a silent part of this humble planet we call home, the ocean has asked for nothing in return for her millions of years of ecological service. Now, however, in no small part due to our exploitative nature, she is suffering. If we do not help her now when she is desperate, then her years of docility will soon run out, and we will feel her wrath.

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Climate Solutions, Earth and Ecology, Observation

Elon Musk donating $100M for Carbon Capture Tech: Twitter wants Trees

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Immediate pushback is a healthy sign of debate

Elon Musk is one of the most interesting humans, and now he is also, at any given moment, the wealthiest. It’s somewhat unusual, even on Twitter, to see anything but positive and supportive reactions to his tweets, given the level of love and admiration he has among followers.

Above: Photo / Adobe Stock

Add to that the concrete, if cryptic, pledge to donate 100M towards a prize for the “best carbon capture tech. It has been pointed out that this is .05% of his net worth, but that is an odd calculation, it seems, since Tesla itself is firmly on the side of climate rescue, with it’s stated mission to “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”.

It is, as a matter of fact, what separates Musk from almost every other tech-billionaire: His motivations are not to acquire wealth as an end but only to support his planet and species saving efforts. Others, such as his sometimes rival (not worthy) Jeff Bezos, can not claim any such thing with a straight face (or any believability).

The reactions were swift and attempted humor but also truth

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The number of replies that popped up swiftly proposing planting trees as likely the best “carbon capture tech” that would deserve such a prize was noteworthy. Because, in one of the few criticisms of the EV revolution that Tesla has started, it is likely not enough to rely solely on “S3XY” technology to save the world from carbon emissions causing global warming and climate change.

Not only is the plant-a-tree a valid rejoinder to the idea that some kind of elaborate technological breakthrough is needed (Bill Gates recently suggested blotting out the sun as a cooling solution), but there are also other “low tech” solutions that should not get short-shrift in order to fund expensive, possibly overly technological, solutions to a problem of our own making.

The recent highly acclaimed documentary film “Kiss the Ground” proposes soil regeneration to reduce carbon emission, improve health benefits of food and, at the same time actually reduce the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere.

Read More: “Kiss The Ground” Documentary Offers Hopeful Remedy to Climate Change by Focusing on Soil Regeneration

The arguments made by this excellent documentary beg the question: why not take funds, such as those being offered by Elon Musk, and divert them first towards obvious, low-tech solutions with proven results, rather than funding a moon-shot style tech search for a method that may, in then end, like so much that has come before, have unintended and even possibly negative repercussions.

At the very least, shouldn’t a portion of this 100 million, or even an equal sum (purportedly amounting to, therefore, 1% rather than .05% of Musks net worth) be allocated to existing, proven methods, rather than a search for new tech invented out of whole cloth?

Twitter posts hit a nerve, now maybe government and private funding should follow common sense

This is not a scientific or detail specific criticism. There may well be “issues” with planting trees or recovering damages soil around the world, and in the process reversing carbon imbalances and even reducing the levels currently measured.

But common sense says otherwise. The destruction of the soil and the deforestation of the globe are part and parcel of the same problem, extreme dependence on fossil fuel long after the dangers were well known, that has caused the current and worsening global problem.

Elon Musk is a hero of the sustainable energy movement, as he well should be. It is powerful and dedicated figures like Musk that are needed, desperately, to solve the looming and already unfolding crises that we face.

The voices for trees and soil regeneration are also an extremely important element of the solutions that are desperately needed, sans the hoopla and massive money prize that tech already has attached.

Would it be too far fetched, @elonmusk, for these various factions, all wanting the same result, to cooperate and collaborate on all the solutions that will undoubtedly be required is we are to pull back from the brink and substantially improve the condition of a planet on its way to possible total annihilation?

Read more: Climate Crisis Coverage by Lynxotic

Thanks to Elon Musk for all his contributions and they are many. Rescuing the E.V. and turning the entire auto industry on it’s head and bringing about an accelerating transition to sustainable transportation much sooner than could have happened without him and Tesla.

Creating the understanding that a business and an entrepreneur does not have to focus relentlessly on profit for its own sake to be successful and powerful. And, as for giving the human species a “plan-b” in the form of abandoning a dying earth in favor of Mars, let’s stick with plan A for now and plant trees, reiterate the soil and, yes, find other solutions to the massive carbon emissions that are choking the life out of our world.

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Climate Solutions

2020 likely to be Hottest Year on Record Despite Isolation and Economic Slow-down Lowering Emissions

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

One more thing…

With social distancing orders spanning across the entire world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have noticed environmental shifts for the better. Certainly with so many individuals remaining in their homes, the air is cleaner in major cities and people aren’t emitting as much pollution. One might assume that this bodes well for 2020 as a climate-reforming year.

Sadly, although the isolation has probably lowered the carbon footprint in the short term, recent statistics show that 2020 is already on its way to becoming one of the hottest years on record. According to the Global Climate Report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, January-February 2020 was the second hottest of its period on record, with global temperatures 1.16 degrees Celsius over the 20th Century average. The only hotter January-February period occurred in 2016.

Likewise, Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reported that global temperatures for March 2020 were on par with those of March 2017 and 2019, respectively the second and third warmest Marches on record.

While we are preoccupied with a pandemic…

Coming off of the warmest decade ever, it should not be a surprise that 2020 is already proving to be a blazing year. The high temperatures are inextricably related to climate change, and even if our current isolated situation is causing people to conserve, it is a meager change that can hardly diminish the CO2 trapped in our atmosphere on any tangible level.

Ever since industrial revolution, humans have been pumping carbon into the air, which in turn has been trapping heat and causing global warming. 2020’s high temperatures are only the most recent manifestation of this phenomenon. Essentially, we have over a century’s worth of above-natural levels of CO2 above us. A few weeks, months, or even a full year of low-emission isolated living is not going to magically eliminate the systemic environmental issue at hand.

This is not to diminish the carbon-reducing efforts of individuals—they are certainly impactful on a person-to-person level. However, if the world is to truly combat the crisis and reach salvation for the future, then powerful groups must come together with policies that enact and enforce wide scale reformation.

Even if we all stay at home, abstain from driving, and engage in less carbon-producing commerce throughout 2020, the world-as-it-is will continue to melt, for it is not just the current year that jeopardizes the planet. It is all of the hundreds of years that came before it. If a solution exists, it will not take effect overnight.

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Breaking News, Climate Solutions, Observation

Trump attacks Planet: Cuts Fuel Efficiency Standards, hoping to Rescue Putin and MBS

Photo Collage – Adobe Stock / Lynxotic / Evan Vucci/AP/Shutterstock

Trump Cuts Obama-Era Fuel Efficiency Standards By Half, An Economic Risk With Environmental Costs

On Tuesday, March 31st, President Donald Trump delivered yet again on one of his more cryptic campaign promises—to roll back environmental policies set during the Obama Administration in order to boost the fossil-fuel economy. This time, his instrument of anti-ecological attack is the automotive industry, which he seeks to send back to the carbon spewing dark ages at the peril of destroying all life on earth.

The new standards being pushed into action are regressive from the 2012-initiated Obama standards. Eight years ago, President Obama called for automakers to increase efficiency by 5% and aim for a 54 mpg average on vehicles. Trump’s new plan reduces that efficiency to 2.5% and aims instead for a more conservative 40 mpg. The EPA and the Department of Transportation recently wrote up and expressed support of Trump’s amended standards.

The stated rationale behind this change, according to Trump and his colleagues, is that it will help the economy. These standards will decrease the price of cars by an estimated $1,000, in order to incentivize people to buy newer and safer vehicles. Meanwhile, it is meant to increase manufacturing and savings and production costs of automakers. This is probably why car companies such as General Motors, Toyota, and Chrysler champion Trump’s new standards—they buy into the trickle-down economic ideal that Republicans are also promoting.

Not only dangerous for the Environment, also Zero Economic Benefit

Many, however, question the validity behind Trump’s economic optimism. For starters, under a 40 mpg average, drivers will have to pay more for gas. According to Consumer Reports, car owners will have to spend $3,200 more on fuel over the course of a vehicles lifetime, dwarfing the original $1,000 savings at the time of purchase.

Meanwhile, the plan could hurt car manufacturers operating in international markets. Just because the United States remains lax in its fuel efficiency standards does not mean that the rest of the world will follow suit. Gas-guzzling, carbon-spewing cars might be fair game in America, but they may not meet legal requirements overseas. Thus, American-made cars may fail to turn profits in foreign markets, causing financial strife and employee layoffs stateside.

And then there is the environmental cost. Gas powered, ICE vehicles are the greatest contributors to carbon emissions in the world right now. According to the New York Times, Trump’s new plan would allow cars to emit almost a billion more tons of CO2 over the course of their lifetimes. While the long-term financial price of these increased emissions is unclear (yet probably very expensive), their consequences will inevitably extend far beyond monetary concerns.

Using Economic “Stimulus” as an excuse to gut Environmental Safeguards is the New Anti-Eco War Tactic

Carbon dioxide trapped in our atmosphere is the leading contributor to climate change. The planet is already in a dangerous situation with more parts-per-million than what is ecologically sound. Industrially, the world demands a turn away from fossil fuels and a decrease in emissions.

Trump’s new plan, however, digresses from the planet’s urgent environmental needs. The penalties could include biodiversity loss, extreme temperature shifts, natural disasters, rising sea levels, and more. Even in shorter terms, greater emissions can compromise air quality, leading to increased illnesses and health issues—something that the world certainly does not need under the current circumstances.


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While Trump has his powerful profit-driven supporters for these new standards, many are pushing back against him. Most notably, the state of California continues to aim for its own emissions standards that are far more stringent than the federal ones. The Trump administration deemed California setting its own standards unconstitutional back in September, but the Golden State has not given up the fight, launching lawsuits and municipal plans to decrease its statewide fossil fuel reliance.

Environmental groups and electric car manufacturers also disagree with the President—BMW, Ford, Honda, and Volkswagen have already struck deals with California and twenty-three additional states opposing Trump’s federal standards are expected to join Cali in filing suits against the administration.

With everything America is fighting right now, environmental issues have seemed to take a temporary backseat to more immediate matters. This late addition to Trump’s ongoing list of environmental rollbacks comes at a precarious time, but it should not be overlooked. Despite everything going on, the climate continues changing and the earth continues warming. When the pandemic passes, environmental problems will still be here. The least we can do is make sure they do not gain an upper hand while we briefly focus our attentions elsewhere.

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Climate Solutions, Coronavirus, Observation

Abundance or Scarcity: Panic Buying and the Tin-Foil Story

How much is enough and for how long?

As virtually everyone is aware by now the second biggest story of the week (third?) has been the literal deluge of shopping crowds converging on grocery and big-box stores buying large quantities of water, paper products, disinfectants and, more recently, food staples and whatever else is not nailed down.

Interviews with company presidents that manufacture paper products have shown that this is truly panic buying as the apparent shortages are based not on a lack of supply or the ability to produce more, but on the logistical difficulty in getting the shelves stocked fast enough.

“There is not some big underground warehouse like in ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ where there is all this toilet paper sitting around in case it is needed”

Dan Clarahan, president of United Converting, quoted in the NY Times

Instead people are literally filling their closets with excess paper, more than they can use in a year, all due to psychological reactions to the uncertainty of the overall situation. We as humans are notoriously bad at calculating needs and usage of supplies and making time based buying decisions.

Paper aisle of a discount store today in Los Angeles. Photo / Lynxotic

Case in point: the box of tin-foil above, which is admittedly a 500 ft roll meant for restaurant use (bought at Costco) is, for all intents and purposes, an antique. I bought it for around $15 in 2012. It’s not gone yet.

I am not, as you can see, an industrial grade user of tin-foil. However, this box has been used several times a week for various household refrigerator storage tasks for 8 Years!

Without getting into the fine mathematics of how long, per person, a roll of toilet paper should last (including all the minutia such as the length of the roll and how many “layers of comfort” are included) grabbing shopping carts full is likely not a necessity, even if practicing social distancing for a month or two.

“Empty” shelves at Los Angeles discount store – Photo / Lynxotic

And then what about food? This photo is of “shockingly empty” shelves in the meat section of a discount store in Los Angeles, today. What’s the first thing you see? What I see is just how many great things to eat are readily available, still, on these empty shelves.

So, all in all, I guess its called “panic” for a reason. Because it’s not about “reason” but rather that lack thereof. Just as with paper products food supplies are not in any huge danger of total collapse. You just might have to choose a different entrée for a time or two. Shelves are being restocked as fast as the stores can muster, but the speed, and in particular the amount per person, of the buying is making it impossible to physically get the goods into place soon enough.

Teleconferencing, Cloud apps, Work-from-home and the carbon conundrum

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And, while on the subject of what’s not-as-bad as it seems, interestingly many common behaviors that were considered necessary, up until the coronavirus became a danger when combined with those practices, such as the 4oz limit on liquids taken on to an aircraft are being phased out. When people were allowed, starting recently, to take 12oz bottles of hand sanitizer onto flights, literally nothing bad happened.

And what about working from home, as has been almost universally adopted by major tech companies such as Amazon, Twitter, Apple, etc. Many are saying this could, and should, be a permanent change and that the don’t think that the practice of commuting to work will ever be the norm again.

Wait… what? So, along with having oil shoved down our throats (or at lest into our gas tanks) by the fossil fuel industry for half a century longer than technologically necessary, we have been commuting and destroying the planet for no reason at all?

Surprisingly positive and even optimistic signs are already appearing like this everywhere – green shoots of the new season of change. Ands change, radical change, is the common denominator.

Electric cars were driving around London as early as 1884, but it took Elon Musk and Tesla to finally take the idea of owning one to the mainstream. A car with an internal combustion engine created in 1934 got over 30 MPG, could reach speeds upwards of 90 mph and could seat 11. It’s no accident that these technologies were stifled for all these years. Ask Putin and MBS.

Living in a Box might help us to think Outside the Box

So, without putting too fine a point on it, a lot of good things are already potentially coming out of the massive changes underfoot – not just our fight to escape the worst of the coronaviruses potential, but the economic fallout, which is only partially related, and the coming shift in thinking about, well, everything.

The reality is, from Climate Change and carbon overload to corruption in government and big business, the biggest changes needed are possible if the old ways just disappear, or are swept away, in order for existing technological potential to be realized. And what better time for that to happen than now?

Act as if ye have faith and faith shall be given to you

We are all so often lost. Feeling lost and wondering what to do. We run to the stores and try to race against one another for the chance to hoard things we don’t really need. But, perhaps, just as toilet paper won’t protect you from the novel coronavirus, even bigger issues such as climate change can only begin to be solved once we find a way to live in a totally different way.

”Well…You know, so much of the time we’re just lost. We say, “Please, God, tell us what is right. Tell us what is true.”

I mean there is no justice. The rich win; the poor are powerless. We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time we become dead, a little dead.

“The Verdict”

What way? That is unknown. Big changes are coming, like it or not. But changes don’t always mean worsening circumstances. We might have the solutions right under our noses. That tin-foil might last longer than we expected. Accepting, even embracing change might reveal a chance for better things to come. Learning not to burn fossilized plant matter to go to an office to work on a computer that you also have at home. Believing in our ability as humans to find solutions, and for those solutions to be brought into the light of day, without being obstructed or suppressed for greedy, stupid reasons.

…But today you are the law. You are the law, not some book, not the lawyers, not a marble statue, or the trappings of the court. See, those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are, in fact, a prayer, I mean a fervent and a frightened prayer.

The next big challenge, which we as a planet are clearly not yet prepared to face, is climate change and the environmental damage wrought by “man”. What if interconnected human communications, enhanced by software and the internet, can play a roll in changing the way we live – and by doing that changing the equation that has been a negative one for over a century? That could be a building block toward not just survival but to a new way to prevail and prosper.

In my religion, they say, “Act as if you had faith; faith will be given to you.”

If we are to have faith in justice we need only to believe in ourselves and act with justice. See, I believe there is justice in our hearts.”

Words by David Mamet – Performed by Paul Newman in Sidney Lumet’s, ‘The Verdict

Read more:

Saving Animals Saves Ourselves: Trump’s Covert Attacks on Endangered Species are Eco-Assaults on Humanity

Tesla Model Y Deliveries are Coming Soon: Here’s a Peek Inside

Capitalists to the Rescue?: Automakers follow Tesla in Race for Electric Car Dominance:

The Tipping Point is Behind us Now, It’s only a question of When EV’s Market Share will Overtake ICE 

Capitalists to the Rescue?: Automakers follow Tesla in Race for Electric Car Dominance

The most talked about car in 2019 has been Tesla’s Model 3, an electric vehicle from Tesla that is sleek, modern looking, and highly desirable. In Tesla’s latest quarter alone, the company has sold nearly 80,000 Model 3s, sustaining it as the most popular EV on the market. This is not Tesla’s only achievement for the year. The company’s Cybertruck and Semi have received copious attention; its Model X and Model S continue to be popular; and consumers are eagerly awaiting 2020’s releases of the Model Y and Roadster.

“Dark Towers” by David Enrich

Click to Buy “Dark Towers” and at the same time help Lynxotic and All Independent Local Bookstores. Also Available on Amazon .

Based on its title, David Enrich’s new book “Dark Towers” might sound like an appendix to the nine part horror-fantasy series that Stephen King wrote between 1982 and 2012. In reality, though, Enrich’s book is a true story of financial corruption, with the full title “Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump and an Epic Trail of Destruction.”

Nevertheless, the tale is just as riveting as any novel, and is perhaps even darker than any work of fiction.

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Climate Solutions

Human-Caused Methane Emissions could be 40% Higher than Previously Estimated

Photo Collage / Lynxotic

Urgency Remains even as Novel Coronavirus Battle is at the Forefront

A recent study published in the scientific journal Nature shows that humans may be responsible for a greater portion of the methane in the atmosphere than previously thought. The report, which came out in Nature’s latest peer-reviewed issue, illustrates how human emissions could account for 25-40% more of the methane in our atmosphere than we expected.

Methane is the greenhouse gas that contributes the most to climate change after carbon dioxide. Emissions of the chemical compound account for around a quarter of the global warming we are experiencing, and it is far more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere, yet disappears much quicker.

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Like our studies of atmospheric CO2, though, scientists and laymen alike have long believed that the methane in our air was a steady balance of human emissions and natural phenomenon. This new report, however, suggests otherwise.

Scientists conducted the experiment by extracting large ice sheets from Greenland. These frozen arctic relics dig into the ground, preserving in ice the chemical condition of Earth’s air over the years. By melting these extracts and analyzing the molecules within, we get a glimpse into what kind of compounds filled our planet in the past.

For this study, the scientists looked at the methane in the ice from the year ~1750 compared to now. In the mid-18th Century, the planet was just on the cusp of wide-scale industrialization, and thus the pollutants from that period gives us an idea of what the world was (chemically) like before the current Anthropocene. What scientists found was that in pre-industrial times, only about 1-5 million tons of methane entered into the atmosphere each year compared to the 45 million tons that annually make their way up there today.

The study is troubling as it shows that human practices are damaging the ecosystem far more than we anticipated.

This 1-5 million pre-industrial figure was quite smaller than expected, and it suggests that the human methane footprint is far more severe than we imagined. Through agriculture and fossil fuel burning, humans are evidently responsible for the vast majority of methane in our skies.

Contrarily, from a more optimistic perspective, it also solidifies that we have greater agency over the amount of methane in the atmosphere. Although we may not have previously known it, we actually have a heightened ability to rein in methane emissions and pave a brighter future for the environment.

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Business, Entertainment, Travel

Hollywood Blvd. Walk of Fame Redesign looks Great but Faces Challenges

Photo / Gensler / Studio-MLA

According to Locals, a Makeover is a Must

The epicenter of the entertainment industry, Hollywood Boulevard has been one of Los Angeles’ biggest tourist attractions for over a hundred years. It’s glamorous Walk of Fame, particularly near the intersection with Vine Street, is iconic and has been the focus of many sensational events and occasions throughout the years.

As dazzling as Hollywood may be to tourists, though, Angelinos have had many complaints about the famed street’s architecture and organization over the years, so much so that the location has undergone several aesthetic transformations during the past few decades.

Now, Los Angeles City Council and specifically Hollywood District representative Mitch O’Farrell has been pushing for a complete overhaul of the area. This renovation would incorporate several changes to the street’s layout, but it would principally offer increased sidewalk space for an improved pedestrian experience.

Hollywood’s Walk of Fame is notoriously crowded. One can hardly appreciate the Stars for all the people walking over them. By widening the sidewalk, people will be able to admire the monuments with comfort, but also walk down the street without having to dodge so many bodies.

Of course, the drawback to a larger sidewalk is decreased road space. Traffic is bad enough in Los Angeles as it is, and some fear that with a wider sidewalk, a narrower street would terribly back up the cars along Hollywood Boulevard. Perhaps this is yet another initiative on LA’s behalf to latently promote public transportation or deincentivize independent driving.

That being said, California (and Los Angeles in particular) enters into 2020 with some bold environmental plans. The Golden State has daring ambitions to go carbon neutral well ahead of the rest of the nation and to drastically decrease its emissions in the coming years. The state has targeted an increased use of electric cars as a paramount means of attaining these goals, but obviously, more action is needed if they truly desire to reach their hefty objectives.

Photo / Gensler / Studio-MLA

Environmental Considerations Should be at the Center of the Planning

Thus, the renovation of Hollywood Boulevard should be seen as an opportunity to make the neighborhood a more eco-friendly urban environment. Unfortunately, not much has been said about this so far. The prospective designs for the updated area—spearheaded by Gensler and Studio-MLA architecture firms—do involve more open air space and trees, though.

This is a good start, but the redesign could also seek ways to incorporate solar panels, increased vegetation, and carbon absorbing surfaces into the landscape. A sleek style certainly does wonders for the street’s aesthetic, but that does not mean that the renovation cannot be functional and progressive at the same time.

Furthermore, there is also a political question as to weather or not refurbishing Hollywood Boulevard at all is the best use of Los Angeles’ taxpayer dollars. Other neighborhoods in the community—South Central, Downtown, or Skid Row for examples—have far worse infrastructure and definitely require more immediate attention.

Likewise, LA’s public transportation system has been highly criticized for decades. If the local government is seeking an urban planning initiative, perhaps it could try refining the city’s metro system for greater accessibility and use.

The obvious argument against all of this is that brushing up the Walk of Fame will increase activity in one of the city’s central commercial hubs. This will help the local economy, eventually earning the city greater funds that it can redistribute to some of LA’s more desperate regions or issues.

It is a strange rewriting of the trickle-down-economics plan that was seldom more than political speech fodder. Nevertheless, Los Angeles already has $4 million in seed money for the project, while some believe that such funds are better placed directly towards more pressing and important causes.

Although the Walk of Fame redevelopment plan has been talked about for months, it is still only in its infancy. It has a long way to go, but hopefully, those in charge of it will not overlook environmental and social justice opportunities when they consider the project’s architectural, political, and ethical implications.

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Climate Solutions, Tech

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice Defy Corporate Policy Calling Out Company on Carbon Emissions

Photo Collage – Aussie Brushfire / Jeff Bezos

Speaking out at great Risk against the Behemoth

In the beginning of 2020, e-commerce tech conglomerate Amazon issued a new policy aimed at preventing its employees from speaking publicly without company approval. Now, the company is threatening to reprimand or even terminate employees who attend climate action rallies or speak out about Amazon’s carbon emissions.

The Amazon workers, however, are not reacting passively to these threats. Instead, they are banding together to form the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ) to show solidarity and pressure the higher-ups to change their energy-related business practices.

The AECJ was only recently formed, but has already extended invitations to thousands of Amazon employees. In an email disseminated by the organization, Amazon workers were asked a number of questions about the company’s ethics. In particular, the note asks employees how they feel about Amazon’s sustainability practices—the issue at the center of the AECJ’s agenda.

Controversies Continue to Build at the eCommerce Giant

In recent years, Amazon has been in hot water on a number of political issues. Climate change is just one of them. CEO Jeff Bezos has been highly criticized for his business dealings with major oil and gas companies, buying into and financially supporting a number of fossil-fuel burning juggernauts. Although Bezos has expressed plans for Amazon to go carbon neutral by 2040 and has hinted at halting donations towards climate-denying politicians, all outlooks are shrouded in noncommittal uncertainty and effectively dodge the question of Amazon’s ongoing relationships with the fossil fuel industry.

Amazon employees appear to have finally had enough of this. Last September, hundreds of Amazon workers participated in a climate action walkout, where they pressured the company to reassess its carbon output. Around the same time, Amazon invested in 100,000 electric vehicles—something that should be celebrated, but nevertheless remains a rather hollow gesture in light of the larger picture.

Governments and Giant Corporations must be Forced to lead the way, if Necessary

The fossil fuel industry, the benefits reaped by the human race notwithstanding, is the central cause of the climate crisis. Big oil and gas companies, backed by politicians and funded by elite organizations, are the major cause of carbon emissions in the world. Even if every individual does his or her part to live sustainably, climate change will continue to occur at a brutal pace unless there is a large-scale transformation in the energy sector. This is a change that no one person can really instigate, but an international institution such as Amazon could impact, in a positive or negative way.

Despite its name, the AECJ are working to change Amazon on more fronts than just environmental ones. Amazon has also been rightfully panned for its mistreatment of warehouse workers and its shady dealings with the government, providing data and technology to officials without user consent. The AECJ hopes to reform some of these issues as well and make Amazon a better place to work and a better institution in the world at large. So far, over 340 Amazon employees have signed with the AECJ, risking their jobs to try and create a brighter future from the bottom up.

Granted, Amazon is not alone in its high carbon emissions, data sharing, and workplace ruling unethicalities. Tech companies such as Google, Facebookand Microsoft have been accused of similar moral breaches. Similar to the society at large, though, these corporations are built upon foundations of lower-level workers. These employees are often diligent and passionate, and in many situations, they have a closer connection to common reality than those at the top of the corporate hierarchies. Even in the midst of oppression, these people can have voices, and when they band together for powerful and just causes, those voices have the potential to form a chorus that leads to significant change.

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Climate Solutions, Lifestyle

Government and Industrial Responsibility vs. Private Guilt in the Climate Crisis

Image by Angela Yuriko Smith

Personal Guilt Misconceptions and “Mind Control by the Alligators”

With the entire world soon to be in a state of emergency due to the climate crisis it is government and industry that must lead the way in enacting drastic reforms for survival. If that leadership is not forthcoming then we all must begin fighting against the system that threatens our own extinction.

The idea that the problem is based on a lack of “voluntary” climate footprint reduction by individuals is not only absurd but an intentional method used to prevent the implementation of any systemic changes.

While individuals and individual consumption is clearly a meaningful factor and cause, it is a propaganda ploy to play on individual guilt and responsibility over a massive, essential change in world energy infrastructure.

Even pointing to the differences in carbon burned by rich vs. poor serves only to produce a scapegoat that is an imaginary individual as opposed to starting a real discussion about how government, industry to society as a whole can solve the problem.

Should a person choosing to fly from LA to NYC be shamed or feel guilt and cancel the trip instead? Why are there no high speed, carbon neutral transportation options?

No different than in 2008 at the depth of the financial crisis when 700 billion was gifted to big banks and Insurance companies, who promptly proceeded to award themselves massive bonuses for nearly destroying the entire world economy.

Not only was the “man from Main Street” blamed in much of the media for “irresponsible” used of credit that was, in reality, foisted on him but that same demographic suffered most and was clearly the victim of the systemic greed that was the true cause of the contagion.

Stay tuned, as this theme will re-emerge with a vengeance as none of the underlying causes of that crisis were addressed, let alone corrected.

Photo by Karsten Wuerth

Simple examples of top down success stories abound but they are rarely mentioned

In Germany, for example, a goal of 65% reliance on clean renewable energy sources is within sight, set as a goal for 2030, but likely will be reached or even surpassed before then.

How was this achieved? Was there a spontaneous surge in individual choices that led to this shift away from Oil and Coal? Of course not. Taxes played a role, industry cooperated, individuals were encouraged, and in some cases required by law, to follow suit.

A very large factor, however, was the lack of Oil interests relative to other countries. In Germany percentage of dependence on foreign oil at very high prices was far above the US or even most of the rest of Northern Europe since WW II. That war itself was lost by the German Axis partially due to the lack of access to cheap oil.

This served, in the short run, to force people to use energy more carefully than in the US. Anything from non essential lighting to refrigeration and air conditioning and individual travel options were limited for the second half of the 20th Century. This was partly due to the market price, but also to the added taxes, which were used to help fund projects like mass transit, and reduce the dependence on oil by having, as a society, a more energy efficient transportation infrastructure.

It’s No Accident that the US has been Lagging Behind in Much Needed Changes for Decades

During the obvious shift in awareness toward this existential challenge facing humankind, with massive predatory greed as its root cause, there can be no foisting of responsibility onto the backs of the common citizen.

It is up to the media to quash and reject the idea that no one can complain about systemic failures unless they lead a private lifestyle that is virtually “carbon free”.

The idea is patently absurd on its face, as if we should all wake up one day and personally replace the freeways with mass transit, for example, even while politicians and industry continue to block sustainable transportation or green lifestyle options for average people through greed and vested interests of the fossil fuel industrial complex.

There is Precedent for this Struggle, and Not a Nice One

Rather, governments, industry and citizenry must all come together against a common enemy, as was done in WW2 in the fight to stop Hitler and the Nazis.

Hitler in this scenario is not the climate crisis itself but rather the corrupt cabal running governments and industry and quietly asserting all its might to prevent positive change from happening.

“If you belong to that small group of people who feel threatened by us, then we have some very bad news for you, because this is only the beginning. Change is coming whether they like it or not.” – Greta Thunberg

A major method the sociopaths of the status quo use to stop positive change is the ridiculous argument that only individuals can solve the problems that are root the cause of the climate crisis.

This is, in fact, true, but not in the way that they are selling. The real and only way that the problems can be solved is by individuals standing up and demanding the worldwide systemic changes necessary to reverse the environmental causes of the crisis.

And if the powers that seek to block those changes stand in the way, they must be removed from power, until they join the dinosaurs they resemble, otherwise all of us face extinction together.

And that goes double for any media outlet that tries to sell you the false narrative the personal, individual actions are primarily to blame, rather than the corrupt decisions of those in power.

It is not just an abdication of responsibility it is willful criminal negligence that would destroy the earth in suicidal destruction, along with the entire human race. Those elements of society blocking the positive changes need to be stopped by any means necessary.

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Climate Solutions, Observation

Los Angeles Aims For 25% Less Greenhouse Gas Emissions By 2028: Electric Vehicles Are The Key

LA Takes Tackling Smog and CO2 Emissions Seriously

Technology leaders from the city of Los Angeles recently announced what they are calling the Zero Emission 2028 Roadmap 2.0. In this outline, the leaders propose a plan by which the bustling metropolis reduces its greenhouse gas emissions by 25% within the next eight years—an ambitious and unprecedented goal that outdoes both the California State and Paris Climate Accord proposals.

Los Angeles is known as a progressive place, filled with creative people willing to adapt to new ideas and fight for just causes. Nevertheless, the SoCal city is also known for its soul crushing traffic. Even with four million residents, finding an Angelino without reason to complain about the town’s constantly congested crisscrossed freeways and lack of reliable public transportation is nearly impossible.

The Californians who devised this plan were not unaware of LA’s traffic issues. Since Many of them live in the city, these tech leaders can tell from the air pollution alone that vehicles are Los Angeles’ heaviest contributors to carbon emissions. If they are serious about their plan, which appears to be the case, then they will have to do something fast about all the cars and trucks smogging up the roads.

The obvious solution would be to create a more effective mass transit system in Los Angeles. However, with an infrastructure unfit for trains and countless failed attempts to move LA drivers onto buses, such a change is unlikely to catch on now. Instead, the planners are looking to the future of electric vehicles for a possible answer to the city’s pollution problems.

The Zero Emission 2028 Roadmap 2.0 focuses heavily on LA’s transition towards EVs. Specifically, by 2028, the plan aims for EVs to account for 80% of all vehicles sold in the city. Simultaneously, it wants LA and the surrounding area to create more EV-compatible infrastructure and zero-emission goods, rebranding the City of Angels as the EV Capital of the World.

City Proposed Solutions as Federal and State Level Options Failed

Of course, not all vehicles emit equally. If Los Angeles wants to achieve its goal by 2028, then it first needs to attack the heavy-duty, gas-guzzling vehicles—buses and trucks. Luckily, as of this year especially, there are many plus-sized EVs for the city to choose from. Tesla recently released the Cybertruck, and many even larger zero-emission vehicles are on the way from a wide variety of car and truck manufacturers. The California Air Resource Board is even proposing an Advanced Clean Truck regulation, which would require one out of every five trucks sold in the state by 2030 to be zero-emission models. 

Earlier this year, however, the state of California lost a battle against the Trump administration (as well as a few car manufacturers) for the right to set its own emissions standards. While the Golden State was denied the right to hold itself to a higher ecological standard than the federal government mandates, individual cities have a little more wiggle room. Therefore, Los Angeles is not just creating these standards for itself; it is hoping that these efforts will inspire other municipalities in California and around the nation to follow suit. If the federal government will not solve the problem, and the state governments are barred from taking action, then perhaps it is up to the local governments to evoke change from the bottom up.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is in full support of the plan. Known to be an environmentally sensitive politician, Garcetti proposed a Green New Deal to the city back in April, outlining ways for LA to combat climate change. The Zero Emission 2028 Roadmap 2.0 is therefore in his wheelhouse, as it accelerates the already ambitious conservation goals set out in the previous proposal. Also supporting the plan are the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI) and the Transportation Electrification Partnership (TEP) as well as private sector partners Tesla, BMW, Audi, BYD, Greenlots, and Proterra.

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Observation, Tech

Tesla Cybertruck Pre-Orders pass Quarter Mil, a.k.a. Any Press is Good Press

Memes and Ridicule are spreading the word: There’s a New Truck in Town…

It’s been quite a week in Tesla news since the Cybertruck was unveiled near the SpaceX headquarters on November 21st. There’s been a rollercoaster of love and mocking, most of which has been entertaining. Once the initial barrage of silly memes hit like an avalanche on Twitter, auto insiders piled on, in a nice way with tongue in cheek, and all seemed to combine to take an already massive press event to an even higher level.

While pre-orders for the Model 3 peaked around half-a-million, and as all would know by now, that model is a huge success story, 250k in pre-orders in less than a week for Cybertruck is not a bad start. Yes, the pre-orders for the Cybertruck are only $100, more a token of appreciation than a hard reservation, and are fully refundable at that, but for a truck that was roundly derided and even scornfully laughed at, this cannot be considered an insignificant number.

There has been much speculation, as the pre-order tally kept growing, that this could all be a ruse and that the publicity would spur on accelerated development at other automakers, which does appear to be the case. However, amid all the noise and squawking, the name, the image, the logo and the concept are splashing across the world like a tsunami of retro-nostalgic-futurism gone wild.

And, deep deep below the surface of that wave, there is something more. Much more. As is often the case with Elon Musk led projects, an attempt was clearly made to break the mold when it comes to the engineering and feature-set capability, not just the aesthetic ethos.

“So, normally the way that a truck is designed, you have a body on frame, you have a bed on frame and the body and the bed don’t do anything useful. They’re carried like cargo, like a sack of potatoes. It was the way that aircraft used to be designed, when they had biplanes, basically. The key to creating an effective monoplane was a stressed skin design. You move the stress to the outside skin.”

– Elon Musk at the Tesla Cybertruck Unveil Event

As can be seen by looking online at the stats, or reading some good Teslarati articles that go further into the deeply practical innovations, there’s a lot more here than meets the eye.

2019 has been a Watershed Year for Tesla and Elon Musk and 2020 will see more Massive Changes

The 250k pre-orders represent, at the very least, a massive world-wide focus group on the idea of the Cybertruck, if not the truck itself. This focus group is very, very enthusiastic about the idea. How much of this is celebrity love? How much is tree-hugger-meets-mad-max eco-rescue lovers? How many are tired of the macho-hillbilly-redneck pro-gas-guzzling Marlboro-Man image of “Made-Ford-Tough”? A lot, clearly.

“So if you think about a truck, you want a truck that’s tough. You want a truck that’s really tough, not fake tough.”

– ELON MUSK AT THE TESLA CYBERTRUCK UNVEIL EVENT

And what if it is just a lot of people with a C-note to spare that would like to vote for an overthrow of the old guard and see the transition to a sustainable energy transportation infrastructure at least get off its ass?

In Southern California you get on the freeway anytime, anywhere and you will see old guard 19mpg, 40 gallon per tank monsters with fat, stupid oversized clown wheels as far as the eye can see. What if they were mixed with Tesla Cybertrucks, in addition to the Model S and Model 3s that are already a California freeway mainstay. Would that be “Blade-Runner-esque? And what of it? At lease a new day will look new and be different.

Haven’t we seen enough of the Status Quo? Haven’t the Dinosaurs had their day? Change can be refreshing, even while retro in a cyberpunk kind of way, and in the end, Saving the Planet and Having Fun Doing It is a much better way than the way we had.

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Climate Solutions

Carbon Dioxide Levels Reach Record High: Dire Statistics ahead of Climate Change Conference

Important Metrics that Measure the Danger Timeline…

The World Meteorological Organization released a new report stating that the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere has reached a record high. According to scientists, the planet’s atmosphere had an average greenhouse gas concentration of 407.8 parts per million in 2018. This is an all time high and a significant increase from the 405.5 parts per million average from 2017.

These figures are not a natural occurrence, and they are indeed very dangerous. The last time the Earth had these levels of greenhouse gases trapped in its atmosphere was over three million years ago, and the climate then was certainly not hospitable for humankind.

The level of carbon dioxide amongst other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased tremendously since pre-industrial times, showing a direct correlation between human emissions and climate change. As more fossil fuels are burned on Earth, more carbon enters the sky, thus trapping heat and disrupting the environment.

Therefore, as emissions increase, we can expect the climate crisis to accelerate. Higher CO2 levels will take a greater burden on natural carbon drains like forests and oceans. Likewise, with the temperature spike, polar ice will melt quicker, sea levels will rise, air will dry up, and the world will face more severe natural disasters—the recent floods in Venice and fires in California are already evidence of this occurring.

Based on the way world leaders are responding to the climate crisis right now, it is unlikely that the trend of increased carbon emissions will be reversing itself anytime soon. As 2019—soon to be one of the hottest years on record—comes to a close, we can expect that the annual average amount of carbon in the atmosphere to go up yet again. 

UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid will Address many issues, Including this Data

This unfortunate news comes at a pressing time, as the UN Climate Change Conference takes place next week in Madrid, Spain and will continue through December 15th. Currently there is a drastic gap between the world’s climate goals set in the 2015 Paris accord and the amount of actual progress that has taken place. The UN recently reported that global greenhouse gas emissions would need to drop 7.6 percent each year after 2020 in order to stabilize the atmosphere and reach the ambitions we settled on in Paris. 

The UN’s proposition is directly antithetical to the emission-increasing trend that has been going on since the Industrial Revolution. It may seem like a reversing of progress, but it is a step that the world needs to take in order to maintain the human race. Nevertheless, it is still a step forward, by taking it the world will come up with new ways to solve problems and produce energy without burning fossil fuels. 

Thus, even in these ecologically treacherous times, a shred of optimism remains. Rethinking our practices and prioritizing environmental conservation is not a suggestion, but a necessity in the modern era. But by making such changes, we will also be making innovations and continuing to grow. Despite the bleak horizon, if addressed properly, this challenge has the potential to bring out the very best of humanity.

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Business, Earth and Ecology

California Creates New Plan to Lower Emissions Despite being Denied Right to set own Standards

Tesla Semi Rendering / Photo / Tesla

If State Legislation Doesn’t Work, Hit the Offenders Where it Hurts…

A couple of weeks ago, California lost a battle with the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. Wanting to set its own standards for vehicular carbon emissions, California campaigned for statewide legislation that would call for lighter, more fuel-efficient cars. The Trump administration, however, backed by car manufactures such as General Motors, Toyota, and Fiat Chrysler, eventually ruled that it was unconstitutional for California to set independent criteria when it came to carbon emissions, and that the state could not create a standard inconsistent with the federal rules.

The Golden State, however, has not given up in its battle to become more eco-friendly. Given the new stipulations, the state has come up with a reactionary plan to continue lowering emissions. Essentially, California is going to block out the car companies that stand in its way and instead use vehicles that already fall in line with its environmentally conscious goals.

This means that the California State government will no longer be purchasing vehicles from GM, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, or any other company that helped the Trump administration revoke its emissions policy. Likewise, the state will only be using low-emission vehicles and will be transitioning to electric vehicles as much as possible. 

Tesla, Rivian and Other Auto Companies’ Benefit by supporting CA’s Green Initiatives

In opposition to the handful car companies that are at odds with California right now, a few other enterprises actually benefit from the state’s eco-friendly plan. Honda, BMW, Ford, and Volkswagen have all backed California and they already make vehicles that fit in with the state’s environmental prerogatives. At the forefront of the situation, however, are Tesla and Rivian—the two premiere electric car manufacturers who can supply Cali with zero-emission vehicles.

Tesla and Rivian have even gone the extra mile, teaming up with charging companies and electric companies to form the National Coalition for Advanced Transportation (NCAT). This group’s goal is to advocate for California’s low-emission standards and try to spread fuel-efficient innovation around the world. It is currently trying to get additional U.S. states to follow in California’s footsteps, and it has filed a lawsuit against the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration for repealing Cali’s right to set its own rules when it comes to clean air.

Admittedly, these electricity-based companies and carmakers might have fiscal motives for pushing environmentally conscious agendas. Perhaps these auto-manufactures are just as interested in greasing their palms as they are in saving the planet or combatting climate change. Even if that is the case, though, and these companies do have ulterior motives, it does not put them in the wrong. In fact, their economic investment in being environmentally sustainable could be a huge step forward, for it shows that going green can be good for business—an eight letter word that has not always been the kindest when it comes to ecological consideration.

The California state government owns over fifty thousand vehicles from snowplows, to school busses, to police cars, to ambulances, and more. The fact that they are ghosting GM, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler and other brands that opposed its initiatives is a big loss for those companies. At the same time, the fact that they are investing in environmentally conscious car manufacturers will launch these eco-friendly companies to greater heights. With fifty thousand vehicles following these stringent emission standards rules, it is possible that the trend will spread outside the Golden State and end up fostering a legitimate shift forward in the ongoing fight against climate change.

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Climate Solutions

Destroying the Planet Will Cost More than Saving it: The Paradox of Suicidal Shortsighted Financial Gain

Photo / Adobe Stock

Whenever a solution to climate change is proposed, one of the first questions is “how much does it cost?” Perhaps the premiere reason that the world perpetually fails to prioritize the climate crisis is because of money; countries, corporations, and individuals around the planet do not want to spend more in order to combat an issue that feels so removed.

This, however, is a paradox. When the effects of climate change come to fruition (as if they have not already), they will affect everyone. The environment will not discriminate. Obviously, developing nations with low GDPs will be the most vulnerable to the nature’s wrath, but the impact will make a dent in the global economy, hurting everybody’s wallets.

A new study from the Economist Intelligence Unit says that over the next generation, climate change could reduce the world’s economic growth by 3%. It will hit parts of Africa, South America, and the Middle East most severely, but it will also affect wealthy parts of the world in significant ways.

The United States, for example, could see its growth reduced by 1% in the next thirty years. If global temperatures continue to rise, that figure could increase to over 10% within the next century.

This should be an economic wake up call for governments and people around the world to start taking the battle against climate change seriously, and to start investing in the fight now because the cost is only going to go up over time. 

The fact that 2019 is likely to go down as one of the hottest years on record should also signal that global warming is not as removed as some might think and thus demands more immediate action. Events in 2019 such as the floods in Venice, the wildfires in California, Hurricane Dorian, and the ongoing melting of the polar ice caps have already cost the world billions of dollars. Natural disasters like these will start happening at greater frequencies as carbon emissions increase—and the money will keep pouring out of our pockets as a result. 

Sadly, another study (this one from the UN Environment Programme) reports that despite ambitions of sustaining global temperatures at 2 degrees Celsius, we are still burning 50% more fossil fuels than necessary to achieve that goal by 2030. Then, if we change the temperature goal to 1.5 degrees Celsius—as many climate scientists have suggested is required—then we are burning 120% more fossil fuels than needed.

These are harrowing figures not just for our global health, ecosystems, and well-being, but also for our currency. Right now, burning fossil fuels is a big money maker, and switching to alternative energy sources could be costly. If we keep relying on non-renewable energy, though, then we might as well be throwing dollar bills into the furnace. Evidently, our financial and ecological priorities are correlated.  Industry, Governments and politicians need to realize this connection and act upon it before it’s too late. And we all need to remind them, as loud and often as necessary.

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Climate Solutions

Climate Crisis Weekend Update: Unbending Corporate Politics & Scary Scientific Findings

11,258 Scientists sign Foreboding Report that Declares a Climate Emergency for the Planet
Auto Companies Back Trump in Fight against California’s Statewide Carbon Emissions Mandates
October 2019 is the Hottest Month on Record, continuing the Year’s Trend Towards a Climate Emergency
Former Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson on Trial for allegedly Deceiving Investors about Climate Change
Climate Change fuels California Wildfires as Photochemical Smog evolves into Smoke in LA
Climate Crisis: Report Reveals New and more extreme Dangers to our Oceans

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Breaking News, Climate Solutions, News

11,258 Scientists sign Foreboding Report that Declares a Climate Emergency for the Planet

Photo / Adobe Stock

If you are still having trouble accepting the fact that climate change is real, then you are definitely not factoring in the overwhelming consensus of science. Earlier this week, the academic journal BioScience released a scientific research paper providing data from the past forty years, all pointing to the conclusion that our planet is currently in a state of climate emergency. Then, if the paper’s research is not enough on its own, perhaps the fact that over 11,000 scientists authorized it will help convince you.

At the bottom of the report, there are 11,258 signatures, all coming from different scientists across 153 countries and multiple disciplines. The paper’s multi-disciplinary approach creates room for a variety of evidence, demonstrating how global warming is effecting the planet from geological, biological, physiological, neurological perspectives and beyond.

This is also a wake up call about the fact that the science on climate change is no longer divisive. In science’s unbiased eyes, the Earth is in an unequivocal state of emergency. 

“Climate emergency” is the exact diction that the paper uses to define the planet’s current situation. The words associated with climate change have evolved many times over the years. From “global warming” to “crisis,” language can certainly affect the way people think about the issue. The authors of this paper decided on “emergency” because it provokes more urgency than mere “change” but not as much chaotic hopelessness as “crisis.” After all, the purpose of the paper is to unveil proof and evoke action, not to have people helplessly bury their heads in the sand.

The paper outlines six major changes people must enact if they want to save the planet. Namely,

  1. Implement massive energy efficiency practices and move to low-carbon renewables.
  2. Reduce emissions of toxic pollutants such as methane, black carbon and hydrofluorocarbons.
  3. Restore global ecosystems across reefs, forests, grasslands and more while preventing further biodiversity loss. 
  4. Reduce the consumption of animal products and opt for plant-based foods.
  5. Focus less on economic GDP growth and more on sustaining ecosystems and human well-being.
  6. Lower fertility rates to reduce the world population.

As the paper makes clear, these changes are hardly suggestions, but more like necessities at this point. If we do not alter our priorities in a timely manner, we will face the worst of climate change’s wrath and be utterly defenseless to it.

Like most realistic studies on the climate crisis, this paper is not for the faint of heart. It opts for harsh truth over optimism. That being said, the research is not without occasional glimmers of hope. The outline of solutions points us in the right direction. Similarly, the authors acknowledge recent surges in environmental protests and eco-friendly ingenuities across the world as ongoing positive changes. Data-wise, fertility rates are already dropping and more people are switching from fossil fuel burning to more sustainable, renewable energy practices. Likewise, even politics are slowly catching on to the issue, with the UK Parliament declaring a climate emergency and United States Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Earl Blumenauer and Sen. Bernie Sanders all introducing the Green New Deal to Congress. 

The world is far from perfect, and more action is still needed if we want to combat climate change effectively. However, the science is nearly unanimous, and the debate surrounding the issue’s severity is no longer a point of contention. Now, we just need people in power to stand with science, believe in the facts, and put in place urgently needed changes to begin to find ways to save us all from possible extinction.

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