GEOLOGY WITH JEFF SIMPSON
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In Your Facebook Feed: Oil Industry Pushback Against Biden Climate Plans

9/30/2021

 
The ads appear on Facebook millions of times a week. They take aim at vulnerable Democrats in Congress by name, warning that the $3.5 trillion budget bill — one of the Biden administration’s biggest efforts to pass meaningful climate policy — will wreck the United States economy. “Some politicians including Rep. Houlahan are setting their sights on pushing for tax hikes on U.S. energy producers,” reads an ad attacking Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania that started running Sept. 15. “Tax hikes on U.S. energy producers is equal to risking U.S. energy jobs. Call Rep. Houlahan now!”  The paid posts are part of a broad attack by the oil and gas industry against the budget bill, whose fate now hangs in the balance. Among the climate provisions that are likely to be left out of the plan is an effort to dismantle billions of dollars in fossil-fuel tax breaks — provisions that experts say incentivize the burning of fossil fuels responsible for catastrophic climate change. - NYTimes
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Another indictment in South Carolina’s nuclear fiasco / Vogtle lumbers toward completion

9/28/2021

 
People in South Carolina turn their lights on and off the same way people in Georgia do. But over the past four years, the two states have diverged dramatically in their relationship with the utilities which produce their electricity.  In Georgia, there’s been significant grassroots reaction to Georgia Power’s plans for dealing with the coal ash problem at its plants. There was a hearing last week in the now 10-year-old case in which the utility is charged with improperly charging ratepayers with fees to cover the soaring costs of its nuclear project at Plant Vogtle. Federal regulators are talking about increasing scrutiny of the way over-budget and way late nuclear expansion project.  There’s little about the way these problems are being handled that’s different from the way they would have been a decade ago. In South Carolina, on the other hand, three top executives involved in a nuclear project nearly identical to the one at Plant Vogtle have pleaded guilty to fraud charges, and a fourth was indicted last month on charges that could result in 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine. The state’s largest utility has changed hands, and the cozy relationship between regulators and regulated has been roughly shaken. - Saporta Report
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World’s longest subsea cable will send clean energy from Morocco to the UK

9/28/2021

 
A 10.5 gigawatt (GW) solar and wind farm will be built in Morocco’s Guelmim-Oued Noun region, and it will supply the UK with clean energy via subsea cables. The twin 1.8 GW high voltage direct current (HVDC) subsea cables will be the world’s longest.  UK-based renewables company Xlinks is the project’s developer. The Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project, as it’s known, will cover an area of around 579 square miles (1,500 square kilometers) in Morocco and will be connected exclusively to the UK via 2,361 miles (3,800 km) of HVDC subsea cables. They’ll follow the shallow water route from Morocco to the UK, past Spain, Portugal, and France. The project will cost $21.9 billion. Xlinks will construct 7 GW of solar and 3.5 GW of wind, along with onsite 20GWh/5GW battery storage, in Morocco. The transmission cable will consist of four cables. The first cable will be active in early 2027, and the other three are slated to launch in 2029. An agreement has been reached with the National Grid for two 1.8GW connections at Alverdiscott in Devon. - Elektrek & XLinks

The ABCs of Big Oil: Why Fossil Fuel Industry Infiltrated Schools (Podcast 38:03)

9/27/2021

 
For decades, the fossil fuel industry has been distributing propaganda to limit how Americans think about taking on the climate crisis. They haven’t just done so through political lobbying and advertising. They’ve also taken a much more insidious route: shaping schools’ curricula. That’s what climate journalist Amy Westervelt and I explore in our new podcast, a collaboration with Drilled called The ABCs of Big Oil.  In our first episode, we wanted to find out why fossil fuel companies think it’s worth investing in education in the first place. What we dug up should give you a good idea. - Drilled

After Hurricane Ida, Oil Infrastructure Springs Dozens of Leaks

9/27/2021

 
When Hurricane Ida barreled into the Louisiana coast with near 150 mile-per-hour winds on Aug. 30, it left a trail of destruction. The storm also triggered the most oil spills detected from space after a weather event in the Gulf of Mexico since the federal government started using satellites to track spills and leaks a decade ago.  In the two weeks after Ida, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a total of 55 spill reports, including a spill near a fragile nature reserve. It underscores the frailty of the region’s offshore oil and gas infrastructure to intensifying storms fueled by climate change. - NY Times

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Baby Poop Is Loaded With Microplastics

9/22/2021

 
WHENEVER A PLASTIC bag or bottle degrades, it breaks into ever smaller pieces that work their way into nooks in the environment. When you wash synthetic fabrics, tiny plastic fibers break loose and flow out to sea. When you drive, plastic bits fly off your tires and brakes. That’s why literally everywhere scientists look, they’re finding microplastics—specks of synthetic material that measure less than 5 millimeters long. They’re on the most remote mountaintops and in the deepest oceans. They’re blowing vast distances in the wind to sully once pristine regions like the Arctic. In 11 protected areas in the western US, the equivalent of 120 million ground-up plastic bottles are falling out of the sky each year.  And now, microplastics are coming out of babies. In a pilot study published today, scientists describe sifting through infants’ dirty diapers and finding an average of 36,000 nanograms of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) per gram of feces, 10 times the amount they found in adult feces. They even found it in newborns' first feces. PET is an extremely common polymer that’s known as polyester when it’s used in clothing, and it is also used to make plastic bottles. The finding comes a year after another team of researchers calculated that preparing hot formula in plastic bottles severely erodes the material, which could dose babies with several million microplastic particles a day, and perhaps nearly a billion a year.  - Wired

China Pledges to Stop Building Coal-Burning Power Plants Abroad

9/21/2021

 
In a move designed to bolster Beijing’s climate credentials, President Xi Jinping of China said Tuesday that his country would stop building coal-burning power plants overseas, ending its support for construction projects that rely on the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel.  “China will step up support for other developing countries in developing green and low carbon energy and will not build new coal-fired power projects abroad,” Mr. Xi said in prerecorded remarks to the United Nations General Assembly.  Within its own borders, China produces the largest share of global emissions of greenhouse gases. It is by far the biggest producer of coal domestically and the largest financier of coal-fired power plants abroad, with an enormous 40 gigawatts of coal power planned. - NYTimes
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Understanding the Environmental Impacts of Shale Development

9/20/2021

 
Development of shale gas and tight oil, or unconventional oil and gas (UOG), has dramatically increased domestic energy production in the U.S. UOG resources are typically developed through the use of hydraulic fracturing, which creates high- permeability flow paths into large vol- umes of tight rocks to provide a means for hydrocarbons to move to a wellbore. This process uses significant volumes of water, sand, and chemicals, raising concerns about risks to the environment and to human health. Researchers in various dis- ciplines have been working to make UOG development more efficient, and to better understand the risks to air quality, water quality, landscapes, human health, and ecosystems. Risks to air include releases of methane, carbon dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and particulate mat- ter. Water-resource risks include excessive withdrawals, stray gas in drinking-water aquifers, and surface spills of fluids or chemicals. Landscapes can be signifi- cantly altered by the infrastructure installed to support large drilling plat- forms and associated equipment. - Geological Society of America
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Ancient spider caring for her offspring is trapped in 99 million-year-old amber

9/20/2021

 
Nothing gets between a fiercely protective mother spider and her children. Dripping tree resin trapped adult female spiders and baby spiderlings about 99 million years ago, forever showcasing the maternal care exhibited by these arthropods, according to new research. The Lagonomegopidae family of spiders is now extinct, but spiders have a long history and first appeared during the Carboniferous period between 359 to 299 million years ago.
The fossilized Burmese amber pieces tell two different stories. A study detailing the observations of the amber specimens published Tuesday in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. - CNN and The Royal Society
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Canaries volcano streams slow down, homes destroyed, thousands flee

9/20/2021

 
Lava flowing from Spain's Canary Islands' first volcanic eruption in 50 years has forced the evacuation of 5,500 people and destroyed around 100 houses but the streams were advancing slower than originally predicted, authorities said on Monday.  The flow of molten rock will not reach the Atlantic Ocean on Monday evening as earlier estimated, an official said. Experts say that if and when it does, it could trigger more explosions and clouds of toxic gases.  "The movement of lava is much slower than it was initially ... There has not been a large advance during the day," local emergency coordinator Miguel Angel Morcuende told a press briefing on Monday evening. He said the stream had made its way about halfway to the coast  .This was just a few hours after Morcuende said that that the Carnarys were safe and that this was just a good show. - Reuters

Special Report: BP gambles big on fast transition from oil to renewables

9/20/2021

 
Deep in the Oman desert lies one of BP's more lucrative projects, a mass of steel pipes and cooling towers that showcases the British energy giant's pioneering natural gas extraction technology.  The facility earned BPmore than $650 million in profits in 2019, according to financial filings reviewed by Reuters. Yet the oil major agreed to sell a third of its majority stake in the project earlier this year. The deal exemplifies a larger strategy to liquidate fossil-fuel assets to raise cash for investments in renewable-energy projects that BP concedes won't make money for years. - Reuters
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The Incredible Shrinking Colorado River

9/10/2021

 
Two decades of climate change-induced drought and rising temperatures, combined with ever-growing demand, have put the entire water system — and the flora and fauna and more than 40 million people that rely on it — into serious trouble. Now local, state and federal water managers are being forced to reckon with a frightening reality: the incredible shrinking Colorado River system. - High Country News
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Climate Change Pushes Fires to Higher Ground

9/8/2021

 
Scientists have known for decades that climate change makes wildfires more common, larger, and more intense. Now an international team of scientists has demonstrated a new connection between fires and global warming. Using data from Landsat satellites, they discovered that wildfires in the western United States have been spreading to higher elevations due to warmer and drier conditions that are clearly linked to climate change.  Historically, forest fires have been rare in high-elevation areas—at least 8,200 feet (2,500 meters) above sea level. But when McGill University scientist Mohammad Reza Alizadeh and colleagues studied fires that occurred in the West between 1984 and 2017, they found blazes moving to higher ground at a rate of 25 feet (7.6 meters) per year.  Fires are now burning higher up on hillsides and mountainsides because areas that used to be too wet to burn are now drier due to warmer temperatures and earlier snowmelt.  - NASA
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World's largest plant capturing carbon from air starts in Iceland

9/8/2021

 
The world's largest plant that sucks carbon dioxide directly from the air and deposits it underground is due to start operating on Wednesday, the company behind the nascent green technology said. Swiss start-up Climeworks AG, which specialises in capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air, has partnered with Icelandic carbon storage firm Carbfix to develop a plant that sucks out up to 4,000 tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent of the annual emissions from about 790 cars. Last year, global CO2-emissions totalled 31.5 billion tonnes, according to the International Energy Agency. - Reuters
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Why Variations in Earth's Magnetic Field Aren't Causing Today's Climate Change

9/8/2021

 
Some people have claimed that variations in Earth’s magnetic field are contributing to current global warming and can cause catastrophic climate change. However, the science doesn’t support that argument. In this blog, we’ll examine a number of proposed hypotheses regarding the effects of changes in Earth’s magnetic field on climate. We’ll also discuss physics-based reasons why changes in the magnetic field can’t impact climate. - NASA
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Study: Greenland Ice Sheet on Brink of Major Tipping Point

9/8/2021

 
A significant part of the Greenland ice sheet is on the brink of a tipping point, after which accelerated melting would become inevitable even if global heating was halted, according to new research.  Rising temperatures caused by the climate crisis have already seen trillions of tonnes of Greenland’s ice pour into the ocean. Melting its ice sheet completely would eventually raise global sea level by 7 metres.  The new analysis detected the warning signals of a tipping point in a 140-year record of ice-sheet height and melting rates in the Jakobshavn basin, one of the five biggest basins in Greenland and the fastest-melting. The prime suspect for a surge in melting is a vicious circle in which melting reduces the height of the ice sheet, exposing it to the warmer air found at lower altitudes, which causes further melting. - Guardian
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Sea Rise Under Scrutiny In Condo Collapse: Corrosion Likely, But No Sign Of Sinkhole

9/8/2021

 
There is no escaping the rising risks to Surfside and other coastal communities up and down the Florida coast. Low-lying garages in South Florida have flooded for years, some famously so. Recall the 2016 photo of an octopus finding its way up a drainpipe into a Miami Beach condo’s garage. The two feet of sea level rise expected by 2060 will swamp septic tanks, homes, parks and roads. And as waters keep rising, it will eventually render some places permanently uninhabitable. - WUSF
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Dry Wells, Lower Flows Raise Alarm About the Verde River's Future

9/6/2021

 
Across the [Verde] watershed, thousands of wells draw groundwater from the same aquifers, supplying growing towns like Prescott Valley and Chino Valley. State records show groundwater levels have been declining. Already, some families in communities near the river have watched wells dry up and have turned to relying on plastic storage tanks and paying to have water hauled by truck.   The upper Verde is increasingly threatened.  If pumping continues unchecked, wells will capture more of the water that would otherwise feed the springs. - AZ Central

Right -Sullivan Dam (foreground) and Sullivan Lake (background) near Paulden, Arizona. 


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Greenhouse Gas Levels Are The Highest Ever Seen — Going Back 800,000 Years

9/1/2021

 
Greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere that contribute to climate change are the highest ever recorded — and that's going back 800,000 years.  Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the concentration of carbon dioxide, one of the primary greenhouse gases, hit 412.5 parts per million in 2020. That's 2.5 parts per million higher than in 2019, and it's now the highest ever observed, the scientists said.  Recording the data is done with modern instrumental methods as well as observing ice core records that date back 800,000 years. - NPR

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