Science & Technology News

[GordMay]

From CBC’s ‘What on Earth?’ newsletter:

“When it comes to sucking up carbon, not all trees are equal”
“This newsletter has often looked at the part trees can play as part of the climate change solution, with their ability to suck carbon out of the atmosphere and store it.
As with so much else, however, there is nuance — we need to be careful about assuming trees alone can save us. With wildfires and natural die-off, trees sometimes give off more carbon than they absorb .
And when it comes to sequestration, some trees and their ecosystems appear to be more effective than others over time ...
... Mangroves hold a particular allure as carbon sinks. At a high level, [mangroves] are salty and wet, and that keeps the carbon from breaking down ...”
More ➥ https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/what...rove-1.6025442

“Planting more trees 'one of the best things we can do' to reduce carbon in the air”
➥ https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/what...ikes-1.5156358

“Mangroves: 11 facts you need to know”
“... Mangroves have (carbon) hoarding issues.
Blue carbon ecosystems (mangroves, sea grasses and salt marshes) can be up to 10 times more efficient, than terrestrial ecosystems, at absorbing and storing carbon long term, making them a critical solution in the fight against climate change ...”
➥ https://www.conservation.org/stories...bout-mangroves

[SailOar]

THE GREAT GEOMAGNETIC STORM OF MAY 1921

Today is the 100th anniversary of the May 1921 Geogmagnetic Storm, the biggest solar storm of the 20th century to hit Earth. Around 02:00 GMT that Sunday morning a telegraph exchange in Sweden burst into flames. Across the Atlantic, the same thing was going on in New York. Flames engulfed the switch-board at the Brewster station of the Central New England Railroad and quickly spread to destroy the whole building. During the conflagration, long distance telephone lines burned out in New Brunswick; voltages on telegraph lines in the USA spiked as high as 1000 V; and auroras were sighted by ships at sea crossing the equator.(...)

What would happen if the same storm struck today? A 2013 Royal Academy of Engineering report summarizes the possibilities. Suffice it to say, fire would be the least of our worries. Modern technology is far more sensitive to solar activity than the simple copper wires of 1921. The same solar storm today could cause regional power blackouts, expose air travelers to radiation, knock out satellites, and disable radio-based technologies such as GPS.

Loss of electricity is often cited as the worst likely side-effect of a solar superstorm, but power systems are more resilient than they used to be. Thanks to improvements made after the Great Quebec Blackout of 1989, many modern grids would bounce back quickly. A more worrisome loss might be GPS. We think of GPS as our main way of finding things: ambulances finding accidents, pilots finding runways, and so on. But there's more to it than that. GPS tells us what time it is, a service of atomic clocks onboard the satellites. In fact, GPS time is woven into the fabric of modern society.(...)

Space weather scholars routinely call the May 1921 event a "100 year storm." However, recent research (both historical and statistical) suggests that such storms come along more often--every 40 to 60 years. Either way, we're overdue.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

List of solar storms

Carrington Event

[GordMay]

“Underwater Forces Can Increase Hurricane Intensity”
Previously undiscovered underwater currents can seriously increase the power of hurricanes, a new study shows [1], research which should make storm system forecasts more accurate in the future.

The findings were made through detailed measurements of the 2017 Category 5 storm Hurricane Maria, taken from a suite of subsurface oceanographic instruments. The analysis revealed interactions between ocean islands and the hurricane that fed the storm with more and more energy.

Researchers estimate that Hurricane Maria gained up to 65 percent more potential intensity because of the sloping shelf patterns of the island shorelines, which produced currents that strengthened and stabilized the different bands of temperature in the ocean.

Sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) are one of the main factors controlling the energy in a hurricane, and in this case the records showed that waters around the coasts of the battered islands didn't cool down until at least 11 hours after Hurricane Maria had passed.
The stratification or layering of temperatures plays a big part in cooling rates, because it means warmer and cooler waters don't mix. The researchers' data showed how a warm layer of water was kept trapped by rising pressure underneath and strong ocean currents (produced by the hurricane winds) from above.

Underlying ocean temperature changes aren't currently factored into hurricane model simulations, but the researchers show that these shifts can control both the intensity and the direction of a storm system.

Human life and critical infrastructure can be better protected if people know what's coming, and as the planet warms up we're seeing more hurricanes of greater intensity – so experts need all the data they can get to better understand them.

More about:
“USGS Scientists Add Another Piece to Puzzle of How Hurricanes Can Gain Strength”
➥ https://www.usgs.gov/news/usgs-scien...ience_products

The study:
[1] “Rapid observations of ocean dynamics and stratification along a steep island coast during Hurricane María” ~ by Olivia M. Cheriton et al [May 12, 2021]
➥ https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/20/eabf1552

[SailOar]

Superfast-charging aluminum-ion batteries outpower lithium-ion

Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has announced performance test results for a new type of aluminum-ion battery that can charge 10X faster than today's lithium-ion units, while lasting much longer and needing no cooling.

Power density around 7,000 W/kg for aluminum-ion batteries
Power density of 250-700 W/kg for lithium-ion batteries
Power density of 12,000-14,000 W/kg for ultracapacitors

Energy density of 150-160 Wh/kg – so it carries only around 60 percent of the energy per weight of today's best commercial lithium-ion cells.

GMG says that a mobile phone could get a full charge in 1-5 minutes. And an EV might travel only 60 percent as far as an equivalent Tesla on a charge, but that charges so fast that range might become far less of an issue

They have undergone 2,000 full charge and discharge cycles with no apparent deterioration in performance, are extremely safe, with low fire potential, and they're more recyclable than lithium batteries

GMG says it can produce high quality graphene at low cost and in scalable quantities. With graphene prices around US$100 per gram, even a "low cost" version could end up being pretty pricey

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by SailOar

Superfast-charging aluminum-ion batteries outpower lithium-ion

Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has announced performance test results for a new type of aluminum-ion battery that can charge 10X faster than today's lithium-ion units, while lasting much longer and needing no cooling.

Power density around 7,000 W/kg for aluminum-ion batteries
Power density of 250-700 W/kg for lithium-ion batteries
Power density of 12,000-14,000 W/kg for ultracapacitors

...
GMG says it can produce high quality graphene at low cost and in scalable quantities. With graphene prices around US$100 per gram, even a "low cost" version could end up being pretty pricey

I'm loving all the new battery technologies coming up. Carbon is of course abundant, so I'm hoping that market pressure will drive the search for better methods of producing graphene in large quantities at lower cost.

[SailOar]

Nations Must Drop Fossil Fuels, Fast, World Energy Body Warns

• The International Energy Agency is not an environmental group but an international organization that advises world capitals on energy policy
• The IEA has issued a detailed road map of what it would take for the world’s nations to slash carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by 2050
• Most of the carbon dioxide generated by power plants, factories and vehicles will have to be eliminated or offset, such as by forests or artificial technologies
• Every nation will need to move much faster and more aggressively away from fossil fuels than they are currently doing
• The annual pace of installations for solar panels and wind turbines worldwide would have to quadruple by 2030
• This is one potential timetable suggested by the IEA:

• This year, nations would stop approving new coal plants unless they are outfitted with carbon capture technology to trap and bury their emissions underground. Nations would also stop approving the development of new oil and gas fields beyond those already committed.
• By 2025, governments worldwide would start banning the sale of new oil and gas furnaces to heat buildings, shifting instead to cleaner electric heat pumps.
• By 2030, electric vehicles would make up 60 percent of new car sales globally, up from just 5 percent today. By 2035, automakers would stop selling new gasoline- or diesel-fueled passenger vehicles. By 2050, virtually all cars on the roads worldwide either run on batteries or hydrogen.
• By 2035, the world’s advanced economies would zero out emissions from power plants, shifting away from emitting coal and gas plants to technologies like wind, solar, nuclear or carbon capture. By 2040, all of the world’s remaining coal-fired power plants are closed or retrofitted with carbon capture technology.
• In 2035, more than half of new heavy trucks would be electric. By 2040, roughly half of all air travel worldwide would be fueled by cleaner alternatives to jet fuel, such as sustainable biofuels or hydrogen.

​

Net Zero by 2050
A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector

[Mike OReilly]

Satellite mega-constellations create risks in Low Earth Orbit, the atmosphere and on Earth

The rapid development of mega-constellations risks multiple tragedies of the commons, including tragedies to ground-based astronomy, Earth orbit, and Earth’s upper atmosphere. Moreover, the connections between the Earth and space environments are inadequately taken into account by the adoption of a consumer electronic model applied to space assets. ...

This analysis by two Canadian researchers is trying to ring the alarm bells even louder about this known, but rapidly increasing problem.

Cruisers are all beneficiaries of satellite technology, but there is a downside, and definitely some unintended consequences from having global communications and tools like GPS and Internet anywhere.

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Satellite mega-constellations create risks in Low Earth Orbit, the atmosphere and on Earth

This analysis by two Canadian researchers is trying to ring the alarm bells even louder about this known, but rapidly increasing problem.

Cruisers are all beneficiaries of satellite technology, but there is a downside, and definitely some unintended consequences from having global communications and tools like GPS and Internet anywhere.

There is no escape now days.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by newhaul

There is no escape now days.

No escape from consequences, intended or otherwise? That's kinda the point. Best we can do is try and recognize, minimize and mitigate the impacts we are having.

... or did you have a different point?

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

No escape from consequences, intended or otherwise? That's kinda the point. Best we can do is try and recognize, minimize and mitigate the impacts we are having.

... or did you have a different point?

Slightly different . Used to be able to say sorry I couldn't be contacted I was on a passage .
Now with all the modern technology you are able to make a phone call from 90% of the planets surface.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by newhaul

Slightly different . Used to be able to say sorry I couldn't be contacted I was on a passage .
Now with all the modern technology you are able to make a phone call from 90% of the planets surface.

Ah, yes. I get it. Soooo true .

[Dockhead]

A rather chilling story in today's NYT about current demographic trends:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/w...shrinking.html

It seems like it was only 10 years ago that I was still arguing with people who thought overpopulation was the world's biggest problem.

The extent to which the opposite is happening shocks even me. South Korea now has a fertility rate of 0.9 (!; replacement rate is 2.1), despite having spent $178 billion (!) in "baby bonuses" over the last 15 years. On current trends, China's population will decline by about one-half by the end of the century. In Japan, adult diapers outsell diapers for babies. Germany already increased the retirement age to 67 and will not bump it to 69, and are demolishing hundreds of thousands of unneeded houses and turning the land into parks. The fertility rate in the U.S., 1.78, is half of what it was in 1953, and is now lower than Sweden's. Italy has a fertility rate of 1.3.

This is crazy. Without profound progress in automation, this will be an economic catastrophe. In much of the developed world, we are not noticing the full extent of this event because we make up a good part of the shortfall in people with immigration. But this is a short term remedy -- those countries from which people immigrate, are also mostly seeing drastic falls in fertility rates. Even India, which had a fertility rate of almost 6 as recently as 1964, is now only barely replacing itself, and is expected to fall below replacement rate already in 2024 https://www.macrotrends.net/countrie...fertility-rate.

Those robots won't come a moment too soon. The world will be a very, very different place in a few decades.

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

You do realize the paper does not say: 'a 1ºC rise will result in "the end of life on Earth."' First off, it is considering a 3ºC rise by 2050, which is a massive shift in global temperature. But even here it does not come close to claiming this will be "the end of life on Earth."

So no... not even close.

But the paper rightly points to the real issue around rapid climate change. Humanity, or indeed most life, is not going to disappear. What is really at stake is our global civilization.

Our entire modern human history and civilization has developed during an unusually stable period of climate. We are now entering a period of rapidly changing climate. This will (is) create incredible stresses on our global civilization. Some of these are already evident, but they will magnify.

The greatest threat is social and political instability brought on by environmental changes. Shifting global rainfall patterns, combined with depleting aquifers and shrinking glacier-fed flows will drive massive migration and political stress. The wealthy countries will/are more insulated, but cannot escape all impacts.

How does some places becoming less desirable and other places more desirable areas to live equate to putting “our global civilization” at stake? I can see how changing climate could influence where folks prefer to live but since the change happens gradually over time, won’t this be similar to past human migrations? For example, Florida wasn’t anywhere near as desirable a place to live before air conditioning was invented but the influx of people to this area since then has certainly changed its character somewhat but hasn’t caused any dangerous instability. Certainly some areas will benefit at others expense as people move around for various reasons, climate being only one of them. But suggesting that “our global civilization” is at stake or it will cause dangerous instability seems a lot like hyperbole to me.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

A rather chilling story in today's NYT about current demographic trends:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/w...shrinking.html

It seems like it was only 10 years ago that I was still arguing with people who thought overpopulation was the world's biggest problem.

I've been making this point for many years now, mostly whenever someone blames over-population as the main cause of our global environmental problems. But it seems few can appreciate how quickly this population decline is coming at us, and how rapidly it will hit once we peak and start heading down.

I read a good book on this a couple of years ago;
Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

Similar to problems brought on by rapid climate change, our global civilization has never faced this kind of challenge before. We've always existed (outside a few small localized blips) with rising populations.

Originally Posted by jtsailjt

How does some places becoming less desirable and other places more desirable areas to live equate to putting “our global civilization” at stake?

I guess I'll just quote myself:

Our entire modern human history and civilization has developed during an unusually stable period of climate. We are now entering a period of rapidly changing climate. This will (is) create incredible stresses on our global civilization. Some of these are already evident, but they will magnify.

The greatest threat is social and political instability brought on by environmental changes. Shifting global rainfall patterns, combined with depleting aquifers and shrinking glacier-fed flows will drive massive migration and political stress. The wealthy countries will/are more insulated, but cannot escape all impacts.

Take the problems faced by the USA with illegal immigration at the southern border. Now magnify this a 100x, and add most every country on the planet facing similar population-shifting crisis at the same time.

Consider what happens to the US mid-west or California when it runs out of water, or when the grain belt of North America can no longer produce at the same levels. When rising sea levels challenge the existence of coastal cities...

Organizations like the US military and CIA have long recognized that rapid climate change is a major threat to global stability. Even the UN Security Council recently spent a whole session focused on the immenent danger this poses to our global way of life.

Climate Change ‘Biggest Threat Modern Humans Have Ever Faced’, World-Renowned Naturalist Tells Security Council, Calls for Greater Global Cooperation

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by newhaul

Slightly different . Used to be able to say sorry I couldn't be contacted I was on a passage .
Now with all the modern technology you are able to make a phone call from 90% of the planets surface.

Despite being a technology nerd, I've been pretty resistant to the siren calls of many of them. We don't have cable TV, just Netflix. No FB, Twitter, Insta-whatever for me. I bought my wife a cellphone, but didn't get one myself til around 2012, when an employer told me it was necessary for the position. And then it was a write-off.

So, just say no. Unless someone is paying handsomely to be able to access you at all hours, turn off that phone when it suits you. Nothing like a nice 2 hour sail with zero interruptions for clearing the mind.
[/derail]