Sounds great, but will it be as good as it sounds?

Lithium extraction coming to California as auto industry goes electric.

But recovering lithium using a geothermal power plant does sound ideal.

When the old becomes new again.

Green Gravity lab in Port Kembla aims to produce renewable energy using weights, old mine shafts.

What seems like a simple plan — sending a large weight down a deep hole — could help Australia towards net zero emissions.

Housed in an old mine shaft and suspended by a strong cable, a weight is lowered 500 metres down a long drop and in doing so, turns a turbine that creates electricity.

It is the same technology that drove grandfather clocks in the 1600s, and it uses gravity to create electricity in the same way as a hydro-electric scheme.

"We're trying to do the same thing, but we don't need the water," Green Gravity chief executive Mark Swinnerton told Lindsay McDougall, on ABC Illawarra Drive.

"We have nearly 100,000 legacy mines in Australia from all around and we have all these big holes in the ground, so rather than use water, we use dense objects."

How it works

In practice, the suspended weight might be lifted during the day when renewable solar energy is plentiful, then lowered at night when power is needed.

Mr Swinnerton said most old mine shafts were still connected to the grid, which meant the system could help deliver power directly to communities near the shaft.

"Only 3 per cent of our legacy mines have been fully rehabilitated or relinquished," he said.

"As a country, we're not using it and it's a great opportunity to reuse infrastructure.".....

Sound great in theory.

The FIA has tweaked the F1 cost cap rules to encourage greener transport and travel.

If the teams follow the suggestions the costs will be removed from the teams cost-capped budget, leaving more money to develop the cars.

The changes include;
Using 100% biofuel in the transporters, each team has about 25 trucks each covering more than 10,000 km/year for the European races. This is estimated to reduce emissions by 89%.
The teams can also purchase 50 green company cars which are all electric or hydrogen powered.
And the costs for team travel if they go by train.

Does this decision by France show why HS2 needs to be completed fully ASAP in the UK.
France bans short-haul flights to cut carbon emissions

Moreover, the technology is expensive. In Europe, importers or producers of solar panels are responsible for disposing of them when they become expendable. And many favour crushing or shredding the waste - which is far cheaper.

Possible solution or certain denial?

Moreover, the technology is expensive. In Europe, importers or producers of solar panels are responsible for disposing of them when they become expendable. And many favour crushing or shredding the waste - which is far cheaper.

Possible solution or certain denial?

Maybe they should try the method mentioned here.

At long last!!!

Another step in a better direction:


British Museum ends BP sponsorship deal after 27 years
wrote:

Campaigners hail split as a ‘massive victory’ , which marks a retreat of the fossil fuel giant from the British arts world...

... bringing to a close one of the highest-profile and most controversial of such deals in recent years, and marking the almost complete retreat of the fossil fuel giant from the British arts world...

More steps need still, and sooner...

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)

Well it's a start.

Texas company travels across the country to plug old, abandoned oil and gas wells: ‘A threat to people and the environment’.

ClimateWells, a company from Austin, Texas, is putting a plug in old oil and gas wells. It’s part of a process its experts said makes our environment cleaner by keeping pollution in the ground.

The targets are marginal oil and gas wells, wells in Latino and indigenous communities, and orphaned or abandoned wells. The latter type of well has 4,000 more added to the list a year, according to the company’s online report.

“Orphan wells pose a threat to people and the environment across the country,” Environmental Defense Fund attorney Adam Peltz said in a report, which noted that about 9 million people in the U.S. live near an abandoned oil or gas well.

One is Bill Suan, a farmer in Lost Creek, West Virginia. He said in a video on the fund’s website that an abandoned well on his property was leaking oil before it was plugged. His cattle licked the toxic pollution and became sick......

With climate change forcing millions of people to become refugees due to global water security issues have scientists come up with a solution?

New hydrogel can extract unlimited amounts of water from the air, even in deserts.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a superabsorbent hydrogel material capable of absorbing moisture and extracting water from the air. This groundbreaking material could be a game-changer, particularly in desert and drought-prone regions.

The material is able to swell as it absorbs water vapor, allowing it to continuously draw in moisture even under dry conditions of 30 percent relative humidity.

Remarkably, it does this without any leakage. After the water is absorbed, it can be heated, condensed, and collected as ultrapure water......

Cheers.

With climate change forcing millions of people to become refugees due to global water security issues have scientists come up with a solution?

New hydrogel can extract unlimited amounts of water from the air, even in deserts.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a superabsorbent hydrogel material capable of absorbing moisture and extracting water from the air. This groundbreaking material could be a game-changer, particularly in desert and drought-prone regions.

The material is able to swell as it absorbs water vapor, allowing it to continuously draw in moisture even under dry conditions of 30 percent relative humidity.

Remarkably, it does this without any leakage. After the water is absorbed, it can be heated, condensed, and collected as ultrapure water......

Cheers.

Two questions.
1) hHow will taking this limited moisture out change the climate?
2) 30%? Here deserts are frequently single digit humidity.

1) How will taking this limited moisture out change the climate?

• Water vapor ("moisture") in our atmosphere acts as a heating multiplier to the level of carbon dioxide...
  
  
• Worse still, this water vapor heating multiplier increases as we increase our level of carbon dioxide pollution.
  
  
• There might be the hope that industrially reducing the level of 'moisture' in our atmosphere might reduce that heating multiplier effect...
  

(Science Fiction Alert)

However, beware the salt gel muting into self-replicating sand trout and creating a new Arrakis to turn Earth instead into a desert planet!


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)

Also, reducing the humidity can reduce the need for HVAC systems to run so hard, particularly when the humidity is above about 80% and the temperature in the range 20 to 30C

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

Another small but positive step to save our planet from our dirty industry:


Whisper it, but the boom in plastic production could be about to come to a juddering halt
wrote:

A plastics treaty is on the cards – and it could join the rescue of the ozone layer as a landmark success in environmental diplomacy...

Here's hoping for something very good, and soon!

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)

Martin, the local climate, you know the ones where the plants get their moisture from the air to survive.

... the local climate, you know the ones where the plants get their moisture from the air to survive.

That is true for a "rain forest".

Otherwise, it is the plants doing their respiration thing that adds moisture into the air from the ground...


... 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)

... the local climate, you know the ones where the plants get their moisture from the air to survive.

That is true for a "rain forest".

Otherwise, it is the plants doing their respiration thing that adds moisture into the air from the ground...


... All on our only one planet...

Perhaps you should learn about plant life in say the Atacama Desert or Sonoran Desert.

... plant life in say the Atacama Desert or Sonoran Desert.

Do educate us please?

---

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

... plant life in say the Atacama Desert or Sonoran Desert.

Do educate us please?

Simple for those who have never heard of it before
https://a-z-animals.com/blog/the-atacama-desert/ wrote:

Atacama Desert flora survives by combing out water from the fog. These plants grow in areas of the desert where there is little precipitation.

And for some deeper stuff https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/plants/what-genes-help-plants-survive-in-the-desert/

You can do more searching and research.

If you can get to The Washington Post there is an interesting article about "The Astropocene" called Hidden beneath the surface

MILTON, Ontario

This summer, researchers will determine whether Crawford Lake should be named the official starting point for this geologic chapter, with pollution-laden sediments from the 1950s marking the transition from the dependable environment of the past to the uncertain new reality humans have created.

In just seven decades, the scientists say, humans have brought about greater changes than they did in more than seven millennia. Never in Earth’s history has the world changed this much, this fast. Never has a single species had the capacity to wreak so much damage — or the chance to prevent so much harm.

“It’s a line in the sand,” said Francine McCarthy, a professor of Earth sciences at Brock University in Ontario, who has led research on Crawford Lake. “The Earth itself is playing by a different rule book. And it’s because of us.”

edit] Found a youtube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq2c4fAmdCw

I wonder why they didn't throw in a few wind turbines while they were at it.

Australia's first commercial vanadium-flow battery storage completed in South Australia.

Australia's first commercial vanadium-flow battery has been completed in South Australia's mid north and is expected to be running and exporting power by August.

Yadlamalka Energy has been undertaking the Spencer Energy Project at Bungama, outside of Port Pirie, where the 2-megawatt/8MW-hour battery is connected to a grid of solar panels.

The battery will store around 10 gigawatts of dispatchable solar power each year and charge from excess electricity produced by the solar panels when the sun is at its peak.

The power will be delivered to households at night when the grid loads are high from demand and when no solar generation is available.

Yadlamalka Energy chairman Andrew Doman said this would also be the first commercial use of the battery in the Southern Hemisphere.

"This is a battery that has significant advantages over lithium-ion ones; the most important one is the duration of this battery is four hours, unlike lithium batteries which typically last half-an-hour or two hours," he said.......

They could stick 1 of those 20' units in the back corner of my backyard if they want to do some cold weather testing. ;-)