Thread: New paper in with and shows a 50-year fixed relationship between world economic "wealth" - not the GDP - and global primary energy consumption. Implication? Our future is tied to even our quite distant past
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Tim Garrett
@nephologue
Professor, nephologist, and collapsosophe at the University of Utah. Minimizing the Lagrangian since birth. All opinions predetermined and not my employer's.
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Great visualization!
"If all the coal produced in 2021 were arranged in a cube, it would measure 2,141 meters (2.1km) on each side—more than 2.5 times the height of the world’s tallest building."
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Visualizing The Scale Of Global Fossil Fuel Production zerohedge.com/energy/visuali
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I really don't understand the "carbon footprint" concept. If the activities of people/sectors/nations are all intertwined, how can the footprint of the island be disconnected meaningfully from the whole? How is there not only a single global carbon footprint?
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Vous le savez, à , on aime les #histoires. Dans le numéro #20, actuellement en kiosque, je les passe au crible dans un grand dossier… Homo fictionus : pourquoi notre espèce se raconte des histoires.
#Science #Neurosciences #Evolution #Anthropologie
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Dan Sanderson () is hosting this week's #LiveStream🖥️ of Steve & Friends, we will have Tim Garrett () as a guest, along with the normal contributions from . Tim's a physicist and professor at the University of Utah.
#economics #physics
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Coldest day of the year, on average, across the U.S. The east-west gradient is remarkable, and something most Americans don't realize. #xp climate.gov/news-features/
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Maybe seen as good news for people, but by other measures a metric of accelerating environmental destruction. Can't make stuff without mining nature
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New Paper: Think Salt Lake City has a lot of halogens from the lake dust? A single local facility, US Magnesium, emits halogens at concentrations 1000x that of the dirtiest coal-fired power plant plume we've ever flown through. #saltlake #airquality
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Once again slandering academics who make reasonable arguments he doesn't like as being shills for the fossil fuel industry
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Not content with pushing climate deniers and fossil fuel advocates into new and wide audiences, the Musk Twitter "for you" algorithm is now pushing this guy into people's feeds
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A little fun for Monday morning for those wondering how deep the snowpack is in Little Cottonwood Canyon, UT. This probe is 3.2 meters (125") long and doesn't reach the ground. Credit: E. Steenburgh.
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Some disappointment with the efficiency of my solar system this winter
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That a mere gallon will take this beast 1/2 a mile is pretty incredible. Civilization consumes about 12.6 billion gallons of oil equivalent per day, so that's a 6 billion mile ride
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48,500 active haul trucks (over 90 tons) at surface mines worldwide. The cost to run each truck on average is $500 per hr. $582,000,000 spent every 24 hours worldwide to operate these trucks. Each truck gets approx. 1/2 a mile per gal. You cant make #GreenEnergy without mining.
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First official day as an Asst. Professor at ... Clearly v hard at work in 18in of powder, but in all seriousness very excited to be officially starting my new position.
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Did a back of the envelope on this and figure the snow does 3 psi, which is significant on atmospheric pressure at elevation of about 10 psi. Is this real?
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Been looking at ground subsidence data (National Geodetic CORS), and some California stations suggest there may be a few cm of deformation under the weight of the huge snowpack. If not simply error, would be fascinating. #xp
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So machines seem on a path for making both professors and students someday redundant...except for designing and fixing machines
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The world adds close to 500 GW of power per year as it is, so if this switch to renewables materializes, it does not imply less fossil consumption. Historically, new energy sources have added not replaced.
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Good morning with good news: Global renewable energy capacity will double in 5 years, averaging nearly 500 GWs of new RE/year, according to IEA. World will get about 38% of its electricity from renewables in 2038. Add 10% from nuclear and world may reach 50% zero carbon in 2027.
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One year ago today, the #HungaTongaHungaHaapai volcano erupted. Thankfully with, bearing in mind the size of the eruption, few casualties and damage.
This eruption was so big it confused us scientists! We couldn't treat it how we normally do.
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As one trying to finish up building a remote home in the Wasatch Back at 8800' this snow is both wonderful and a serious challenge. Literally in over my head.
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Latest data just dropped. Snowbird is 231%. I repeat, TWO HUNDRED THIRTY-ONE percent of median snowpack right now. #utwx
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Mother Nature again for the win!
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#RoadClosureUpdate
LCC travelers, #SR210 still CLOSED. @UtahDOT road ops debris clearing is ongoing.
Estimated reopening is 2:30PM - we will provide an update if a delay exceeds 15 min.
@UDOTTRAFFIC @AltaCentral @AltaAlerts @SnowbirdAlerts @UPDSL @RideUTAShow this thread
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This evening at #AMS2023 I'll present a poster about two new hotplate devices we developed that are the first to directly measure the mass and density of individual precipitation particles. One concurrently measures wind speed, direction and turbulence
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Presenting tomorrow morning 11:45 at #AMS2023 on why I suspect the aerosol impact on clouds may not be much. Locally, sure. Globally, theory, models, and observations suggest it's zero.
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I'm of the school of thought that diagrams beat equations. But they're hard to create! And sometimes I wonder if it's at all worth it. Way too abstract...here's one I toyed with a few years back but went nowhere. Only rediscovered it today.
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To afford the high costs of mitigating climate change damages, civilization must remain healthy. A healthy civilization requires energy for its maintenance. So, for as long as fossil fuels remain, maintaining civilization will accelerate climate change.
That's the double-bind
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Which rather goes without saying. How else could a rich country have become rich in the age of fossil fuels if not by exploiting - directly or indirectly - fossil fuels?
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Climate change is due to our cumulative emissions, not just our emissions today.
While rich countries have started decreasing emissions in recent decades, rich country emissions are still responsible for a substantial majority of the 1.2C warming to-date carbonbrief.org/analysis-which
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Good advice here for profs
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Currently running all of my essay prompts through ChatGPT to figure out what I need to change (this first assignment absolutely needs to be replaced - too general and prone to rhetorical spamming).
Anyone else doing a re-assessment of their assignments in response to ChatGPT?
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What's your carbon footprint? The idea assumes a person could be magically removed from civilization and the rest of civilization wouldn't simply adjust by consuming and emitting what that person consumed before. It just doesn't make sense. nephologue.blogspot.com/2018/05/whats-
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There is already as much snow at Atwater Study Plot (Alta, UT) as there was in April of this past winter!
Courtesy of Snow HydRO Lab PhD Otto Lang
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Absorbed Solar Radiation is increasing rapidly in recent years. Is it the sun?
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Snowflake 932
Super-cooled water droplets collided with this #snowflake, some of which grew facets and eventually became side-branches. Can you spot them?
Full write-up on : flickr.com/photos/donkom/
#physics #science #meteorology #macro #winter #snow #ice #lumix #fractal
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John Gowdy is probably one of the world's most eminent thinkers today. So happy Nate Hagens has him on the series! I sincerely recommend you take time to watch.
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Humans self-organize around energy surplus (today, $ markers of) and thus expand nodes and networks globally. We are not alone in dominating the planet - in this clip John Gowdy explains how ants/termites are very like human societies. (The full episode explains the implications)
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Snowflake 929
Hexagonal plates in the center of dendrite snowflakes are beautiful and easy to explain... but how about two separate plates with branches growing on a layer below? More beautiful, hard to explain.
Full post on : flickr.com/photos/donkom/
#snow #science #ice
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Since our energy consumption appears intrinsically tied to historically cumulative inflation-adjusted GDP, shrinking civilization's potential gradient means destroying that which we have previously produced. I doubt many will be game to recoil society to a more primitive state.
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So how do we stop such global (not local) environmental destruction? Clearly, to enable its recovery, civilization would need to recoil to a smaller, less consumptive size. But this would be economically unpalatable...
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We and critters may not compete for the same energy (yay, fire!), but civilization is built from matter, and to a much larger degree than energy we and the natural world share the Earth's material resources: lumber is dead trees.
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Thermodynamics is a zero-sum game! Whatever factor by which we grow our "civilized" potential corresponds to an equivalent factor reduction of the "uncivilized" natural world's potential.
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What is interesting (though sad) is that the more energy we consume - and the further we stretch the civilization potential gradient - indices of the living world drop by *the same factor*.
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The potential energy gradient is defined relative to a ground state with a potential of zero. For civilization, this zero potential, or "uncivilized" condition, is one with no fossil fuels, PV, or dams, where we become effectively indistinguishable from our natural environment
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