#james temple

[mittechnologyreviewdesign]

10 Breakthrough Technologies 2017: Hot Solar Cells

By converting heat to focused beams of light, a new solar device could create cheap and continuous power.

(Read the full story here / Photographs by Ken Richardson)

[cheshirecat-rabbit]

What Musk’s $100 million carbon capture prize could mean

What’s happened: Tesla CEO Elon Musk, now the world's richest person with a net worth north of $180 billion, announced on Twitter that he plans to give away $100 million of it as a prize for the "best carbon capture technology." He says he’ll provide more details next week.

What is carbon capture? It can refer to methods that prevent greenhouse gas pollution escaping from power plants and factories, or various ways of pulling it out of the atmosphere. Some startups are developing so-called direct-air capture machines that pluck carbon dioxide molecules from the air. Other groups are exploring ways of using minerals, trees, plants and soil to pull down the greenhouse gas.

A catch: Neither on-site carbon capture or air removal are happening on large scales today, however, principally because they're highly expensive and there's limited value for the captured gas right now. Money aside, one thing Musk has a particular knack for is generating attention. And this is a space in need of it. 

Read the full story.

—James Temple

[cheshirecat-rabbit]

The developing world has hit the brakes on clean energy

The news: Clean-energy investments in the developing world plummeted last year while coal use reached a record high.

Worries: That’s bad news for the climate. Most of the world’s economic expansion in the coming decades will be in nations like China, India, and other emerging markets. So powering that growth with fossil fuels, rather than renewables, threatens to lock in soaring levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

The numbers: Investments in solar, wind, and similar projects fell to $133 billion in 2018, down from $169 billion the prior year, according to BloombergNEF’s annual survey of more than 100 emerging markets. China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, accounted for most of the decline.

Elsewhere: Clean-energy investments fell by $2.4 billion in India and $2.7 billion in Brazil, the report found. 

One bit of good news is that investments did rise outside of those three nations, ticking up by $4 billion, with Vietnam, South Africa, Mexico, and Morocco putting in the most resources, BloombergNEF found. And overall, more clean-energy capacity than fossil-fuel capacity was added in 2018.

The really bad news: It now appears that China has kicked off a new coal building boom. “An increase in China’s coal power capacity is not compatible with the Paris climate agreement to hold warming well below 2 °C,” the report concluded.

—James Temple

[cheshirecat-rabbit]

California advances an ambitious climate policy that should be a model for the world

On late Tuesday, the California Assembly passed a bill requiring 100 percent of the state’s electricity to come from carbon-free sources by the end of 2045. This puts one of the world’s most aggressive clean-energy policies on track for the governor’s desk.

Movin’ on up: The new bill also moves up the state’s earlier time line to reach 50 percent renewables from 2030 to 2026. But notably, California regulators have said the state’s major utilities could reach that milestone as early as 2020. This underscores the rapid pace at which the energy transformation has unfolded since the state put its renewable standards in place in 2002.

The testing grounds: California is acting as a test bed for what’s technically achievable, providing a massive market for the rollout of clean-energy technologies and building a body of knowledge that other states and nations can leverage, says energy economist Severin Borenstein. “We are showing that you can operate a grid with high levels of intermittent renewables,” he says. “That’s something that can be exported to the rest of the world.”

—James Temple

[cheshirecat-rabbit]

Scientists have designed a longer-lasting lithium-oxygen battery

Packing more energy into batteries is the key to delivering electric cars with longer range and smartphones that can last days.

The promise: Lithium-oxygen batteries represent one of the more promising paths toward that end. They could boost energy density by an order of magnitude above conventional lithium-ion batteries—in theory, at least. A paper published yesterday in Scienceaddressed some of the major hurdles to converting that potential into commercial reality.

The challenge: As a lithium-oxygen battery discharges, oxygen is converted into reactive compounds that corrode the battery's components over time. That, in turn, limits its recharging ability—and any real-world utility. To get around the problem researchers switched the cathode material, used a molten salt electrolyte, and raised the battery's operating temperature to 150 ˚C, which together made the batteries more resilient to repeated recharging.

Wait for it ... But Linda Nazar, a co-author of the study, stresses that the researchers haven't provided a practical design for commercial production of lithium-oxygen batteries, which she says is at least more than 15 years away. "We may be infinity from commercialization—as our battery is designed—but more importantly this concept will hopefully lead to new designs that may get us there," she said in an email.

—James Temple

[cheshirecat-rabbit]

This summer’s extreme heat may just be the start of a super-hot stretch

Climate change is almost certainly causing or exacerbating many extreme weather events by creating drier, hotter conditions and throwing off the polar jet stream. And, scientists continue to remind us, it’s all just getting started.

Going to extremes: A study in Nature Communications this week found that we may be entering a naturally warmer period, which could magnify the effects of human-influenced climate change. That could boost the odds of “extreme warm events” from now through 2022.

Approaching “Hothouse Earth”: Such natural fluctuations will continue, but climate research consistently points to a much warmer future over the long term. A study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warned there’s a “significant risk” of a “Hothouse Earth” scenario, in which crossing certain temperature thresholds could drive temperatures higher still by, for example, releasing carbon currently locked up in permafrost.

High costs and lost lives: Increasingly common extreme weather events could very quickly strain emergency funds, insurance reserves, and other resources for dealing with these disasters. Such events have already cost lives, and the toll is all but guaranteed to get worse.

—James Temple

[jtrudz]

james temple. dont call him james potter he hates the harry potter series

btw he looks like tyler blackburn and makes indie rock music

grew up on the road with his cool rock tar dad and his band. had two other friends who were kids of his dad’s band members and they made their first band when they were thirteen

they were cool u know but they broke up and then james started a new band with two other people and they were even cooler

went solo three years ago and is working on his second album

kind of pretentious kind of weird kind of swears a lot

plays a lot of instruments and loves to collab with people

addicted to tattoos