Green Energy – The Use of the Earth’s Gravity to Generate Electricity

Green Energy – The Use of the Earth’s Gravity to Generate Electricity Runaway climate change due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from burning of fossil fuels and the resulting warming of the planet could destroy civilization and potentially ultimately cause the extinction of life on earth. The famous biologist, David Attenborough, said at a UN sponsored meeting on catastrophic climate change: “Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon. The world’s people have spoken. Their message is clear. Time is running out.” And Greta Thunberg, the famous teenage climate activist, said at the same meeting: ““We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the climate crisis that threatens our civilization - and the entire biosphere - must speak out in clear language, no matter how uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be. “We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your platform, the bigger your responsibility.” We know what has to be done to even limit the increase in greenhouse gases, but it is frighteningly clear that the world’s companies and countries cannot accomplish even this minimal effort in enough time to avoid the coming mega-catastrophes. I have read the scientific literature for many years now and am beyond despair. I myself do not expect to experience the disaster and I fortunately do not have children who will suffer. The green writing is on the wall and climatologists know that the only possible solution would be to completely stop utilization of fossil fuels world-wide and replace these with solar and wind energies. But the Sun stops shining at night and the wind does not blow forever. Recently the possibility of producing energy from fusion of hydrogen to helium as occurs in the Sun may actually take less than the oft repeated 30 years. And, for the first time physicists have succeeded in creating fusion reactions in the lab that are larger than the energy required to create these reactions so that fusion may be available at least in 30 years. But a continuous source of energy by fusion will most likely never be possible but rather a series of controlled hydrogen bomb explosions. But then in the last few months I read several recent papers on methods which do not require advanced engineering or new discoveries and I see a way to save civilization and the earth!!! Fantastic!!! These all use the same basic simple idea, to use the energy of gravity, which Einstein showed in 1915 in his General Relativity Theory, is actually produced by the bending of four dimensional space-time by mass, to create electricity. Let me now describe the several available methods that actually are feasible and are ongoing. Gravity could solve renewable energy’s biggest problem Energy Vault's gravity-based storage system rises over the Swiss town of Arbedo-Castione. London CNN Business — By  Dell Lewis, CNN Business Updated 6:02 AM EDT, Mon March 14, 2022 In the Swiss municipality of Arbedo-Castione, a 70-meter crane stands tall. Six arms protrude from the top, hoisting giant blocks into the sky. But these aren’t building blocks, and the crane isn’t being used for construction. The steel tower is a giant mechanical energy storage system, designed by American-Swiss startup Energy Vault, that relies on gravity and 35-ton bricks to store and release energy. When power demand is low, the crane uses surplus electricity from the Swiss grid to raise the bricks and stack them at the top. When power demand rises, the bricks are lowered, releasing kinetic energy back to the grid. It might sound like a school science project, but this form of energy storage could be vital as the world transitions to clean energy. 35-ton blocks, made of recycled or locally sourced materials, are raised to the top of the crane where they store energy. Energy Vault “There’s a big push to get renewables deployed,” Robert Piconi, founder of Energy Vault, tells CNN Business, adding that companies are under increasing pressure from governments, investors and employees to decarbonize. But relying on renewable s for consistent power is impossible without energy storage, he says. Unlike a fossil fuel power station, which can operate night and day, wind and solar power are intermittent, meaning that if a cloud blocks the sun or there’s a lull in the wind, electricity generation drops. To compete with fossil fuels, you need to “make renewable s predictable,” says Piconi, which means storing excess energy and being able to dispatch it when required. Instead, Energy Vault decided to base its technology on a method developed over 100 years ago, which is widely used to store renewable energy: pumped storage hydropower. During off-peak periods, a turbine pumps water from a reservoir on low ground to one on higher ground, and during periods of peak demand, the water is allowed to flow down through the turbine, generating electrical energy. Piconi says Energy Vault relies on gravity in the same way, but “instead of using water, we’re using these composite blocks.” By doing it this way, he says the company is not dependent on topography and doesn’t have to dig out reservoirs or create dams, which can have negative effects on the environment. storage technology is low-cost, long life and environmentally compelling. Green Gravity Energy Green Gravity’s energy storage system moves heavy weights vertically in legacy mine shafts to capture and release the gravitational potential energy of the weights. By simply using proven mechanical parts and disused mine shafts, Green Gravity’s energy storage technology is low-cost, long life and environmentally compelling. Storing energy in this way uses no processed chemicals and has no performance degradation. Moving weights vertically allows for high Round Trip Efficiency and using legacy mine shafts allows reuse of existing structures, contributing to the circular economy and lowering costs. Green Gravity’s energy storage technology improves the economics of wind and solar power, leading to a faster and lower cost transition away from fossil fuels. Truly the next generation of ultra-green energy. Green Gravity’s energy storage solution harnesses the fundamental principles of gravity and kinetic energy to store and dispatch energy by lifting and lowering heavy-weighted objects. Green Gravity’s innovative technology was inspired by pumped hydro like Snowy 2.0. Like pumped hydro, we use the gravitational potential energy of a mass moving between two heights. However, rather than water between two dams, Green Gravity requires much less space by using very dense materials. To overcome friction, a vertical height available from a mine shaft is used rather than an incline on the side of a hill. Gravitational storage refers to a process of converting electrical energy into gravitational potential energy through moving an object to a height. The energy is then released back to electrical energy at a later time by moving the object to a lower height, in the process turning an electric motor using the kinetic force of the descending object. Where can Green Gravity energy storage be deployed? Green Gravity’s system can be deployed in many types of mine shafts. With nearly 100,000 shafts in Australia, this offers many potential deployment locations. Locations with the best economic case include those with shafts built after 1950, with electrical infrastructure sill accessible, and with greater depth. Shafts over 300 metres deep offer very attractive energy economics. What advantages does Green Gravity have over chemical batteries? Green Gravity’ energy storage system is fundamentally more sustainable than chemical batteries. Some of the most important differentiating points include: • Our parts can be locally sourced. Lithium batteries are developed using water intensive processing, combined with rare minerals and are assembled in a long global supply chain. • We use basic steel cables, motors and recycled and inert materials. Chemical batteries are future landfill liabilities and are hazardous materials.  • Gravitational energy systems do not leak energy over time, don’t degrade and have very long asset lives. The energy system needs long-term stable clean capacity. Green Gravity can deliver equipment life 3 to 4 times longer than a chemical battery.  • Green Gravity re-uses existing infrastructure. We take minesites, which are sitting idle today, and convert them into energy storage systems capable of accelerating the uptake of renewable • energy. - Green Gravity uses existing proven technology from the steel, mining and energy sectors to build the energy storage centre. We use cables, weighted blocks, mine winders, electric motors and off-the-shelf handling equipment to make our technology work.  How much weight does a Green Gravity energy storage centre move? The weights moved depend on the depth and market configuration for an individual storage centre. For a large shaft, we move weights up to 40 metric tonnes, which give us the capability to store up to 10 kWh of energy per 100 metres of depth. For context, an average car weighs 1.3 tonnes, meaning we drop objects weighing the equivalent of 30 cars. How big are the mine shafts? Mine shafts are generally very deep. Shallow shafts are 100-150 metres, while medium shafts are often 300 metres in depth. Modern shafts are concrete lined and can be more than 5 metres in diameter. Deep shafts can be over 1,000 metres in depth. For some context, the Empire State Building is 380 metres, the Eiffel Tower 300 metres, Sydney Tower 305 metres, Petronas Towers 450 metres, and way out there, the Burj Khalifa 828 metres. Of course, nature wins with the Grand Canyon at 1,800 metres deep. Gravity Power The Gravity Power Plant is effectively a Water Battery. We dig a deep shaft, using standard technology from the mining industry. We build a piston of reinforced rock in the shaft. We add water and cap it, creating a closed loop system, with no additional water required. Storing Energy A conventional pump/turbine forces water down the penstock into the shaft, lifting the piston. With highly efficient hydropower equipment and low piston speed, system efficiency is high. Thousands of megawatt-hours can be stored in each plant. Generating Power As the piston drops, it forces water up the penstock and through the turbine, spinning the generator to produce electricity. Gravity Power is by far the most cost-effective solution for long duration energy storage. Gravity Power returns energy to the grid at about 6½¢ per KWh, less than half the cost of lithium ion, including the cost of energy lost in the round trip. The big difference is in CapEx. Gravity Power is the only storage solution that achieves dramatic economies of scale. PNNL conducted a study to calculate the LCoE (levelized cost of energy) for 14 storage technologies, grouped into Pumped Storage Hydroelectric, Hydrogen, Flow, and Lithium Ion. The Gravity Power technology is by far the most cost-effective. BuildiMinimal Environmental Impact • No threats to wildlife, air, water, indigenous cultures • No emissions • No visual or noise impacts • Small footprint • No ongoing water use Proven Technology → Innovative Configuration • Off-the-shelf components, widely used in hydroelectric plants globally • Excavation using conventional mining technology • Design protected by 6 patents in 24 countries © Crossrail Ltd 2021 Flexible Installation • Can be built almost anywhere underground conditions are suitable • Co-located with renewable energy generation plants • Located in urban areas, where load is greatest and transmission may be limited Long Lifetime • Properly maintained, a Gravity Power plant will last for decades • No degradation in performance Grid Stability • Gravity Power plants provide exceptional grid resources, including frequency control, fast ramping, and resource shifting into the high-value times of day. • Wikepedia Encyclopedia Gravitational Potential https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_potential _____________________________________________________________________ Scientists Have a Genius Plan: Turn Abandoned Mines Into Gravity Batteries This might be the coolest energy storage solution yet. BY DARREN ORF PUBLISHED: JAN 23, 2023 Energy Vault • Gravity batteries use gravity and regenerative braking to send renewable energy to the grid. • Scientists created a battery that uses millions of abandoned mines worldwide (with an estimated 550,000 of them being in the U.S. alone) to store energy. • Some companies are trying to build gravity batteries that can be dropped anywhere, regardless of if there are mines in the area. Supplying the world with renewable energy is a two-fold problem. The first is making technologies like wind and solar as robust and affordable as coal and natural gas. With recent estimates suggesting solar will outpace coal in 2025, that first problem is quickly being solved. The second one, figuring out how to store that energy, is a bit trickier. Unlike fossil fuels, solar and wind can’t provide an uninterrupted stream of energy. After all, the sun sets and winds die, but scientists and engineers have developed myriad ways to store that renewable energy for when the grid needs it. One idea is to supplement lithium-ion batteries with iron-air batteries that could charge our homes via rust (yes, rust), or transform existing coal-fired power plants into nuclear ones. But another much talked about technology is what’s known as “gravity batteries,” which use regenerative braking and, well, gravity to send energy to the grid. The big problem is exactly that—they’re big—making them unfeasible (and unattractive) for certain areas. However, earlier this month, scientists revealed a gravity battery that takes advantage of vestiges of dirty energy’s past by using millions of abandoned mines worldwide (with an estimated 550,000 of them being in the U.S. al) to store energy. The research into these new batteries, led by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), examined a technology known as Underground Gravity Energy Storage (UGES). At its most basic, this battery lowers large containers of sand into a mineshaft when energy is expensive (aka peak hours). Using regenerative braking, these mines would transform the sand’s potential energy into actual energy, and the bigger the mine, the bigger the battery

Supreme deceit: How Alito snuck medieval state Christianity into the Dobbs opinion - From The Raw Story – David Boyle, Salon

The Supreme Court's June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned the half-century-old precedent of Roe v. Wade, occasioned worldwide rage, enough that Justice Samuel Alito — author of the majority opinion in Dobbs — mocked the outraged Prince Harry and other luminaries. Jewish advocacy groups, among others, have filed suits argued that laws restricting abortion may violate religious freedom, but ironically enough, the widespread rage may have prevented people from noticing what may be the most outrageous feature of Dobbs.

Alito's opinion sneaks in a 12th-century religious penalty for abortion — not a criminal statute — citing it in a section meant to support the history of criminal punishment, and with its ecclesiastical origins neatly excised. Those who are outraged by this are now free to mock Alito, unless they'd rather have him impeached — along with the whole Dobbs majority, perhaps — for deceiving America and violating the separation of church and state.

Page 17 of the Dobbs slip opinion, in footnote 25, cites the legal treatise "Leges Henrici Primi" (or "Laws of Henry I"), which dates to around 1115 A.D.:

Even before Bracton's time, English law imposed punishment for the killing of a fetus. See Leges Henrici Primi 222–223 (L. Downer ed. 1972) (imposing penalty for any abortion and treating a woman who aborted a "quick" child "as if she were a murderess").

Legal historian Leslie John Downer's translation of the original 12th-century Latin text, however, reads, "[I]f she does this [intentionally destroys her embryo] after it is quick [animate], she shall do penance for seven years as if she were a murderess." Alito carefully clipped out the words "she shall do penance for seven years" from the quotation, between "quick" and "as."

Why hide those words? Unless he was sleepwalking, Alito understood perfectly well that he was committing a gross material omission, obscuring the fact that the "penalty" in this medieval text was merely religious and penitential, not civil or criminal. Religious "crimes" are not crimes at all, by our modern legal standards. (The Leges Henrici, at pages 222-223, mentions paying "wergeld" and "manbot," or reparations, including compensation for loss of a pregnancy, if a pregnant woman is slain by any means. But that's not "punishment for abortion," which is merely penance in the Leges.)

To say this is "just a footnote" is no excuse. If footnote 25 had used undisclosed material that was atheist, Islamist or Satanist in origin, people would be outraged; given the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, which bans any state religion, they may be equally outraged by the court's deliberate concealment of the Christian prehistory to Dobbs. The court's majority has no right to inflict state religion on Americans, in even the slightest dose.

But wait, there's more. On pages 16 and 17, the Dobbs opinion bookends footnote 25 with, "We begin with the common law, under which abortion was a crime at least after 'quickening'," before moving on to common-law sources like Henry de Bracton and the statement, "English cases dating all the way back to the 13th century corroborate the treatises' statements that abortion was a crime." This all misleadingly implies that the Leges, which is certainly a treatise, criminalizes abortion under common law.

Then Alito crosses the Rubicon, proclaiming on page 25 that "an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973." This is fraudulent, by any analysis. If the Leges Henrici is common law, as Alito presents it, mixed in with common-law sources like Bracton, it's dishonest to say that common law has always criminalized abortion. But if Alito then wishes to backpedal and claim that the Leges, with its penance-penalty, is really canon law (i.e., church law), not common law, then two things follow: Alito falsified his argument by categorizing the Leges with common law, and he more flagrantly snuck Christian state religion into the Dobbs decision. Falsehood, either way.

Finally, English common law is normally understood to begin after 1066 (with the Norman Conquest) and no later than the 12th century, since King Henry II (1133-1189) is often called "Father of the Common Law." But Bracton, Alito's earliest legitimate citation for criminalizing abortion, wasn't born until around the year 1210. In short, Alito provides doctored evidence, or none at all, for his conclusory statement that the "earliest days of the common law" criminalized abortion, and creates a kind of fake history — the fiction of an ancient, continuous Anglo-American pedigree of criminalizing abortion — which supposedly supports overturning Roe.

Was this an unintentional mistake? That's unlikely, especially since the present author told the court, in a brief filed May 21, after the Dobbs draft leak, that the opinion failed to explain that the penalty in Leges was purely ecclesiastical. The justices paid no attention, and the error was repeated in the final June opinion. Alito creates a kind of fake history — the fiction of an ancient, continuous Anglo-American pedigree of criminalizing abortion — which supposedly supports overturning Roe.

Oddly, the three dissenters in Dobbs failed to catch the Leges problem, and even committed a minor error on page 13 of the dissent: "Of course, the majority opinion refers [to] earlier history[;] it goes back as far as the 13th (the 13th!) century." In fact, the Leges is even older, from early in the 12th century. Their anger, perhaps, made them "miss the trees for the forest": Hyper-focused on the big-picture loss of Roe, the liberal justices missed crucial details about the Leges and state religion. Whether one is "pro-choice" or "pro-life," the truth is important.

What can Americans do, now that they know about "Leges-gate"? (In HBO's "House of the Dragon," Aemma Arryn learns the hard way how reproductive freedom fares when women are kept uninformed.) First, the religious freedom lawsuits contesting abortion restrictions may now seem a lot less frivolous. Second, Americans may be interested, on Election Day or otherwise (e.g., by complaining to Congress' judiciary committees), in letting the Supreme Court know how they feel about Dobbs' deceitful, smuggled-in religious doctrine.

Ironically, Alito recently dissented from an order compelling Yeshiva University to recognize an LGBTQ group (at least for now) by arguing, "The First Amendment guarantees the right to the free exercise of religion, and if that provision means anything, it prohibits a State from enforcing its own preferred interpretation of Holy Scripture."

From him, that seems especially hollow, even ridiculous, given the sub rosa state religion Alito slipped into Dobbs. True friends of religious liberty, and other liberties as well, may want to act.

Trump may threaten to reveal state secrets to manipulate legal proceedings if he’s indicted:

The DOJ now has thousands of classified documents, including 43 mysterious folders that are empty but have “classified” information on the cover. Twenty eight have “return to staff/military aide.”

One has information about the President of France and others have informations about various cabinet level people.

The fact that there are missing documents in folders is extremely concerning to security experts.

There are many questions to be investigated:

Why did Trump collect all these secret documents and why did he hold on to them even after the FBI requested turning over all documents?

Why did he try to hide them in multiple boxes mixed with other ordinary materials and putting the boxes in multiple places throughout Mar a Lago, including in a storage room that had no lock and in his closet!

Who were the people with access to these rooms, especially those shown in the video cam footage monitoring these rooms?

Why did his lawyers lie to the FBI that there were additional documents? Did Trump tell them to lie?

What is the evidence that the Trump team have additional hidden documents and that they most likely moved classified documents to other locations?

I personally think that there is sufficient information to close Mar a Lago and interview everyone there, in addition to searching Trump’s children houses Counter intelligence agents have warned that an unusually high number of US spies were being killed, captured or compromised.

And finally be aware that Trump may threaten to reveal state secrets to manipulate legal proceedings if he’s indicted. I think that it is time to handcuff Donald and hold him in a cell.

Like Watergate all over again

Like Watergate all over again

This is like Watergate all over again. I am a junky for information or thoughts on Trump and his boxes and boxes of secret and even top-secret government materials sitting in closets in Mar a Lago (and now sitting in FBI closets). Now why did he do this? Does he just like the power of having secret documents for himself to show them sometimes to his rich friends at the Lago? Or---Did he want to sell them to foreign governments and make a lot of money.  

 The other night when the FBI agents were searching his house and collecting the boxes of secret documents, one of the TV people said that Trump and Melania were most likely looking at the FBI searching in real time on the videos he had installed in the White House. If he had an IT person wire the White House with video cams, he probably also had them record and keep the videos. This means that he (or an FBI agent) could discover if anyone at Mar a Lago ever looked at any of the secret documents during the weeks that Trump was hiding them from the DOJ  just by looking at the videos.   

Just thinking.

Past 1.5 degrees centigrade warming

 So we have passed the point of atmospheric CO2 for 1.5 degrees warming and are headed to more than 2 degrees warming. I thought it would be instructive to look at what some climate scientists are predicting for more than 2 degrees warming.

BETWEEN ONE AND TWO DEGREES OF WARMING

At this level, expected within 40 years, the hot European summer of 2003 will be the annual norm. Anything that could be called a heatwave thereafter will be of Saharan intensity. Even in average years, people will die of heat stress.The first symptoms may be minor. A person will feel slightly nauseous, dizzy and irritable. It needn’t be an emergency: an hour or so lying down in a cooler area, sipping water, will cure it. But in Paris, August 2003, there were no cooler areas, especially for elderly people. Once body temperature reaches 41oC (104oF) its thermo regulatory system begins to break down. Sweating ceases and breathing becomes shallow and rapid. The pulse quickens, and the victim may lapse into a coma. Unless drastic measures are taken to reduce the body’s core temperature, the brain is starved of oxygen and vital organs begin to fail. Death will be only minutes away unless the emergency services can quickly get the victim into intensive care. These emergency services failed to save more than 10,000 French in the summer of 2003. Mortuaries ran out of space as hundreds of dead bodies were brought in each night. Across Europe as a whole, the heatwave is believed to have cost between 22,000 and 35,000 lives. Agriculture, too, was devastated. Farmers lost $12 billion worth of crops, and Portugal alone suffered $12 billion of forest-fire damage. The flows of the River Po in Italy, Rhine in Germany and Loire in France all shrank to historic lows. Barges ran aground, and there was not enough water for irrigation and hydroelectricity. Melt rates in the Alps, where some glaciers lost 10% of their mass, were not just a record – they doubled the previous record of 1998. According to the Hadley centre, more than half the European summers by 2040 will be hotter than this. Extreme summers will take a much heavier toll of human life, with body counts likely to reach hundreds of thousands. Crops will bake in the fields, and forests will die off and burn. Even so, the short-term effects may not be the worst: From the beech forests of northern Europe to the evergreen oaks of the Mediterranean, plant growth across the whole landmass in 2003 slowed and then stopped. Instead of absorbing carbon dioxide, the stressed plants began to emit it. Around half a billion tonnes of carbon was added to the atmosphere from European plants, equivalent to a twelfth of global emissions from fossil fuels. This is a positive feedback of critical importance, because it suggests that, as temperatures rise, carbon emissions from forests and soils will also rise. If these land-based emissions are sustained over long periods, global warming could spiral out of control. In the two-degree world, nobody will think of taking Mediterranean holidays. The movement of people from northern Europe to the Mediterranean is likely to reverse, switching eventually into a mass scramble as Saharan heatwaves sweep across the Med. People everywhere will think twice about moving to the coast. When temperatures were last between 1o and 2oC higher than they are now, 125,000 years ago, sea levels were five or six metres higher too. All this “lost” water is in the polar ice that is now melting. Forecasters predict that the “tipping point” for Greenland won’t arrive until average temperatures have risen by 2.7oC. The snag is that Greenland is warming much faster than the rest of the world – 2.2 times the global average. Divide one figure by the other and the result should ring alarm bells across the world. Greenland will tip into irreversible melt once global temperatures rise past a mere 1.2oC. The ensuing sea-level rise will be far more than the half-metre that the IPCC has predicted for the end of the century. Scientists point out that sea levels at the end of the last ice age shot up by a metre every 20 years for four centuries, and that Greenland’s ice, in the words of one glaciologist, is now thinning like mad and flowing much faster than it ought to. Its biggest outflow glacier, Jakobshavn Isbrae, has thinned by 15 metres every year since 1997, and its speed of flow has doubled. At this rate the whole Greenland ice sheet would vanish within 140 years. Miami would disappear, as would most of Manhattan. Central London would be flooded. Bangkok, Bombay and Shanghai would lose most of their area. In all, half of humanity would have to move to higher ground. Not only coastal communities will suffer. As mountains lose their glaciers, so people will lose their water supplies. The entire Indian subcontinent will be fighting for survival. As the glaciers disappear from all but the highest peaks, their runoff will cease to power the massive rivers that deliver vital freshwater to hundreds of millions. Water shortages and famine will be the result, destabilising the entire region. And this time the epicentre of the disaster won’t be India, Nepal or Bangladesh, but nuclear-armed Pakistan. Everywhere, ecosystems will unravel as species either migrate or fall out of synch with each other. By the time global temperatures reach two degrees of warming in 2050, more than a third of all living species will face extinction. Chance of avoiding two degrees of global warming: 93%, but only if emissions of greenhouse gases are reduced by 60% over the next 10 years.

BETWEEN TWO AND THREE DEGREES OF WARMING

Up to this point, assuming that governments have planned carefully and farmers have converted to more appropriate crops, not too many people outside subtropical Africa need have starved. Beyond two degrees, however, preventing mass starvation will be as easy as halting the cycles of the moon. First millions, then billions, of people will face an increasingly tough battle to survive. To find anything comparable we have to go back to the Pleistocene – the last epoch of the Tertiary period, 3 million years ago. There were no continental glaciers in the northern hemisphere (trees grew in the Arctic), and sea levels were 25 metres higher than today’s. In this kind of heat, the death of the Amazon is as inevitable as the melting of Greenland. The paper spelling it out is the very one whose apocalyptic message so shocked in 2000. Scientists at the Hadley centre feared that earlier climate models, which showed global warming as a straightforward linear progression, were too simplistic in their assumption that land and the oceans would remain inert as their temperatures rose. Correctly as it would turn out, they predicted positive feedback.Warmer seas absorb less carbon dioxide, leaving more to accumulate in the atmosphere and intensify global warming. On land, matters would be even worse. Huge amounts of carbon are stored in the soil, the half-rotted remains of dead vegetation. The generally accepted estimate is that the soil carbon reservoir contains some 1600 gigatonnes, more than double the entire carbon content of the atmosphere. As soil warms, bacteria accelerate the breakdown of this stored carbon, releasing it into the atmosphere. The end of the world is nigh. A three-degree increase in global temperature – possible as early as 2050 – would throw the carbon cycle into reverse. Instead of absorbing carbon dioxide, vegetation and soils start to release it. So much carbon pours into the atmosphere that it pumps up atmospheric concentrations by 250 parts per million by 2100, boosting global warming by another 1.5C. In other words, the Hadley team had discovered that carbon-cycle feedbacks could tip the planet into runaway global warming by the middle of this century – much earlier than anyone had expected.Confirmation came from the land itself. Climate models are routinely tested against historical data. In this case, scientists checked 25 years’ worth of soil samples from 6,000 sites across the UK. The result was another black joke. As temperatures gradually rose the scientists found that huge amounts of carbon had been released naturally from the soils. They totted it all up and discovered – irony of ironies – that the 13 million tonnes of carbon British soils were emitting annually was enough to wipe out all the country’s efforts to comply with the Kyoto Protocol. All soils will be affected by the rising heat, but none as badly as the Amazon’s. “Catastrophe” is almost too small a word for the loss of the rainforest. Its 7 million square kilometres produce 10% of the world’s entire photosynthetic output from plants. Drought and heat will cripple it; fire will finish it off. In human terms, the effect on the planet will be like cutting off oxygen during an asthma attack. In the US and Australia, people will curse the climate-denying governments of Bush, Trump and Howard. No matter what later administrations may do, it will not be enough to keep the mercury down. With new “super-hurricanes” growing from the warming sea, Houston could be destroyed by 2045, and Australia will be a death trap. “Farming and food production will tip into irreversible decline. Salt water will creep up the stricken rivers, poisoning ground water. Higher temperatures mean greater evaporation, further drying out vegetation and soils, and causing huge losses from reservoirs. In state capitals, heat every year is likely to kill between 8,000 and 15,000 mainly elderly people. It is all too easy to visualise what will happen in Africa. In Central America, too, tens of millions will have little to put on their tables. Even a moderate drought there in 2001 meant hundreds of thousands had to rely on food aid. This won’t be an option when world supplies are stretched to breaking point (grain yields decline by 10% for every degree of heat above 30oC, and at 40oC they are zero). Nobody need look to the US, which will have problems of its own. As the mountains lose their snow, so cities and farms in the west will lose their water and dried-out forests and grasslands will perish at the first spark. The Indian subcontinent meanwhile will be choking on dust. All of human history shows that, given the choice between starving in situ and moving, people move. In the latter part of the century tens of millions of Pakistani citizens may be facing this choice. Pakistan may find itself joining the growing list of failed states, as civil administration collapses and armed gangs seize what little food is left. As the land burns, so the sea will go on rising. Even by the most optimistic calculation, 80% of Arctic sea ice by now will be gone, and the rest will soon follow. New York will flood; the catastrophe that struck eastern England in 1953 will become an unremarkable regular event; and the map of the Netherlands will be torn up by the North Sea. Everywhere, starving people will be on the move – from Central America into Mexico and the US, and from Africa into Europe, where resurgent fascist parties will win votes by promising to keep them out. Chance of avoiding three degrees of global warming: poor if the rise reaches two degrees and triggers carbon-cycle feedbacks from soils and plants.

BETWEEN THREE AND FOUR DEGREES OF WARMING

The stream of refugees will now include those fleeing from coasts to safer interiors – millions at a time when storms hit. Where they persist, coastal cities will become fortified islands. The world economy, too, will be threadbare. As direct losses, social instability and insurance payouts cascade through the system, the funds to support displaced people will be increasingly scarce. Sea levels will be rampaging upwards – in this temperature range, both poles are certain to melt, causing an eventual rise of 50 meters. “I am not suggesting it would be instantaneous. In fact it would take centuries, and probably millennia, to melt all of the Antarctic’s ice. But it could yield sea-level rises of a meter or so every 20 years – far beyond our capacity to adapt.Oxford would sit on one of many coastlines in a UK reduced to an archipelago of tiny islands. More immediately, China is on a collision course with the planet. By 2030, if its people are consuming at the same rate as Americans, they will eat two-thirds of the entire global harvest and burn 100 million barrels of oil a day, or 125% of current world output. That prospect alone contains all the ingredients of catastrophe. But it’s worse than that: By the latter third of the 21st century, if global temperatures are more than three degrees higher than now, China’s agricultural production will crash. It will face the task of feeding 1.5 billion much richer people – 200 million more than now – on two thirds of current supplies. For people throughout much of the world, starvation will be a regular threat; but it will not be the only one. The summer will get longer still, as soaring temperatures reduce forests to tinderwood and cities to boiling morgues. Temperatures in the Home Counties could reach 45C – the sort of climate experienced today in Marrakech. Droughts will put the south-east of England on the global list of water-stressed areas, with farmers competing against cities for dwindling supplies from rivers and reservoirs. Air-conditioning will be mandatory for anyone wanting to stay cool. This in turn will put ever more stress on energy systems, which could pour more greenhouse gases into the air if coal and gas-fired power stations ramp up their output, hydroelectric sources dwindle and renewables fail to take up the slack. The abandonment of the Mediterranean will send even more people north to overcrowded refuges in the Baltic, Scandinavia and the British Isles. Britain will have problems of its own. As flood plains are more regularly inundated, a general retreat out of high risk areas is likely. Millions of people will lose their lifetime investments in houses that become uninsurable and therefore unsaleable? The Lancashire/Humber corridor is expected to be among the worst affected regions, as are the Thames Valley, eastern Devon and towns around the already flood-prone Severn estuary like Monmouth and Bristol. The entire English coast from the Isle of Wight to Middlesbrough is classified as at ‘very high’ or ‘extreme’ risk, as is the whole of Cardigan Bay in Wales. One of the most dangerous of all feedbacks will now be kicking in – the runaway thaw of permafrost. Scientists believe at least 500 billion tonnes of carbon are waiting to be released from the Arctic ice, though none yet has put a figure on what it will add to global warming. One degree? Two? Three? The pointers are ominous.As with Amazon collapse and the carbon-cycle feedback in the three-degree world stabilising global temperatures at four degrees above current levels may not be possible. If we reach three degrees, therefore, that leads inexorably to four degrees, which leads inexorably to five? Chance of avoiding four degrees of global warming: poor, if the rise reaches three degrees and triggers a runaway thaw of permafrost.

BETWEEN FOUR AND FIVE DEGREES OF WARMING

We are looking now at an entirely different planet. Ice sheets have vanished from both poles; rain

forests have burnt up and turned to desert; the dry and lifeless Alps resemble the High Atlas; rising seas are scouring deep into continental interiors. One temptation may be to shift populations from dry areas to the newly thawed regions of the far north, in Canada and Siberia. Even here, though, summers may be too hot for crops to be grown away from the coasts; and there is no guarantee that northern governments will admit southern refugees. Lynas recalls James Lovelock’s suspicion that Siberia and Canada would be invaded by China and the US, each hammering another nail into humanity’s coffin. Any armed conflict, particularly involving nuclear weapons, would of course further increase the planetary surface area uninhabitable for humans. When temperatures were at a similar level 55 million years ago, following a very sudden burst of global warming in the early Eocene, alligators and other subtropical species were living high in the Arctic. What had caused the climate to flip? Suspicion rests on methane hydrate – an ice-like combination of methane and water that forms under the intense cold and pressure of the deep sea and which escapes with explosive force when tapped. Evidence of a submarine landslide off Florida and of huge volcanic eruptions under the North Atlantic, raises the possibility of trapped methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – being released in a giant belch that pushed global temperatures through the roof.Summer heatwaves scorched the vegetation out of continental Spain, leaving a desert terrain which was heavily eroded by winter rainstorms. Palm mangroves grew as far north as England and Belgium, and the Arctic Ocean was so warm that Mediterranean algae thrived. In short, it was a world much like the one we are heading into this century. Although the total amount of carbon in the atmosphere during the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM, as scientists call it, was more than today’s, the rate of increase in the 21st century may be 30 times faster. It may well be the fastest increase the world has ever seen – faster even than the episodes that caused catastrophic mass extinctions. Globalism in the five-degree world will break down into something more like parochialism. Customers will have nothing to buy because producers will have nothing to sell. With no possibility of international aid, migrants will have to force their way into the few remaining habitable enclaves and fight for survival. Where no refuge is available, civil war and a collapse into racial or communal conflict seems the likely outcome. Isolated survivalism, however, may be as impracticable as dialling for room service. How many of us could really trap or kill enough game to feed a family? Even if large numbers of people did successfully manage to fan out into the countryside, wildlife populations would quickly dwindle under the pressure. Supporting a hunter-gatherer lifestyle takes 10 to 100 times the land per person that a settled agricultural community needs. A large-scale resort to survivalism would turn into a further disaster for biodiversity as hungry humans killed and ate anything that moved. Including, perhaps, each other. Invaders do not take kindly to residents denying them food. History suggests that if a stockpile is discovered, the householder and his family may be tortured and killed. Look for comparison to the experience of present-day Somalia, Sudan or Burundi, where conflicts over scarce land and food are at the root of lingering tribal wars and state collapse. Chance of avoiding five degrees of global warming: negligible if the rise reaches four degrees and releases trapped methane from the sea bed.

BETWEEN FIVE AND SIX DEGREES OF WARMING

Although warming on this scale lies within the IPCC’s officially endorsed range of 21st-century possibilities, climate models have little to say about what Lynas, echoing Dante, describes as “the Sixth Circle of Hell”. To see the most recent climatic look alike, we have to turn the geological clock back between 144 million and 65 million years, to the Cretaceous, which ended with the extinction of the dinosaurs. There was an even closer fit at the end of the Permian, 251 million years ago, when global temperatures rose by – yes – six degrees, and 95% of species were wiped out.That episode was the worst ever endured by life on Earth, the closest the planet has come to ending up a dead and desolate rock in space. On land, the only winners were fungi that flourished on dying trees and shrubs. At sea there were only losers. Warm water is a killer. Less oxygen can dissolve, so conditions become stagnant and anoxic. Oxygen-breathing water-dwellers – all the higher forms of life from plankton to sharks – face suffocation. Warm water also expands, and sea levels rose by 20 metres. The resulting “super-hurricanes” hitting the coasts would have triggered flash floods that no living thing could have survived. There are aspects of the so-called “end-Permian extinction” that are unlikely to recur – most importantly, the vast volcanic eruption in Siberia that spread magma hundreds of metres thick over an area bigger than western Europe and shot billions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. That is small comfort, however, for beneath the oceans, another monster stirred – the same that would bring a devastating end to the Palaeocene nearly 200 million years later, and that still lies in wait today. Methane hydrate.What happens when warming water releases pent-up gas from the sea bed: First, a small disturbance drives a gas-saturated parcel of water upwards. As it rises, bubbles begin to appear, as dissolved gas fizzles out with reducing pressure – just as a bottle of lemonade overflows if the top is taken off too quickly. These bubbles make the parcel of water still more buoyant, accelerating its rise through the water. As it surges upwards, reaching explosive force, it drags surrounding water up with it. At the surface, water is shot hundreds of metres into the air as the released gas blasts into the atmosphere. Shockwaves propagate outwards in all directions, triggering more eruptions nearby. The eruption is more than just another positive feedback in the quickening process of global warming. Unlike CO2, methane is flammable. Even in air-methane concentrations as low as 5%, the mixture could ignite from lightning or some other spark and send fireballs tearing across the sky. The effect would be much like that of the fuel-air explosives used by the US and Russian armies – so-called “vacuum bombs” that ignite fuel droplets above a target. According to the CIA, those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringes are likely to suffer many internal injuries, including burst eardrums, severe concussion, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness.” Such tactical weapons, however, are squibs when set against methane-air clouds from oceanic eruptions. Scientists calculate that they could “destroy terrestrial life almost entirely (251m years ago, only one large land animal, the pig-like lystrosaurus, survived). It has been estimated that a large eruption in future could release energy equivalent to 10 to the 8 megatonnes of TNT – 100,000 times more than the world’s entire stockpile of nuclear weapons. Not even Lynas, for all his scientific propriety, can avoid the Hollywood ending. It is not too difficult to imagine the ultimate nightmare, with oceanic methane eruptions near large population centres wiping out billions of people – perhaps in days. Imagine a ‘fuel-air explosive’ fireball racing towards a city – London, say, or Tokyo – the blast wave spreading out from the explosive centre with the speed and force of an atomic bomb. Buildings are flattened, people are incinerated where they stand, or left blind and deaf by the force of the explosion. Mix Hiroshima with post-Katrina New Orleans to get some idea of what such a catastrophe might look like: burnt survivors battling over food, wandering far and wide from empty cities. Then would come hydrogen sulfide from the stagnant oceans. It would be a silent killer: imagine the scene at Bhopal following the Union Carbide gas release in 1984, replayed first at coastal settlements, then continental interiors across the world. At the same time, as the ozone layer came under assault, we would feel the sun’s rays burning into our skin, and the first cell mutations would be triggering outbreaks of cancer among anyone who survived. Dante’s Hell was a place of judgment, where humanity was for ever punished for its sins. With all the remaining forests burning, and the corpses of people, livestock and wildlife piling up in every continent, the six-degree world would be a harsh penalty indeed for the mundane crime of burning fossil energy.

WHY OH WHY DO NOT PEOPLE WANT TO PREVENT INFLICTING THIS IMMENSE SUFFERING ON THEIR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN. WHY OH WHY?

4Agda Simpson, Harumi Kasamatsu and 2 others

Just thinking ……. Merrick Garland should retire

 Just thinking ……. Merrick Garland should retire

It appears that Merrick Garland, the Attorney General and head of the Department of Justice, may not even indict Trump for his many crimes. Garland is a nice person but is not fit to be Attorney General at this critical time in the history of our country. Biden should politely fire him and wish him well and then propose Andrew Weissmann to replace him. Weissman was the Assistant US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York from 1991 to 2002. In this position he prosecuted and convicted the Mafiosos, Genovese, Colombo, Gambin and Gigante. He was then appointed by G.W. Bush to be director of the task force investigating the Enron Scandal. In that role, Weissmann prosecuted and convicted more than 30 people including Enron’s top executives. In 2011 he became General Counsel under Mueller of the FBI, and in 2015-2017 he headed the criminal fraud section at the Department of Justice, and in 2017 was appointed special counsel under Mueller investigating Russian Interference in the Trump White House. Weissmann has a reputation of being the “pit bull” of prosecutors and is exactly the type of person to prosecute Trump for the variety of crimes he has probably committed.

It is likely that the Republican Senators will not vote to hire Weissmann in that position, but Biden could always appoint him as “Acting Attorney General”.

Just thinking....