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Observing the renewable energy transition from a European perspective
Archive for the category “climate change”
The Uncertainty of Sea Level Rise
Dutch language video
The Netherlands has a professor, specialized at sea level rise, Roderik van de Wa. Here he discusses the deep uncertainty regarding sea level rise modelling.
0:00 Call for support
0:31 Intro
0:44 Alarmism about sea level rise
11:34 Are we seeing an acceleration?
23:57 Antarctica
30:31 Warming at the South Pole
36:44 Deep Uncertainty
41:57 After the 21st century
48:28 Climate goals
[uu.nl] – Prof. dr. Roderik van de Wal
Decarbonisation Dutch Power Sector Halfway
Dutch power sector probably completely decarbonized by 2030.
But… electricity is merely 20% of total primary energy consumption.
Space heating is the real challenge.
Carbon Farming: A Climate Solution Under Our Feet
Watch video on YouTube.
YouTube text:
00:00 – Opening
00:32 – From a NY organic farm
01:45 – Carbon farming: What is it?
03:03 – Regenerative agriculture: A Minnesota Case Study
06:04 – Ray Archuleta: Visually comparing soil health
12:19 – Gabe Brown: The 5 principles
19:14 – Shinano Takuro: Visualized rhizosphere
23:05 – Carbon farming around the world
23:42 – Toshimichi Yoshida: Our dear friend bacteria
38:20 – The ‘4 per 1000’ Initiative
39:20 – Biochar: A Yamanashi Case Study
47:54 – ConclusionRegenerative agriculture, also known as carbon farming, is one way people are taking action against the climate crisis, turning harmful carbon emissions in the atmosphere into nutrient rich soil or biochar and using it to farm organic and sustainable food.
Meet carbon farming pioneers like Gabe Brown in the US, Toshimichi Yoshida in Japan and more.
What About Carbon Capture?
YouTube text:
The truth about carbon capture technology. It’s held up as both an essential piece of our renewable energy transition and a last ditch effort of the fossil fuel industry to keep polluting. Regardless of which side of the debate you’re on, there’s been a lot of advancements in recent years. Most of the headlines come from direct air carbon capture technology, but there are some natural approaches starting to get attention that could not only sequester carbon from the atmosphere, but also improve our food production, reduce erosion, and many other benefits. Do we need to build giant machines to capture carbon or has nature already given us the technology we need? Let’s see if we can come to a decision on this.
The research on biochar is extensive. There’s been more than 15,000 published research articles covering biochar. There’s so many research articles, that there are now essentially meta-meta-analysis (systematic reviews of meta-analysis).
How Saudi Arabia Is Turning Their Desert Into Green Forest
YouTube text:
This is Saudi Arabia measuring a massive 2 million square km, making it the 14th largest country by landmass! However, 95 percent of the kingdom is a hot dry desert where you find lots and lots of sand! It is also one of the few countries where you find not a single permanent river! You are also looking at a country where the average annual rainfall is below 150 mm all year round! However, if you zoom in on the country, you will see something totally unexpected; arable land! Saudi Arabia is dotted by a network of farmlands where agriculture thrives, letting farmers harvest many kinds of fruits, an abnormality in the hot desert! You will also immediately notice that most of the farmlands are in circles! The nation has 35,000 square kilometers of arable land, which is larger than the Netherlands and larger than three times the size of Qatar! However, in the early sixties, Saudi Arabia only had 400 square kilometers of arable land! How did the oil-rich kingdom multiply its arable land in so short a period? Join us in this video as we dive into the ingenious methods Saudi Arabia has used to turn its desert into a farmland oasis!
Europe Achieves “20-20-20” Goals With Flying Colors
More than 20% primary renewable energy generation, 20% CO2 reduction, 20% less primary energy consumption, Europe has met its own targets in grandiose fashion and would have done so, even without Covid.
[twitter.com] – Martien Visser
[eea.europa.eu] – EU achieves 20-20-20 climate targets, 55 % emissions cut by 2030 reachable with more efforts and policies
Melting of West-Antarctica Ice Will Lead to 3m Sea Level Rise
Thwaites-gletscher, Antarctica, 2014. NASA.
As we speak, scientists at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans, warn that a critical Antarctic gletscher, with the size of Britain or Florida, could collapse within 5 years. This gletscher can be seen as the cork on a bottle, containing the entire West-Antarctic ice mass. Cork gone, bottle will empty itself into the ocean (in slow motion). If Thwaites and other gletschers are gone, this ice mass could be responsible for a sea level rise of up to 330 cm, in a timeframe of centuries.
It is difficult to see how this scenario can be prevented.
[nature.com] – Giant cracks push imperilled Antarctic glacier closer to collapse
[science.org] – Ice shelf holding back keystone Antarctic glacier within years of failure
[cires.colorado.edu] – Thwaites Threat: The Retreat of Antarctica’s Riskiest Glacier
[cnn.com] – Scientists warn a critical ice shelf in Antarctica could shatter in 5 years
[focus.de] – Der letzte Schutzschild des „Gletschers des Weltuntergangs“ steht kurz vor dem Zerfall
[deepresource] – Sudden 50 cm Sea Level Rise Possible Within 20 Years
Sea Level Rise – Picturing Our Future
Climate and energy choices this decade will influence how high sea levels rise for hundreds of years. Which future will we choose?
See What 3 Degrees of Global Warming Looks Like
[dailymail.co.uk] – Majority of climate scientists predict ‘catastrophic’ 3C rise in global temperature… with just 4% believing the world will meet target of limiting warming to 1.5C, survey shows
[rt.com] – COP26 will be a heady mix of climate hysteria, fear-mongering, and quasi-religious worshiping at the altar of ‘The Science’
Note that both climate scientists and Russia Today each have their own interests to guard: the scientists will be under the temptation to keep their profession in the spotlight of international attention by keep the climate change story “hot”, so to speak, and thus keeping the research grants flowing; the Russians on the other hand have an interest not to be stuck with billions worth of stranded fossil fuel assets and hence are tempted to play the climate issue down.
For mere mortals, like myself, it is extremely difficult to see through the highly politicized science debates and discern the truth.
Yet, I give the climate scientists the benefit of the doubt, for national, environmental, geopolitical and economic reasons.
National: my country, the Netherlands, is about the first to suffer, “suffer” as in “cease to exist”, if sea levels will rise significantly more than 1 m. There is hardly a country in the world that has more reason not to gamble the farm on academic questions over situations that might or might not occur in 100 year time. Take no chances.
Environment: there is no doubt that humanity has far too big a footprint on this planet, facing depletion of resources, melting of icecaps, pollution of land, air and oceans and that business as usual is out of the question.
Geopolitical/economic: Europe is our fairly new political frame of reference, and I am fine with that, always have been. Europe, that ran the global show between 1492-1939, until it was brutally shoved aside by globalist powers USA and USSR, using the UK war party around Churchill as a catalyst to get the war started on behalf of the US (forget the All-lied anti-German Nuremberg propaganda, it was all by intent, the so-called Big Three were aligned as of 1933-1934 in their geopolitical objectives, namely that the European empires had to go). A massive European geopolitical renaissance however is in the works, if all plays out well, and energy plays a crucial role for this to happen. To understand that, consider this:
[zerohedge] Rough Estimates of the Relative Standing of Great Empires: Netherlands, Britain and USA.
Elaboration on that map here:
[parisberlinmoscow] – “What Comes After the Three Anglo Empires?”
Summary: the success of the consecutive Dutch, British and American empires were to a large extent based on exploiting a new source of energy first:
– The Dutch with their windmills created the world’s first industrial area in the Zaan area, NW of Amsterdam. Its saw mills enabled the Dutch to at some point have three times more ships than then rest of the world combined, leading to massive trade monopolies and immense wealth between 1600-1750 (“Golden Age“).
– The British Empire is unthinkable without the figure of James Watt, who gave a principle known to the Romans, industrial strength. The combination of coal and steam engine, applied to machines, trains and ships, gave British society an enormous multiplier of human labor and subsequent geopolitical power and a head-start over other European powers, taking over from the Dutch after 1750 and holding global prominence until 1939.
– In North-America, in relative isolation, the Americans got hold over an even more powerful source of energy: oil and gas and applied that not only to machines, trains and ships, but also to cars, trucks and planes. By 1939, the US as a result had 29% global GDP and could plan for a global power grab and succeeded by setting Europe up for war, via pushing Britain and France into a war guarantee for Poland and when that was in place, quietly encouraged the Poles to throw the Germans out of Versailles Poland. When 100,000 German refugees had been ethnically cleansed from Poland, Germany was forced to intervene and the Americans had their desired war.
Back to energy. Stepping back from history, there is a lot to learn from this. Rule #1 in modern geopolitics is: the one who masters a new source of energy first will have a geopolitical advantage/dominance for a century or more. Oil and gas are running out and with it the power base of the Americans, bye-bye USA. There is for centuries worth of coal, but for environmental reasons a come-back is out of the question, sorry Britain. The Dutch have far better chances that their beloved windmills are in for a majestic come-back, where those iconic Dutch 30 kW saw mills are to be replaced by up to 600-1600 times more powerful electric successors of 20 MW or perhaps more [Rotterdam 50 MW].
Klimaschutz als Industriepolitische Chance | Prof. Dr. Veronika Grimm | LCOY 2021
Veronika Grimm gets it. There are several very good reasons to press ahead with the renewable energy transition, that far surpass anything that over-the-top climate toddler Greta Thunberg has to say:
– stopping climate change
– peak oil and gas are approaching fast, so we need to leave fossil fuel anyway, before it leaves us
– in line with the considerations above: having a fully-flexed renewable energy system and its corresponding industries first, ensures excellent geopolitical status for the rest of this century.
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