writeaboutwarming

March 3, 2018 - Scientists at the University Of California, Irvine; the California Institute of Technology; and the Carnegie Institution of Science recently published an article stating that the United States could meet 80 percent of its electricity needs with solar and wind power. To sweeten the deal, the price of solar and wind have been dropping rapidly. The remaining 20 percent could be provided by alternate sources of energy such as hydropower, geothermal, and biomass. These sources currently meet 8.5 percent of electrical demand, and can be expanded. The remaining deficit would be met by managing demand. The larger grid required for transmission of solar and wind power would have to be continental in scale, or 12 hours' worth of the energy would have to be stored in new facilities. This degree of expansion would require hundreds of billions of dollars in investment. Storing the electricity with today's cheapest batteries would cost a trillion dollars, although the price...

July 25, 2011 - So: how do you like living in a world of human-induced climate change? Have you wondered what it would be like, once climate change really "kicked in?" I know I have. This, of course, is only the beginning. It's going to get much worse. The folks at the Weather Channel keep telling us this is a Heat Wave With a Difference. That's because of its historic wide-spread occurrence over much of the nation. That, and one more thing: the very high levels of humidity accompanying the heat. The humidity is so high because hot air can hold more water than dry air can. The hotter the air gets, the more water it can hold! Here comes the remarkably bad news - all that water in the air acts as a greenhouse gas (GHG). It keeps heat from reflecting back into space. Where does that leave us? In a terribly difficult situation. The Gulf of Mexico's sea surface temperature (SST) is higher than ever, and that causes increased evaporation. There's the water. Air temp...