The false dichotomy of climate change remediation Years ago, I had a Facebook friend from my hometown who was a big enthusiast of molten salt nuclear reactor technology. He wasn’t a scientist or engineer, but his dad had worked on MSRs in the ‘60s, and he fetishized his dad’s memory. As some point, I mentioned […]
Believe it or not, there are still some folks who think climate change is a hoax. How many are financially invested in that belief, I don’t know. I do know that folks who are currently in the business of making money in the insurance industry *do* believe that climate change is real. They’re no longer […]
The existential crisis of our time is global warming. The planet is already in deep trouble, with polar ice melting, permafrost thawing, sea level rising, increased desertification and more violent storms. The hour is late. “The quest for net zero needs to be fought on many fronts. You have your vanguard offense: simply reducing the […]
Back when we were grad students at UNC-Chapel Hill from 1977-82, my wife and I made several trips to the Outer Banks. One reason was to visit her uncle and his family, who lived in Buxton, just north of Hatteras lighthouse. What struck me then was how many people lived in homes on the coast […]
There’s a lot of attention being paid these days to EVs and solar power, but there are plenty of other ways to decarbonize human activity. Public transportation is one. I’m certainly no stranger to public transportation. I didn’t have a car in college, so when I visited my grandmother in Johnstown or my sister in […]
Global heating continues unabated. While decarbonizing our energy sources is certainly important, it is too late to prevent global disaster. Coastal flooding, desertification, wildfires will continue to increase, driving vulnerable populations to migrate and igniting resource wars for fresh water and arable land. It’s already driving migration and violence in the Middle East and Central […]
One of the climate change denialist memes is that, since plants inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen during the day, then increased CO2 will be *good* for trees. Setting aside the facts that increased desertification and increased coastal flooding are decidedly *not* good for trees, a recent study suggests that it more CO2 doesn’t necessarily […]
Another stupid climate change denialist troll trick is to point out that volcanos also emit carbon dioxide and therefore volcanos, not human activity, are the cause of the current climate change crisis. While vulcanism has shaped the climate during earth’s history, it is not a significant contributor today. Human activity-associated CO2 generation dwarfs volcanos. Again, […]
According to legend, King Canute tried to order the tide not to come in. Needless to say, he failed, divine rights of kings nonwithstanding. Back when we lived in North Carolina, we visited the Outer Banks a few times. There were many expensive homes on the shoreline. These were often casualties of hurricanes that would […]
“Using the Joint European Torus (JET) — a huge, donut-shaped machine known as a tokamak — the scientists sustained a record 69 megajoules of fusion energy for five seconds, using just 0.2 milligrams of fuel. That’s enough to power roughly 12,000 households for the same amount of time.” Progress, yes, but incremental. “And myriad challenges […]