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Because apparently we can't have a website anymore without a blog


The blah-blah-blog

As time permits, I'm going to put the esoterica I encounter related to climate change here rather than trying to update the various pages. So this will be in reverse chronological rather than logically organized within the structure of the rest of this website. Please don't rely on this as a consistent and current source for climate change information updates. Sadly, we cannot rely on our corporate-controlled mass media for good information on this, and my time is limited.

Past blog pages:
2019: May    June    July    August    September    October    November    December   
2020:
January    February    March    April    May    June    July [COVID gap]
2021: [COVID gap] October-December
2022: January-February    March    April    May-August    September    October    November-December
2023: January    February    March-April    May-July    August-September    October-November    December
2024: January    February    March    April    May    June    July    August    September   


The 10n10 Catastophic Climate Change Blog - February 2023

2023.02.28 Once again, the Alberta War Room (oil propaganda central), is delivering all the disinformation Alberta taxpayers can afford to spume.

The question is, why the personal attacks? Because they have no facts on their side?
Alberta’s War Room accuses Catherine McKenna of misleading Canadians (National Observer)


2023.02.28 A vanishing world

Winter sea ice is melting away from Labrador. For the Inuit way of life, it’s a death knell. (CBC)


2023.02.28 Spoiler: it's Canadian taxpayers paying for oil and gas industry greenwashing.

Canada’s carbon capture craze and who might be paying for it (National Observer)


2023.02.27 It takes energy to make new commodity minerals, and generally less to recycle them.

Still, it is astonishing how much of the metals we use are just tossed to landfill after a single use. Have a look at the graphic in this article, and note we throw away more steel, iron, copper and aluminum than we recycle (U.S. data). It isn't until we get to lead that we see more recycling than binning. That's because lead-acid batteries get recycled, massively. We can expect the same for EV batteries.
Visualizing the Opportunity Cost of Unrecycled Metals in the U.S. (Visual Capitalist)


2023.02.23 This finding agrees with data collected for a peer-reviewed paper (see Discussion, 4th paragraph) in which I was a co-author.

Health impact of tyre particles causing ‘increasing concern’, say scientists (The Gurardian)


2023.02.23 Another lithium battery recycler pops up. The batteries are not going to landfill, they're too valuable.

Lithium-ion battery recycling company Li-Cycle scores $375 million conditional loan from Energy Department for Rochester plant (CNBC)


2023.02.23 Petrobras brags about their new CCUS record, as though it wasn't just EOR to produce more oil.

Petrobras beats its annual record for CO2 Capture, Utilization and Storage (Petrobras)
CCUS is generally used by the oil and gas industry to help them produce more oil and gas and create more GHG emissions. But by pretending they are sequestering carbon dioxide, they can qualify for tax credits for climate change mitigation, while in reality creating even moro GHG emissions and making more profits.


2023.02.23 2021 data. Despite working from home going mainstream, 2021 emissions were higher than 2020.

Canada's carbon emissions rose in 2021 but were still below pre-pandemic highs: report (CBC)


2023.02.23 At best, this is about a leaky form of 'net-zero' capture of carbon dioxide to make a volatile hydrocarbon. Methanol is a product of value, but it is not indicated what the energy or financial costs are to implement this energy cycle. As direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide is still not living up to its billing, odds are this will have to be implemented in the exhaust stream of a facility that is burning fossil fuels and creating carbon dioxide (flue gas) as a consequence. That sounds like perpetuating fossil fuels as the base case, not shifting away from them. Best case, Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage - with leaks, not Carbon Capture and Sequestration.

The Least Costly Yet: Scientists Unveil a New Carbon Capture System (SciTechDaily)


2023.02.21 Other than a steady diet of social media and mainstream media disinformation, how can anyone still be surprised that fossil fuel vehicles are driving climate change, and EVs are part of the near-term solution.

I wrote "Electric Vehicles: Part of Canada's Climate Change Solution" for Electric Mobility Canada 15 years ago, but somehow this is still news for the Canadian public? (By the way, the Canadian electric grid, and especially Ontario, is cleaner now than in 2008, while oil production has become more carbon intensive.)
Gasoline versus electric cars? Here’s how their life cycle emissions compare in Canada (National Observer)


2023.02.21 How about that? People and countries can kick the fossil fuels addition if the motiviation is right.

EU Gas Demand Fell More Than Target (OilPrice.com)


2023.02.21 Another lithium battery recycling plant is opening - in Arizona.

(The dead batteries are too valuable to go to landfill, just like lead-acid batteries have been for decades. It's time to stop looking for disinformation to justify your unwillingness to move to environmentally-friendly vehicles.)
The world’s largest battery recycler is opening its first US li-ion recycling factoryg (electrek)


2023.02.21 Could it be that the airlines - who don't even pay taxes on fuel for aircraft - are also tired of being price-gouged by the oil industry? Because they were never very interested in biofuels before the 2nd half of 2022.

A Sudden Rush to Make Sustainable Aviation Fuel Mainstream New York Times)


2023.02.21 Disinformation, misinformation and spin all prevent good decision-making and taking appropriate action.

The thin green line — where disinformation meets greenwashing (National Observer)


2023.02.16 I could not make this stuff up. But this is what passes for reality in the Alberta UCP's world. The big problem here is that they are the government. And they believe the foreign-owned oil industry in Alberta needs another $20 billion bailout, in a year the four main beneficiaries will make that much in profits.

Danielle Smith's no good, very bad, $20-billion idea (National Observer)


2023.02.16 Even Barclay's Bank, which will continue funding other oil and gas projects, recognizes that oil sands projects carry too high a financial risk to continue funding those, probably because they can see that it is impossible for oil sands extraction to reduce their GHG emissions to meet anyone's targets. Looks like the Pathway Alliance is going to be even more dependent on Canadian taxpayers to keep their carbon capture charade going.

World’s seventh largest fossil-fuel-funding bank dumps oilsands financing in Canada (National Observer)


2023.02.16 Avoiding a doom loop required a more honest acceptance by politicians of the great risks posed by the climate crisis

World risks descending into a climate ‘doom loop’, warn thinktanks (The Guardian)


2023.02.15 Hunh, after decades of actively suppressing electric vehicles in Canada, now the federal government is surprised that there is a lack of them to support the sudden about-face to embrace them.

Imagine that. Odd that places like Sweden and China don't seem to have a supply shortage. Maybe Canada should have another look at electric microcars and microtrucks, an industry it killed (pptx PowerPoint deck), which would need smaller batteries, less materials, take up less space, use less energy to operate and would fit well in the short-mission urban environment which is still car-centric, where most of our driving is actually done.


2023.02.15 Stand by for seal level rise.

‘Extreme situation’: Antarctic sea ice hits record low (The Guardian)


2023.02.14 U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that sea levels will rise significantly even if global warming is “miraculously” limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius

Rising seas risk ‘death sentence’ for some nations, says UN secretary-general (Globe & Mail)


2023.02.10 Americans will shift off fossil fuels, if it saves them money.

Chart: Americans bought more heat pumps than gas furnaces last year (Canary Media)


2023.02.08 Current EVs need lithium for their batteries. You may have heard a LOT of lithium.

However, the numbers in the studies assume essentially no recycling, do not allow for solid-state batteries using less lithium or the potential for new battery formulations (e.g. sodium-based batteries). Still, we should be realistic about the potential impacts of obtaining a lot of lithium within the next 30 years.
On the other hand, we should also consider the impacts of the status quo on climate change, air quality, water quality, soil and food quality and health. So, for that, read this article.
Weighing the harm of gasoline against lithium (National Observer)

You might also be worried about all those batteries going to landfill. It might not be the problem the oil industry is leading you to believe. For starters, the best proxy today is the automotive and industrial equipment lead-acid battery disposal market. Yes, market. Because of the value of the materials in a lead-acid battery, they are the most recycled consumer product in the world. But, lithium batteries have an even better story. Second-life. Here are the real 'landfills' for old lithium EV batteries today.
EV batteries getting second life on California power grid (Reuters)

Eventually, these batteries will have capacity reduced below even viable stationary duty, when they will head for recycling.
Redwood Materials scores a new $2 billion loan to build out battery recycling facility in Nevada (CNBC)
And other lithium battery recyclers are coming.


2023.02.06 Climate change escapism fantasies for those that can't afford to travel to another planet.

Clue to rising sea levels lies in DNA of 4m-year-old octopus, scientists say (The Guardian)


2023.02.05 To be clear, the comparison is NEW-BUILD renewables vs. EXISTING coal-fired electric generating stations.

Almost all coal plants in the US are more expensive than new renewables (ZME Science)


2023.02.04 The West Antarctic Ice Shelf has disappeared before, and we're on track to doing it again, triggering a relatively sudden, multi-metre sea level rise world-wide. Not the time to buy that beachfront property.

Huge dust cloud launched from Earth's moon could ease global warming (New Scientist)


2023.02.03 Geo-engineering fantasies go to the moon - but where's the off-switch?

Huge dust cloud launched from Earth's moon could ease global warming (New Scientist)


2023.02.03 Carbon capture is not a viable path to climate change mitigation, it's another oil & gas subsidy from taxpayers

Why Carbon Capture and Storage Is Not a Net-Zero Solution for Canada’s Oil and Gas Sector (International Institute for Sustainable Development)


2023.02.03 We need real plans and strategic execution over hype and prayers.

Canada can plan for a net-zero future or bet on tech and ‘hope for the best’: Wilkinson (National Observer)


2023.02.01 Over a 10-year period from release into the atmosphere, a molecure of methane is more than 100 times as potent a GHG as carbon dioxide, and we know where a lot of it comes from.

[dead link: https://https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/02/01/news/measure-methane-energy-companies-reduce-emissions] It's not easy to measure methane, say energy companies told to reduce emissions (National Observer)

March 2024 update: but with multiple satellites being put into Earth orbit with the ability to map methane emissions, large emitter points will be easier to identify, and aircraft-based and ground-based equipment could be used in the area to better measure emissions independently of oil and gas industry reporting which has long been considered inadequate or even suspect.


2023.02.01 Finally, somebody else has realized that CCUS is not Sequestration, it's enhanced oil recovery.

Originally, the term was CCS for Carbon Capture and Sequestration. Sequestration means permanently removed and made inaccessible for periods measured in geological time. This got climate change attention and funding. But, over time, the oil industry changed this so that the 'S' became Storage instead of Sequestration, and then the 'U' appeared, for Utilization. CCUS = Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage. Which meeans, industry wants to use the captured carbon dioxide GHG. What they use it for mostly is making more fossil fuels, more GHGs and a lot of the CO2 pumped into depleted oil and gas wells comes back out with produced water, oil and gas. This is called Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). In other words, CCUS as the front end for EOR, actually puts more GHGs into the atmosphere than it allegedly removes. And the oil industry has taxpayers paying to build the CCUS facilities as climate change mitigation technology greenwashing. Welcome to upside-down world.

What the heck is carbon capture? The pollution-cutting technology that’s got Canada investing billions (National Observer)


Past blog pages:
2019: May    June    July    August    September    October    November    December   
2020:
January    February    March    April    May    June    July [COVID gap]
2021: [COVID gap] October-December
2022: January-February    March    April    May-August    September    October    November-December
2023: January    February    March-April    May-July    August-September    October-November    December
2024: January    February    March    April    May    June    July    August    September   

You can find many earlier postings (going back to year 2000) related to climate change at:
Keith's List Archive and
the Sustainable Biofuel List Mail Archive.

I present a lot of information in this blog and on this website. If you need some help sorting through the noise level and getting a forward-looking, proactive approach to climate change for your business, I can do that work for you via my consulting business. Contact

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