…nobody loves being the voice of doom…&…bad as cassandra had it…the thing she didn’t have to cope with was the idea that some thing that terrified her about the future had been conveyed to someone else in a way that meant they blew a gasket…so…don’t take this the wrong way

In a guarded compound at the foot of the Rockies, government scientists are working on a new kind of global alarm system: One that can detect if another country, or maybe just an adventurous billionaire, tries to dim the sun.

…at various times I’ve heard people suggest that if countries were people they’d present as different ages & the US would be an adolescent…more often than not they make a decent case for some well-documented traits of those…mostly ones associated with men…so I bring this one up because I think it makes an equally solid case that in that anaology…the US has clearly reached “a certain age”

As the planet continues to heat up, the idea of intentionally trying to block solar radiation – sometimes called solar radiation modification, solar geoengineering, or climate intervention – is gaining attention. Governments, universities, investors and even environmentalists are pouring millions of dollars into research and modeling of geoengineering systems.

It could be a relatively quick way to cool the planet. But it could also unleash untold dangers.

Many worry that solar geoengineering could have unintended consequences, shattering regional weather patterns and damaging everything from agriculture to local economies. And the first steps could be done quietly, by a rogue actor or another nation operating without any regulations or controls.

So the United States is building a system that would allow it to determine if and when others may be trying to tamper with the Earth’s thermostat.

…a long time ago I remember have an interesting chat with someone about a similar idea that was in the oceans rather than the air…all of which was before I cursed myself with the idea of thinking of the earth like a brain getting a neural lace hook-up…but it’s worth noting those have a lot of nifty upsides…enough that the existential horror that seems so off-putting never even occurs to most folks who have them…so…don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it…maybe…whatever

The early warning system for geoengineering is an effort splintered across federal agencies and laboratories. NOAA has the device to measure aerosol concentration and raise a red flag at any anomalies. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has the high-altitude aircraft that can carry sophisticated testing equipment to the location of an aerosol plume. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, working for the Energy Department, have a tool that can estimate when and where a burst of aerosol was emitted.

…&…I accept that it’s a weakness on my part to go dragging the speculative fiction into all the non-fiction speculation & everything…on account of that’s just childish…but…I dunno…childish ain’t so bad when you consider how some of those turn out…& I don’t like my chances of keeping my head up if I don’t have the option of that line of retreat…so…anyway…could have sworn I was going somewhere with this

Researchers stress that these detection efforts are still in their infancy. As of now, they believe that solar geoengineering has only been attempted at a very small scale, despite the claims of conspiracy theorists.

But the work taking place at NOAA and Sandia demonstrates how geoengineering has morphed from the stuff of science fiction to a source of growing concern for the government.

…I mean…other than the voice of doom stuff to do with who has what kind of air quality where they live…give or take a wildfire…or…cost benefit analysis or something…that wouldn’t occur to most kids…”so, you have how many balloons?”…”& they’re how big?”…”& they go how high?”…how does it go in the princess bride…art was involved & you saw only money…that’s what kid inigo remembers his dad saying to the six-fingered man before he murders him for offering an accurate assessment of his low character…no, really…I did think I was going somewhere

The immediate task of the scientists in Boulder is to gather enough data about aerosol levels at different spots above Earth to create a base line of normal concentrations, absent some outside event like a volcanic eruption. That would allow NOAA to determine when aerosol levels at any particular spot are unusually high.

The program, which Congress began funding in 2020, fits within NOAA’s broader mission to study the atmosphere, Dr. Thornberry said. The budget is less than $1 million a year, he added.

…there’s…wossnames…intangibles

To build a global base line, NOAA has been working with researchers and government scientists in other countries. It is coordinating launches with researchers in Réunion, a French territory near Mauritius. This month, NOAA staff launched a balloon for the first time from Suriname, a small country on Brazil’s northern border, with plans for future launches run by that country’s meteorological agency. NOAA plans to visit Palau, a small island nation between the Philippines and Guam, early next year, seeking a similar arrangement.

When balloons are launched in other countries, NOAA’s partners relay the data to be analyzed in Boulder. They also have access to the data, which is shared publicly.

There is no payment involved, just an ethos of collaboration and mutual assistance among atmospheric scientists, Dr. Thornberry said. Also, the effort required to launch the balloons is minimal, he added. “All of the little pieces are seen as contributing to the advancement of the whole,” he said.

Richard Querel, an atmospheric scientist and group manager at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, which runs the balloon launches in that country, said working with NOAA “allows us to expand our suite of observations beyond what would be possible to do on our own.”

…which isn’t to say some places…like…I dunno…the one that made the first complete map of the globe before deciding they already had the good bit & pulling the OG “build a wall” routine…might not be having a go solo…when was the last time you read a thing in the ‘paper about balloons?

Dr. Thornberry said he’s not aware of any other countries pursuing a similar surveillance effort. “Maybe because they just don’t talk about it,” he added.

…I dunno about you…but…when I was a kid this would have sounded so cool

If the balloon system were to detect a suspicious level of aerosols, then Dr. Thornberry would turn to another instrument in NOAA’s laboratory. It’s the world’s most sensitive device for detecting sulfur dioxide, the material most often cited as likely to be used to reflect radiation away from Earth. A bundle of valves and tubes that resembles a racecar engine, the instrument can measure concentrations as small as one part per trillion.

NOAA would load the device in the back of a truck, drive it to Houston, and bolt it to the bottom of a plane. But not just any plane.

There are only a handful of aircraft that can reach the stratosphere. One model is the WB-57, three of which are housed at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. The plane, marked by a bulbous nose and extra-long wingspan, can fly above 60,000 feet.

…& I would not have given fuck one about this part

Dr. Thornberry estimated that his team could get the device airborne within three weeks of detecting an aerosol plume and before it could dissipate. All that would be required is funding the flight time — somewhere in the range of $1 million to $1.5 million, he said.

…because at that age the idea that a bunch of grown ups in a world where some people could afford cars that cost that much & houses that cost more wouldn’t consider that just loose change on the level of whole countries seemed way more ridiculous than santa claus…so…it’s pretty clear I never entirely grew up…there are clues…like…ok…so…nuclear fusion…that’s kid’s stuff, right?

…in the sense that it’s science grown ups know is sort of a hail mary but to a kid it’s the obvious pick because it solves your problem when you can get more out than you put in & assume that it works like plugging your phone in to charge

…but…it’s also…in a not-so-much-with-the-tinfoil way…a field where the achievements can be representative of some capabilities that…contextualize less academic references to things that invoke or imply the nuclear label

Some 400 miles south of Boulder, researchers at one of the country’s pre-eminent nuclear weapons laboratories have worked out another part of the puzzle: how to identify the location of an aerosol release.

Sandia National Laboratories, on the eastern edge of Albuquerque, was started as part of the Manhattan Project, America’s clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb. These days the lab, which is operated by a subsidiary of Honeywell International under contract with the Department of Energy, has sophisticated computer-based models that can determine whether other countries are testing nuclear weapons.

Modern nuclear test ban treaties only work “because we would be able to know if Russia conducted the tests,” said Erin Sikorsky, who formerly led the U.S. intelligence community’s climate security analysis, and now directs the Center for Climate & Security, a Washington research group. “And it was the scientists at Sandia who developed the systems to be able to figure that out.”

That capacity to build sophisticated detection models comes in handy in the age of solar geoengineering.
Laura Swiler, a senior scientist at Sandia, developed an algorithm that could take an observed aerosol plume from any source — say, a volcanic eruption, or a large wildfire — and look backward in time to estimate its size and point of origin.

It’s a hard problem, Dr. Swiler said, because “the aerosol plume is moving.”

…&…they didn’t put it in quotes…but to a lot of those sorts of doctors the term hard problem is not thrown about casually

The terms “hard problem” and “easy problems” were coined by the philosopher David Chalmers in a 1994 talk given at The Science of Consciousness conference held in Tucson, Arizona.^[4] The following year, the main talking points of Chalmers’ talk were published in The Journal of Consciousness Studies.^[1] The publication gained significant attention from consciousness researchers and became the subject of a special volume of the journal,^[5][6] which was later published into a book.^[7] In 1996, Chalmers published The Conscious Mind, a book-length treatment of the hard problem, in which he elaborated on his core arguments and responded to counterarguments. His use of the word easy is “tongue-in-cheek”.^[8] As the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker puts it, they are about as easy as going to Mars or curing cancer. “That is, scientists more or less know what to look for, and with enough brainpower and funding, they would probably crack it in this century.”^[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

…they tell me that among certain folks known to be boastful about their fidelity a certain pride is taken in acknowledging that the only easy day was yesterday…& it’s a bit like that…but with an added mars reference…so…that makes it topical, you see…&…there’s more than one hard problem

Current philosophy on "the hard problem of matter"
byu/XantiheroX inaskphilosophy

…so…about them balloons…& nuclear physics

The tool that Dr. Swiler created with colleagues Diana Bull and Kara Peterson is part of a program called CLDERA, pronounced “caldera” – the word for a crater formed by a volcanic eruption. The team used data from the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines to build the algorithm and then test its accuracy.

That method was designed to examine any type of aerosol plume. If NOAA or NASA detected a spike in aerosol levels, Sandia’s algorithm could estimate the amount released and perhaps where it was released and when.

“We do have the capability, and it does tie strongly to something like an early detection system,” Dr. Swiler said.

The tool can also estimate the consequences of an aerosol injection, things like changes in surface temperatures, precipitation levels or soil moisture.

“The effect will possibly last months, and even maybe a couple of years, depending on how much aerosols they’re injecting,” Dr. Swiler said. “Understanding what might happen two years hence – that is where we will have to rely on our modeling capabilities.”

The United States is still years away from being ready to detect a solar geoengineering effort but is on the leading edge.

“We know more about important aspects of stratospheric aerosol as it exists today than any other group in the world,” Dr. Fahey said. “We’re playing the long game.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/climate/geoengineering-early-warning-system.html

…gotta say I wouldn’t object if there were a few less of those being played for quite the stakes they seem to be by quite so many people who think they involve coming out ahead of a zero-sum…but…we’ve established that I’m childish

With apologies to those who comment on this review, I must insist that one of the wisest pieces of advice a writer can follow is “don’t read the comments” — an injunction so indispensable that it has become a kind of mantra. You can find it emblazoned on sweaters and T-shirts, and there used to be an account on X, formerly Twitter, that existed solely to issue “periodic reminders to not read the comments section for, well, pretty much anything, ever.” Not reading the comments is a way of preserving both sanity and a kind of salutary ignorance: Only writers unaware of the vitriol of their readers can muster the courage to go on publishing.

According to Mark Lilla, an intellectual historian at Columbia, the comments are just one of many things we are better off not knowing about. In “Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know, he argues that “we are creatures who want to know and not to know.” The repudiation of knowledge is every bit as central to human flourishing as its pursuit.

…&…what can I say…I clearly read the comments…look…it’s not that I don’t see the point…but…terry pratchett had a remark made…by a wizard, I think…about how if there was a button clearly labelled “don’t push” attached to a machine that could end creation the paint wouldn’t be dry before a wizard assumed the instructions weren’t intended for them & mashed that sucker…I’m…paraphrasing…but…I can be that way about the idea that if there’s a thing to be known maybe it’s not so bad if somebody knows it…provided we pay attention to what sort of people know what sort of stuff because if the mix is off you gum up the works something fierce & you get a lot of misfires…like…people who “roll coal”…just sayin’

When Lilla began his whirlwind tour through the history of Western ideas, he discovered that few philosophers have grappled with the benefits of ignorance. It is axiomatic that “the first step in philosophy is to know the extent of our ignorance” — but Lilla suspected that ignorance is more than a starting point for generating its opposite, knowledge. With the aid of a range of thinkers, from ancient stalwarts like Plato and Sophocles to modern fixtures like Sigmund Freud and Elias Canetti, he set out to craft a more positive defense. The results prove that ignorance is a topic well worth knowing about.

In a famous allegory that appears in “The Republic,” Plato describes a group of people who have always lived in a cave and who therefore mistake the interplay of shadows on the walls for reality. When one of their number escapes, he initially squints up in agony, unable to endure the light. Slowly, however, his eyes adjust, and he comes to prefer the beauty of the truth to the drab darkness of his former delusions. Plato proposes that we are all like the cave-dwellers — until we turn to philosophy (Plato’s doctrine in particular, naturally) so as to discover the source of the shadows.

…plato & the cave might seem a bit 101 to some…or kind of a reach as allegories go…different strokes & all that

Lilla begins by inverting this familiar story. What if someone who left the cave did not prefer the bright world outside it? What if he could not bear it? What if he longed for the consolations of his old illusions? “Ignorance and Bliss” goes on to demonstrate that there are many reasons most of us might opt for the comforts of the cave.

…when it’s the guy that sells the good guys out to the system in the matrix movie so he can go back to believing virtual steak is real…we…don’t necessarily like that guy…but…aristotle was very clear about how the goalposts shift from person to person…so let’s not get absolutist about it quite yet…there’s a ways to go yet

For one thing, unadulterated self-knowledge would probably lead to paralysis. Lilla draws on the work of Freud to show that we are at odds with ourselves — that we are nothing but an uneasy détente between jostling desires. But the fiction of an integrated self is nonetheless a precondition of moral agency. “Ethical action,” Lilla writes, “requires a sense of self-mastery, a false belief that I am fully and solely the author of my actions.” Ignorance of the true, multifarious nature of the self is therefore a necessity.

…&…sometimes when you open the box it turns out the cat wasn’t called hope

Besides, there is a great deal of knowledge that is harmful. Curiosity, while often a boon, is also rumored to have killed the cat: Not for nothing is the insatiable thirst for information a frequent subject of cautionary myths. To demonstrate this point, Lilla devotes much of “Ignorance and Bliss” to a sharp and provocative reading of one of the most influential texts on the merits of ignorance: the Bible. Eve’s original transgression is perhaps the most notoriously impudent and imprudent act of knowledge acquisition.

…but…maybe irrelevance is underrated

But knowledge proves an irresistible temptation even for Lilla, who allows himself many digressions into a number of arcane but fascinating subjects, among them the history of exorcisms and the 19th-century Russian Slavophile movement, which militated against the influences of Western Europe. Perhaps the most gripping part of his book consists of a bold and startling reading of the works of Paul the Apostle, whom Lilla regards as the originator of anti-intellectual populism. “The teachings of Jesus presupposed nothing about a person’s intelligence or level of culture,” Lilla writes. On the one hand, then, Christianity was an antidote to a cruel culture of hierarchy and elitism; on the other, its most zealous champions sometimes went so far as to denigrate education, and Paul, in particular, was a “cultured despiser of culture” — a prototype of some of the worst proponents of Trumpism today.

These remarks about Paul are some of the only ones in “Ignorance and Bliss” that bear directly on contemporary politics. For the most part, Lilla refuses to subordinate his inquiry to the ruthless imperatives of relevance. It is refreshing to read a book with enough intellectual integrity to ask a timeless philosophical question unabashedly, without any urge to justify it in terms of present trends. Funnily enough, it is a work on the virtues of ignorance that ends up exemplifying the pleasures of the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.

‘Ignorance and Bliss’ argues knowledge isn’t always worth seeking [WaPo]

…have I mentioned lately that I’m partial to irony…never mind…but…how the other half lives…can go round & round on you when you’re not looking

Call it under-consumption core. Call it frugality. In China, call it “proudly stingy.”

Just as the cost of living is weighing on many Americans – and even helped propel Donald Trump back into the White House – so too are many Chinese worrying about making ends meet, even while Chinese food costs are a fraction of American ones.

As the world’s second largest economy slows and the job market dries up, tens of thousands of young Chinese are embarking on money-saving challenges and sharing their latest feats on social media. One trend that has taken off in recent months: spending no more than $70 a month, or 500 yuan in Chinese currency, on feeding themselves.

Participants upload photos of what they eat each day and detail the costs of each item on the popular platform Xiaohongshu, which has at least 300 million active users. Some who finish a month with money to spare go on to target an even a lower budget.

Some say their quality of life has not dropped substantially.

…probably still have a relative or two knocking about who’d call it “thrifty” with a note of surprisingly fierce pride…but that’s a whole other nest of revolutions on the generational merrygoround of what passes for the objective perspective on things

For breakfast, Liu has two boiled eggs and some soy milk. On weekdays, she usually gets the lunch set — one meat and two vegetable dishes — at her college cafeteria for options. For dinner, she gets a steamed bun and vegetables from street vendors. Total: $2.50 a day. When she wants to splash out, she buys a pack of chicken breasts for 70 cents from her neighborhood supermarket.

Doing the challenge has been “pain-free,” Liu said.

That’s partly because she grew up with little in a working-class family, although as she became an adult she developed a penchant for fast fashion and stuffed animals. “That was a fleeting spark of joy created by the consumerist society, never driven by my existential needs,” she said.

The spending challenge convinced Liu that she has enough self-discipline to shop less, save more and make longer-term plans. Even though that might now mean moving to a bigger city.

“If I stay here, I will probably be doing the same old job all my life. That’s too boring. Saving a bit of money gives me more courage to try something new.”

Could you feed yourself on $70 a month? Chinese millennials are trying. [WaPo]

…giant oaks…tiny acorns…yadda yadda…some story about a dude who planted more trees than seem single-handedly possible…each to their own, I guess…but…not in the bad way…anyway…even if it isn’t to you…tech on a massive scale is amazing…not least when the massive stuff involves messing with things that are beyond tiny…but…maybe we shouldn’t start *that* small?

How water could be the future of fuel [WaPo]

…I’m not trying to make out it’s all a simple matter of synergistically stripping the stuff out from where we don’t want it to turn it into stuff we do want without the stuff we don’t want from the stuff we do that with at the minute

The key, some experts say, may lie in transforming air conditioners from cooling machines into more efficient humidity gulpers. As the planet gets hotter, warmer air in the atmosphere holds more water vapor, leading to greater humidity in some places. Combined with intensifying heat, these higher humidity levels become dangerous: The more humid it gets, the harder it is for the human body to sweat and cool itself.

“It’s a necessity product in the context of today’s world, so we have to get it right,” said Ankit Kalanki, who is working on an effort through RMI, a U.S.-based clean energy think tank, to bring more planet-friendly air conditioners to homes.
[…]
Cooling already accounts or nearly 4 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions, or twice as much as planes. Much of that comes from electricity to run air conditioners and refrigerant leaks. The cooling chemicals can be hundreds of times or even more than a thousand times as potent as carbon dioxide.

By 2050, the number of air conditioners in buildings around the world is expected to triple, according to a 2018 report from the International Energy Agency, or IEA. If nothing changes, the carbon dioxide emissions they generate will almost double from 1.1 billion metric tons in 2016 to just over 2 billion metric tons in 2050, or roughly what 476 million cars spew out a year, according to the agency.
[…]
It’s a stark challenge. The standard technology, first deployed in a Brooklyn printing plant in 1902, is not designed to tackle the higher temperatures and humidity levels common in the places expected to add the most ACs in coming decades.

The machines not only have to be more powerful to mitigate the Southern Hemisphere’s hotter and wetter climate, but to combat further global warming, they also have to do so while using less electricity, which in many of these regions is still generated by burning fossil fuels.

These improvements also have to come at an affordable price tag: If the new AC units are too expensive, buyers will opt for less efficient and more polluting models on sale today.
[…]
“Today’s air conditioners have a giant blind spot: That’s humidity,” said Kalanki, of RMI, which was created in response to the 1970s energy crisis and has since shifted its focus to addressing global warming.

“With climate change, you are seeing not just increased events of higher temperatures around the world, but also starting to see higher humidity … creating a new need for solutions that can actually manage humidity and not just temperature.”

RMI, based in Colorado, is working to jump-start a market for ACs that can fill that gap. Ongoing efforts to get this technology on store shelves are backed by the Clean Cooling Collaborative, an environmental coalition funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Ikea Foundation, among others.
[…]
In 2018, only about 5 percent of India’s 300 million households, many of which are in densely populated urban slums, had air conditioning, according to a report from the International Energy Agency. But that figure is rapidly increasing.

Last year, Indians bought between 8 million and 10 million room air conditioners. For about 90 percent of buyers, it was their first AC purchase, according to RMI. As incomes continue to rise, those numbers are projected to explode: The number of air conditioners installed and sold in India will increase to more than 1 billion by 2050 – a roughly 30-fold increase from 2018, another IEA report estimates.

Those units are expected to generate 25 gigatons of cumulative emissions by 2050, equivalent to nearly 6 billion gas-powered cars being driven for a year, according to RMI. Operating them would require about 1.5 times as much power as India’s total capacity today, much of which still relies on fossil fuels.

“We must switch and try to accelerate the market toward these super-efficient ACs now,” Kalanki said. “Otherwise, we will be adding a large number of inefficient units that will only contribute to this vicious loop of warming.”
[…]
In one test, researchers measured how much energy it took the air conditioners to keep a space comfortable — at or below about 80 degrees Fahrenheit and 60 percent relative humidity, according to the testing parameters.

When it’s hot and muggy, it’s impossible to hit that humidity target by setting the thermostat to 80 degrees. That’s not cold enough for the water vapor in the air to condense so it can be extracted, a temperature known as dew point. Under the testing conditions, that point would be closer to 66 degrees Fahrenheit.

The only path to reach that with a traditional model is by cranking down the thermostat, which is what someone sitting in that uncomfortable room would do. The researchers mimicked that response in their tests and measured what happened.

To achieve the colder temperature, the machine furiously moved refrigerant through its coil. External monitors showed this approach removed humidity, but it also chilled the room well past comfortable levels, consuming large amounts of energy.

The prototypes have more levers they can pull to get both temperature and humidity close to the testing parameters — while limiting the time they spend operating at full capacity. Because they can sense humidity in real time, they, not users, make constant adjustments to avoid overcooling a space.

One of the winning models also has two coils instead of one, allowing it to work toward the dew point gradually. Instead of immediately kicking into high gear, as with traditional models, the prototype uses the first coil to take a first pass at cooling the air, but that doesn’t always get it all the way to the dew point. If additional cooling is needed, that’s the job of the second coil. Because the AC is doing this in steps, it can dehumidify the room without overtaxing itself.
[…]
The off-the-shelf unit went through more than 16 kilowatt-hours of energy. That’s equivalent to the energy needed to run a typical clothes dryer for almost six hours. The more efficient new units drew about 75 percent less energy.

…something to think about

Achieving this goal, though, hinges on these units being installed in enough homes, which won’t happen unless their cost goes down and buyers are aware of their energy savings, said Nihar Shah, presidential director of the Global Cooling Efficiency Program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“It’s not just going to magically happen,” said Shah, who served on the prize’s technical review committee.

…& it can be hard not to be cynical

“They probably took a little step toward the goal of climbing a much bigger mountain,” said Eric Kozubal, a senior mechanical engineer and researcher at NREL, which was not involved in RMI’s air conditioner contest and testing.

Price, not technology, probably will remain one of the main hurdles in building a carbon-neutral AC, his colleague Chuck Booten said.

“If you said, ‘Look, I’ll pay you $100 million for the single best air conditioner that can do absolutely anything in the world …’ Yes, no problem. It’ll happen,” said Booten, a senior engineer at NREL. “It becomes kind of a practical limit on how do you make it better without making it so expensive or so complicated or unreliable that it’s just not a mass-market solution?”

To combat stickier weather, air conditioners need to go from cooling machines to humidity gulpers. [WaPo]

…&…just like it’s not good to run your batteries all the way down

So, the island is turning to a new generation of batteries designed to stockpile massive amounts of energy – a critical step toward replacing power plants fueled by coal, gas and oil, which create a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Hokkaido is facing a problem that is starting to confront power grids around the world. For the past 150 years, utilities have stored energy in piles of coal or tanks of gas that can be burned on demand. But as countries switch from fossil fuels to clean energy, they need a new kind of backup system that can deliver power whenever someone flips a light switch, not just when the sun shines or the wind blows.

“Most utilities are definitely recognizing that if they’re adding renewables, they have to add storage,” said Vanessa Witte, a senior analyst at the energy data and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie.

After decades of development, the world has figured out how to make wind turbines and solar panels cheaply and at massive scale. They’re starting to make a dent in energy production, accounting for 15 percent of electricity globally, according to the International Energy Agency. But now, a few of the regions that have adopted wind and solar most aggressively are finding some of that energy goes to waste because they can’t store it.

Power companies are experimenting with new ways to hold on to that clean electricity, from stashing heat in vats of sand to supersizing the lithium-ion batteries that power laptops and cars. Some 30 miles from Sapporo, the Hokkaido Electric Power Network (HEPCO Network) is deploying flow batteries, an emerging kind of battery that stores energy in hulking tanks of metallic liquid.

…not to be confused with tik toks about “flow state”

But the technology faces a raft of challenges, including high up-front costs and skeptical financiers. China and Russia dominate the market for vanadium, the metal that makes flow batteries durable and easy to maintain. “The supply chain for vanadium is extremely precarious,” said Kara Rodby, a battery analyst at the investment firm Volta Energy Technologies.

Still, flow batteries are making their debut in big real-world projects. Sumitomo Electric, the company that built the Hokkaido plant, has also built flow batteries in Taiwan, Belgium, Australia, Morocco and California. Hokkaido’s flow battery farm was the biggest in the world when it opened in April 2022 – a record that lasted just a month before China built one that is eight times bigger and can deliver as much energy as an average U.S. natural gas plant.

…someone really ought to tell one of them “everything’s bigger in texas” fellas about that, there

“It looks like flow batteries are finally about to take off with interest from China,” said Michael Taylor, an energy analyst at the International Renewable Energy Agency, an international group that studies and promotes green energy. “When China starts to get comfortable with a technology and sees it working, then they will very quickly scale their manufacturing base if they think they can drive down the costs, which they usually can.”

This is what the power plants of the future may look like: Instead of stashing coal and gas next to boilers or combustion turbines, they’ll use electrons to store energy inside of giant batteries.

…& as a bonus byproduct…they make joe manchin cry

To make sure there’s always enough electricity to go around, energy companies rely on extra-polluting power plants called “peaker plants.” They get their name because they only run when electricity use hits its peak – for example, on a really hot day when everybody runs their air conditioners at once.

Peaker plants tend to be older, less efficient and more polluting than other plants. Most of the time, they sit idle. But in an emergency, they dump fuel – usually natural gas – into their combustion turbines to generate electricity fast. That keeps power flowing steadily to homes, businesses and factories, but it also pumps pollution into the air.

Wind turbines and solar panels don’t pollute, but they can’t make more electricity on demand. They only produce as much energy as the sun and the wind provide, which changes throughout the day or year depending on the weather.

One way to smooth out those bumps is to use batteries to store renewable energy when it’s plentiful and use it later when it becomes scarce.

…sort of the antithesis of that gob shite that pays the gobshite so well since he got that reclassified as “not waste” into “sure, burn the stuff that’s mostly not even coal – what’s the worst that could happen?”

The energy held in batteries mirrors the tanks of gas sitting next to a combustion turbine waiting to be burned — except batteries can send out electricity even faster than a gas turbine can ramp up, and they don’t create carbon pollution.

…it’s…a bit like magic

Vanadium is a shape-shifter. If you add or remove electrons from its atoms the element’s electrical charge will become more positive or negative, and its color changes from purple to green, blue and yellow. The metal’s rainbow color palette led Swedish chemist Nils Gabriel Sefstrom to name the element after Vanadis, the Scandinavian goddess of beauty. But vanadium’s ability to change its charge is what makes it so useful in a battery.

…to those of us who are uninitiated, at least…according to arthur c clarke, anyway

When HEPCO Network wants to charge the batteries, it uses energy from wind turbines to move electrons from the positive side of the membrane to the negative side, which creates an imbalance: Now there are a lot more electrons crammed into the negative tank than the positive tank, and they’re itching to spread out evenly once again.

When HEPCO Network wants to use the energy stored inside the batteries, it lets electrons flow the other way. Their movement creates an electric current that can power homes and businesses across the island.

Flow batteries are designed to tap giant tanks that can store a lot of energy for a long time. To boost their storage capacity, all you have to do is build a bigger tank and add more vanadium. That’s a big advantage: By contrast, there’s no easy way to adjust the storage capacity of a lithium-ion battery — if you want more storage, you have to build a whole new battery.

The flow batteries in this plant are designed to store energy for about four hours of use, which is on par with lithium-ion batteries. But Sumitomo Electric says it expects future projects will aim to double that duration to eight to 10 hours. That’s about what they’d need to last overnight when solar panels are dormant, or to fill in the gaps between gusts of wind.

…lets hope the kids can learn to play nice, though…because sharing can be problematic

One major barrier to building more of these battery farms is finding enough vanadium. Three-quarters of the world’s supply comes as a by-product from 10 steel mills in China and Russia, according to Rodby, who got her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studying the design and market for flow batteries. Australia, South Africa and the United States also produce vanadium, but in much smaller quantities.

Mines that have been proposed could boost supply. And some flow battery start-ups are trying to sidestep the vanadium problem entirely by using different materials that are easier to buy.

…the advantages at least seem pretty clear

But experts say flow batteries can be cheaper in the long run because they’re easier to maintain and last longer. A lithium-ion battery might have to be replaced after 10 years, but Rodby says flow batteries can last much longer. “There really is no finite lifetime for a flow battery in the way there is for lithium-ion,” Rodby said.

Sumitomo Electric President Osamu Inoue said his company guarantees its flow batteries will last 20 years — but the vanadium inside can be reused forever in future batteries. The company’s oldest commercial batteries have been running for 11 years so far.

…& not all sustainable business models are as sustainable as others

These batteries help Hokkaido keep a steady balance between the amount of energy its power plants generate and the amount of electricity its homes and businesses use. But they’re not the only way to maintain that balance: While Hokkaido is on a battery-building spree, it’s also beefing up undersea power lines to share electricity with the rest of Japan.

So far, it’s working: Even though Hokkaido gets nearly a fifth of its electricity from wind and solar, it doesn’t face blackouts and it wastes almost zero energy.

Having a stable grid allows Hokkaido to keep building more renewable energy, bringing it closer to its goal of cutting power plant emissions to zero by 2050. The flow batteries sitting in the shipping containers outside Sapporo paved the way for HEPCO Network to add 15 new wind farms around Hokkaido. The turbines generate about 3 percent of the island’s electricity without pollution.

Experts say the world will need to build many more batteries like these to stay on track to cut greenhouse emissions to zero by 2050. Over the next six years, utilities will have to build 35 times as many batteries as there are today to soak up all extra renewable energy that will come online, according to the International Energy Agency.

These batteries could harness the wind and sun to replace coal and gas [WaPo]

…thing is…not all the nasty shite has to stay that way…so…slag could be up for a redemption arc

“There are millions and millions of tons of slag just laying around industrial sites across the world, ready to be exploited,” said David Hughes, the chief scientific officer of a start-up called Material Evolution, one of the new companies vying to upend the $400 billion cement market.

Cement is the binder that makes concrete – and concrete is the second-most-used commodity on Earth after water.

If humans progressed from the Stone to Bronze to Iron ages, it is fair to say that today – by raw tonnage – we are living in a Concrete Age.

This year, Hughes and his partners will open their first small commercial plant, where the slag will be pulverized into a fine powder, bolstered with chemicals and fed into whirling blenders to make a low-carbon cement. Their product, the inventors say, emits 85 percent less carbon dioxide than the process for traditional cement.

…it’s…well…it’s kind of a big deal

That is a bold claim, observers and competitors say, but if true, it’s one that could help shrink the cement industry’s gargantuan share of global, human-generated carbon emissions. Cement is responsible for about 8 percent, roughly quadruple that of the entire aviation industry.

The problem with traditional cement is that it requires hellish kiln temperatures — volcano-hot — that produce a mind-blowing amount of odorless, colorless carbon dioxide.

A single traditional cement plant may spew more than a million tons of CO2 out of its stack every year — equivalent to driving 220,000 gas-powered automobiles or flying a fleet of 35 commercial jetliners, take your pick. And there are thousands of cement plants around the world.

If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of carbon, behind China and the United States.

…so…there’s some inertia involved

The traditional cement industry is huge and essential. Cement is cheap, trusted and deliverable. Turning cement factories into something green has been compared to turning offshore oil wells into offshore wind farms — the work of decades. The beta versions of low-carbon cement are more expensive, and because they are new, untested over time.

…& something a bit like a postcode lottery

The most ubiquitous stuff of the modern era is called Ordinary Portland Cement, patented in England in 1824 by Joseph Aspdin, a bricklayer’s son, during the Industrial Revolution.

If Aspdin were to come back from the dead, he might be confused by automobiles, telephones and computers, but he would immediately understand the chemistry at the Hope Cement Works, one of the oldest and largest cement plants in Britain, now owned by the Breedon Group.

The plant, built in 1929, was located in England’s Peak District to exploit buried treasure.

“We’re here because of the gift of geology,” said Edward Cavanagh, the plant’s industrial director, as we stood on an outcrop overlooking a mile-long quarry.

The prize is carboniferous limestone, 335 million years old, an ancient ocean floor littered with the fossils of extinct animals that lived in warm, shallow seas rich with the lime for building their shells.

It is this solidified soup of ancient oyster bits that when mixed with shales or clay, and baked, is the basic recipe for Portland Cement.

…not to get all biblical…or…I dunno…joe vs the volcano…or whatever

The limestone and other raw materials arrive as watery, rocky slurry, already heated to 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 degrees Fahrenheit), and then the mix is blasted as it flows through the kiln by a flamethrower — a tongue of fire 100 feet long, fueled by burning coal, plastic waste and rubbery crumbs from chipped-up car tires.

Cavanagh offered a look through a small porthole. It was like staring into the belly of a volcano.

It gets seriously hot in the kilns. At 1,450 degrees Celsius (2,642 degrees Fahrenheit), the slurry is as hot as magma.

…some things are just facts…of science

Cement production is one of the most energy-intensive manufacturing processes in the world, but only a third of the greenhouse emissions it generates come from the coal and other fuels used to heat the kilns. The bulk comes from transforming the limestone into lime.

“You can’t get around that chemical reaction in the kiln,” Cavanagh said. “It’s 60 percent of our carbon emissions.”

…but…where there’s a will

Technologists are experimenting with biological cement; with cements produced with electricity instead of coal-fired furnaces. They are moving away from the 200-year-old recipe that relies on turning limestone into lime. A company in Oakland, California, called Brimstone recently received third-party certification that its carbon-negative cement is structurally and chemically the same as regular cement. It uses a carbon-free silicate rock as its raw material.

…something, something…learn from mistakes

Hughes, Material Evolution’s chief scientific officer, is also a professor at Teesside University, where the lab is housed. They have raised $20 million in venture capital, mostly from European early-in funds betting on green tech. Gilligan said she told her backers, “Tell me if this doesn’t work because the world’s on fire. I don’t want to waste two, three years doing this if this isn’t the answer.”

To make their cement, Gilligan and her team are not burning limestone in kilns. Instead, they are recycling century-old slag as the raw material.

Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, also created in giant furnaces. It too is a major emitter of carbon dioxide — as bad as cement. To make steel, lime is added to fuse with the impurities, which forms the slag that is removed as a waste product.

The inventors at Material Evolution are using slag to make their cement because it has been already been super-heated and contains silica and alumina, materials that were transformed and are now “chemically activated,” ready to add strength to the concrete when water is added.

…look…maybe it sounds boring & messy but to me this seems deeply cool

Slag makes up about 90 percent of the volume of Material Evolution’s green cement.

At Material Evolution’s lab, workers deploy their own Artificial Intelligence software to help them analyze the exact chemical compounds of the raw slag and decide the proper amounts needed for additives — the reactive alkalis — like calcium hydroxide, sodium bicarbonate. You might recognize these materials in other forms, such as baking soda, heartburn tablets or laundry soaps.

The powdered slag and other materials are poured into a mixer that looks like a big food blender. The dry ingredients are pressed together — what Hughes calls “impact mixing.” This is not a gentle stirring but “pretty intense, the particles are really hitting each other, rubbing together, hard, sharing ions, reacting in the blender,” he said. This process, called alkali fusion, does not require heat, but it needs a lot of friction.

…& you know how it goes

Material Evolution expects to open its first factory in the Welsh city of Wrexham this fall, with the capacity to produce 120,000 tons of cement a year, less than one percent of Britain’s needs. Its partners, such as Sigma Roc, will use the first green cement to make breeze block, or concrete block, to be used to build houses.

This will not be quick or easy. “The cement industry really does face a problem,” said Julian Allwood, a professor who heads the Use Less Group at the University of Cambridge in Britain. He is working with a team to make their own green cement using recycled concrete and electricity instead of heat.

“I am slightly skeptical of everyone over their claims,” Allwood said, “It will take a while to work out what the real story is.”

…but to get to the end you generally have to start somewhere

The start-ups face other challenges. With growing interest in slag, for instance, it could become more expensive. Builders who use cement are conservative and careful customers. They have a long history of deploying traditional cement and Gilligan and her team understand this. They expect that the industry might try the green cements — from any source — in the lowest-risk projects first and see how they hold up over time: how they age, freeze and thaw, repel and absorb water.

“Industry will start by using green cement for curbs or sidewalks or benches,” Hughes said.

“It will take a long time before they use our cement to build a bridge or a skyscraper,” he said. “But we have to start now to get there later.”

Reinventing the world’s favorite building material [WaPo]

…so…speaking of starting somewhere & getting to the ending…about the part where I thought I knew where I was looking to fetch up, for a change

Just over a month after the hurricane hit, Donald Trump was elected again as president. For many, myself included, considering the character of this new administration and its promises, despair has been a constant temptation.

In both North Carolina and on the national scene, it can feel like we are stymied in growth, in hope, in vigor. But every path of progress — both individual and collective — includes failures and downturns, even periods of hopelessness. In the immediate aftermath of disappointment and disorder, it is understandable to freeze or shut down. But eventually, we’ve got to rise up and move forward — if for no other reason than the alternative is worse.

Finding meaning and maintaining hope despite inevitable pain, loss and suffering is a crucial life skill. In 1949, the Holocaust survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl coined the term “tragic optimism” to describe this conundrum.

…not trying to call anyone tragic…except @tragicallychic…because they asked nicely

Tragic optimism emerged out of what Dr. Frankl observed to be the three tragedies that everyone faces (not only those of us who have seen the worst of the world, as he had). The first tragedy is pain, because we are made of flesh and bone. The second is guilt, because we have the freedom to make choices and thus feel responsible when things don’t go our way. The third is loss, because we must face the reality that everything we cherish is impermanent, including our own lives.

Tragic optimism means acknowledging, accepting and even expecting that life will contain hardship and hurt, then doing everything we can to move forward with a positive attitude anyway. It recognizes that one cannot be happy by trying to be happy all the time, or worse yet, assuming we ought to be. Rather, tragic optimism holds space for the full range of human experience and emotion, giving us permission to feel happiness and sadness, hope and fear, loss and possibility – sometimes in the same day, and even in the same hour.

…they say with age comes wisdom…& that age comes to all of us

Research shows that this sort of emotional flexibility is associated with resilience. For example, a study of U.S. college students after Sept. 11 found that those who could hold on to hope at the same time as loss demonstrated greater resilience and fewer depressive symptoms in the tragedy’s aftermath. This finding is not about denial or delusion. Most of the study participants experienced negative emotions such as anger, fear and sadness. It’s just that the more resilient ones were able to hold on to positive emotions, too.

Tragic optimism does not encourage actively seeking out or romanticizing suffering. Not everything has to be meaningful; sometimes things just suck. Rather, tragic optimism realizes the inevitability of suffering but also that we generally have at least some say in how we face it.

Difficult moments, both personal and collective, often lead to extreme behaviors: what’s now known as toxic positivity on the one hand – burying our heads in the sand and deluding ourselves that everything is great – or excessive pessimism and despair on the other. Both absolve us of doing anything about the situation.

Excessive optimism and delusion, at root, deny that anything is wrong; and if nothing is wrong, there is nothing to worry about and nothing to change. Extreme pessimism and despair are so grim they essentially say that any action would be pointless. Between these two poles exists a third way: committing to wise hope and wise action.

…like that fifth column lot would say…it’s just a thought

Wise hope and wise action ask us to accept a situation and see it clearly for what it is, and then muster the strength, courage and resolve to focus on what we can control. We remind ourselves that we have faced challenges before. We continue because to stand still is not an option.

Recognizing that we maintain agency fuels hope, and maintaining hope reminds us that we have agency.
Resilience comes down to a few core factors: leaning into community, being kind to yourself, finding small routines to support your mental health, allowing yourself to feel sadness and loss and yet maintain hope at the same time. It requires a commitment to taking productive action.

How to Keep Going Amid the Chaos [NYT]

…but…can’t help feeling like it can be pretty cool when people are careful about which of the ones they have they act on?

…speaking of which…kinda sorta…the world is one weird fucking place…& the shit you don’t have to imagine can include some surprising stuff…like…ever wondered what it would look like if you put joe rogan in a room with bernie sanders?

…that’s mostly just for the folks that wouldn’t agree with me that this makes a nicer listen