Energy
Why High LPW Means Sacrificing Fixture Performance –
For a long time I've been fascinated by very energy efficient LED bulbs rather than the rather energy hogging LED bulbs currently available. Why don't manufacturers make energy efficient bulbs?
For one, it's cheaper to overdrive and abuse LED bulbs so they burn out quicker and require fewer chips. But also most of the ultra efficient bulbs - those pushing 200 lumens a watt have lousey color rendition, are cold white, put out a lot of glare and don't do a good job at putting light where needed.
NPR
Indiscreet comments made by an Exxon Mobil lobbyist to undercover activists may figure prominently in upcoming congressional hearings about the role of oil companies in the battle against climate change.
Video clips released by the Greenpeace investigation project Unearthed show Keith McCoy, the oil giant's senior director for federal relations, talking frankly about Exxon Mobil's lobbying strategies. Channel 4 from the United Kingdom first reported the comments.
McCoy was tricked by the activists who said they were job recruiters. He talked about working with "shadow groups," supporting a carbon tax that he believes will never happen and influencing senators to weaken climate elements of President Biden's infrastructure plan.
"Joe Manchin, I talk to his office every week," McCoy bragged to the interviewer. He called the Democratic senator from West Virginia a "kingmaker" and discussed how "on the Democrat side we look for the moderates on these issues" in their efforts to stop policies that could hurt the company's business.
NASA satellites see upper atmosphere cooling and contracting due to climate change
The sky isn't falling, but scientists have found that parts of the upper atmosphere are gradually contracting in response to rising human-made greenhouse gas emissions.
Combined data from three NASA satellites have produced a long-term record that reveals the mesosphere, the layer of the atmosphere 30 to 50 miles above the surface, is cooling and contracting. Scientists have long predicted this effect of human-driven climate change, but it has been difficult to observe the trends over time.
"You need several decades to get a handle on these trends and isolate what's happening due to greenhouse gas emissions, solar cycle changes, and other effects," said Scott Bailey, an atmospheric scientist at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, and lead of the study, published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics. "We had to put together three satellites' worth of data."
Together, the satellites provided about 30 years of observations, indicating that the summer mesosphere over Earth's poles is cooling four to five degrees Fahrenheit and contracting 500 to 650 feet per decade. Without changes in human carbon dioxide emissions, the researchers expect these rates to continue.
Electric Power Monthly – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
I was noticing the spike in electric generation from oil in February 2021, but that's actually not surprising as that was when there was deep freeze down south, when dual fuel gas plant couldn't get cheap natural gas, so they burned oil.
Still nothing like 20 years ago when a lot of regularly power plants burned oil, especially in the north east. Oil has fallen out of favor as a generating fuel, with cheap natural gas and tougher air quality standards limiting sulfur to reduce air pollution and acid rain.
New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States | ProPublica
According to new data from the Rhodium Group analyzed by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, warming temperatures and changing rainfall will drive agriculture and temperate climates northward, while sea level rise will consume coastlines and dangerous levels of humidity will swamp the Mississippi River valley.
Taken with other recent research showing that the most habitable climate in North America will shift northward and the incidence of large fires will increase across the country, this suggests that the climate crisis will profoundly interrupt the way we live and farm in the United States. See how the North American places where humans have lived for thousands of years will shift and what changes are in store for your county.
What is going to happen in the next 30 years, something we should accept as adults and not deny, while focusing on harm reduction whenever it makes sense from both an environmental and social perspective.
NPR
President Biden has signed legislation that will more vigorously regulate climate-warming methane leaks from the oil and gas industry, a move supporters say is key to achieving his ambitious climate goals.
Earlier this month, House lawmakers voted to reverse a Trump administration rollback by passing resolutions under the Congressional Review Act, which gives them the ability to undo agency rules passed in the last months of the previous administration. The Senate approved the measure in April.
The signed resolution reverses an Environmental Protection Agency methane rule finalized last year and leaves in place a stricter 2016 EPA rule, finalized during the Obama administration.