Dear Reader,
I appreciated hearing from so many GWGers that you were missing your favorite Friday read. I might be inspired to get this back to a weekly schedule - we will see.
Climate Change Summer
Summer ‘21 was supposed to have a serious hot girl summer vibe (and I think it does in NYC) but for the rest of the world it’s turning out to be a hot planet summer.
The season kicked off in fashion when things got HOT in the Pacific North West. We’re talking hotter than Britney in the early 2000’s. It was so hot power lines melted; roads blistered and burst.
Just take a look at this graph - record highs were shattered!!
A group of scientists concluded that human activity made the heatwaves at least 150 times more likely but what does that even mean? I thought Nikos Christidis, a climate scientist with the U.K. Met Office, put it well:
Without human-induced climate change, it would have been almost impossible to hit such record-breaking mean June temperatures in the western United States.
The chances of natural occurrence is once in every tens of thousands of years.
This type of heat is also fuel for the upcoming fire season, which is already off to a scary start with fires burning across Oregon and Northern California and smoke reaching as far as NYC.
Moving on to the other ‘once every ten thousand year’ events that also happened this month.
First it rained A LOT in Germany. Like enough to turn city streets into rivers and float the houses down river. Over 100 people died and thousands of lives were changed forever.
Then it rained in central China. The city of Zhengzhou got a years worth of rain in 3 days. Authorities say the rains displaced more than a million people and at least 63 people have passed.
Did you see the video of people on the flooded subway car? Fortunately these people made it out but there was at least one group of 14 people who didn’t. Imagine being trapped on the 6 train as water slowly fills the car and subway rats (strong swimmers) chew at your legs. This is straight-up nightmare stuff happening right in front of us.
Scientists think that most of the extreme weather can be attributed to changes in the jet stream, which are driven by a warming planet - but this wasn’t supposed to be possible yet. According to most climate models this type of heat shouldn’t have been possible until 2030 at the earliest. Now scientists are re-running the numbers and projecting that events like this – currently estimated to occur once every 1000 years - will occur every 5 to 10 years if the planet continues warming.
To add insult to injury, our response to these disasters is only going to make them worse. When it gets hot out A/C usage skyrockets meaning more (dirty) energy is drawn from the grid and harmful cooling chemicals are released into the atmosphere. In China, to alleviate the flooding they destroyed a dam. So a source of clean energy was destroyed in response to an issue created in large part by dirty energy.
Let’s be honest with each other -
As the author of a (usually) weekly climate newsletter, ignoring these events seems impossible. But writing an issue like this is hard for me. I imagine none of this is really news to GWGers and all the negativity makes me feel like I’m becoming a doomsday preacher - which is not the vibe here at the GWG.
I find all this seriousness leaves my mind running and it feels irresponsible to try and put a positive spin on this. So instead I want to leave you with some questions. I hope to hear from you with your thoughts or other questions you may find yourself wondering - if you reply to this email it will come direct to me.
Are we seeing the first signs that we are already past the point of no return?
Do these natural disasters make you want to more urgently confront climate change? Or maybe you feel more hopeless?
Is the doomsday narrative an effective communication tool? Have we become desensitized?
How do you think communities and countries should respond? Is it worth rebuilding a city that is likely to flood again? Why are the hottest and driest areas of the U.S. also the places growing the fastest?
What happens when extreme weather inevitably forces people to relocate? Will the U.S. accept climate refugees more readily than those fleeing war and violence?
Amplify
Let’s talk about something a bit more optimistic! One of the most important problems on the path to reduced emissions is electricity usage. Most of the power flowing through the grid is still generated by fossil fuels. Renewable energy, like solar and wind, have finally reached cost parity with fossil fuels and are gaining market share every day. But with current technology they will never be able to fully replace fossil fuels.
Society demands energy 100% of the time and simply put - the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. One answer is a grid-scale energy storage system to allow solar energy captured during the day to be used at night, but up until now there has not been a cost efficient solution.
Enter Form Energy. The company has been working in stealth mode for four years and last week announced they have built an inexpensive battery that can discharge power for days using iron, which is one of the most common elements on Earth.
Don’t mistake it - this is big news!!! If they can actually deliver on their promises the dream of a clean energy grid takes a big leap towards reality. This new battery would not just be better at discharging energy steadily over a week - lithium-ion batteries usually have a much shorter discharge time - the storage cost will be $20 per kilowatt-hour of storage vs $50-$80 per kilowatt-hour for current grid-scale batteries. Form Energy thinks they can get costs down to below $10 per kWh with scale.
The WSJ has an article that gets into the details of the battery tech if you want to learn more. The company was founded by battery industry veterans and is backed by Breakthrough Energy (Gates/Bezos) and recently took a big investment from ArcelorMittal, one of the world’s leading iron-ore producers. I have a feeling this is the real deal and we will see this technology making a difference within the next 5 years. Watch this space!
Something Pretty To Look At
Potpourri
The olympic village is powered by hydrogen.
Airstream x Pottery Barn. A 1950’s classic updated for the recently retired?
That’s All Folks!
Feels good to be back. There is something very meditative about writing GWG. Please continue to share with friends and send feedback my way. Best wishes for a relaxing weekend.