S. W. Lawrence, MD
@swlawrence.bsky.social
Writer of climate fiction or cli-fi. But my work is preapocalyptic and optimistic, unlike most works in this space.
AAAS: “The twisted secret behind a chameleon’s oddball eyes.” No, this is not the skull of a rabbit, but rather a chameleon. Recall that rabbits have cartilage in their ears, not bones. But chameleons have pretty unique eyes.
![Chameleon skull, with neural structures in purple. “The reptiles can cast their peepers in two different directions at once, a rare trait in the animal kingdom that gives them a nearly 360° field of vision—and a freaky visage.”
The advantage may be that they can otherwise remain motionless when in view of either predator or prey. “CT scans published today in Scientific Reports reveal the long nerves (purple) that link a chameleon’s bulging eyes to its brain are coiled like a telephone cord.” [Back when telephones had cords]. The extra slack allow lizards to store longer optical nerves than any other reptile, plus rotate their eyes in virtually any direction.
“The team observed the looped nerves in “veiled chameleons” (Chamaeleo calyptratus), a species native to the Arabian Peninsula, and two distantly related chameleons.” Suggests it’s likely the trait is shared + genetically preserved across the entire oddball reptilian family. And not just the crazy aunt in the basement.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreic7izueef32j7vzoq6o3s6l5brfbsdz6l46ftwqoolassfvcenv2e@jpeg)
November 11, 2025 at 5:35 PM
AAAS: “The twisted secret behind a chameleon’s oddball eyes.” No, this is not the skull of a rabbit, but rather a chameleon. Recall that rabbits have cartilage in their ears, not bones. But chameleons have pretty unique eyes.
Okay, folks, last chance to sign up for my next local book launch event for CLOUD DRAGON. It’s happening this Saturday, the 15th of November, at Village Bookstore in Lynden, WA at 2 o’clock in the afternoon.
![Soapbox orator + Greek goddess Cassandra. [Not 7 o’clock in the evening as had been the original scheduling]. Pictured is the first slide, and I promise to explain the significance of these two figures. I will also read selected portions of four or five of the early chapters. And my wife has committed to baking some chocolate chip cookies.
Here is the link for information + tickets: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/1680961794979 Cost is $5 for entry, taken off the price of a book if you purchase one. So, as they say, come one + all if you live in the northwest corner of Washington State.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreiehfhbor3ks7r5dodfkuqszqsqf2whuubgt5ytmnjl4sg6r7xntmu@jpeg)
November 10, 2025 at 2:54 PM
Okay, folks, last chance to sign up for my next local book launch event for CLOUD DRAGON. It’s happening this Saturday, the 15th of November, at Village Bookstore in Lynden, WA at 2 o’clock in the afternoon.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (2025) 10.1073/pnas.2510535122: “High-resolution geostationary satellite observations of free tropospheric NO2 over North America and implications for lightning emissions.”
![Lightning strike to ground. The atmosphere contains 78% nitrogen, in the form of paired “dinitrogen” molecules with a taut triple bond as tight as the cinch on a horse’s saddle. Takes lots of energy to disrupt, but when that is accomplished, the result is “free tropospheric nitrogen dioxide [FT NO2], [which] helps drive global atmospheric oxidant chemistry.
“Dang et al. used satellite observations to show that lightning dominates FT NO2 production in nonwinter seasons over North America, and that commonly used model estimates of its production contain large errors.” They also detected diurnal variations in FT NO2 The researchers applied ‘cloud-slicing’ to the Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) geostationary satellite instrument, + produced a unique high-quality FT NO2 dataset over North America including the first measurements of the diurnal cycle.
“Comparison of TEMPO FT NO2 data “with the Goddard Earth Observation System-Composition Forecasts (GEOS-CF) atmospheric chemistry model shows overall consistent magnitudes, seasonality, and diurnal variation, with a midday minimum in nonwinter seasons from photochemical loss.” Recall that nitrogen is critical in plant + thus animal physiology. Note for example how much nitrogen is in our RNA + DNA.
And there is a climate angle here as well. From multiple studies, including for example one from UC Berkeley, we know that for every 1ºC of global warming lightning strikes will increase by about 12%, which projects to a 50% increase by century’s end. You can’t really bottle this stuff, so it’s best to dodge it.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreih34ld5xltlrwl2wxxa4kitwjejtwh4jggoigg5vp4smfmv2hwzqy@jpeg)
November 8, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (2025) 10.1073/pnas.2510535122: “High-resolution geostationary satellite observations of free tropospheric NO2 over North America and implications for lightning emissions.”
CanaryMedia: “Puerto Rico’s energy future: distributed solar or centralized grid?” This article was published 3Nov, but unfortunately not updated after Hurricane Melissa on 21Oct. Pu
November 7, 2025 at 6:17 PM
CanaryMedia: “Puerto Rico’s energy future: distributed solar or centralized grid?” This article was published 3Nov, but unfortunately not updated after Hurricane Melissa on 21Oct. Pu
Offshorewind.biz: “Wind Turbine Installation to Start Soon on 2.6 GW US Offshore Project.” Pessimism about wind farms under the current administration should be leavened with rationally-based hope.
![U.S.-built offshore wind turbine installation vessel. “All monopiles + almost 1/2 of the transition pieces (TPs) have been installed at Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind (CVOW) project site, with wind turbine installation expected to start this month + project anticipated to produce first power beginning of next year.”
Portion of the exciting context is the offshore wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV) Charybdis arrived at Portsmouth Port in September. “According to the latest information released by Dominion Energy, vessel is expected to be cleared to load and install turbines in November.” The CVOW developer also noted there are no time-of-year or time-of-day restrictions on installations. Gotta say this mammoth task must be harder to accomplish in the dark, no matter how much lighting is set up, but I am no engineer.
“In its third-quarter results, Dominion Energy, which owns both the 2.6 GW offshore wind project and the wind turbine installation vessel, said all 176 monopiles have been installed, with 63 transition pieces also in place, as well as the jacket foundation for the second of the project’s three offshore substations.” This offshore wind farm is 66% completed + remains on track to achieve first power production in the first quarter of next year + full commissioning by the end of 2026. “CVOW will feature 176 Siemens Gamesa 14 MW wind turbines…once in operation, it will become the biggest US offshore wind farm…and one of the biggest in the world today.”
Another site proceeding apace is Revolution Wind, which will provide 702 MW of power to Rhode Island with 304 MW + Connecticut with 400 MW [perhaps they should check their math at this point]. They are proud of the fact they will be supporting > 2,000 direct jobs across construction, manufacturing, shipbuilding + operations, which includes > 1,000 union construction jobs. And I am proud to commend them on their perseverance in the face of headwinds from the White House, only 2/3 of which is still intact.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreibyshn2lpdrmhdwm7lobsktqmkj6ka34d5lsagszgl3x4374kqora@jpeg)
November 6, 2025 at 9:42 PM
Offshorewind.biz: “Wind Turbine Installation to Start Soon on 2.6 GW US Offshore Project.” Pessimism about wind farms under the current administration should be leavened with rationally-based hope.
AAAS: “Antarctic glacier shows fastest retreat in modern history.” The Hektoria Glacier is a small river of ice that slips into the sea near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, which aligns with Tierra del Fuego of South America.
![Part of Antarctic glacier calving into ocean. “In 2022, something ‘shocking’ happened—as over 16 months, it retreated by 25 km—losing a whopping 8 km in just 2 of those months—fastest glacial retreat in the modern record. “After a forensic analysis, researchers say they have identified worrisome mechanisms behind it: a combination of glacial earthquakes and a swath of thinned ice popping afloat and breaking apart.”
Able to use “satellite with images of surface depressions—a marker of thin, floating ice with cracks underneath.” Larsen-B broke up spectacularly in 2002, undamming Hektoria.Simultaneously, Hektoria’s ice was stretching + thinning out across flat bedrock underlying it, forming an “ice plain.”
Imagine here a thin layer of ice on a puddle, breaking apart when you step on it. Storms sent large waves crashing into its margin in 2022+ Hektoria’s first 12 km of floating ice broke up into icebergs, in a process called “buoyancy-driven calving.” More damage followed when the force of the breakup flipped some of the icebergs “toes out,” momentarily + loudly reversing their momentum into glacier behind them. Collisions generated glacial earthquakes that were detected by a network of seismographs. And with the shock waves reverberating through the mass of ice, the remaining part of the ice plain broke free.
“The one-two punch of flotation and quakes was enough to account for Hektoria’s 8 kilometers of retreat over 2 months, a pace that’s an order of magnitude [base 10] faster than any in the modern record.” The researchers wonder “whether the same kind of catastrophic calving could occur at the much larger Thwaites Glacier, which is sometimes called the Doomsday Glacier because its retreat could unleash more than 3 meters of global sea level rise.” This could takes centuries of course, but this study is “telling us that those worst-case scenarios are maybe not as implausible as some people might have thought.” Sort of thing that keeps climate scientists up at nite.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreieenvsjoq4sdvvncqmiwsyzspqo3hhpzdkrbgvjbuuqoyszpgwl7q@jpeg)
November 5, 2025 at 3:39 PM
AAAS: “Antarctic glacier shows fastest retreat in modern history.” The Hektoria Glacier is a small river of ice that slips into the sea near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, which aligns with Tierra del Fuego of South America.
ClimateBrink: “The undeniable science of extreme weather.” Andrew Dessler has a guest column by Kevin Trenberth. Recently published is a new analysis issued by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM].
November 3, 2025 at 8:47 PM
ClimateBrink: “The undeniable science of extreme weather.” Andrew Dessler has a guest column by Kevin Trenberth. Recently published is a new analysis issued by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM].
CanaryMedia: “New England’s final coal plant shuts down years ahead of schedule.” The federal government is making valiant but expensively misguided efforts to prop up the waning coal industry.
![New Hampshire coal plant, closed last month. They “announced plans to resuscitate the coal sector by opening millions of acres of federal land to mining operations and investing $625 million in life-extending upgrades for coal plants.” Previously they had released a blueprint for rolling back coal-related environmental regulations.
“The federal government has twice extended the scheduled closure date of the coal-burning J.H. Campbell plant in Michigan [costing their customers millions in extra payments in just 3 months], and U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has declared it a [quasi-religious] mission of the administration to keep coal plants open, [falsely] saying the facilities are needed to ensure grid reliability and lower prices.”
Meanwhile, in New Hampshire, “Merrimack Station, a 438-megawatt [MW] power plant, came online in the 1960s and provided baseload power to the New England region for decades.” But gradually [methane] gas + renewables took over the regional market. “In recent years, Merrimack operated only a few weeks annually, in 2024, the plant generated just 0.22% of the region’s electricity.”
Granite Shore Power, the plant’s owner, first announced its intention to shutter Merrimack in March 2024, following years of protests and legal wrangling by environmental advocates. “The company pledged to cease coal-fired operations by 2028 in the wake of a lawsuit claiming that the facility was in violation of the federal Clean Water Act”
“At the time, the company outlined a proposal to repurpose the 400-acre Merrimack site, just outside Concord, for clean energy projects, taking advantage of existing electric infrastructure to connect a 120-MW combined solar and battery storage system to the grid.” [In another blow to coal, U.S. coal exports declined 11% in the first half of 2025 due to reduced exports to China]. One thing for sure, bluer skies over New England have arrived 3 yrs ahead of schedule. Not 2028, rather 2025.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreihtqjrq7fkdb2knjpxg2nab6c4aau2qiezsihxuzb5ewhihlbwtgm@jpeg)
November 2, 2025 at 5:59 PM
CanaryMedia: “New England’s final coal plant shuts down years ahead of schedule.” The federal government is making valiant but expensively misguided efforts to prop up the waning coal industry.
AAAS: “Vaccine protects people from paratyphoid fever in a ‘human challenge’ study” History first: “paratyphoid fever, caused by a microbe named Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi—or simply S. Paratyphi—sickens 3 million to 5 million people per year, according to WHO.
![Paratyphoid bacteria under microscope. The highest burden is in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and parts of Southeast Asia.” The organism spreads through water and food contaminated with fecal matter from infected people [charmingly called fecal-oral spread in medicine], and it thrives in places without clean drinking water and sanitation. “Estimates of the global death toll vary; one 2019 study put it at 23,300 fatalities every year.” The two diseases, both also called “enteric fever,” are “like brother and sister. They have the same route of transmission,” says Xinxue Liu of the University of Oxford’s Department of Paediatrics, a co-author on the NEJM study. There is already an injectable vaccine for typhoid fever. “Earlier this month, Bangladesh became the eighth country to introduce the shot—a so-called conjugate vaccine that’s injected intramuscularly—in a campaign supported by WHO and UNICEF that initially aims to vaccinate 50 million children ages 9 months to 15 years.” WHO hopes a bivalent or combination vaccine—taken orally or injected—will eventually address both diseases in one fell swoop.
“Because paratyphoid fever is relatively uncommon, testing in the real world would take massive clinical trials enrolling up to a quarter-million people, at a prohibitive cost.” Thus WHO supported testing of vaccines for the disease via human challenge studies. Such studies are sensitive—”there was a big debate about using them for the development of COVID-19 vaccines in 2020—they are considered ethical if there are clear scientific benefits, participants are carefully selected and well-informed, and the risks are minimal.” The 70 participants in the new study were given 2 doses of vaccine or two placebos 2 weeks apart. “Four weeks later, they took the swig of wild S. Typhi bacterium, a strain isolated from a patient in Nepal in 2006.”
Ultimately, 75% of people who got the placebo became infected, as measured by a blood test, versus only 21% in the vaccine group.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreih4woljmnzrnft75vqfyfcfhvvwjhl57yksb2cnhuwabl2cezyayy@jpeg)
November 1, 2025 at 1:45 PM
AAAS: “Vaccine protects people from paratyphoid fever in a ‘human challenge’ study” History first: “paratyphoid fever, caused by a microbe named Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi—or simply S. Paratyphi—sickens 3 million to 5 million people per year, according to WHO.
Happy am I to announce that my next audiobook is on the verge of launching out into the world. Which is to say that Jess Herring, creator of Audiobook Empire, has just let me know the files are almost ready for review, after months of work
![Cover of audiobook. I will get out my headphones after they are delivered and carefully audit their performance of the prologue, 34 chapters and epilogue for any errors or omissions. The two professional actors and narrators—Cara Firestone and Keith Brown—were recruited after my wife and I had listened to multiple auditions. They have done such great work in the past that I suspect I will also engage them for FOSSIL DRAGON, the third and final book in the Trilogy of Dragons. Each of them narrates individual chapters, and this time I trusted them to negotiate which chapters they preferred. Once published, the audio will be available on Spotify, Google Play, Hoopla, Kobo, Nook, Amazon and more.
The covers for the books including the audio versions were completed by my friend and graphic artist Bob Paltrow, who is both a musician as well as a talented graphic designer.
Finally, I will take this opportunity to offer up a penultimate reminder that my next local launch event will take place at Village Bookstore in Lynden, WA on the 15th of November [a Saturday] at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. Here is the link for information + tickets: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/1680961794979 Cost is $5 for entry, taken off the price of a book if you purchase one. So, as they say, come one + all if you live in the northwest corner of Washington State.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreihksvzzgahxnpb3pngffnagbttybfigg4avojbbtdtywoj2g4mxra@jpeg)
October 31, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Happy am I to announce that my next audiobook is on the verge of launching out into the world. Which is to say that Jess Herring, creator of Audiobook Empire, has just let me know the files are almost ready for review, after months of work
Resource Insights: "How did U.S. 'energy dominance' turn into rising domestic natural gas prices?" Kurt Cobb is the author of a great blog. He states not only are record amounts of U.S. natural gas now being sent abroad in the form of liquefied natural gas, but much more export capacity is planned.
October 30, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Resource Insights: "How did U.S. 'energy dominance' turn into rising domestic natural gas prices?" Kurt Cobb is the author of a great blog. He states not only are record amounts of U.S. natural gas now being sent abroad in the form of liquefied natural gas, but much more export capacity is planned.
YourLocalEpidemiologist: “Halloween is the deadliest day of the year for child pedestrians.” This classic bar chart displays 365 days of the year + the mean number of pediatric car-pedestrian deaths on individual days, each averaged over 15 years through 2018.
October 29, 2025 at 3:08 PM
YourLocalEpidemiologist: “Halloween is the deadliest day of the year for child pedestrians.” This classic bar chart displays 365 days of the year + the mean number of pediatric car-pedestrian deaths on individual days, each averaged over 15 years through 2018.
VisualCapitalist: “Visualizing the 200 Year History of U.S. Debt.” U.S. debt stands at $37.6 trillion, equal to 125% of GDP. “Net interest payments on the debt are set to reach $1.3 T by 2030, and $1.8 T in 2035.” Not particularly reassuring that much of the debt is owed to Americans.
![Log 10 graphic of US debt. Nor the idea that “by 2035, net interest payments on U.S. debt are forecast to equal 22.2% of federal revenues.” This year interest costs are forecast to reach $952 B on that pile of $37.6 T debt. And interest costs has nearly tripled over the last 5 yrs.
“In 10 years, they are set to hit a staggering $1.8 T, further squeezing the federal budget.” Debt has swelled nearly sevenfold in the last 25 yrs; largely, this was driven by the Fed printing trillions of dollars in 2008 and the pandemic era. “In 2020 alone, the Fed printed $3 T dollars under ‘quantitative easing.’ Prior to these crises, this strategy was uncommon, but has since become a primary tool used by the central bank.”
Looking back at mid-century America, we can see that debt expanded from $257 B in 1950 to $533 B in 1975. “Thanks to decades of strong economic growth, debt actually fell from 106% of GDP in 1946 to just 23% in 1974, a figure almost inconceivable to imagine today.”
Historically, it’s worth noting that “U.S. debt was almost virtually eliminated at one point in America’s history. In 1835 under President Jackson, it fell to $34,000—down from $4.8 M in the previous year.” President Jackson “relied on tariffs and the sale of public lands to raise revenue and reduce the national debt, but these policies later helped trigger the Panic of 1837 amid a growing real estate bubble.”
I’m no economist, but there is talk floating around that AI corporate valuations may consist at least in part of soap bubbles. And actual economists speak of the stock market being more buoyant than a bamboo raft starting to unravel. A Final point: current projection is that quantitative easing may screech to a halt with the next meeting of the Federal Reserve.
The graphic shows the U.S. debt since 1825, based on data from the U.S. Treasury, + it should be noted the y-axis on the right side is logarithmic [base 10]. Another point: I think that the depiction of the White House is only historic now.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreidajtqtz6vmlpombs7md2pcdvztwq6tdewsvbvs74ryiee5jsxnte@jpeg)
October 28, 2025 at 3:10 PM
VisualCapitalist: “Visualizing the 200 Year History of U.S. Debt.” U.S. debt stands at $37.6 trillion, equal to 125% of GDP. “Net interest payments on the debt are set to reach $1.3 T by 2030, and $1.8 T in 2035.” Not particularly reassuring that much of the debt is owed to Americans.
Jounal of Geophysical Research: Oceans: “On the Measurement of Ocean Acidity With Ambient Sound.” A new acoustic technique could make it easier to monitor threat to marine life from rising carbon emissions.
![Ocean CO2 monitor being deployed. “Ship propellers and whale songs reverberate at the lowest pitches, while at higher tones dolphins click and shrimp snap their claws. Between these frequencies are the sounds of the churning sea itself, generated as waves, wind, and rain roil its surface.” Guess snow doesn’t count.
The oceans naturally absorbs about 1/3 of annual CO2 emissions. As this gas dissolves + reacts with molecules of water, it creates bicarbonate + hydrogen ions. “The hydrogen lowers the pH of seawater, increasing ocean acidity, which can [both] harm sea life and slow future carbon uptake.” Ship-based measurement in shallow ocean have found that since 1985 the pH has already dropped from 8.11 to 8.04. But the ocean is complexly multi-layered; measures at 1 depth do not extrapolate to others. “Adding pH sensors to the thousands of robotic Argo floats that patrol the seas, diving as deep as 2000 meters, is one way to get a broader picture of acidity.”
Now David Barclay, an acoustical oceanographer at Dalhousie University, and his co-authors, have found another way to measure average pH across an even greater range of depths, by taking advantage of the intrinsic physics of sound. In 2009, “Barclay led a cruise to the Philippine Sea, funded by the U.S. Navy, to test a new acoustic listening device, called Deep Sound.” When they dropped the instrument down 5,000 meters, they “found that when the winds at the surface whipped up to more than 10 knots or so, the sounds of breaking waves reached all the way to Deep Sound, at frequencies of about 1 to 10 kilohertz (kHz).” Prior research had demonstrated that ‘two compounds in the ocean, boric acid and magnesium sulfate, can dampen sounds at 1 kHz and 10 kHz, respectively, because of the particular way the molecules absorb a bit of the sound wave’s energy.’ Critically, ‘rising acidity decreases the abundance of boric acid, and its attenuating effect, while leaving magnesium sulfate unscathed.’](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreigmfgp5lr74uz3mi77wq7dxbmjf3p4pl6aa67yjuu56tzvda3mmee@jpeg)
October 27, 2025 at 2:12 PM
Jounal of Geophysical Research: Oceans: “On the Measurement of Ocean Acidity With Ambient Sound.” A new acoustic technique could make it easier to monitor threat to marine life from rising carbon emissions.
CleanTechnica: “ERCOT Increasingly Meets Rising Demand with Solar, Wind, & Batteries.” ERCOT of course in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which supplies about 90% of demand in the state. A couple of particulars about this graphic.
![Graph of Texas utility segments over summer months. First, the ‘summer’ months are unconventionally stated as June, July, August, September, comprising a third of the yr. [Note that the Texas grid has faced its highest demands + greatest failures in summers + winters]. Second, only 3 alternating yrs are included, 2021, 2013 + 2025. Third, batteries or storage were not separtely tabulated until the in-between yr of 2024 [in green]. Fourth, gas is the biggest player by far, but definitely has been trending down; especially note the lower peak gas use at ~ 9pm due to rising peaks of both wind + storage. Fifth, coal is trundling along at < 10%, + I’m personally confident will do nothing but decline over time. Sixth, aside from batteries, the grouped ‘other’ category includes nuclear, hydroelectric, biomas + some nonrenewable sources.
Seventh + last, the chart is from the Energy Information Administration, part of the USDOE, which has no regulatory or enforcement functions, but is generally considered a reliable source of data. Though perhaps less so under the current administration, especially during the government shutdown. Bear in mind that only 2 of these sources of electricity will always have free fuel, which is hard to beat. Personally, by this time next yr I project continued absolute + proportionate growth in solar, wind + storage. I’m not a betting man, but my confidence level here is high.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreignzkddjlb7ylrtilvbur6hsa3f7ulklmr2l7ooa2o2hplffxn4nm@jpeg)
October 26, 2025 at 2:14 PM
CleanTechnica: “ERCOT Increasingly Meets Rising Demand with Solar, Wind, & Batteries.” ERCOT of course in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which supplies about 90% of demand in the state. A couple of particulars about this graphic.
AAAS: “Stranded coral boulders point to a medieval tsunami in the Caribbean.” In the British Virgin Islands lies the lovely island of Anegada.
October 24, 2025 at 3:19 PM
AAAS: “Stranded coral boulders point to a medieval tsunami in the Caribbean.” In the British Virgin Islands lies the lovely island of Anegada.
Clean Energy: “Solar Growth Cushions Colorado River Hydropower Declines.” The Colorado River basin, 7 states plus northern Mexico, is in trouble. “River forecasts consistently overestimated runoff [for 2025]. Reservoirs are on a knife’s edge. The basin, on the whole, is drying.”
![Solar near Boulder City. Forty million people + 5 million acres supplied by the river are at risk, with climate projections of ongoing drought. “Lakes Mead and Powell, the basin’s two largest reservoirs, are approaching critical levels in which hydropower from their dams (Hoover and Glen Canyon, respectively) would be severely curtailed or altogether cease.”
Most vulnerable are small utilities, operating with small customer bases + relying ‘primarily on the dams and…at the mercy of market rates to cover hydropower shortfalls.’ Hoover Dam’s annual generation has dropped by half since 2000. According to the Bureau of Reclamation, “if Lake Mead falls another 23 feet—to elevation 1,035 feet—Hoover Dam’s capacity to generate electricity would be slashed by 70% from [even] its current level.”
To the rescue: “Solar power is growing as a share of utility electricity regionally and nationally, even as solar faces stiffening headwinds from the [White House].” Lincoln County Power District, “attempting to diversify from hydropower, is one of several electric power cooperatives that will benefit from Apache Solar II, a solar and battery storage project of Arizona Electric Power Cooperative that is expected to go online in December.” This district is also building its own 2-megawatt solar project thanks to a congressional earmark in the 2023 budget bill.
Ironically, even Boulder City, the community that was founded to house workers who built Hoover Dam, is reaching for the Sun. “The city picked up 5 megawatts of solar and battery storage in 2022 through a power purchase agreement, and it wants more.” Finally, the “Salt River Project provides water and energy to 2 million people in central Arizona.” Solar, wind, and batteries today are less than a quarter of its power portfolio. By 2035, that number is expected to reach three quarters. Fortunately Arizona won’t run out of sunlight for several billion yrs. Remember, the Sun will always be free.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreif3pcgryvb7xgujxka3w256ojhos5zo6hir5gfgvj6umkwomkt64e@jpeg)
October 23, 2025 at 6:35 PM
Clean Energy: “Solar Growth Cushions Colorado River Hydropower Declines.” The Colorado River basin, 7 states plus northern Mexico, is in trouble. “River forecasts consistently overestimated runoff [for 2025]. Reservoirs are on a knife’s edge. The basin, on the whole, is drying.”
YaleClimateConnections: “The hidden risks of forest carbon credits.” Often individuals + companies purchase what are called forest carbon credits. “They’re a way to offset…carbon emissions by paying to plant or protect trees, which absorb and store carbon as they grow.”
![Old growth tree. The organizations that certify these credits have protocols they allegedly use to estimate a project’s impact. The theory: “One credit … should represent one ton of additional carbon dioxide that is stored in a forest.” The reality: “Rebecca Sanders-Demott of the Clean Air Task Force says many projects fail to live up to that promise because of flaws in the protocols.”
Her team found in a recent analysis that many certification programs underestimate the risks of wildfires + diseases, which can obviously kill trees. Another potential problem is the concept of “displacement,” the risk that protecting trees in one area might increase logging in another. [Non-]additionality is when a logging company would replant trees anyway—most often in a monoculture—but then solicits forest carbon credits as another bogus line of revenue. Natural disasters such as wildfires + bark beetles can render a credit worthless by releasing carbon emissions. The certification process may be subject to corruption or regulatory capture; changes of government by election or coup may sacrifice existing protected forest. The Guardian has reported their analysis which showed more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets from a company named Verra [short for ‘verification’ one assumes] had no positive impact on the climate. Another systemic review of over 2,000 offset projects found that only 12% led to real emissions reductions. A study by REDD+ Projects found that the proportion of worthless credits to be as high as 94%.
For a company seeking greenwashing, realize that it is simply corporate malfeasance to claim to the public + to your customers that it is accomplishing a social good. For an individual, don’t waste your money trying to salve your conscience about the carbon emissions of your next flight overseas. Harsh but true. Consider this tough love + get over it.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreiawbpbf3zanh3mvu7dh2jpwzd3ze2fugl2cpysdqhrl2zhmiy5req@jpeg)
October 22, 2025 at 2:56 PM
YaleClimateConnections: “The hidden risks of forest carbon credits.” Often individuals + companies purchase what are called forest carbon credits. “They’re a way to offset…carbon emissions by paying to plant or protect trees, which absorb and store carbon as they grow.”
Guardian: “Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country.” No way to delay the reveal or bury this lede, so let me just detour a moment to explain what wine rope is, which was a surprise to me when I looked it up, not being an enologist or leipidopterist.
October 21, 2025 at 1:03 PM
Guardian: “Mosquitoes found in Iceland for first time as climate crisis warms country.” No way to delay the reveal or bury this lede, so let me just detour a moment to explain what wine rope is, which was a surprise to me when I looked it up, not being an enologist or leipidopterist.
AAAS: “AI reveals vast ‘ghost forests’ along U.S. coast.” Spencer Rhea + colleagues gathered to investigate “ghost forests”—otherworldly stands of bleached dead trees drowned by flooding or poisoned by saltwater that is intruding inland in the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula of North Carolina
![Dead trees. “They had been led here by a new map of ghost forests, created with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), that identified individual dead trees standing along the east coast of the United States.
Posted as a preprint in May, the map counted millions of dead trees across 36,000 square kilometers of coastal forests, many in areas where ghost forests had not been documented before.” But the aerial view couldn’t show exactly what killed specific stands of trees, which is why, wearing waders, they had to brave the muck + mosquitoes to collect samples. “It is forensics for tree death,” says Duke ecologist Emily Bernhardt, a leader of the NASA-funded project, which in a nod to Dr. Seuss is called THE LORACS, for Tree Health Evaluated using LiDAR, Optical, and Radar Applications across Coastal Systems. Their answers could help identify other forests at risk of becoming ghosts, a process expected to reduce biodiversity and release planet-warming carbon stored in the trees, including root systems.
Henry Yeung, a doctoral student at the University of Virginia (UVA), spent hundreds of hours identifying more than 50,000 dead trees in aerial images of the coastline between South Carolina and Maine.”He then used these hand-labeled trees to train a deep learning algorithm to spot their pale color and the distinctive shadows of their bare branches in other images.” Scanning the images on its own, the algorithm counted nearly 12 million dead trees standing near the coast, as well as other patches of ghost forest farther inland along estuaries. “Not all of the AI-counted trees were killed by water; some were victims of insects or disease.”
Such AI mapping could be extended to identify ghost forests worldwide. “If you’re losing forests in a similar way [to the U.S. east coast],” he says, “then that’s a big chunk of carbon storage.” So—sea level rise [SLR], more intense storms, + infiltration of salt into aquifers all help increase carbon emissions.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreic2oltx6ljzqegtipgb4wgabrlxar2tx6mshqlfs2blwmrqy7ijui@jpeg)
October 20, 2025 at 3:38 PM
AAAS: “AI reveals vast ‘ghost forests’ along U.S. coast.” Spencer Rhea + colleagues gathered to investigate “ghost forests”—otherworldly stands of bleached dead trees drowned by flooding or poisoned by saltwater that is intruding inland in the Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula of North Carolina
Volts: “Super-deep geothermal drilling … with microwaves, A conversation with Carlos Araque of Quaise Energy.” Quaise .. “Quaise is an out-of-the box geothermal startup which aims to go deeper—as in [more than] several miles down.”
October 19, 2025 at 11:34 PM
Volts: “Super-deep geothermal drilling … with microwaves, A conversation with Carlos Araque of Quaise Energy.” Quaise .. “Quaise is an out-of-the box geothermal startup which aims to go deeper—as in [more than] several miles down.”
YaleClimateConnections: “Fact-checking a Trump administration claim about climate change and crops.” A draft report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy [DOE] misleadingly claims that increasing levels of carbon dioxide could be beneficial for agriculture.
October 17, 2025 at 5:06 PM
YaleClimateConnections: “Fact-checking a Trump administration claim about climate change and crops.” A draft report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy [DOE] misleadingly claims that increasing levels of carbon dioxide could be beneficial for agriculture.
CleanTechnica: ‘New “Salt Battery” Proves Energy Storage Exists, Again.’ US startup Aslym Energy just launched its a new safety-forward, sodium-ion battery into the marketplace, with the aim of accelerating the renewable energy transition.Graph
October 16, 2025 at 3:02 PM
CleanTechnica: ‘New “Salt Battery” Proves Energy Storage Exists, Again.’ US startup Aslym Energy just launched its a new safety-forward, sodium-ion battery into the marketplace, with the aim of accelerating the renewable energy transition.Graph
UtilityDive: “Losing power, losing billions: How offshoring grid materials weakens America.” Jargon first. In electromagnetism, a dielectric medium is an electrical insulator with a high polarisability—which can be used a a [stabilizing] store of energy.
![Graphic of dialectic manufacture. Dialectric capacitor film is “a highly engineered, ultra-thin plastic that enables power stability and distribution for our grid—is almost entirely made overseas, and 75% is made in China, which dominates the global supply.” Whew. The rest is relatively easy.
“Electrification, AI, data centers, [electric vehicles of all types], and extreme weather are driving unprecedented demand for energy and grid reliability.” What we need is real-time monitoring, rapid integration of renewables and far less energy lost in transmission, which today can waste an unhealthy 8-12% of power generation. At the heart of grid reliability are magnets, rare-earth minerals and dielectric films. The latter are “used in capacitors that condition power, convert AC/DC power, keep power flowing steadily and even help manage spikes in demand to keep the grid stable and secure.”
Unwisely, the U.S. has outsourced its ability to replace failing transformers, capacitors and other critical grid components. No American manufacturer even builds the equipment to make dielectric films, + we spend nearly $200 billion overseas for this film and other critical materials. This represents a ‘huge strategic liability threatening our national security and stifling innovation at the moment our nation needs it most to drive AI and defense.’ If we lost our source of dialectic films, ‘consequences would be immediate and severe, triggering blackouts, crippling industries, compromised reliability during peak events like heat domes, extreme weather and surging data center loads.
The author of this article, Jim Welsh, is CEO of Peak Nano, so he is both knowledgeable about this issue plus has no doubt some self-interest. But he is “talking about a global film capacitor market that stood at $4.1 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $10.3 billion by 2030.” Showing off his conservative bona fides, he trumpets the following: “Dominion Energy is investing in fusion."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreifrtnahrphsgebwrh42p5vn7rf6keumjhmovuuqx3wzaabh6ckztq@jpeg)
October 15, 2025 at 5:43 PM
UtilityDive: “Losing power, losing billions: How offshoring grid materials weakens America.” Jargon first. In electromagnetism, a dielectric medium is an electrical insulator with a high polarisability—which can be used a a [stabilizing] store of energy.
ClimateCentral: "Fall Warming, by Average Temperatures." Forget the autumnal equinox, which this yr occurred on September 22nd at 2:19 p.m. EDT, marking the official start of calendrical autumn in the Northern Hemisphere.
![On this day, day and night are approximately equal in length as the Sun 'crosses' the celestial equator heading south.
Time for an 'alternative fact.' September 1st is the start of what is called meteorological fall. "The season has warmed in every county across the contiguous U.S. since 1970—and is warming fastest in the Southwest." Fall has warmed in 237 U.S. cities—by 2.8°F on average from 1970 through 2024. "Unusually warm fall days now happen more often in 238 cities, or 98% of the 243 cities analyzed."
Logically, a warmer fall season prolongs risks of heat-related illness, wildfire, smoke exposure, allergies [including ragweed pollen for those poor sufferers], poor set for fruit + nut trees, drought, persistance of mosquitoes, ticks + other vectors of infection and more. Meanwhile, offshore coral bleaching is affecting 84% of corals worldwide. Fish, crab + other species are migrating, disrupting ecosystems.
How about a little soul-searching. Ask yourself what you have done to wrestle climate change to a pin. And ask your friends the same question.
This Climate Matters analysis is based on open-access data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:nnq2reoe4aaiyhhtsofqmdrz/bafkreifluus3djyr3ztg6y24yuphtxcvejkdlpyzjjgb2mbz7dwi7nevfm@jpeg)
October 14, 2025 at 3:06 PM
ClimateCentral: "Fall Warming, by Average Temperatures." Forget the autumnal equinox, which this yr occurred on September 22nd at 2:19 p.m. EDT, marking the official start of calendrical autumn in the Northern Hemisphere.