Energy

How I imagine a renewable low carbon future would look like

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As I noted the other day, I’m skeptical about the future of a few industrial solar farms and electric cars powering out future in a few years. I think it’s going to take some big market changes and price rather government regulation and left-wing green shaming will slow the climate crisis down.

Everything fossil fuel related has to become much more expensive. It’s going to hurt the poor at first, there is no way around it. But higher prices are a powerful signal for market and personal action change. If the price for fossil based electricity shoots up, your home and business will have a very strong incentive to install lots of solar panels and battery storage so you can avoid buying as much power as possible from the fossil based grid.

Likewise motoring will only change when the price of gasoline shoots up, and your forced to drive less, get a small car, or go electric with your car. Obviously, if you don’t have a lot of solar on your roof and you don’t plan your day around sunny weather to charge your car, you can forget about motoring. Maybe consider walking or taking a bicycle to your destination?

A lot of people want a free lunch with renewable energy. But there is no free lunch when it comes to converting sunshine for our prolific modern use of energy. If we want to become a carbon neutral society we have to become much more dependent on natural rhythms of the earth and use a lot less energy overall.

We have to:

  • Require buildings to produce and store most of their energy on site, relying on the grid only as a last resort
  • Using the bulk of our energy on sunny days when cheap and plentiful solar energy exists in excess – including only charging electric cars at peak solar output
  • Radically reduce electricity use especially at night and on cloudy days. We can store and move some power around but much less than we are used to with the fossil grid
  • Make motoring so expensive that it’s only used for special purposes, instead relying on walking, bicycling and electrified public transportation for getting around cities
  • Reduce heating and air conditioning in buildings, instead relying on windows that open, shade, dimmed lights to keep people cool in the summer and wearing warm clothes and blankets in the winter.
  • Make conservation of energy a national obsession, forcing people to view all energy use as a waste and a burden to one’s own finances.

what climate scientists do at home to save the planet | Science | The Guardian

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No flights, a four-day week and living off-grid: what climate scientists do at home to save the planet | Science | The Guardian

Month after month, there is research showing that climate change is happening faster than we thought. We’re in a car hurtling towards the edge of a cliff, we’ve got our foot on the accelerator, and we’re just talking to each other, faffing about. If anything, some of us are even putting the foot further down. What we need to do is stop the car and get out. That has become increasingly clear to me in the last couple of years, which is why I’ve made changes to my own lifestyle.

France hits record high temperature while deaths tally up during Europe heat wave – National | Globalnews.ca

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France hits record high temperature while deaths tally up during Europe heat wave – National | Globalnews.ca

France registered its highest temperature since records began as the death toll rose from a heat wave suffocating much of Europe.

The mercury hit 45.9 degrees Celsius in Gallargues-le-Monteux, in the southern Provence region, weather forecaster Meteo France said, nearly two degrees above the previous high of 44.1 C recorded in August 2003.

Devastating Rain Spells Are on Their Way

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Truth Dig: Devastating Rain Spells Are on Their Way

Canadian scientists have examined an exhaustive collection of rain records for the past 50 years to confirm the fears of climate scientists: bouts of very heavy rain are on the increase.

They have measured this increase in parts of Canada, most of Europe, the U.S. Midwest and Northeast, northern Australia, Western Russia and parts of China.

From 2004 to 2013, worldwide, bouts of extreme rainfall rain increased by 7%. In Europe and Asia, the same decade registered a rise of 8.6% in cascades of heavy rain.

I think excessive rain is going to be the biggest impact of climate change over the next decade in New York as high PWAT become more and more common. Ten inches of rain in an hour or two from time to time in various parts of the state will become common leading to severe flash flooding in patterns that seem random.

The Book Show #1606 – Bill McKibben | WAMC

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The Book Show #1606 – Bill McKibben | WAMC

Bill McKibben, often referred to as “America’s most important environmentalist,” thirty years ago offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change in his book, “The End of Nature.” Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. The new book is “Falter.”

This is a very interesting podcast, I was listening to it a few hours ago.