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U.S. Looks to Extract Lithium for Batteries from Geothermal Waste

12/30/2021

According to a study by the Department of Energy, the Salton Sea in California’s Imperial Valley—one of two large geothermal energy production sites in the state—could produce as much as 600,000 tons of lithium annually. That is more lithium than the United States currently uses. It could bring in $7.2 billion a year, and that could just be the beginning of expected economic benefits. The global demand for lithium is expected to grow as much as tenfold by 2030. - Scientific American

Right - A geothermal energy plant taps deep underground heat from the southern San Andreas Fault rift zone at the Salton Sea near Calipatria, Calif.

Himalayan glaciers are melting at an extraordinary rate, research finds

12/30/2021

Ice sheets across the Himalayas have shrunk 10 times faster in the past four decades than during the previous seven centuries. The rapid ice melt threatens agriculture and water supply for millions of people in South Asia, according to research published Monday in the journal Scientific Reports. There is scientific consensus that human-caused climate change has resulted in accelerated ice melt from glaciers and higher ocean temperatures across the world. - CNBC

Staying below 2° C warming costs less than overshooting and correcting

12/30/2021

What will it cost if the climate exceeds the Paris Agreement temperature goals this century—even if we later remove carbon dioxide from the air and manage to bring temperatures back down to meet those targets by 2100? And how does that compare with the costs of staying below those targets? Most plans that are consistent with the Paris Agreement goals assume that temperatures will rise above 1.5° or even 2° C before 2100. They then heavily rely on the success and wide adoption of what are called negative carbon emissions techniques, which involve the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to bring temperatures back down. That’s a gamble for a number of reasons. “Betting on being able to bring temperatures down after a larger overshoot is very risky because of the uncertain technological feasibility and because of the possibility of setting off irreversible processes in the earth system with even a temporary temperature overshoot,” wrote second author Christoph Bertram, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, in an email to Ars Technica. “Furthermore, such an approach would be unfair to future generations, as it basically would shift more of the mitigation burden on them.” - ArsTechnica

Capturing carbon, as this algae-growing plant does, may not be the most economical way to reach our climate targets.

U.S. Looks to Extract Lithium for Batteries from Geothermal Waste

Himalayan glaciers are melting at an extraordinary rate, research finds

Staying below 2° C warming costs less than overshooting and correcting

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