Now that explains it all. ;-)

Thanks Richard.
Some really interesting assumptions in that story, but the image is just whacky out of all proportion.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

But it allows those with very small minds to wrap their meager brain cells around a very simple, but wrong, principle.

Definitely Trump supporter territory there.

Ah NOPE.

There is a HUGE POT of MONEY being and to be Dispersed to Those in Politics; Academia; Science who PUSH UPWARD the Climate 'Change' Agenda.

MONEY Driven Drivel and BS.

Get It While One Can.

Oldest Game in dA Book

106 Billion People since People Began would not make a Dent in Volume of Grand Canyon.

And If They All Farted at Same Time and Continued to Fart for Infinity.....still No Worries.

MONEY GRAB Baby!!!!!

Yep

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May we All have a METAMORPHOSIS. REASON. GOoD JUDGEMENT and LOVE and ORDER!!!!!

This looks to be a very big win:


CO2 Free Steel becomes a reality...


And that is in the here and now and at industrial scale.

No more need for dirty old coke and coal!! And all for less required energy input overall also!

... How quickly can the rest of the world's steel production be converted to go clean?...


All on our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Going further with green hydrogen, we have spearheading new business:


JCB signs green hydrogen deal worth billions
wrote:

Construction equipment maker JCB has signed a deal to buy billions of pounds of green hydrogen, defined as hydrogen produced using renewable energy.

The deal means JCB will take 10% of the green hydrogen made by the Australian firm Fortescue Future Industries (FFI).

FFI said the deal was a "first-of-a-kind partnership" that would see it become the UK's largest supplier of the clean fuel...

... JCB and a firm called Ryze Hydrogen would then distribute it in the UK...

... Lord Bamford has also called on the government to invest in hydrogen-fuelled forms of transport such as buses, trains and aircraft.

In a statement, he said: "It's fine having an engine powered by green hydrogen, but no good if customers can't get green hydrogen to fuel their machines. "This is a major advance on the road towards making green hydrogen a viable solution."...

... JCB, based in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, also announced earlier this month that it was spending £100m on a project to produce "super efficient hydrogen engines" to power its machinery...

There looks to be some good clean synergy there. Good profitable business also.

All on our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Here is a beautiful place not too far away that I've visited that is again in the news:


Renewable energy: How Scottish Isle of Eigg relies on wind, water, solar
wrote:

As the world slowly moves away from using fossil fuels for electricity, a tiny Scottish island has shown it’s possible to rely almost entirely on renewables... Since ... 2008...

Where there is a positive will, there is a good way forwards!


All on our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Promises for going cleaner:


COP26: More than 40 countries pledge to quit coal
wrote:

More than 40 countries have committed to shift away from coal, in pledges made at the COP26 climate summit.

Major coal-using countries including Poland, Vietnam and Chile are among those to make the commitment.

But some of the world's biggest coal-dependent countries, including China and the US, did not sign up...

... Coal is the single biggest contributor to climate change...

... While the US was notably absent from the coal commitments, it joined 19 other countries - including the UK, Canada and New Zealand - in pledging to stop financing unabated overseas fossil fuel projects...

... "Ending international finance for all unabated fossil fuels is the next critical frontier we must deliver on," UK energy minister Greg Hands said. "We must put public finance on the right side of history."

However, major financers of such projects, such as China, Japan and South Korea, did not sign up. The countries did join G20 nations last month in agreeing to end financial support for new unabated coal plants overseas.

Enough of a solution and soon enough?

Or just more blah-blah-blah hot air and politics?...


All on our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/24/us/arctic-ocean-early-warming-climate/index.html

The Arctic Ocean has been warming since the onset of the 20th century, decades earlier than instrument observations would suggest, according to new research.
The study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, found that the expansion of warm Atlantic Ocean water flowing into the Arctic, a phenomenon known as "Atlantification," has caused Arctic water temperature in the region studied to increase by around 2 degrees Celsius since 1900.
Francesco Muschitiello, an author on the study and assistant professor of geography at the University of Cambridge, said the findings were worrisome because the early warming suggests there might be a flaw in the models scientists use to predict how the climate will change.

Likely fits here best here though it isn't explicitly about climate but is about how humans react to solving a shared problem.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20211122-why-overly-kind-and-moral-people-can-rub-you-up-the-wrong-way

Really usefully useful?...


Wind-powered net zero McDonald's opens in Market Drayton
wrote:

A net zero carbon McDonald's has opened in what the company believes is a UK first.

The wind turbine and solar panel-powered restaurant is in Market Drayton, Shropshire.

Recycled IT equipment and household goods make up the building's cladding, signs are from used coffee beans and insulation is provided by sheep wool.

The fast-food company said it would be used as a "blueprint" for other sites...

Useful and practical?

Or... Some fast and loose Marketing Green-wash?...


All on our only one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Can they claim that when they sell all those belching cow based products.

Can they claim that when they sell all those belching cow based products.

Who pays the guy to write the report and who does he have to please?

I'm not so sure about this being a real solution as yet, but it's sort of a start and interesting.

Newly Invented Catalyst Dramatically Increases The Efficiency of Turning CO2 Into Fuel.

It took nature decades of photosynthesis, followed by eons of intense heat and pressure from geological activity to bake atmospheric carbon dioxide into the long chains of hydrocarbon that make up fossil fuels.

We don't have the luxury of millions of years to mop up the excess carbon from our atmosphere, but advances in chemistry could help us get part of the way there in a relative blink of the eye.

The latest advance is a new catalyst capable of churning out short-chained carbon molecules made from carbon dioxide at a rate that blows previous methods clear out of the water.

Developed by chemical engineers at Stanford University, the technology turns waste CO2 and a good dose of hydrogen into chains of ethane, propane, and even butane, all molecules that can serve as a fuel source.

"We can create gasoline, basically," says Matteo Cargnello, a chemical engineer at Stanford University.

In recent years, there's no shortage of efforts to find economical ways to pull carbon out of the air and turn it into something people will want to pay for, such as fuel or synthetic materials like plastic.

The challenge is to make something that will make a dent in the ridiculous amounts of carbon we pump into the atmosphere each and every year. That means a rapid process that can be scaled up cheaply, locking away as much carbon as possible into every molecule.

"To capture as much carbon as possible, you want the longest chain hydrocarbons. Chains with 8 to 12 carbon atoms would be the ideal," says Cargnello.

Current technologies struggle to get near this goal. The longer the chain, the more heat and pressure are required, making the process less efficient and more expensive.

Cargnello and his team focused their research on organic polymers – materials with pores that can be scaled easily to suit the kind of structure needed to maximize the reactivity of carbon dioxide and hydrogen into chains.

Combined with an effective catalytic metal to hasten the process (in this case, the element ruthenium combined with titanium oxide), the researchers could improve efficiency by modeling the polymer's pore structures.

And improve it they did, demonstrating a 10 fold increase in the turnover of high molecular weight carbon chains.

Remarkably, the rate of production for the four-carbon-long chains of butane ramped up 1,000 fold by coating the catalyst in a specific kind of porous organic polymer.

Now if they can get this down pat I can see it going a long way, especially here down under.

New Solar Panel Design Uses Wasted Energy to Make Water From Air.

While generating green energy, solar panels usually create excess heat that goes unused. But with a new, innovative design, scientists have found a way to harness those precious leftovers to give the power producers a second purpose: pulling water out of thin air....

Well, my confusion continues.
As some will know I periodically have a look at the UK's electric grid's sources of power, if for no other reason than being nosy.
Today, a rather dull day here in the middle of England the mix was:
CCGT = 39.4%;
Nuclear = 15.3%;
Wind = 24.4%;
Hydro = 2.4%
Solar = 0.4%;
Coal = 3.9%;
Biomass = 7.4%
(Don't bother trying to add this lot up, I know it doesn't add up to 100%, there are quite a few, generally quite small, sources I've not included)
Hardly any surprise that solar is so low, we are looking at the UK on a dull March morning and the Sun is hiding behind a thick layer of cloud.
The amount of nuclear is fairly constant at just below 6GWHr, but obviously the proportion varies with demand.
Hydro, well we are a "green and pleasant land", with no real mountains, but some decent upland areas so I think we could do far better on that front.
Wind, well we do have a fairly constant wind flow over parts of the UK, but it does vary a bit too much to be a reliable backbone.
Coal??? WTF, I thought we'd got rid of all the coal burners.

The UK is pushing solar and wind, but I don't see that being the whole of the UK's energy solution. Quite a number of UK new-build houses and commercial premises are having lots of solar panels fitted, I've no idea about how many of those are feeding directly into the grid and how many are connected to battery banks. But we are in the UK and we do not have the nice bright sun of say North Africa, but a cloudy maritime climate. So why not encourage micro/mini-hydro schemes which would utilize some of the run-off streams around our moors and uplands, reduce the need for massive power distribution networks and not rely on the rarely seen sun, but on the frequently observed rain. I'm sure with a little thought and effort hydro could easily eliminate the need for burning coal, and eat into the CCGT requirement.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I suspect that much of the answer lies in so much of British decision-making being concentrated in the relatively flat, dry, and porous south-east of England. Scotland has a significant number of public hydro-power stations feeding into the national grid; both Scotland and Wales have pumped-storage hydro stations (Cruachan and Dinorwig respectively); England (well, Northumberland) has Cragside, attributed with being fitted with the first private hydro-electric system in the world, in 1870.

So we have the knowledge, the expertise, and (in some places) the geography to make use of all these tools. But either we've forgotten how, or we overlook them in favour of more "acceptable", "fashionable" alternatives.

Richard - of your list of options I'd go for "fashion" as the most likely.
Just look at the number of villages that had their own water driven mills at one time. Indeed there were some quite substantial industrial machines like ore crushers and forge hammers that were water powered until the late 1800s, whereupon it became fashionable to use steam the electricity to provide the power for such equipment.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Yes, I live in exactly such a village. Our village symbol is a stylised water-wheel, derived from the wheel at Sunnydale Paper Mill. It's said that the top wheel (of two) was the largest built, until the Laxey wheel was built to a similar design.

The mill it powered produced high-quality paper, used for printing banknotes. The mill was the highest and most prestigious of a chain of up to a dozen mills that ran down the valley - so it got first dibs on the water captured from the moorland. Each subsequent mill captured the water again in its own pond, and used it to power mostly textile production. I have a map dated 1899, showing the main mills still in use - it can still be used as a walking guide to the village, and the outlines of the now-demolished buildings can be traced.

I live in a small courtyard of five cottages: one of my neighbours when they were first built in the 1850s is listed as a 'papermaker' in the 1861 census.

Fascinating little bit of local history there Richard.

Edit to add:-
I'd have never thought of Yorkshire as producing paper. Tea maybe, but paper!

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?