Climate Change

Can We Survive Extreme Heat?

Can We Survive Extreme Heat?

In Chester’s view, a Phoenix heat catastrophe begins with a blackout. It could be triggered any number of ways. During periods of extreme heat, power demand surges, straining the system. Inevitably, something will fail. A wildfire will knock out a power line. A substation will blow. A hacker might crash the grid. In 2011, a utility worker doing routine maintenance near Yuma knocked out a 500-kilovolt power line that shut off power to millions of people for up to 12 hours, including virtually the entire city of San Diego, causing economic losses of $100 million. A major blackout in Phoenix could easily cost much more, says Chester.

But it’s not just about money. When the city goes dark, the order and convenience of modern life begin to fray. Without air conditioning, temperatures in homes and office buildings soar. (Ironically, new, energy-efficient buildings are tightly sealed, making them dangerous heat traps.) Traffic signals go out. Highways gridlock with people fleeing the city. Without power, gas pumps don’t work, leaving vehicles stranded with empty tanks. Water pipes crack from the heat, and water pumps fail, leaving people scrounging for fresh water. Hospitals overflow with people suffering from heat exhaustion and heatstroke. If there are wildfires, the air will become hazy and difficult to breathe. If a blackout during extreme heat continues for long, rioting, looting, and arson could begin.

NPR

Heat Wave Unleashes Record-High Temps From California To Great Plains : NPR

It might be tempting to shrug at the scorching weather across large swaths of the West. This just in: It gets hot in the summer.

But this record-setting heat wave's remarkable power, size and unusually early appearance is giving meteorologists and climate experts yet more cause for concern about the routinization of extreme weather in an era of climate change.

These sprawling, persistent high-pressure zones popularly called "heat domes" are relatively common in later summer months. This current system is different. Deepening Drought Holds 'Ominous' Signs For Wildfire Threat In The West Environment Deepening Drought Holds 'Ominous' Signs For Wildfire Threat In The West

"It's not only unusual for June, but it is pretty extreme even in absolute terms," says Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. "It would be a pretty extreme event for August," Swain says, when these typically occur.

In service of the Big Green Lie 🌎 πŸŒ²πŸ’š πŸ€₯

In service of the Big Green Lie 🌎 πŸŒ²πŸ’š πŸ€₯

It really bothers me to see that they are developing the big farm fields off of Stoner Trail in Johnstown into industrial solar energy facilities. It seems like one of the fastest growing forms of sprawl these days are the mega industrial solar farms which honestly don’t even produce that much energy compared to existing fossil plants which crank out far more energy with far lower environmental and land impacts. Probably a 5 megawatt solar farm sprawled over dozens acres of land compared to the 750 MW gas power plants a few miles down the road.

I think the obsession over climate change has gotten way out of hand, and while we should take reasonable steps to conserve energy and produce it efficiently and cleanly, on the whole nothing really beats fossil energy when it comes to clean, reliable, low environmental impact sources of energy. Roof top solar power and wind power in appropiate locations can be part of the solution but we also need to realistic about the impacts of all sources of energy.

I think we need to get away from the denialism of climate change won’t be inevitable by the left. All the evidence says it will be a serious problem that will hurt real people. But we also need energy to power society – natural gas, oil and coal aren’t going away – despite the denialism that these industrial solar and wind farms represent. Society has to make unpleasant choices and we are going to warm the planet and cause all kinds of pain by doing that but a lot of it is inevitable. But we can choose to protect our environment and our land, by choosing cleaner fossil fuel plants with better pollution controls over these industrial solar and wind farms.

Old Enough ….

I’m old enough to remember when there was fewer then 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now we are almost at 420 ppm.

Why renewables can’t save the planet | Michael Shellenberger | TEDxDanubia

Environmentalists have long promoted renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind farms to save the climate. But what about when those technologies destroy the environment? In this provocative talk, Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and energy expert, Michael Shellenberger explains why solar and wind farms require so much land for mining and energy production, and an alternative path to saving both the climate and the natural environment. Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine Hero of the Environment and President of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization. A lifelong environmentalist, Michael changed his mind about nuclear energy and has helped save enough nuclear reactors to prevent an increase in carbon emissions equivalent to adding more than 10 million cars to the road. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Personally, I think the way to go is with cleaner natural gas plants, along with some renewables where they make sense and conservation efforts -- and realize that most of climate targets are jokes -- and that we are all going to have to suffer from whatever climate instability is out there. Nuclear is a dying technology, not only is it dangerous, expensive, and silly compared to just burning the fossil fuels directly. But he does make a good point about renewables and the problems they can pose.

The interesting discussion I got into the other day about climate change 🌎

The interesting discussion I got into the other day about climate change 🌎

The other day I was in an interesting discussion about climate change. It was kind of interesting in the sense that it came with a fundamental misunderstanding of how I see the problem and how it relate to the solutions towards it. Often people who are concerned about climate change, mostly see the problem in a collective sense, or one of personal guilt, rather then a personal risk — something to be prepared for and take steps to prevent oneself from becoming a victim of it in the future.

There is a popular trend in the liberal ideology to feel a lot of guilt about the world today. To be concerned about the hungry starving children in India, the poor people loosing their homes and all their belongings to wildlife or floods. People who have a lot less then they do, who ultimately fell into their misfortune by no fault of their own. Some people truly do have bad luck, but also some people bring upon their bad luck by making bad decisions and not being prepared for likely scenarios of the future.

Every other day when I open up Facebook and the Youtube, I see another one of these so-called sustainable investment opportunities and technologies. Endless advertisements for heat pumps, solar panels, renewable energy schemes (SHOUTING GIRL IN YOUTUBE AD: get solar power, now without panels on your roof !!!), electric cars, recycling, organic and vegan food, and endless investment opportunities in sustainable funds. Because if you have money, you can buy your way out of your guilt. Or so we are told by the advertisers, pushing endless amounts of plastic, aluminum, not-so-green chemicals, and electronics upon us. No need to give up the suburbanite way of living, as long as you pay for your sins. I often see these sustainable ads, and have to wonder what Martin Luther would have said about them?

All the evidence suggests that climate change is a big problem that is going to be solved by government action, not individual choices. Buying the right kind of car or properly cleaning out your salad dressing bottle and recycling it isn’t going to stop the planet from getting warmer. Investing in the latest green energy scheme might feel good, but there is no guarantee it will be profitable or even have much of an effect on the warming planet. Feel good actions are nice, but they aren’t really significant if they don’t lead to political change. There is an important place for political activism, and it’s wonderful that some people step up to do it — but political activism shouldn’t cover for personal failings.

My view on climate change is pretty darn simple — it’s going to happen and going to be real bad, especially if politicians fail to enact policies that are dramatic enough to arrest it. There is a lot of denial, especially in “greenie” circles that climate change won’t happen, especially if you buy the right products. Not the big jacked up truck I have, or the fact that I don’t clean out plastic bottles before chucking them in the fire. In this discussion I was having, it was pointed that if I move out to country, with my hobby farm, driving my big jacked-up truck back and forth to the city, my carbon footprint will increase, as will the impacts on the land by farming and living on it compared to my small apartment in city, where I can ride the bus to work, walk to a lot of destinations, and it’s a short drive to the store.

But if you believe that climate change is going to bad, and is almost inevitable as politicians don’t want to enact unpopular policies to slow it, then you have to take a different tack at the problem — namely, taking action to protect oneself from the worse impacts of climate change.

That means first and foremost saving and investing, so you have a liquid asset that can be a means to purchase necessities to survive when shit hits the fan, which is almost inevitable. It also means having land where I can produce a lot of my own food, and an off-grid system that isn’t dependent on a power grid that is likely to have a lot of problems in the future as storms become more severe, more areas flood and trees come down. Where power plants struggle with extreme heat and a wildly fluxing gulf stream. Where civil disorder becomes more common in cities, as people bake and traditional institutions fall. When driveway and roads washouts become more common, and need to be fixed by the farm tractor regularly.

It’s a scary world ahead, and I don’t think I can change it, but I can be prepared for what is going to happen. I can live with less, live simply, and reduce my impacts without buying into all these greenie crap that the marketers are constantly bombarding us with advertising on.

CO2 levels are at an all-time high β€” again – The Verge

CO2 levels are at an all-time high β€” again – The Verge

Planet-heating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere averaged 419 parts per million this May, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That pileup of CO2 is comparable to where it was a little over 4 million years ago, when the average global temperature was about 7 degrees Fahrenheit hotter and sea levels were a whopping 78 feet higher than they are today.

Without much more drastic action, scientists warn, CO2 levels will keep trending upward — which also brings the world closer to more inhospitable temperatures and coastal flooding