Environmental News

PriusChat likes may have little value so instead here is iplug's "sees what others do not" award:

 

I have a "Pinto" story from Brazil but it is not appropriate for an all-ages website.

 

Science (journal) today said a lot about ecology on mountains, free to download. There also was one about 'neonics'

A neonicotinoid insecticide reduces fueling and delays migration in songbirds | Science

Behind a soft paywall.

Science is Friday, Nature is Thursday, and PNAS is Wednesday. Not less than 100 other journals cater to your tree-hugging thoughts. It is a task beyond me to distill all that for readers here.

 

Vaclav Smil is far from an optimist. He is quite well regarded among energy analysts so one might pay some painful attention though. Here is a brief review of his latest book:


https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02716-z

 

Another reading suggestion:

Renewable energy: getting to 100% requires cheap energy storage. But how cheap? - Vox

Mentioned publication

https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30300-9

is behind one of the more effective paywalls (Elsevier). Visit library or email author.

 

Breaking news. Nyuck nyuck nyuck.

 

Lithium rechargeable batteries are becoming less expensive per unit energy stored. Saw a graph of this but did not save the url. Perhaps someone else did? But beyond that, durability is also increasing. Implications for both mobile and stationary applications:

Tesla May Soon Have a Battery That Can Last a Million Miles | WIRED

A Wide Range of Testing Results on an Excellent Lithium-Ion Cell Chemistry to be used as Benchmarks for New Battery Technologies

 

If your land is steep and you wish to grow rice, terracing is the answer. But in areas with high earthquake risks it may sometimes be a bad answer:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0444-1
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0448-x

 

There is now a Michael Moore documentary on alternative energy. It is not entirely favorable:

New Michael Moore-backed doc tackles alternative energy

 

Lithium ion battery folks receive Nobel Prize in Chemistry:

3 Share Nobel Prize In Chemistry For Development Of Lithium-Ion Batteries : NPR

 

News from the energy/water nexus:

Replacing coal with gas or renewables saves billions of gallons of water -- ScienceDaily

Linked older story down the page:

How much water does U.S. fracking really use? Water used in fracking makes up less than one percent of total industrial water use nationwide, study finds -- ScienceDaily

Lets us put 2 ideas together. Fracking water use is much smaller than water savings of moving away from coal.

 

There is an online survey where you can click your views on climate change. Severity, causes, evidence, etc.

I put link here but it disappeared

so I did the chain thing

 

Invasive grasses and California fires:

The California wildfire culprit no one's talking about: invasive grasses | Popular Science