The article literally cites “relentless overplowing” as a primary cause. Of course that means removing the existing plants (i.e. native grasses) in the context of converting the prairies to farmland. Not really sure what additional context you are providing, or expecting the article to convey here. Cool pic though.

Absolutely, they are already experiencing flooding, fires, and permafrost melting is destroying tons of infrastructure. It seems like they’ll fare better than many countries but nobody is a “winner” here.

The problem is a simple paved lot can be redeveloped into something useful easily. Once there are EV chargers and and solar roofs in place, it’s that much harder to break the cycle of car dependency. Places like Walmart/Costco/strip malls are probably better off just placing panels on the roof instead of building a new structure for them. I’d actually extend that to just about any building. This isn’t really happening at any scale on its own, which tells us it’s less economical than other installations. Forcing higher cost installations while also entrenching parking lots that often shouldn’t exist seems like poor policy, although I’m sure there are some places where it makes enough sense. But if we care about preserving farmland and wild spaces, stopping sprawl is the only real policy that matters, and that means stopping car dependency and parking lots.

Snow will accumulate on solar panels (source - have rooftop solar on Colorado). Panels are glass so snow will slide off depending on angle, and since panels are dark they tend to melt snow quicker once they get started melting, typically causing the snow to slide off dramatically.

Hi, I have solar on my roof in Colorado. Solar panels are glass, so depending on angle snow will accumulate and slide off dramatically if not for snow bars either on the bottom of the panels, or more commonly the roof below the solar panels. The structure needs to be able handle the snow load and be designed so snow doesn’t slide off and kill people.

Appreciate the context, thanks! It seems like, as with all things, a diversity of stresses on the body builds resiliency. I rock climb and while the shoes have improved over the years, they are still brutal on the feet. You can feel how they mold your feet because if you take a month off, everything feels totally different and much tighter. While I’m a little worried about damage, I’ve never had any issues but I mostly attribute that to wearing a bunch of different shoes for different activities, plus barefoot when I can.

There’s definitely some truth to the asymetric way we talk about heating dominated vs cooling dominated climates. I don’t hear people criticize folks for living in Alaska or the upper Midwest or NE despite their massive heating costs, and this type of living isn’t inherently any more noble than AC use (although synthetic refrigerants are all awful, but we use them for heat pumps too). Lack of water is a bigger issue arguably, cold is seen as more survivable than extreme heat, but carbon is carbon. The American SW used to have more water though, and their civilizations lived quite differently than modern Phoenicians.

Example numbers - I live in Colorado, have a high end cold climate heat pump, and use 10x the energy seasonally to heat my home vs cool my home. I also make excess solar power even when cooling in the summer, but winter is another story. I used 10 kWh yesterday when it was 100F (an amount an EV owner might casually use every single day), almost all covered entirely by my solar panels (except dusk until about 10pm when it shut off), while the coldest day last winter was -15F and I used almost 80 kWh that day, almost zero of it from solar because snow on the roof. We’re not going to get everyone to move at the macro level, so micro level movements, resiliency, and adapting to the environment rather than fighting it make the most sense.

The grasshopper and ant parable is about preparation and not the virtue of winter. It’s equally applicable to heat waves, storm surges, flooding, water, etc.

I understand what each of these words mean, but have no idea what you’re saying.

It absolutely has something to do with EVs, because there are massive new factories spewing out PFAS exclusively for the production of PVDF for batteries for EVs. You can just ignore this link. That being said, we absolutely need to regulate these chemical companies and that’s the “main issue”. Pretending like these real issues are FUD isn’t helpful though because the actual FUDsters don’t care about reality anyway. Even the EU has a special exemption for PFAS for EV battery production.

UCI takes a classic approach to racing so that the bikes don’t become the story, and that’s ok. Recumbents are weird, and nobody is stopping you or anyone else from creating a recumbent league. There has already been a gravel UCI WC since 2022 as well. Disc brakes weren’t universally praised immediately either - it took years for the pieces the fall into place, like carbon rims, wider tires, through axles, etc. and now everyone uses them. I really fail to see the harm here over “slow” adoption. You can’t please everyone.

I’m the opposite, I think a proper show with professional fireworks is super fun but clowns setting off tiny loud POS fireworks randomly over the course of several hours are just annoying. They don’t have the boom boom, they don’t make much light, and people just set them off in residential areas near kids/dogs.

All I know is the “average” person has slightly less than one testicle.

Not sure why you jump to “blame”. It’s about awareness of reality. You’re more than welcome to raise awareness about the damage of corporate overlords, which is what’s needed to do something about it politically. We alll need to talk about things to change things.

Wattage is power, not energy. But I still generally prefer carbon as a metric because that’s the climate issue, so by focusing on it directly we can make more informed decisions. It also incorporates time of day/seasonal (peak) impacts implicitly, which also have profound effects on the grid, more than total energy used. The essence of our comments is the same though.

I’m only seeing a “short version” linked that has one question (and a horrible one at that, it’s a ranking of 5 things that are all about “average Americans”). Based on this question alone, I’m forced to assume the test itself was stupid yet their conclusion is likely correct.

“New generation of engineers” is a bit cringe. The old generation knew thermodynamics pretty damn well. All that’s changed is they’re using R290 refrigerants and variable speed compressors now, but those don’t change anything from a physics perspective. COP is fun but it’s not even the right metric to use from a policy perspective, just like MPG. And despite being unitless, COP suffers from the same exagerative effect as MPG numbers. What matters is the carbon associated with delivering BTUs to a home, so here you can have the ridiculous case of delivering more BTUs at a higher carbon cost achieving a higher SCOP than the same exact heat pump delivering fewer BTUs at a lower total carbon cost achieving a lower SCOP for a better insulated home, and the person with the higher SCOP bragging about it like a clown. At least when the government tests COP it’s a standardized test so you can actually compared equipment (somewhat).

Regardless, nerds gonna nerd and no harm done (and I also track real time energy use of my heat pump, so I consider myself a nerd).

Not sure where you’re located, but there are often significant incentives for heat pumps. If you’re US and low/moderate income, there are big programs ramping up via the IRA that will cover a large percentage of the costs, assuming you’re not in a total brain dead state.

Ultimately we must do the best with what’s available to us, just like you’re doing. Electrify everything, get the most efficient stuff you can, and vote and trust your regulators are decarbonizing the grid. I’m in CO and although I am on track to overproduce on an annual basis with my 8 kW system, I’m not even close to matching my usage daily and especially not seasonally (good luck in January when my heat pump is cranking and I have a foot of snow on the panels). I’m able to retire my own RECS for my production so at least Xcel doesn’t get to use my solar to meet their targets, but I’m clearly very heavily dependent on their grid.

We’re maybe a decade behind CA in solar adoption and although I’m aggressively compensated by our current rate structure, that will surely change when the duck grows a belly here and solar is worth jack shit at high noon. It’s a fascinating industry.

You’re still making the mistake of treating dems like some single monolith. It’s a coalition of just about everything that isn’t MAGA at this point, covering all sorts of ideals, yours being just one small part. The answer is still “get a majority of reps that aren’t asswipes” and then we’ll get legislation we want.

As to DC statehood, it would have gone through if not for Manchin because the Senate “majority” at the time hinged on his support. We need to win these seats with bigger majorities, period, and then they’ll pass better bills. The overwhelming majorty of Dems support DC statehood, saying “they won’t do it” is not a great take when they literally didn’t have the votes.

Incredibly detailed article, thanks for sharing. I would like to see more detail on the conversions efficiencies however. We already know the economics of green hydrogen are quite poor without free renewable energy, so adding more conversion steps, accounting for losses and warming impacts from leaks, and then finally burning such fuels, often for low value uses like process heat (steel is another story) seems just awful when we have so much lower hanging fruit to worry about.

Clearly there will be some niche uses for these types of fuels and ergo they must have a pathway to be carbon neutral, but at this stage it all feels like a massive distraction that conveniently preserves existing fossil infrastructure, which will undoubtedly result in it being used for fossil interests in the meantime.