delgato

Biggest stock surge since October 2008 too, reeks of market shorting. Wish I was rich and morally bankrupt enough to profit off this.

I just watched Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure yesterday and though the soundtrack is not original, the soundtrack made the movie.

In these trying times I am still chuckling hours after seeing this, thanks for the meme.

If you can’t decipher this writing system, there’s a few other ones that need a look.

What an exciting study. The TL;DR:

GEOlogy is the study of the earth and how it changes over time. At a high level the Earth is sustained by the geodynamo - electromagnetic fluid movement in the core and mantle that sustains mantle convection and plate tectonics. The Moon doesn’t have any of that, so geological processes on the Moon is of intense study. In this paper they found pretty good evidence of contractional tectonics - the surface wrinkling from the Moon shrinking and changes in orbit - effecting all sides of the Moon in the form of scarps which induce moonquakes. This has implications for mapping the surface for future exploratory missions and long-term habitation (don’t want to have a colony in a seismically unstable place).

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.

Legodalf

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.