Richard H. Clarke
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Richard H. Clarke
@cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
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Climate Risk Specialist, Ortec Finance | Model, write, campaign about the impacts of extreme weather | Fellow, Institution of Chemical Engineers | Fusion | Cryogenics | Co-Editor Future of Helium as a Natural Resource | Lake District, UK | views are my own
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cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
#Helium The Future of Helium as a Natural Resource (eds. William J. Nuttall, Richard H. Clarke and Bartek A. Glowacki) www.routledge.com/The-Future-o... is still a go-to source if you want to know where helium comes from, how much helium gas is left, what helium is used for now and in the future...
Richard Clarke in 2012 holds up a copy of 'The Future of Helium as a Natural Resource' edited by William J. Nuttall, Richard H. Clarke and B.A. Glowacki (Routledge)
October 28, 2025 at 5:26 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
#Helium since the US Helium Privatization Act 1996, there have been periods of helium supply glut / shortfall but, as we showed in this article, we not about to run out of helium any time soon. Indeed, the high helium prices have spurred helium 'pure play' mining www.researchgate.net/publication/...
In a Dec 2013 edition of The Chemical Engineer magazine, Richard H. Clarke, William J. Nuttall and Bartek A. Glowacki show that despite supply shortfalls on and off over many years, we are not about to run out of helium any time soon
October 26, 2025 at 2:01 PM
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#Helium has a vital role in advanced technologies ranging from #MRI medical imaging to #aerospace, #semiconductors, #quantumcomputing. Reflecting this, Grade-A 99.996% helium prices keep rising in line with our estimate. Ultra-pure liquid helium costs much more www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
In our 2005-2009 helium resources study involving the University of Cambridge, Culham Centre for Fusion Energy and BOC Linde (industrial gases etc), PhD student Zhiming Cai used a System Dynamics model to examine the interplay between known and projected helium resources and likely demand, to determine production volumes and price. The price trend up to 2020 largely followed this curve, and more recent prices have reflected the ongoing importance of helium in advanced technologies ranging from aerospace, medical imaging, high power magnets/fusion and quantum computing
October 25, 2025 at 1:47 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
#Helium If the Russian helium recovery facility at Amur (E. Siberia) is fully online by 2030, that may mark the point of #peakhelium production according the to Helium Resources research project 2005-2009; Z. Cai, W.J. Nuttall, R.H. Clarke, B.A. Glowacki, N. Ward
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
Monte Carlo simulation of expected helium consumption rate from 1991 to 2150 (millions of cubic feet per year). This chart was produced using a System Dynamics model developed in a project exploring future helium resources in the context of fusion energy and high tech needs. PhD student Zhiming Cai developed the model along with William Nuttall and Bartek Glowacki (Cambridge University), Nick Ward (BOC Linde industrial gases), Richard Clarke (Culham Centre for Fusion Energy)
October 24, 2025 at 11:58 AM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
#Helium 12 years ago I gave a keynote at Creon's Helium 2013 Moscow summit. I predicted by 2030 the centre of global helium production would be Eastern Siberia. Recent reports agree en.igascn.com/global/detai... In 1963, it was Texas Panhandle/Cliffside. Thanks to LNG, Qatar was the centre in 2015.
The centre or geo-center of global helium gas production has moved over the decades. In 1963, as this map shows, the United States was the leading producer of helium. Demand for the Apollo space programme created a huge demand for helium for use as a rocket fuel propellant. When liquid natural gas (LNG) production in Qatar was developed it became economic to produce liquid helium from fields containing just 0.04% helium. So, by 2015, the geo-center had moved to the Middle East. What's next? Recent reports support my prediction at the Creon 'Helium 2013' summit in Moscow - that Eastern Siberia will become the most significant helium producing region by 2030. 4He Solutions is a consultancy I developed. It looks at helium resource questions and at the engineering challenges of using helium in cryogenic applications such as high-field magnets and fusion.
October 23, 2025 at 5:24 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
#LSEEvents launch of Pete Betts' #ClimateDiplomat. Lord Stern invites Fiona Betts up, as book editor Grace Pengelly, and former & current ministers Ed Davey, John Selwyn Gummer (Lord Deben) & Ed Miliband look on. A shared understanding of the science demands global action, an industrial revolution!
September 5, 2025 at 12:20 PM
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Last week these groups came to the 'Global Tipping Points' Conf, Exeter, UK. #AMOC #Amazon #foodsystems #GIS #WAIS #CoralReefs #mindsets these are the concerns of leading scientists www.carbonbrief.org/experts-whic... My poster "Economic Impacts of Acute Physical Risk Under a Prompt AMOC Collapse"
A treemap showing which groups of people came to the Exeter University 'Global Tipping Points' Conference (29 June - 03 July). Academics, researchers, finance professionals, government officials, science media, insurance professionals, health researchers, legal professionals, independent scientists, creative people Exeter University Global Tipping Points Conference - crochet design depicting the coral reef crisis Exeter University 'Global Tipping Points' Conference - an art installation on Day 1 depicts how the climate has changed and will likely get worse during the 21st Century
July 11, 2025 at 12:37 AM
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What's the chance the world will warm more than 3°C? An #EDHEC report indicates that #IPCC expert opinion (15%) lags the science (35-40%). This matters a lot. If IPCC scientists underestimate risk, it reduces our capacity to prepare for it.
EDHEC lnkd.in/enhYHjNB
The Guardian survey lnkd.in/e3SpBmcE
Histogram shows results from The Guardian survey of IPCC scientists (8 May 2024). 380 scientists responded to the question 'how high above pre-industrial levels do you think global temperatures will rise between now and 2100?'. Just 58 (15%) said it would be more than 3°C
May 29, 2025 at 11:06 PM
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#Electricity is having a rough week! What with #Spain #Portugal & #TonyBlairInstitute. Here I’m on a train to London Paddington. Line overheating & power trip. Are we going backwards? Or is this a bump on the road to the future? Too many eggs in one basket? www.icevirtuallibrary.com/doi/pdf/10.1...
May 1, 2025 at 11:21 AM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
Very high tariffs are being imposed on some of the most economically and environmentally vulnerable countries. What did they do wrong? The parties involved, the suppliers, buyers and customers freely entered into contracts to trade. The US' problems stem from decades of bad policies by both parties.
A chart showing Trump’s country specific tariffs plotted again and “economic vulnerability ratio” which is a ratio of a country’s economic impacts from extreme weather divided by its GDP. Many of the countries being hit with tariffs have a vulnerability higher than the US and China (yellow) which have the resilience to cope with extreme weather – for now.
April 5, 2025 at 11:02 AM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
People in Delta, Ohio, want "a level playing field"*. I get that. How do these vindictive, random tariffs, that cut in today, help achieve that? China (yellow), EU can fight back. But #Lesotho, #Cambodia, #Laos, #Madagascar & #Myanmar? These countries need supporting.
* www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
A chart showing Trump's country-specific tariffs (%) plotted against the GDP per capita of the countries affected (PPP). Many of these low and middle income countries will suffer from higher tariffs than China's. All bar 3 of these countries have a lower GDP per capita than the US.
April 5, 2025 at 11:01 AM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
Is it just a coincidence that atmospheric methane concentration started escalating around the time that US shale gas production took off? I don't think so... fugitive CH₄ emissions can make natural gas worse than coal! US Gov has removed fugitive emission controls:
www.linkedin.com/posts/peters...
Chart shows US natural gas production in TWh v. atmospheric concentration of methane (CH4) from 1983 to 2023. From about 2007, US gas production increased significantly as shale gas production methods took off. And at about the same time CH4 concentration started increasing from about 1775ppb to around 1925ppb in 2023.
March 29, 2025 at 2:31 AM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
Cutting the UK's #overseasaid budget from 0.5% GDP to 0.3% is not what is needed - Sky News lnkd.in/eexizRTd
Worsening #extremeweather means UK's share should now be 0.7% (the pre-Covid goal). Unless warming is limited to 2°C, the % of GDP needed increases. Nature Comment shows why lnkd.in/ewxFbKA5
World map showing which countries in 2025 should contribute overseas aid and which countries should receive aid. Among other factors, it is fundamentally cumulative CO₂ emissions that drives the need for hashtag#lossanddamage funding** Unless or until those historic emissions are drawn down, relatively rich countries like the UK, the rest of Europe, Canada - and Russia - need to step up to help Central America, Pakistan, Somalia, Vietnam etc. to cope with the extreme weather-related consequences of climate change. In future, China may emerge as a donor nation and, using the Nature Comment method, Australia and the US already would qualify for funding because of the extent of their climate change induced extreme weather impacts - so I excluded them. ** ** Grantham Institute https://lnkd.in/ej6ujkHF
February 25, 2025 at 6:16 PM
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Whiplash #hydroclimate #volatility is seen in acute physical risk / extreme weather modelling. Emerging in the 1980s, it is evident in oscillations: periods of excess rainfall HYD flooding, plant growth followed by periods of drought CLIM boosted wildfires
www.climatecouncil.org.au/resources/cl...
The ‘tadpole’ diagram illustrates two things, I suggest, (1) that the effects of climate change on extreme weather really kicked in during the mid-1980s, and (2) the climate whiplash effect between HYD (excess rain, flooding) and CLIM (drought, wildfires) is strong. Less clear, how MET (hurricane, sever convective storm) events are correlated – something the climate attribution scientists also see.
January 17, 2025 at 7:55 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
A factor behind the Los Angeles #firestorms:
"Hydroclimate volatility refers to sudden, large and/or frequent
transitions between very dry and very wet conditions. This review examines how #hydroclimate #volatility is anticipated to evolve with anthropogenic warming" www.nature.com/articles/s43...
Fig. 5 | Cascading hydroclimate whiplash hazards in a warming climate. The pathways through which hydrological extremes and rapid whiplash transitions between wet and dry states can lead to complex effects in the broader Earth system. The dark arrows represent cascading relationships (in which the initial event causes indirect but substantial downstream effects via an intermediate step or process), and the red vertical arrows show increases or decreases in specific impacts under anthropogenic warming. The processes labelled in blue represent effects caused by wet events alone, those labelled in yellow represent those caused by dry events alone and processes labelled in grey represent those specifically caused by rapid whiplash transitions. Together, natural variability and anthropogenic climate change contribute to meteorological extremes that can cause hydroclimate whiplash events — with subsequent cascading and wide-ranging impacts that are often distinct from wet or dry extremes occurring in isolation.
January 17, 2025 at 7:21 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
As the UK freezes, it's challenging for #NHS and the #nationalgrid. My observations: Cobble stones are less slippy than tarmac. Gas may not be as sooty as coal but, when the wind drops, power prices surge. Frozen-over solar was just a blip today grid.iamkate.com We need long term #energystorage.
Cobblestones into their gullies but concrete steps do not. A gas boiler vents through a sooty stone wall. Snow dusted solar panels.
January 8, 2025 at 9:02 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
The plant #1trilliontrees by 2030 idea is not about sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere. Instead, " www.1t.org is part of the World Economic Forum’s efforts to accelerate nature-based solutions and was set up to support the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration" www.climateinteractive.org/blog/trillio...
What would be the impact on global temperature anomaly if 1 trillion trees were planted by 2030? In this chart of 'business as usual' temperature anomaly v time, the year 2100 temperature anomaly is reduced by about 0.25C, from ~3.35 to ~3.1C according to an MIT climate simulator
January 1, 2025 at 2:06 PM
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"Climate change intensified 26 of the 29 extreme weather events studied by #WWA and had a stronger influence than #ElNiño on many high-impact weather events that were so damaging to lives, livelihoods and ecosystems." says Celeste Saulo, Sec-Gen, World Met. Org. www.worldweatherattribution.org
December 27, 2024 at 7:39 PM
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Twenty years ago, the Boxing Day #Tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean. In the aftermath, population trends changed in the severely hit coastal cities. For some, moving to an inland refuge may have been an option; for others it was too far, or there was no refuge #WUP www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Using the UN World Urbanisation Prospects (WUP, 2018) data and the Wikipedia impact map, it is possible to get a sense of what happened to population growth rates in severely-hit coastal cities in the years after the 2004 Tsunami. Population growth slowed, then recovered after 2-3 years. Over the same period, inland cities in the affected countries experienced a temporary increase in population growth.
December 26, 2024 at 6:00 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
South Africa’s high court has upheld a legal challenge to the government’s plans to develop 1,500MW of new coal-fired power, says #Bloomberg
Risks to health & planet of #coal are well known www.climatechangenews.com/2015/06/23/s...
Despite that, why is per capita use in #China & #India increasing?
Our World in Data (OWiD) chart shows per capita energy consumption from coal in selected countries. In China, India use per capita is increasing, whereas in US, Australia and UK it has decreased significantly.
December 5, 2024 at 11:55 AM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
A bit surprised that my fab new Dell 34" curved monitor has a 'G' energy rating. Have the standards become tighter, or are production innovations slipping? On the face of it, a power consumption of 32W for a big screen seems OK to me... www.energylabel.org.uk/the-new-labe...
Electronic appliance energy ratings A to G
December 4, 2024 at 4:19 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
CO₂ emissions are/were increasing and given that CO₂ is the major forcing, why not plot anomaly against cumulative emissions (~19.27GtCO₂/ppm x Mauna Loa CO₂ ppm)? Linear regression agrees with the estimated mean TCRE =1.9°C/TtC. The 2016 'blip' reverted to trend; I predict the 2023 'blip' will too.
The main forcing of temperature anomaly is CO₂ emissions. Here, this is approximated by using atmospheric CO₂ concentration (Mauna Loa Observatory). Large volcanic eruptions and ENSO events temporarily cause a deviation from the trend. The regression is a linear trend that agrees well with the central estimate of the lognormal TCRE distribution. The mean transient climate response to cumulative CO₂ emissions is 1.9°C / trillion tonnes of carbon. By 2022 the 2015/2016 temperature spike or 'blip' had reverted to trend. Will the 2023 'blip' revert to tend by 2030?
December 2, 2024 at 6:32 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
I had the same thought about 'time' so, in 2020, I plotted anomaly v. cumulative carbon ~ Mauna Loa CO2 concentration (ppm) and other info. It appears that the central TCRE value of 1.9C per TtC is quite a good fit. I suggest in another comment that we now have 'blips' followed a reversion to trend.
The main forcing of temperature anomaly is cumulative CO2 emissions. Here, this is approximated by using atmospheric CO2 concentration (Mauna Loa observatory). Other forcings or events, such as large volcanic eruptions and ENSO events, seem to temporarily cause a deviation from the trend. The regression is a linear trend that agrees well with the central estimate of TCRE - the transient climate response to cumulative CO2 emissions
December 1, 2024 at 10:40 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
#Helium is heating up! Great to see O&G Co's, explorers pivot into helium and hydrogen exploration - a sample:
www.reuters.com/markets/deal...
www.investing.com/news/company...
www.chemanalyst.com/NewsAndDeals...
www.gasworld.com/story/helium...
www.share-talk.com/helium-one-p....
As predicted...
'The Future for Helium as a Natural Resource' Eds. W. J. Nuttall, R. H. Clarke, B. A. Glowacki (Routledge, 2012) was the culmination of 5 years research and an international conference. Pictured here, R. H. Clarke, at the JET Cryogenics Plant, Culham Science Centre, UK. JET is the largest fusion energy research facility in Europe. The research addressed this question "when fusion energy becomes a reality, where will the helium fusion needs come from?" Fusion and other high-tech users need reliable supplies of this precious gas. Rare on earth, helium only occurs in geological formations where thorium and uranium radiogenically decay. CONTENTS 1. Introduction R. H. Clarke, W. J. Nuttall and B. A. Glowacki 2. A history of the helium industry Bo Sears 3. The US federal helium reserve J. B. Peterson 4. Helium in Algeria: pioneering helium extraction from LNG B. Reinoehi 5. LNG: the global liquefied natural gas industry A. Flower 6. Helium in Russia B. Hooker 7. India: haressing helium from the Earth's interior N. K. Das, R. K. Bhandari, S. C. Mallik 8. Helium from the air: the backstop R. H. Clarke, Roger Clark 9. Helium demand: application, prices and substitution Z. Cai, R. H. Clarke, W. J. Nuttall 10. The dynamics of the helium market W. J. Nuttall, Z. Cai, B. A. Glowacki, N. Kazantzis, R. H. Clarke 11. Closed-cycle refrigeration: minimizing helium demand in cryogenic applications T.W. Bradshaw, T. Miller 12. Medical imaging: why helium prevails A. Thomas 13. Rising to the challenges of constrained helium supply in cryogenic systems for the research market J. W. Burgoyne, M. N. Cuthbert 14. Helium and nuclear fission energy R. Stainsby 15. Helium and fusion energy R. H. Clarke, Z. Cai 16. Substituting hydrogen for helium in cryogenic applications B. A. Glowacki 17. Is there a helium problem? Ways forward R. Scurlock, A. Francis 18. The future of helium: policy, molecules and machines W. J. Nuttall, R. H. Clarke, B.A. Glowacki
November 28, 2024 at 7:26 PM
cost-of-carbon.bsky.social
#StormBert continues its disruption in Wales and S. England. In #AbingdonOnThames, we are restoring a gable wall on the lovely ethelwoldhouse.com.
Today's update "Little progress today as the yard at #Jewson [near #RiverOck] is flooded and James unable to collect timber for infill (pine verticals)"
A discussion about restoring the 18th Century gable wall at St Ethelwold House, East Saint Helen St., Abingdon on Thames, showing the laths and rotten uprights
November 26, 2024 at 9:19 PM