All Things Environment

[Typical Lax Dad]

Ivory Billed Woodpecker finally declared extinct. It is a shame, magnificent bird. I suspect however they have basically been out competed in their 200+ year fight for survival by their cousin the Pileated Woodpecker in its equally long term fight for survival, an equally magnificent bird.

In the past year I have observed a Pileated Woodpecker on a half dozen occasions. That's a half dozen more observations than I had had in my previous 70 years.

Ivory Billed Woodpecker.jpeg

Good book…. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009 ... extinction

[jhu72]

Ivory Billed Woodpecker finally declared extinct. It is a shame, magnificent bird. I suspect however they have basically been out competed in their 200+ year fight for survival by their cousin the Pileated Woodpecker in its equally long term fight for survival, an equally magnificent bird.

In the past year I have observed a Pileated Woodpecker on a half dozen occasions. That's a half dozen more observations than I had had in my previous 70 years.

Ivory Billed Woodpecker.jpeg

Good book…. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009 ... extinction

... I just read the first half of the article you posted - the frog extinction story -- fantastic, very interesting. Will have to come back to read the rest. I stopped at the section describing the Alvarez, father & son research that identified the earth's Iridium band that led to the discovery of the dinosaur extinction meteor.

At the time the Alvarezes were doing this research I was working at Berkeley on heavy ion meson decay, quark signature research. This research was directed by Louis Alvarez, the father, and my thesis advisor from Hopkins (Leon Madansky). I had just received my degree and had agreed to stick around for a year as a post doc as a favor to my thesis advisor to straw boss a number of his research projects. I was recruited by Louis Alvarez to join his research team as an assistant professor at UCLA. He was in the process of moving from UC Berkeley to UCLA. I turned the offer down as I had decided to go to work in corporate science (medical imaging, in the early days of CT commercialization). It paid much better and advancement was much quicker. Have always wondered where I would have ended up if I had gone to work for Alvarez.

[CU88]

Electric Cars Have Hit an Inflection Point

One sign EVs are no longer the auto industry’s neglected stepchild? Norway could sell its last gas-powered car as soon as next year.

By Robinson Meyer

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters ... nt/620233/


Automakers’ $500 Billion Bet on Electric Cars

One theme of this newsletter is that the world’s physical infrastructure will have to massively change if we want to decarbonize the economy by 2050, which the United Nations has said is necessary to avoid the worst effects of the climate crisis. This won’t be as simple as passing a carbon tax or a clean-electricity mandate: Wires will have to be strung; solar farms will have to be erected; industries will have to be remade. And although that kind of change can be orchestrated only by the government (hence the importance of the infrastructure bills in Congress), consumers and companies will ultimately do most of the work to make it happen.

Take electric cars, for instance. An electric car is an expensive, highly specialized piece of technology, but building one takes even more expensive, specialized technology—tools that tend to be custom-made, large and heavy, and spread across a factory or the world. And if you want those tools to produce a car in a few years, you have to start planning now.

That’s exactly what Ford is doing: Last night, the automaker and SK Innovation, a South Korean battery manufacturer, announced that they were spending $11.4 billion to build two new multi-factory centers in Tennessee and Kentucky that are scheduled to begin production in 2025. The facilities, which will hire a combined 11,000 employees, will manufacture lithium-ion vehicle batteries and assemble electric F-series pickup trucks. While Ford already has several factories in Kentucky, this will be its first plant in Tennessee in six decades. The 3,600-acre Tennessee facility, located an hour outside Memphis, will be Ford’s largest campus ever—and its first new American vehicle-assembly plant in decades.

The politics of this announcement are worth dwelling on. Ford and SK Innovation were lured to Tennessee with $500 million in incentives; Kentucky gave them $300 million and more than 1,500 acres of free land. Ford’s workers in Detroit have historically been unionized—and, indeed, a source of power in the national labor movement. But with these new factories, Ford is edging into a more anti-union environment: Both Tennessee and Kentucky are right-to-work states, meaning that local laws prevent unions from requiring that only unionized employees work in a certain facility. In an interview, Jim Farley, Ford’s CEO, played coy about whether either factory will be unionized. (Last week, the company announced that it was investing $250 million, a comparative pittance, to expand EV production at its unionized Michigan facilities.)

That news might depress those on the left who hope that old-school unions, such as the United Auto Workers, can enjoy the benefits of electrification. But you can see the outline of a potential political bargain here. Climate-concerned Democrats get to see EV production expand in the U.S., while climate-wary Republicans get to add jobs in their home states. (And unions get shafted.) Whether that bargain can successfully grow support for more federal climate policy, further accelerating the financial-political-technological feedback loop that I’ve dubbed “the green vortex,” remains to be seen.

More important than the announcement is what it portends. In the past, environmentalists have complained that even when the law has required that automakers make climate-friendly cars, they haven’t treated them as a major product. It’s easy to tune out climate-friendly announcements as so much corporate greenwashing, but Ford’s two new factories represent real money: The automaker’s share of the investment exceeds its 2019 annual earnings. This investment is sufficiently large that Ford will treat EVs as a serious business line.

And if you look around globally, you’ll see that Ford isn’t alone. EVs are no longer the neglected stepchild of the global car industry. Here are some recent headlines:

Nine percent of new cars sold globally this year will be EVs or plug-in hybrids, according to S&P Global. That’s up from 3 percent two years ago, a staggering, iPhone-like rise.

GM, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, BMW, and the parent company of Fiat-Chrysler have all pledged that by 2030, at least 40 percent of their new cars worldwide will run on a non-gasoline source. A few years ago, the standard forecast was that half of new cars sold in the U.S. would be electric by 2050. That timeline has moved up significantly not only in America, but around the world. (In fact, counter to its high-tech self-image, America is the laggard in this global transition. The two largest markets for EVs worldwide are China and the European Union.)
More remarkably (and importantly), automakers are spending like they actually believe that goal: The auto industry as a whole will pump more than $500 billion into EV investment by 2030. Ford’s investment in these two plants represents less than a third of its planned total $30 billion investment in EV production by 2025, and that’s relatively small compared with its peers’. Volkswagen has announced more than $60 billion in investment. Honda has committed $46 billion.

Norway could phase out gas cars ahead of schedule. The country has one of the world’s most robust pro-EV policies, and it is still outperforming its own mandates. In the most recent accounting period, eight out of 10 cars had some sort of electric drivetrain. If the current trend holds, Norway would sell its last gas car in April of next year—and while I doubt the demise will be that steep, consumer preferences are running well ahead of its schedule to ban new gas-car sales by 2025.

I won’t make predictions or declare that a tipping point for EVs has arrived. But if mass adoption of electric cars was hitting an inflection point, wouldn’t it look, well, something like this?

[Typical Lax Dad]

Ivory Billed Woodpecker finally declared extinct. It is a shame, magnificent bird. I suspect however they have basically been out competed in their 200+ year fight for survival by their cousin the Pileated Woodpecker in its equally long term fight for survival, an equally magnificent bird.

In the past year I have observed a Pileated Woodpecker on a half dozen occasions. That's a half dozen more observations than I had had in my previous 70 years.

Ivory Billed Woodpecker.jpeg

Good book…. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009 ... extinction

... I just read the first half of the article you posted - the frog extinction story -- fantastic, very interesting. Will have to come back to read the rest. I stopped at the section describing the Alvarez, father & son research that identified the earth's Iridium band that led to the discovery of the dinosaur extinction meteor.

At the time the Alvarezes were doing this research I was working at Berkeley on heavy ion meson decay, quark signature research. This research was directed by Louis Alvarez, the father, and my thesis advisor from Hopkins (Leon Madansky). I had just received my degree and had agreed to stick around for a year as a post doc as a favor to my thesis advisor to straw boss a number of his research projects. I was recruited by Louis Alvarez to join his research team as an assistant professor at UCLA. He was in the process of moving from UC Berkeley to UCLA. I turned the offer down as I had decided to go to work in corporate science (medical imaging, in the early days of CT commercialization). It paid much better and advancement was much quicker. Have always wondered where I would have ended up if I had gone to work for Alvarez.

Unbelievable. It’s a good read too!

[jhu72]

Ivory Billed Woodpecker finally declared extinct. It is a shame, magnificent bird. I suspect however they have basically been out competed in their 200+ year fight for survival by their cousin the Pileated Woodpecker in its equally long term fight for survival, an equally magnificent bird.

In the past year I have observed a Pileated Woodpecker on a half dozen occasions. That's a half dozen more observations than I had had in my previous 70 years.

Ivory Billed Woodpecker.jpeg

Good book…. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009 ... extinction

... I just read the first half of the article you posted - the frog extinction story -- fantastic, very interesting. Will have to come back to read the rest. I stopped at the section describing the Alvarez, father & son research that identified the earth's Iridium band that led to the discovery of the dinosaur extinction meteor.

At the time the Alvarezes were doing this research I was working at Berkeley on heavy ion meson decay, quark signature research. This research was directed by Louis Alvarez, the father, and my thesis advisor from Hopkins (Leon Madansky). I had just received my degree and had agreed to stick around for a year as a post doc as a favor to my thesis advisor to straw boss a number of his research projects. I was recruited by Louis Alvarez to join his research team as an assistant professor at UCLA. He was in the process of moving from UC Berkeley to UCLA. I turned the offer down as I had decided to go to work in corporate science (medical imaging, in the early days of CT commercialization). It paid much better and advancement was much quicker. Have always wondered where I would have ended up if I had gone to work for Alvarez.

Unbelievable. It’s a good read too!

... finished the article. The final bat extinction story was a good read as well. Did a little research, picking up where the article left off. The obvious question is "Why now? What has change?" That still remains a question. It appears that the fungus came from Europe, but not clear when or how. Apparently the Eurasian bats are immune. It appears a temporary work around might be designed, as UV light is know to mutate the fungus and the fungus has no ability to repair itself. The bad news is, since the original discovery of the problem, the fungus has found its way into bat caves in 38 states.

... what is clear is that as we move into the future there are going to be an infinity of jobs in the physical and biological sciences and engineering adjusting to and managing climate change.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Ivory Billed Woodpecker finally declared extinct. It is a shame, magnificent bird. I suspect however they have basically been out competed in their 200+ year fight for survival by their cousin the Pileated Woodpecker in its equally long term fight for survival, an equally magnificent bird.

In the past year I have observed a Pileated Woodpecker on a half dozen occasions. That's a half dozen more observations than I had had in my previous 70 years.

Ivory Billed Woodpecker.jpeg

Good book…. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009 ... extinction

... I just read the first half of the article you posted - the frog extinction story -- fantastic, very interesting. Will have to come back to read the rest. I stopped at the section describing the Alvarez, father & son research that identified the earth's Iridium band that led to the discovery of the dinosaur extinction meteor.

At the time the Alvarezes were doing this research I was working at Berkeley on heavy ion meson decay, quark signature research. This research was directed by Louis Alvarez, the father, and my thesis advisor from Hopkins (Leon Madansky). I had just received my degree and had agreed to stick around for a year as a post doc as a favor to my thesis advisor to straw boss a number of his research projects. I was recruited by Louis Alvarez to join his research team as an assistant professor at UCLA. He was in the process of moving from UC Berkeley to UCLA. I turned the offer down as I had decided to go to work in corporate science (medical imaging, in the early days of CT commercialization). It paid much better and advancement was much quicker. Have always wondered where I would have ended up if I had gone to work for Alvarez.

Unbelievable. It’s a good read too!

... finished the article. The final bat extinction story was a good read as well. Did a little research, picking up where the article left off. The obvious question is "Why now? What has change?" That still remains a question. It appears that the fungus came from Europe, but not clear when or how. Apparently the Eurasian bats are immune. It appears a temporary work around might be designed, as UV light is know to mutate the fungus and the fungus has no ability to repair itself. The bad news is, since the original discovery of the problem, the fungus has found its way into bat caves in 38 states.

... what is clear is that as we move into the future there are going to be an infinity of jobs in the physical and biological sciences and engineering adjusting to and managing climate change.

Yep. My daughter gave me that book for Christmas. It was on my list.

[jhu72]

First ever lionfish observed in British Isles. The fish is an extremely invasive species.

[Farfromgeneva]

First ever lionfish observed in British Isles. The fish is an extremely invasive species.

Can I get one for my son?

[jhu72]

Decades long albedo tracking study shows earth's albedo has decrease significantly. This is not good.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Decades long albedo tracking study shows earth's albedo has decrease significantly. This is not good.

That warning was in Al Gore’s film. We should keep ignoring it.

[DMac]

In the past year I have observed a Pileated Woodpecker on a half dozen occasions. That's a half dozen more observations than I had had in my previous 70 years.

Not saying you see one every day but it's not all that uncommon to see those in these parts, have seen quite a number of them (probably doesn't hurt that the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge is nearby). Always know when one is in the hood as they make quite a distinctive sound. Good sized birds, make damn big holes in trees and a lot of noise while doing so. Impressive looking birds indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewfTDsKKCWA

[jhu72]

In the past year I have observed a Pileated Woodpecker on a half dozen occasions. That's a half dozen more observations than I had had in my previous 70 years.

Not saying you see one every day but it's not all that uncommon to see those in these parts, have seen quite a number of them (probably doesn't hurt that the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge is nearby). Always know when one is in the hood as they make quite a distinctive sound. Good sized birds, make damn big holes in trees and a lot of noise while doing so. Impressive looking birds indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewfTDsKKCWA

They are very large birds. When I first saw one, I didn't recognize it and immediately wondered how a terradactyl had escaped extinction. Then I saw two more in flight over my property, apparently hanging with the first one. They do make huge holes in trees and agree they are noisy. Haven't seen much of them in the last few months.

[cradleandshoot]

Decades long albedo tracking study shows earth's albedo has decrease significantly. This is not good.

That warning was in Al Gore’s film. We should keep ignoring it.

Fat Al made about 1000 predictions of environmental doom. I guess the old saying is true.. a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile. You got skin in the Fat Al game? You betting the farm on carbon credits? You able to sleep at night knowing in a couple hundred years some bad things might happen? It ain't nuttin that trillions and trillions and trillions of taxpayer money can't fix.

[Typical Lax Dad]

Decades long albedo tracking study shows earth's albedo has decrease significantly. This is not good.

That warning was in Al Gore’s film. We should keep ignoring it.

Fat Al made about 1000 predictions of environmental doom. I guess the old saying is true.. a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile. You got skin in the Fat Al game? You betting the farm on carbon credits? You able to sleep at night knowing in a couple hundred years some bad things might happen? It ain't nuttin that trillions and trillions and trillions of taxpayer money can't fix.

RINs

[cradleandshoot]

Decades long albedo tracking study shows earth's albedo has decrease significantly. This is not good.

That warning was in Al Gore’s film. We should keep ignoring it.

Fat Al made about 1000 predictions of environmental doom. I guess the old saying is true.. a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile. You got skin in the Fat Al game? You betting the farm on carbon credits? You able to sleep at night knowing in a couple hundred years some bad things might happen? It ain't nuttin that trillions and trillions and trillions of taxpayer money can't fix.

RINs

I'm guessing you gotta lotta skoots invested in carbon credits?

[Typical Lax Dad]

Decades long albedo tracking study shows earth's albedo has decrease significantly. This is not good.

That warning was in Al Gore’s film. We should keep ignoring it.

Fat Al made about 1000 predictions of environmental doom. I guess the old saying is true.. a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile. You got skin in the Fat Al game? You betting the farm on carbon credits? You able to sleep at night knowing in a couple hundred years some bad things might happen? It ain't nuttin that trillions and trillions and trillions of taxpayer money can't fix.

RINs

I'm guessing you gotta lotta skoots invested in carbon credits?

Don’t you?

[cradleandshoot]

Decades long albedo tracking study shows earth's albedo has decrease significantly. This is not good.

That warning was in Al Gore’s film. We should keep ignoring it.

Fat Al made about 1000 predictions of environmental doom. I guess the old saying is true.. a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in awhile. You got skin in the Fat Al game? You betting the farm on carbon credits? You able to sleep at night knowing in a couple hundred years some bad things might happen? It ain't nuttin that trillions and trillions and trillions of taxpayer money can't fix.

RINs

I'm guessing you gotta lotta skoots invested in carbon credits?

Don’t you?

I would have to go through my portfolio. My financial advisor has me invested all over the board. There would be some irony on my part if I'm invested in fat Al Inc and don't even know it.

[youthathletics]

You might as well profit off it, just like everyone else.

[cradleandshoot]

You might as well profit off it, just like everyone else.

You are correct. I could make myself a little cardboard sign and hang out by the express way on ramps... "Will work for carbon credits"

[ardilla secreta]

In the past year I have observed a Pileated Woodpecker on a half dozen occasions. That's a half dozen more observations than I had had in my previous 70 years.

Not saying you see one every day but it's not all that uncommon to see those in these parts, have seen quite a number of them (probably doesn't hurt that the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge is nearby). Always know when one is in the hood as they make quite a distinctive sound. Good sized birds, make damn big holes in trees and a lot of noise while doing so. Impressive looking birds indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewfTDsKKCWA

Not unusual to see woodpecker here either. I typically see a larger species (forget the name) in wooded areas, but regularly see the smaller and attractive Downy woodpecker in my city neighborhoods.