Meanwhile the US only increased capacity in pumped hydroelectric by 2.1 Gw between 2010-2022 for a whopping 22 Gw total capacity. Hydroelectric generally hovers about 28% of total renewable energy electricity generation.

The biggest problem (in the US) has been a lack of investment in new pumped hydroelectric projects not connected to improving existing dam infrastructure. Permitting huge new projects is unattractive but smaller ones in geographically/geologically favorable places like with most of the new sites being planned in California and Arizona will grow in the next 10 years.

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I completely understand. On a personal level I worked for years on lobbying to get a carbon fee and dividend system passed at state and federal levels because I felt that taxing companies for their carbon emissions was a smart and tangible way of dealing with the problem. As I’ve grown cynical with CF&D never catching on politically, I sniffed out different technocratic solutions. I agree the companies researching and implementing CCS are the same oil companies that got us into this mess so how much can we take from their advocacy with CCS as being a good thing? As a professional geologist I have a love-hate relationship with O&G industry but they are so powerful I don’t know how to work against them but instead with them (I don’t work for an oil company, I work in publicly funded CCS research)

Not exactly dry ice, it is supercritically pressured carbon dioxide so it has the density of a liquid but defuses like a gas. CO2 plumes are stable at depths where injection occurs because they are maintained in a pressure and temperature environment where the CO2 stays in a liquid stage, so it will never rise to the surface like a conventional lighter-than-air gas. In-situ mineral carbonation can also occur where the CO2 is injected into silicate rock formations to promote carbonate mineral formation, locking the CO2 for thousands (millions maybe) years.

This is just simply not true . There is robust science that shows the technology can work, it is not a comprehensive solution, but one of many that can reduce atmospheric CO2 emissions. You can read my post where I cite some literature if you’re interested.

Planting more trees and making more solar panels won’t fix the issue of rapidly increasing CO2 emissions around the world. Making solar panels is not a green industry and the ability to build them locally is not really an option for a lot of countries, which will need petroleum fuel to ship panels and mine the materials. CCS is the only technology we have available that can actually prevent CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere from sites that are CO2-heavy, with direct air capture showing we can remove carbon from the air (though it is not inefficient). Yes, that CO2 is instead going into the deep subsurface (mineralized or as a supercritical plume) but it can be managed with robust regulations and scientific monitoring. Petroleum based combustion is not going away and especially in an incoming Trump administration I see any option on the table as a good one when it comes to carbon wrangling. I’m happy to debate this because as a society we need to have dialogue about how to mitigate climate change.

Regarding this Illinois project, this project began 10 years ago as a proof of concept, of course target sequestration rates will be lower than desired. DOE regularly invests huge sums of money to develop technology for industry using research scale pilots. This plant was never meant to be a proof of what large-scale CCS can do.

I was talking to my brother in law about this. His position approximates this article. While I agree this may not be intentional spying (never proven in court ) on Apple’s part they at a minimum did not account for this huge engineering problem on the back end where Siri couldn’t decipher between key words and background noise. Maybe don’t push products that aren’t robust? Especially since this law suit started in 2019 when voice tech was still (still is) in an infancy.

The Paleozoic era ended with the P-T extinction - the Great Dying - when about 80-90% of marine life died, but more marginal survival rates were found on land. Dycodont therapsids (two tusked proto-mammals with reptile body plan and leg splay) , predatory amphibians, and diapsid reptiles (reptiles with advantageous openings on the skull, all modern birds and crocs have this for example) all survived to varying degrees. Into the Mesozoic reptiles would continue to adapt to a rebounding ocean seen in species such as ichthyosaur. On land, conifer trees began to take hold and mosquitoes evolved to become a pest for the next 230 million years.

This is all to say we don’t really know what any of these guys looked like, maybe like how this comic portrays, checks don’t fossilize unfortunately.

I was a youngling when this happened but rereading about this event 20 years later… we’ve seen nothing like it. I think the most interesting fact from this earthquake/tsunami is that the Indian Ocean’s volume permanently decreased as a result of sea floor movement, producing a rise in the global sea level by an estimated 0.1 mm.

This event also improved tsunami warning systems throughout the Indian Ocean and Indonesia, hopefully if an event like this happens there will be a lot more notice given.

I don’t see the argument you’re making. Science across all disciplines is complex. The more a person attempts to understand and define an object or a phenomenon it opens more doors to more questions about it’s nature. Classification is inherent to our human minds understanding the world around us.

So tsunamis are definitely a threat generally from earthquakes and an earthquake of this size can make it deadly. Unlike the San Andres faults that cause most California earthquakes ( which wouldn’t produce significant tsunamis) this earthquake occurred in a discordant part of the pacific oceanic crust called the Mendocino triple junction - the intersection of the San Andres fault, Cascadian subduction zone (where the Pacific crust is plunging under the North American continent, feeding features like Mt. St Helens), and the Gorda plate (the last remnant of the precursor to the pacific plate, the Panthalassic Ocean that surrounded Pangea).

Reminds me of this man, over exactly 100 years ago. To quote:

On October 30, 1924, Midgley participated in a press conference to demonstrate the apparent safety of tetraethyl lead (TEL), in which he poured TEL over his hands, placed a bottle of the chemical under his nose, and inhaled its vapor for sixty seconds, declaring that he could do this every day without succumbing to any problem.

Because there’s a Wikipedia article for everything, if anyone else is morbidly curious about the history of dying on stage

The intro paleontology class I took had this for mandatory reading, definitely one of my favorite non-fiction books.

A good point. From the get-go humans have been intensely tribal and fearful of outsiders. 10,000 years of history shows we kinda bumbled our way through it with a lot of causalities but also a lot of beautiful culture, art, feats, and athletic talent sprinkled in for people who had the time. Now every part of the earth is so interconnected it is unprecedented. How we bumble through this stage is unfolding into a sad story but I can’t get too beat up about it for my own sanity.

A nuclear winter isn’t a scientific guarantee, many post-cold war models have suggested it might not happen.

That said, shit would get fucked up but for how long and what affects they have on the atmosphere is still debated.

There is a Potawotani word “puhpowee”, whose translation into English is “the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.” Puhpowee is the unseen, animating force that inhabits the natural world, the hot breath of life.

I am a geologist that works in the field of characterizing reservoirs for CCS projects. The way I see it, some fossil-fuel industries are here to stay and the best we can do is mitigate their emissions into the atmosphere. Take the UK, they got rid of their coal plants after 100 years and replaced it mainly with natural gas-burning plants, that energy portfolio is not changing to, say, wind or solar anytime soon but now the government (both parties too) are heavily investing in connecting those plants to CO2 storage in the bedrock of the North Sea (which has been demonstrated to be safe).

Industrializing industries in Africa are also starting to construct new fossil fuel plants with CCUS technology. Fossil fuel burning is inherent to developing countries and at least technology can make the industrialization less dirty.

Sorry I’m on mobile and would provide some sources. I can add them if you’re interested.

As a geologist I will retort that if Minecraft environments had eroding surfaces like real life does then that bedrock would also be visible at the surface. Outcrops are just areas that are experiencing erosion rates faster than areas that are overlayed with soil. That said, there are a cool Minecraft programs for geological processes that have been shown to be educational.

I worked in geotech consulting and there is one piece of radioactive equipment used for soil testing that requires a certification to operate and transport in a vehicle, called a nuclear density/moisture gauge. Every year there’s an article that makes the news where a technician forgets to strap down the equipment so it doesn’t fall out the truck or not locking the box that holds the equipment and someone steals it. People really are stupid and lots of companies that give out work trucks don’t teach employees basic safety especially when towing or transporting fragile things.