Antarctica found to have 138 Underwater Volcanoes
Which accounts for a lot of the melting caused by "global warming"
If you check out images of Antarctica today, it might seem like one long flat sheet of ice (except for the mountains and cliffs, of course). Underneath, though, it’s a whole different story
The ice over the top of everything is an average of 1.4 miles thick, but beneath it are rocky mountains, volcanoes, and canyons that have been trapped there for millions of years.
Satellite data and radar surveys have made it possible to see the topography of the bedrock with startling clarity, and we have a pretty amazing map known as BedMachine Antarctica.
The map was the culmination of years of research by 19 different institutes around the world, including NASA, the National Science Foundation, Australia’s Cooperative Research Centres Programme, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the British Antarctic Survey, to name a few.
Looking at it is like having X-ray vision, and the data from the map is a gold mine for scientific communities around the world.
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One of the biggest surprises the research uncovered was how huge the Denman Glacier is actually – more than 11,500 feet below sea level, making it the deepest point on continental Earth.
Professor Mathieu Morlighem, an associate professor at the University of California Irvine, issued a statement on the finding back in 2019.
“Older maps suggested a shallower canyon, but that wasn’t possibly; something was missing. With conservation of mass, by combining existing radar survey and ice motion data, we know how much ice flows through the canyon – which, by our calculations, reaches 3,500 meters below sea level, the deepest point on land.
Since it’s relatively narrow, it has to be deep to allow that much ice mass to reach the coast.”
The fact that Antarctica has volcanic tendencies also comes as a bit of a surprise to some, even though there are 138 volcanoes in West Antarctica alone.
Most are dormant, but around nine of them remain active to this day. Mount Erebus is 12,448 feet tall and is the southernmost active volcano on the planet.
https://principia-scientific.com/antarctica-found-to-have-138-underwater-volcanoes/
*************************************************Coming Clean on Clean Energy: It’s a Dirty Business
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you are probably aware of the massive push to transition to green energy. The goal is to have wind and solar replace coal and natural gas; the electric vehicle (EV) will supposedly replace internal combustion engines. Directives are coming from the highest office in the land; the current administration has made green energy a large part of its agenda.
We are being told that these technologies are clean and will save the planet from climate change. However, these alternative forms of energy being espoused are riddled with their own problems.
Hidden behind the solar panels, wind turbines, and EV batteries are some dirty secrets that get swept under the rug and ignored by climate enthusiasts. Fossil fuels are constantly put under a microscope and condemned as an evil destructive polluter; green energy is typically put on a pedestal. Green energy, however, is not as perfect and wonderful as we are made to believe. Yet, we are putting a lot of trust into these energy sources, without considering their ramifications.
The American Consumer Institute just released a report detailing many of the environmental impacts associated with the so-called green energy forms being heavily promoted. The life cycle of all three—the wind turbine, solar panel, and EV battery—involve significant environmental consequences that should not be overlooked and need to be part of the discussion when implementing energy policies.
One of the biggest issues involved with these forms is the extraction and manufacturing processes of various critical minerals that are required for wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries. Many underdeveloped nations, where there’s an abundance of minerals, are at risk. The operations and procedures not only overtake land but contaminate surrounding soil and water sources. In the worst cases, this work is accomplished through slave labor.
Various toxins and other greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, where workers and even nearby communities are potentially affected. Landscape is tarnished and various animal habitats are shrinking and/or experiencing stress. The massive amount of land occupied by both wind and solar may never be recoverable.
China dominates the green energy supply chains, but their environmental standards are subpar. CO2 emissions associated with refineries in China are 1.5 times greater than those in the EU or U.S.
All three energy sources are also creating a huge waste problem. Since any kind of recycling is very limited on a large scale, more than 90% wind turbine blades, solar panels, and EV batteries end up in landfills. By 2050 it is predicted that used turbine blades will exceed 43 million tons of waste worldwide. Solar waste is predicted to be close to 80 million tons. And with the U.S. projecting 33 million EVs on the road by 2030, that is a lot of batteries to end up in landfills.
Ironically, the same folks who want to charge customers for every plastic bag they use at the grocery store, out of fear of single-use plastics ending up in landfills, don’t seem to have a problem with potentially toxic machinery filling that space instead.
In a penchant for trying to solve one crisis, we are creating others.
Some of the environmental impacts and hazards posed by green energy are far more detrimental than fossil fuels, and yet the latter is often dismissed. Such risks associated with green technologies should actually be an argument against vigorous pursuit of them.
Each energy source, including fossil fuels, should be considered as part of an all-of-the-above strategy for supplying the necessary energy to power homes, businesses, and the U.S. economy at large. All of them come with some degree of environmental concerns, and each should be weighed and measured—along with costs, logistics, reliability, and geopolitical factors—when developing public policy. Instead of completely trying to phase out fossil fuels, a robust and healthy energy mix ought to be established; we need a balanced approach that does not breed additional problems.
It is past time to come clean on so-called clean energy. The real-life consequences and detrimental effects of it demand more honest conversations and a thoughtful course of action.
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Renewables will not magically make fossil fuels go away
Bjorn Lomborg
Despite much hype, the much-vaunted green energy transition away from fossil fuels isn’t happening. Achieving a meaningful shift with current policies turns out to be unaffordably costly. We need to drastically change policy direction.
Globally, we are already spending almost $US2 trillion ($2.9 trillion) annually to try to force an energy transition. Across the past decade, solar and wind energy use has increased to their highest levels. But it hasn’t reduced fossil fuels – across the same time, we have added even more fossil fuels.
Countless studies show that when societies add more renewable energy, most of it never replaces coal, gas or oil. It simply adds to energy consumption. Recent research shows that for every six units of new green energy, less than one unit displaces any fossil fuel. Analysis in the US shows that renewable energy subsidies simply lead to more overall energy being used. In other words, policies meant to boost green energy are leading to more emissions.
None of this should come as a surprise to any student of history. During the transition from wood to coal during the 1800s, overall wood use increased even while coal took over a greater percentage of energy needs. The same thing happened when we shifted from coal to oil: by 1970, oil, coal, gas and wood all delivered more energy than ever.
Humans have an unquenchable thirst for affordable energy, which is required for every aspect of modern life. In the past half-century, the energy we get from oil and coal has again doubled, hydro power has tripled and gas has quadrupled – and we have experienced an explosion in the use of nuclear, solar and wind.
The whole world – and the average person – has never had more energy available.
The grand plan underpinning today’s green energy transition mostly insists that pushing heavily subsidised renewables everywhere will magically make fossil fuels go away. But a recent study concluded that talk of a transition is misleading. During every previous addition of a new energy source, the researchers found, it has been “entirely unprecedented for these additions to cause a sustained decline in the use of established energy sources”.
What causes us to change our relative use of energy? One study investigated 14 shifts that have taken place across the past five centuries, such as when farmers went from ploughing fields with animals to fossil fuel-powered tractors. The main driver has always been that the new energy service is better or cheaper.
Solar and wind fail on both counts. They are not better because, unlike fossil fuels that can produce electricity whenever we need it, they can produce energy only according to the vagaries of daylight and weather. This means they are not cheaper, either. At best they are cheaper only when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing at just the right speed. The rest of the time they are mostly useless and infinitely costly.
When we factor in the cost of just four hours of storage, wind and solar energy solutions become uncompetitive compared with fossil fuels. Achieving a real, sustainable transition to solar or wind would require orders of magnitude more storage, making these options incredibly unaffordable.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says the government has approved Australia’s “biggest renewable energy project ever”.
Moreover, solar and wind address only a small part of a vast challenge. They are almost entirely deployed in the electricity sector, which makes up just one-fifth of all global energy use. We still struggle to find green solutions for most transport and we haven’t even begun with the vast energy needs of heating, manufacturing or agriculture. We are all but ignoring the hardest and most crucial sectors such as steel, cement, plastics and fertiliser.
Little wonder then that, for all the talk of the world undergoing an energy transition, even the Biden administration finds that while renewable energy sources will increase dramatically worldwide up to 2050, oil, gas and coal will all keep increasing, too.
On this trajectory, we will never achieve an energy transition away from fossil fuels. This would require vastly more subsidies for solar and wind, as well as for batteries and hydrogen, and for us all to accept less efficient technologies for important needs like steel and fertiliser. But on top of that, a true transition also would require politicians to impose heavy taxes on fossil fuels to make them less desirable. McKinsey estimates the direct price tag to achieve a real transition at more than $US5 trillion annually. This splurge would slow economic growth, making the real cost five times higher. Annual costs for people living in rich countries could be higher than $US13,000 a person per year. Voters won’t agree to that pain.
The only realistic way to achieve a transition is to vastly improve green energy alternatives. This means more investment in green energy research and development. Innovation is needed in wind and solar, but also in storage, nuclear energy and many other possible solutions. Bringing alternative energy costs below the price of fossil fuels is the only way that green solutions can be implemented globally, and not just by the elite in a few climate-concerned, wealthy countries.
When politicians tell you the green transition is here and we need to get on board, they are really just asking voters to support them throwing more good money after bad. We need to be much smarter.
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Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
And LNG is a "Fossil fuel"
Manning Rollerson turned down a $20,000 offer in 2016 for the land he inherited from his grandmother in the East End, a historically Black neighborhood in Freeport, Texas, designated as a “negro district” in 1930.
After Rollerson refused to sell, Port Freeport, the government body responsible for the town’s harbor on the Gulf Coast of the United States, claimed eminent domain and took over his and other people’s land to expand its facilities. This was in part to accommodate the shipping of liquefied natural gas from the Freeport LNG export terminal that opened nearby in 2019.
LNG is a fossil fuel made by cooling natural gas to reduce its volume and make transportation easier and safer. Like giant seaborne camels, formidable ships fitted with bulging tanks depart from Freeport and four other Gulf Coast terminals to bring LNG to the world, including Japan.
Now, empty plots lie where houses and businesses once stood in the East End. “The city’s dead,” as Rollerson puts it.
Until 2016, the U.S. was sending virtually none of the fuel abroad, but a fracking bonanza, a price spike following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and growing demand in Asia are among the factors that have led to a surge in exports. Last year, the U.S. was the biggest supplier of LNG traded internationally, trumping Qatar.
“The value of an LNG cargo trading, say from the U.S. to Asia, went from essentially zero in (mid 2020) to over $200 million” after the start of the Ukraine war, says Sam Reynolds, LNG and gas research lead at the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
Critical to the future of gas is a country that has very little of it. For over half a century, Japan has been a constant and sizable buyer of LNG, and its government, banks and energy companies have played a key role in continued investment in related infrastructure, including along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
That comes even as debate grows over just how big a role gas should play in the energy transition — both globally and in Japan — that is needed to avert far worse impacts of climate change than the world has already witnessed. And more immediately, residents of communities around these U.S. LNG facilities — in Freeport and elsewhere — have complained of the negative impact on their health, livelihoods and environment.
That puts a significant responsibility on Japan’s shoulders.
“Japanese companies have signed contracts to buy from six massive U.S. LNG projects,” including Freeport LNG, says Reynolds. “This may not sound like a big number, but they are really key players in getting this U.S. LNG off the ground.”
A Japan-fueled boom
In January, the frantic U.S. LNG expansion prompted the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to temporarily pause new export facilities that have not already been approved, giving the Department of Energy time to update its criteria. Legal battles over the pause are ongoing, but in practice the approval of projects covered by the moratorium are not expected in the near term.
The move has been hailed by climate campaigners and decried by Republicans, industry players and countries like Japan, with economy minister Ken Saito expressing concern that the pause could threaten Japan’s energy security.
Gas accounts for about one-fifth of Japan’s energy supply, making it the third-largest source after oil and coal, and it is used for 33% — the biggest share — of electricity generation. Most of this is imported as LNG.
Indeed, Japan is the world’s second-biggest buyer of LNG — surpassed by China only in recent years — and Jera, Japan’s largest power generator, is one of the companies that imports the most LNG globally. Although Australia is Japan’s No. 1 supplier, reliance on the U.S. is growing.
Japan imported 5.5 million metric tons of American LNG last year — only 8% of total purchases, but 34% more than the previous year — and a lot of Japanese public and private money is flooding into this sector. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Mizuho and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. (SMBC) are the first, second and third biggest financiers of LNG export projects in the U.S., respectively, having each invested anywhere between $10.7 billion and $13.8 billion since 2012.
Furthermore, Japanese companies such as energy firms Jera and Osaka Gas and trading houses Mitsubishi Corp. and Mitsui own shares in U.S. facilities, including Freeport LNG. They also have agreements to purchase large amounts of future LNG output — for example, Jera has signed on to buy 1 million tons of fuel per year from Calcasieu Pass 2, a planned export terminal in Louisiana where Calcasieu Pass LNG already operates.
But CP2, as the planned facility is known, has been stalled by the U.S. export freeze, as has Lake Charles LNG in the Louisiana town of the same name, in which Kyushu Electric Power is considering buying a 10% stake, potentially using a government loan.
Japanese public agencies have been instrumental in funding American LNG projects, enticing Japanese corporate buyers and investors and providing them with insurance. For example, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Nippon Export and Investment Insurance spent billions to fund the construction of Freeport LNG and Cameron LNG in Louisiana.
Jera, MUFG, Mizuho and SMBC all declined to comment for this article.
Gulf Coast LNG is attractive because it offers an alternative to major suppliers like Australia and Qatar and because U.S. deals offer flexibility where others don’t, says Anne-Sophie Corbeau, global research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. American contracts are not bound by destination restrictions, so the LNG can be used or resold anywhere without profit-sharing arrangements.
Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the economy ministry had requested that Japanese companies transact 100 million tons per year of LNG by the fiscal year beginning April 2030 — a target that has already been met, says Masahiro Naka, deputy director of the Energy Resources Development Division at the ministry’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.
However, Finance Ministry data shows domestic demand contracted by 8% last year, while it is expected to shrink by one-third by 2030, according to IEEFA. The economy ministry estimates that Japan will import 56 million tons of LNG per year by fiscal 2030 based on its energy strategy — that is, if the government’s targets for nuclear and renewable energy activation are reached, Naka says, hinting that imports could remain higher.
Japan’s choice to buy more LNG than it uses now and in the future is underpinned by the need for a “flexible amount” to respond to fluctuations, Naka says. The fuel not used at home, currently about one-third of the total, is instead sold to South and Southeast Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Japanese government is strongly promoting gas usage in that region, including through initiatives such as the Asia Zero Emission Community.
“(Japan) have a very large fleet of existing coal and natural gas plants, decades and decades dominating trade in these commodities, technical expertise at all levels,” Reynolds says. “I don't think it's too far of a stretch to say that this strategy is designed to maintain dominance in (these) markets.”
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/2024/08/11/japan-us-lng-projects/
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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