Insanity fact #3,787. Fossil fuel expansion is projected to be gobsmackingly mindboggling enormous in the coming years. The U.S., Brazil, and Saudi Arabia plan major increases in oil production. Russia, India, and Indonesia will increase coal production. The U.N. reports that the planned production worldwide is almost 70% more than would be consistent with 2˚C global average heating. According to the IMF, fossil fuel subsidies in 2022 were over $7 trillion. The projected Production Gap has not changed significantly in recent years. The Paris Agreement of December 2015 did not address fossil fuel production.

Neoliberal capitalism and supply-driven consumption is the usually unexamined box that we live in. It will destroy civilization and ensure the sixth great extinction. But, hey, the Earth will be fine….in the long run.

ExxonMobil’s greenwashing knows no limits. The new Baytown facility near Houston is touted as a model of plastic recycling, but the life cycle carbon accounting is missing.

With the massive wildfires in Canada over the previous summer, it is essential that we understand the causes of wildfire in extratropical forests. Lightening is the leading cause of wildfires in boreal forests. As shown by the massive carbon emissions from Canada’s wildfires, this is now a huge threat to ecosystem carbon storage. Lightening frequency is projected to increase 11-31% per degree of climate change driven warming over intact extratropical forests.

A startup with major funding from the US Department of Energy has started capturing CO₂ directly from the air. This is a process known as Direct Air Capture (DAC) and has never been successful at a commercial scale. Pilot and demonstration projects have always failed to capture even a fraction of the targets for CO₂. This new project at Tracy, CA, uses finely crushed limestone to passively absorb CO₂ from the air, and the product is then injected into concrete. Although Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm unveiled the project with great fanfare, the project will absorb a maximum of 1,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year. This is less than 0.1% of the annual emissions from a single fossil-gas fired powerplant. Many environmental groups point out that such technology is hugely expensive and provides the fossil majors with a rationale for continued pollution. It seems that humanity will go to great lengths to avoid killing fossil fuels, even when it involves self-deception. Big tech will not save us.

The best way to think of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is as a time machine. Do the math. Here is a slide from my lecture on geoengineering using data from a paper published in Nature by researcher David Ho.

Michigan’s Clean Energy Bill is a big deal. Historically Michigan has produced energy from carbon-intensive sources. The article from Inside Clean Energy explains the huge leap that Michigan is making to clean up its energy production.

I am not alone in thinking that the Amazon has already entered a period of regime shift, aka tipping point. Although there is no demarcated point at which a regime shift occurs, several recent studies point to the reality that deforestation, forest disruption, fragmentation, large-scale cattle ranching, and climate change are changing the hydrology of the Amazon Basin. By this time of year the major rivers of the Basin should be full, but there is widespread drought as the current El Niño in the Pacific strengthens. The amount of potential loss of carbon resulting from a broad regime shift is staggering. Presently the south and southeast are showing signs of regime shift from forest to savanna and grassland. For me this transformation is terrifying and it has literally kept me awake at night. (map and figure below from Mongabay September 2022)

A greenhouse emissions hotspot is associated with the burning of fields and exposed soil of Florida’s sugarcane industry in the politically protected Everglades Agricultural Area. Although the sugar industry disputes the findings of peer-reviewed studies, the science is damning.

Enhanced Geothermal Energy could completely transform clean energy. This technology promises to make it possible to tap geothermal energy anywhere that drilling the Earth is possible, not just at geothermal hotspots. This video explains one of the techniques that is being explored. Another approach is that used by the MIT spinoff Quaise Energy in which geothermal wells can be created from very deep holes.

Fossil methane gas may be 24 times worse for the climate than coal in even the best-case scenario. This is because of leaks from wellhead to pipeline to compressor station to transportation. Essentially every stage of fossil gas energy production is subject to massive leaks.

Climate warming is causing a public health crisis in Washington State prisons. This is amplifying widespread poor conditions due to years of neglected maintenance and crumbling infrastructure. Extreme heat and extreme cold in these prisons are plaguing inmates across the Washington system. Heat waves are becoming life threatening.

The League of Conservation Voters regards the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, as “appalling” for his stance on climate change and environmental degradation. We can expect no progress on climate change issues in the House so long as a small number of extremist GOP such as Johnson are able to control the agenda.

There has been a lot of nonsense dredged up by conservatives that waste from solar PV is toxic and slowing decarbonization. This comment in Nature Physics shows just how ridiculous this claim is. The article is behind a paywall, but this figure tells the story.