It’s starting to look like readers living in the ocean may need to develop the means to move onto land. More on why later, but for now, here’s how I recommend you arrive. Singing about deities is likely to put land-dwellers at ease, and this demonstrates some knowledge of some of our cultures.
Hillary Clinton recently tweeted a rejection of any perceived endorsement from Charles Koch, citing his climate denial, and his funding of misinformation efforts. I take it as a good sign that she’s being clear about that, but I find it a bit frustrating, given Clinton’s own stance on fossil fuels – namely the assumption that there’s a way to continue using them that’s “safe and responsible”:
There’s a lot to be said about the harm that climate change is doing and will do in the future, both to ecosystems and to humanity, but the current system would be horrible, dangerous, and inhumane even without the destabilization of our climate. Case in point: [Read more…]
I’ve previously mentioned my hobby of talking to/arguing with strangers on the internet, and a while back I decided to copy and paste one of the conversations onto my blog, since it seemed wortwhile. Since then I’ve periodically added to the series when something interesting and fun comes up. So, without further ado, here is the latest installment of Conversations with Strangers, taken from the comments thread of this Huffington Post article.
Stranger:
So if a change in ice mass at a pole can cause the earth to sway from its position, then isn’t it possible over time that population changes could do the same thing? It that is possible, then couldn’t China and other over populated areas produced the same “balance” issue? Now, if this is possible, that could mean that Chna is a leader in carbon emissions and “Population Sway”.
My last blog post covered a dramatic shift in the location of the North Pole, and a change in the direction in which Earth’s axis is migrating, and the wording of the original articles, and subsequent secondary and tertiary articles has been the source of some confusion.
The 75˚ shift refers to the change in direction of polar drift, NOT change in location of the pole. It’s a big change in direction, but nowhere near the kind of change we would see if Earth’s equator suddenly ran through the Arctic and Antarctic. We probably would have felt that.
No really though. It’s always been clear that the worldwide melting of glaciers and ice sheets was going to have some effect on Earth’s crust. Like some other impacts of climate change, it’s a pretty straightforward concept – the crust is a relatively thin layer of solid stuff on top of the molten goo that makes up most of the planet’s bulk, so massive chunks of ice press the layer down. Reduce the ice mass, and the crust rises up a bit.
From there it’s not much of a stretch to predict some change in seismic and volcanic activity as a result.
What had not occurred to me was that this redistribution of mass could actually result in changes in how the Earth moves through space. New research published in Science Advances (yay open access!) indicates that the loss of ice mass in Greenland and West Antarctica, coupled with a gain in ice mass in East Antarctica, has shifted the North Pole towards the UK in the last decade, a change from the direction it was moving for most of the 20th century.
This isn’t a big enough shift to cause problems, bit it is an indication of the scale of the changes that are occurring, thanks to human-caused climate change.
Drinking monk’s blood like any good atheist. I think this was from a monk similar to Friar Tuck in Russel Crowe’s Robin Hood.
Some people say transitioning to clean energy will simply cost too much – “leave it to future generations.” In Edinburgh, Scotland, Richard Alley explains that if we start soon the cost of the transformation could be similar to that which was paid for something none of us would want to do without – clean water and the modern sanitation system.
Scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have developed a new catalyst for splitting water. Here’s why this is big news:
One of the great strengths of renewable energy is their consistency and predictability. Yes, wind and solar have periods when they’re not generating power (with some exceptions like certain solar thermal designs), but the sun is available for a set amount of time every day, and wind blows in predictable patterns where turbines are placed. These predictable patterns make it easy to balance the grid, and to calculate how many units are needed to meet demand.
But here’s a little secret. All sources of power are intermittent. There is no power plant, coal, nuclear, or gas, that is available 100 percent of the time. The electrical grid is built with this in mind.
A well functioning coal plant, will not be available 44 days of the year.
For nuclear, it’s 36 days, as well as 39 days for refueling every 17 months or so.
Wind power has a failure rate of only 2 percent, and units rarely go down all at once.
A while back Scotland decided to aim for 100% renewable energy by the year 2020 – a goal that has been doubted despite being almost halfway there at the end of 2015. Now, they’ve taken another massive step forward – Scotland has shut down its last coal plant!