New York Wind Power

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The giant parts for wind turbines await pickup at a pier in New London, Conn. Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times

Wind has always been there for the taking in so many places, the challenges of nimbyism notwithstanding. Now the turbines are arriving to harness it for the New York metropolitan area. Our thanks to Patrick McGeehan and the New York Times for sharing the story:

Huge Turbines Will Soon Bring First Offshore Wind Power to New Yorkers

Parts of what will eventually be the towers of wind turbines out in the ocean. Joe Buglewicz for The New York Times

New York’s best bet for entering the era of offshore wind power is stacked up at the water’s edge in Connecticut.

The pier on the Connecticut coast is filled with so many massive oddities that it could be mistaken for the set of a sci-fi movie. Sword-shaped blades as long as a football field lie stacked along one edge, while towering yellow and green cranes hoist giant steel cylinders to stand like rockets on a launchpad.

It is a launching point, not for spacecraft, but for the first wind turbines being built to turn ocean wind into electricity for New Yorkers. Crews of union workers in New London, Conn., are preparing parts of 12 of the gargantuan fans before shipping them out for final assembly 15 miles offshore. Continue reading →

The Warped Side Of Our Universe, Demystified

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Harvard staff writer Anne J. Manning writes about an event with the author and illustrator of this new book, discussing their remarkable collaboration:

CalTech’s Kip Thorne and Chapman University’s Lia Halloran visit Harvard to discuss their collaboration. Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Nobel-winning physicist, artist illustrate universe’s ‘warped side’

New book seeks to demystify complex science from black holes to time travel

Nobel Prize-winning astrophysicist Kip Thorne has spent his career describing, through mathematics, some of the deepest mysteries of the universe. His latest project takes on similar material, but through poetry and paintings.

© 2023 by Lia Halloran

A nearly two-decade collaboration with artist Lia Halloran has extracted from Thorne’s brain the pictures that accompany those highly technical descriptions and brought them to life in their new book, “The Warped Side of the Universe: An Odyssey Through Black Holes, Wormholes, Time Travel, and Gravitational Waves.” The weighty tome blends complex science with whimsical art and features more than 300 ink-on-film paintings by Halloran alongside poetry by Thorne.

Paintings that accompany the poems “A Black Hole is Made from Tendices/of Stretching and Squeezing Space and/ a Chaotic Singularity” and “When Orbiting Black Holes Collide:/Spiraling Vortices/ Morph into Gravity Waves.” © 2023 by Lia Halloran

Thorne, the 2017 Nobel laureate in physics and emeritus theoretical physics professor at the California Institute of Technology, and Halloran, associate professor at Chapman University, shared the story behind their partnership at a Harvard Science Book Talk last week, moderated by MIT physicist and humanities Professor Alan Lightman (one of Thorne’s former students at CalTech).

The book, said Thorne, is not meant to teach the particulars of astrophysical concepts, but rather to “convey the essence of the ideas, the feeling, the experience of the ideas, without going into the technical details — like I do in my other life.” Continue reading →

Corrupt Cop

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Illustration by Isabel Seliger

Ever wondered what the Cop in Cop1-28 means? The answer is not nearly as interesting as how it came to be that a country whose lifeblood is oil is hosting Cop28. Petrostates have been biding their time, gaining momentum, and now have corrupted the Cop system from within. Weekend reading, Thanksgiving edition, from Elizabeth Kolbert, explains the stakes:

The Road to Dubai

The latest round of international climate negotiations is being held in a petrostate. What could go wrong?

Cop1 was held in 1995 in Berlin’s International Congress Center, a massive, metal-clad complex that looks like the set for a dystopian movie. Around nine hundred government delegates attended the weeklong negotiating session, along with about a thousand observers from non-governmental organizations. Daimler-Benz brought some electric cars to show off, while young activists brought a steamroller, to convey their opposition to cars. Delegates were invited to take a trip along the River Spree in a solar-powered boat. Continue reading →

Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, Leading The Conversation, Again

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We are grateful to the GEF for sharing this, and to Carlos Manuel Rodriguez for leading the conversation, as he has always done:

Creating space for young people to affect climate policy

In a recent conversation at his home, GEF CEO and Chairperson Carlos Manuel Rodríguez heard from members of the Youth and Climate Change Network of Costa Rica about how the climate emergency is impacting young people. Continue reading →

Heat Pumps Catching On In Norway

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The Tromsø sorting office of the Norwegian postal service Posten Bring is heated by heat pumps. The city is located almost 140 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty

Previous stories we have linked to about heat pumps have raised our expectations and hopes, but also raised the question of whether they will catch on. Here is the start to an answer:

‘You can walk around in a T-shirt’: how Norway brought heat pumps in from the cold

Device installed in two-thirds of households of country whose experience suggests switching to greener heating can be done

When Glen Peters bought a heat pump for his home in Oslo he wasn’t thinking about the carbon it would avoid. Continue reading →

Green Mountain Power, Sunrun, FranklinWH & Innovative Electricity Options

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Photograph by Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist / Bloomberg / Getty

We need more energy, and here are some possibilities:

The Next Power Plant Is on the Roof and in the Basement

A Department of Energy report promotes a new system that could remake the energy grid.

On any given Monday in Vermont, Josh Castonguay, the vice-president of innovation at that state’s Green Mountain Power utility, told me, he studies the forecast for the days ahead, asking questions like “What’s it looking like from a temperature standpoint, a potential-of-load standpoint? Is there an extremely hot, humid stretch of a few days coming? A really cold February night?” If there is trouble ahead, Castonguay prepares, among other things, Vermont’s single largest power plant, which isn’t exactly a power plant at all—or, at least, not as we normally think of one. Continue reading →

The Great Carbon Divide

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While the wealthiest 1% tend to live climate-insulated lives, their emissions are responsible for immense suffering. Illustration: Guardian Design

Jonathan Watts, whose work we have been linking to for some years now, is the global environment editor for the Guardian, and this may be his most revealing story yet.

Even if you are not in the 1%, if you are not in the bottom 66% the implications for all of us on the wealthier side of the divide are challenging:

Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%, report says

‘Polluter elite’ are plundering the planet to point of destruction, says Oxfam after comprehensive study of climate inequality

The richest 1% of humanity is responsible for more carbon emissions than the poorest 66%, with dire consequences for vulnerable communities and global efforts to tackle the climate emergency, a report says. Continue reading →

Prioritizing Carbon Capture Versus Emissions Reduction

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A carbon capture plant near Reykjavik, Iceland.

A carbon capture plant near Reykjavik, Iceland. CLIMEWORKS

Since we first heard of it we have been enthusiastic about the upside potential of this technology, but until now had not considered the tradeoffs:

Climate Plans That Rely Too Much on Carbon Removal Could Breach International Law

Countries that rely too heavily on carbon removal in their climate plans could violate international law, warns a new paper. Continue reading →

Letters To The Secretary

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We have appreciated this newsletter since it started, and every issue since. This week it brings these handwritten letters to our attention:

…Oh, and who’s the other group of climate voters the president needs to worry about? That would be older people, like those of us at Third Act—we codgers have been organizing mass protests all year. And while we may not be TikTok savvy, we have another weapon: pen and stationery. In the last week Third Actors have unleashed thousands of letters on DOE headquarters—which may not sound quite as sexy as petitions from the Internet, but they have their own impact, since officials know that if you’re willing to do more than click you’re probably an effective and motivated adversary.

So consider [image above left]

Or [image to the right]

What I’m trying to say is, the Department of Energy has a real problem—an increasingly aware and activated posse of youngsters and oldsters. And a solution: announce CP2 is going nowhere, and that no other project will be approved, or even considered, until there’s been an exhaustive rewrite of the criteria taking into account the latest science and economics. It’s not hard. Continue reading →

Climate Scientist Wields Words Well

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Carl Recine/Reuters

Kate Marvel is a climate scientist at the environmental nonprofit Project Drawdown, and was a lead author on the Fifth National Climate Assessment. She has well-informed opinions and as we have noted before, she knows how to express them clearly:

I’m a Climate Scientist. I’m Not Screaming Into the Void Anymore.

Two and a half years ago, when I was asked to help write the most authoritative report on climate change in the United States, I hesitated. Did we really need another warning of the dire consequences of climate change in this country? Continue reading →