Google will help build seven nuclear reactors to power its AI systems

Google is adding nuclear plants to its seemingly ever-growing portfolio. The company has partnered with Kairos Power to back the construction of seven small nuclear reactors in the U.S. It’s the first agreement of its kind.

The first plant is expected to come online by 2030, the company announced in a blog post. Other reactors will be deployed by 2035. All totaled, the deal will funnel 500 megawatts of power to the company’s AI technologies—enough to power a midsize city.

“Nuclear solutions offer a clean, round-the-clock power source that can help us reliably meet electricity demands with carbon-free energy every hour of every day,” Google wrote in the blog post. “Advancing these power sources in close partnership with supportive local communities will rapidly drive the decarbonization of electricity grids around the world.”

The smaller reactors created by Kairos, a nuclear-energy startup, are different from the towers most people think of when they conjure up an image of a nuclear reactor. The company uses a molten salt cooling system (much like the one that will be used for the on-site reactor being built on the campus of Abilene Christian University), which operates at a lower pressure. The company broke ground on a demonstration reactor, which will be unpowered, earlier this year in Tennessee.

Google did not unveil the cost of the partnership. The project site (or sites) have not yet been determined.

Google’s announcement comes weeks after Microsoft announced a partnership with Constellation Energy that will see the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history, resume operations to power Microsoft’s AI data centers.

Experts have warned data centers could become a big strain on the U.S. power grid, with the nine-year projected growth forecast for North America essentially doubling from where it stood a year ago. Last year, the five-year forecast from Grid Strategies projected growth of 2.6%. That number has since nearly doubled to 4.7%—and planners expect peak demand to grow by 38 gigawatts. In real-world terms, that’s sufficient to power 12.7 million homes.

https://fortune.com/2024/10/15/google-nuclear-reactors/

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Global warming is NOT surging, scientists say - despite record-breaking temperatures

From the UK's hottest day to the hottest year on record globally, there's no doubt some worrying temperature records have been broken in recent years.

Many people think the rate of global warming has dramatically accelerated or 'surged' over the past 15 years – and is a cause of more extreme weather.

But a new study says there is not any statistical evidence for this so-called 'surge' or 'leap'.

Researchers looked at long-term global surface temperatures since records began back in 1850 and found no evidence of a surge since the 1970s.

While the academics agree that human-caused global warming is happening, they say it is not statistically 'surging' as some claim.

The team’s findings demonstrate a lack of statistical evidence for an increased warming rate that could be defined as a surge. In this graph, the circled part section is the part that some scientists have highlighted as a period of increased warming (the 'surge'), but the team say this model is 'not plausible' (inset)
The team’s findings demonstrate a lack of statistical evidence for an increased warming rate that could be defined as a surge. In this graph, the circled part section is the part that some scientists have highlighted as a period of increased warming (the 'surge'), but the team say this model is 'not plausible' (inset)

Recent years have seen record-breaking temperatures and heat waves globally, including the hottest UK record set in July 2022.

Last year was officially the hottest year since global records began in 1850, while that the 10 warmest years in the historical record have all occurred in the past decade (2014-2023).

However, the new study found a lack of statistical evidence for an increased warming rate that could be defined as a surge.

'Our concern with the current discussion around the presence of a "surge" is that there was no rigorous statistical treatment or evidence,' said co-author Professor Rebecca Killick, a statistician at Lancaster University.

'We decided to address this head on, using all commonly used statistical approaches and comparing their results.'

To learn more, Professor Killick and partners at UC Santa Cruz in the US studied 'global mean surface temperature' (GMST),

GMST is simply the average temperature of Earth's surface – and a metric that is widely studied to monitor climate change.

It's usually recorded by weather balloons, radars, ships and buoys, and satellites, over both oceans and land.

The experts looked at GMST from four main agencies that track the average temperature of Earth’s surface – NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), Berkeley and the UK's HadCRUT – since 1850.

Although GMST is rising long-term, in the short-term it tends to fluctuate due to natural phenomena – like major volcanic eruptions and the El Niño Southern Oscillation.

Therefore, the team deemed a warming 'surge' as statistically detectable if it exceeded and sustained a level above those temporary fluctuations over a long period of time.

'Imagine temperature records plotted on a graph – a small change in the slope would require more time to detect it as significant, whereas a large change would be evident quicker,' said Professor Killick.

After accounting for short-term fluctuations in the GMST, a warming surge could 'not be reliably detected' anytime after 1970, the team found.

'No change in the warming rate beyond the 1970s is detected despite the breaking record temperatures observed in 2023,' they write in their paper, published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment.

The team stress that a surge in global warming may be happening – just that it's not detectable yet.

'Of course, it is still possible that an acceleration in global warming is occurring,' said lead author Claudie Beaulieu, a professor of ocean sciences at UC Santa Cruz.

'But we found that the magnitude of the acceleration is either statistically too small, or there isn’t enough data yet to robustly detect it.'

Professor Beaulieu agreed that Earth is the warmest it has ever been since records began because of human activities.

She said: 'To be clear, our analysis demonstrates the ongoing warming; however, if there's an acceleration in global warming, we can't statistically detect it yet.'

In response to the findings, Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, suggested that only one line of evidence was considered for the study.

'In fact, when all lines of evidence are scrutinized it is apparent that climate change is accelerating rather continuing steadily,' said Professor Allan, who was not part of the research team.

'Halting global warming by stabilizing Earth’s climate and limiting further damage from worsening extreme weather and rising sea levels is only possible through rapid and massive cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.'

Dr Kevin Collins, a senior lecturer in environment and systems at Open University, said there is a 'very real danger' that the findings are misinterpreted.

'With many people and places experiencing year on year record temperatures around the globe in the last decade, it is very human to assume global warming is accelerating or "surging",' said Dr Collins, also not involved with the study.

'However, through an authoritative statistical analysis of temperature increases since 1970, this research concludes that there is no detectable surge – yet.

'Instead, the results suggest global warming is occurring at a steady state.

'However, as the authors acknowledge, this may be because the size of any acceleration is either statistically too small, or there is simply not enough data to detect a surge in the last decade.'

'In other words, it is still too early to tell if the last decade – the warmest on record – represents a "leap" in the warming trend.

'By 2035 or 2040 we may look back and be able to see from 2015 onwards there has been a fundamental shift in the warming trend.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13961409/Global-warming-not-surging-scientists-climate.html

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Another Captive Agency Weaponized Against White House Critics

Note from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

On September 4, I received a letter from Mr. Todd J. Smith, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the National Marine Fisheries Service, United States Department of Commerce. In the letter, the agency states that they are investigating the alleged claim that I collected a specimen from a rotting carcass found on a Massachusetts beach in 1994. It claims that I may have violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The agency sent its letter just 12 days after I endorsed President Trump on August 23, raising the concern that this investigation is yet another instance of the systematic weaponization of federal enforcement agencies against White House critics.

Here’s my response to his letter, which I sent to Mr. Smith on Oct. 8:

October 8, 2024

RE: Alleged Violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act

Mr. Smith:

This is my response to your inquiry about the unsubstantiated allegation that my collection, in 1994 on a Massachusetts beach, of a specimen from a rotting carcass may have violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act. I never collected a whale specimen in Massachusetts or transported marine mammal specimens across state lines, nor do I have such a specimen in my collection.

While I am impressed with the alacrity with which the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) launched its investigation of the fate of a 30-year-old specimen, the rapid reaction contrasts sharply with your stubborn intransigeance in addressing the apparent massacre of marine mammals by the offshore wind industry. Recently approved offshore wind farms appear to be putting several protected dolphin and whale species, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, in dire crisis.

Your agency has idly watched the approval of 30 offshore wind leases from Maine to North Carolina effectively privatizing 2.3 million acres of ocean bottom, mostly on extremely productive fishing grounds and critical habitat for migratory whales and other marine mammals, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Many Americans suspect that your agency’s anemic response to this serious emergency may be rooted in its reluctance to obstruct the profit ambitions of a politically powerful cabal of energy titans including Dominion, Shell, and General Electric, and U.S. financial houses Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Wells Fargo, Citibank, J.P. Morgan, and Blackstone. These firms either directly own or are funding projects by foreign energy behemoths including Equinor (Norwegian government), Ørsted (Danish state majority-owned), Iberdrola (Spain), and TotalEnergies (France). The backing by those U.S.-based financial houses allows foreign governments and foreign-owned wind developers to collect tens of billions of dollars in U.S. subsidies and tax credits. These subsidies are provided for by the Inflation Reduction Act, President Biden’s signature “environmental” legislation. In the U.S., offshore wind is an environmentally destructive boondoggle. No financial institution will fund these projects in the absence of obscene government subsidies. Offshore wind farms produce energy 300% more expensive than cheap and abundant onshore wind, which I strongly support.

These companies, based on present offshore wind construction plans that have been approved or are in the process of being approved, will pile-drive 2,200 offshore wind turbines into the ocean floor at intervals of one mile or less across 5,816 square miles. Each turbine with blades will be approximately 1,000 feet tall, on par with the height of the Eiffel Tower.

The advent of the first wind project on Block Island and the arrival of seismic survey boats in 2016 and 2017 were coterminous with an alarming uptick in unexplained whale deaths so unusual that the NOAA Office of Protected Resources declared three Unusual Mortality Events (UMEs): one for humpbacks, one for minke, and one for North Atlantic right whales. The North Atlantic right whale has a total population of fewer than 360 individuals, so every stranding poses a threat to its total extinction.

Prior to the inception of increased seismic survey and construction activity for the wind industry, ship strikes killed 1.4 humpbacks annually from Maine to Virginia. In 2016, as the offshore wind gold rush gathered steam, 26 humpbacks stranded from Maine to North Carolina. Fifteen more stranded from January to April of 2017. Of the 20 humpback whales that were necropsied from that time period, 10 of them were ship strikes. There was no increase in shipping during this period. The only thing that changed was a flurry of offshore wind survey boats, from Massachusetts to North Carolina.

Mass deaths have increased in lockstep with expanding exploration and construction activities. In the 13 months beginning in December of 2022, there were 85 large whale strandings on the East Coast with zero entanglements. A total of 109 large whale deaths occurred from December 1, 2022, through June 6, 2024, mostly within range of offshore wind survey and construction vessels. This amounts to an average of 5.7 dead whales a month for 19 months — a record number of dead whales the likes of which have not occurred in a lifetime. Hundreds of dolphins and porpoises have also died. Only last month, a dead humpback washed ashore on Block Island in the vicinity of the Revolution Wind wind farm, and a dead fin whale landed on Cupsogue Beach on Long Island after being seen the day before floating 12 miles south of Shinnecock, while a young minke whale was found alive struggling in the surf in Montauk, only to die and then to float out to sea.

In September of 2020, 17 environmental groups conveyed to NMFS their “profound concerns” about NMFS’s systematic coddling of the offshore wind farm industry. In that letter, they discussed the 12 previous comment letters they submitted to NMFS since 2018 identifying your agency’s multiple failures in enforcing the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). They repeatedly urged your agency to “require even stronger protections … for marine site characterization surveys required for offshore wind development” in compliance with the MMPA. Despite their urgings, NMFS has taken no meaningful steps to mitigate the massacre.

Instead of calling an immediate moratorium on offshore wind development, government regulators continued to permit lethally deficient Incidental Harassment Authorizations (IHAs) that allow the wind farm industry to “take” Atlantic whales by the drove. Your reckless dereliction of your statutory obligations to protect these magnificent creatures has resulted in up to 108 vessels conducting geophysical survey activities over more than 10,000 survey days from 2017 to 2022. Independent analysis of your own data suggests that these activities have already resulted in more than 113,000 instances of “taking” of marine mammals, including 402 North Atlantic right whales, 647 endangered fin whales, 53 endangered sei whales, 93 endangered sperm whales, 494 humpback whales, 329 minke whales, and 12,493 harbor porpoises. These are all noise-vulnerable marine mammal species.

Newer analysis conducted in 2023 predicted that when NOAA’s currently authorized offshore wind activities were combined with then-proposed and yet-to-be-authorized offshore wind activities, the impacted number of marine mammals would rise astronomically to over 630,000 animals. Industry proposals included up to 996 requests for Level B harassment takes of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. That number is now almost triple the population size of the species, suggesting that the species may go extinct as a result of your hand-sitting. NOAA has approved just one project off the coast of New England that, on its own, will “take” 126 North Atlantic right whales.

On January 9, 2023, after six large whales had stranded on New Jersey and New York beaches in as many weeks, five grassroots environmental groups demanded a federal investigation into the whale deaths.

They also submitted a letter to President Biden demanding:

“an immediate investigation into the marine mammal mortalities from Cape May, NJ, to Montauk Point, NY, and/or beyond, be conducted by qualified scientists including those of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and a halt to all current lessees’ offshore wind energy development activity within the Atlantic Ocean from Cape May, NJ, to Montauk Point, NY, including assessment, characterization, and construction-related activities until an investigation has been conducted.”

Instead of vigorously investigating these mortalities and taking steps to end this massacre, your agency has bent over backwards to enable the slaughter to continue. NOAA has protected the offshore wind industry — with its strong connections to the Democratic Party — by refusing to conduct basic science that might link the slaughter to industry activities. This strategic lethargy in conducting vital and obvious studies allows your agency, and by extension, the wind industry, to conveniently claim, as Benjamin Laws did on January of 2023, “There is no information supporting that any of the equipment that’s being used in support of wind development for these site characterization surveys could directly lead to the death of a whale.”

I offer just one of many examples of this species of agency sandbagging: The fin, humpback, minke, sei, and right whales that are now dying in droves are all part of the Mysticetes family of whales that all hear in low frequency. Yet your agency has stubbornly refused to collect direct hearing data from large whales to determine whether offshore wind survey boats and seismic survey machinery are emitting sounds within this hearing profile.

Here is another example: In the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA requires immediate survey shutdowns in the event of live mammal strandings or millings within 50 km of oil and gas survey activity. In deference to powerhouse offshore wind titans, NOAA has ignored those long-standing IHA rules for offshore wind in the Atlantic, despite the fact that the Gulf of Mexico surveys use the same equipment as the Atlantic surveys and NOAA permits the same levels of marine mammal impacts for both.

Furthermore, only Atlantic offshore wind surveys are expected to impact multiple endangered whale populations, and only in the Atlantic have energy development activities coincided in time and space with unprecedented whale deaths. This suggests that federal agencies should be providing more protections for impacted marine mammals in the Atlantic, not less. Yet NOAA continues to turn a blind eye, inexplicably applying weaker Marine Mammal Protection Act standards for Atlantic wind farms than for identical High-Resolution Geophysical (HRG) surveys in the Gulf of Mexico. The Marine Mammal Protection Act does not allow for differential application to the same activity; it is designed to protect mammals, not foreign energy companies and their Wall Street financiers.

Your agency has also stonewalled the issuance of uniform necropsy protocols that might point a finger at offshore wind. It’s obvious that the standardized protocol should include early examination of ear damage in dead whales. Despite the pleadings of the environmental community, you have refused to recommend this procedure. This step is so fundamental that it suggests a deliberate dereliction. In fact, your agency actually allows what partial or full necropsies of dead whales do occur to be conducted by Marine Mammal Stranding Network partners that have been funded by offshore wind companies and even maintain offshore wind executives, lobbyists, and third-party contractors on their board, ensuring that no “investigation” taken by such NOAA partners is objective.

In addition, commercial fishermen complain that the areas around the turbines — the Atlantic cod’s critical spawning grounds — have been emptied of fish. This outcome is consistent with your agency’s early warning that the turbines may cause the collapse of the cod fishery.

You sent the investigatory letter to me on September 4, just 12 days after my August 23 endorsement of President Trump, raising the issue that this investigation is yet another salient in the systematic weaponization of federal enforcement agencies against White House critics.

You acknowledge that you launched your investigation publicly on August 26, at the urging of the Center for Biological Diversity, a formerly effective NGO that now functions as a subsidiary of the DNC.

Your enthusiasm in launching an investigation based upon an unsubstantiated anecdote of a specimen collected from a rotting corpse three decades ago compares unfavorably with your abject failure to stop, much less investigate, the ongoing slaughter of whales by politically connected energy companies and financial houses that number among the Democratic Party’s biggest patrons. Your agency’s systematic insouciance is likely to result in the permanent extinction of the very species you are charged with protecting. Please let me know the steps that you plan to take to avert this agency-sanctioned calamity to Atlantic whale populations.

https://robertfkennedyjr.substack.com/p/rfk-jr-kennedy-whale-investigation

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Green Hydrogen limps toward inevitable demise

Fortescue Metals Group, a leading Australian iron ore miner, has been actively pursuing green hydrogen as a key component of its decarbonisation strategy. Green hydrogen reportedly results in no carbon dioxide emission or production.

In May 2024, Fortescue launched its first US green hydrogen production project. It represented a $550 million investment in a facility to produce up to 11,000 tons of liquid green hydrogen annually. They renamed their green hydrogen facility in Buckeye, Arizona, to Arizona Hydrogen. However, recent developments have forced them to scale back their green hydrogen plans.

The same is true for Woodside, citing a lack of renewable electricity, and similarly for Origin Energy, when it realised that it is uneconomical. Each company withdrew from the market for the same reason – the lack of cheap electricity – which ‘renewables’ cannot provide. You need hydrocarbon (coal, petroleum, or natural gas) fired electricity generation for that.

Buying into what I call the Climate Cult dream, Fortescue had set an ambitious goal to produce 15 million tons of green hydrogen annually by 2030. The company invested in renewable energy projects and developed its own green hydrogen technology, including the PEM50 project, a 50 MW green hydrogen electrolysis production plant.

But in July 2024, Fortescue announced a significant scaling back of its green hydrogen plans, citing high electricity prices as a major factor. The company put its goal of producing 15 million tons of green hydrogen on hold until electricity prices fall. (That is like waiting for hell to freeze over.)

Additionally, Fortescue cut 700 jobs, affecting various parts of its business, including its green hydrogen operations.

You have got to love the irony there!

High electricity prices that have resulted from massive government (read ‘taxpayer’) subsidies to the green electricity sector are the reason companies cannot produce cheap enough hydrogen gas from electrolysis. As I explained in Hydrogen Gas: another Climate Cult myth busted the problem is basic physics.

And the dream of finding a pure source of hydrogen from a gas well is just that, more mythological than pink unicorns.

However, mining magnate Andrew Forrest, Fortescue’s chairman, appears to be unfazed and downplayed the cuts made to the industry, stating that they do not signal a retreat from the company’s green hydrogen ambitions. Forrest emphasised the importance of investing in renewable energy generation to drive down power prices, making green hydrogen production more commercially viable.

More dreaming! Or is it just wishful thinking?

Fortescue remains committed to green hydrogen and its potential to decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors, such as iron ore operations. To extract the metallic iron from iron ore you need to use copious amounts of coal, and to make steel from that you need an enormous supply of both coal and electricity.

Solar and wind power just will not do it. It was coal and cheap electricity that got us out of the poverty of the Dark Ages. Why do they want to send us back there?

On October 2, 2024, Forrest said that it’s time to walk away from the ‘proven fantasy’ of Net Zero. That sounds like he is coming to see the light! Well, not quite it turns out. So, what did he mean by that?

Australian mining tycoon Andrew Forrest, founder and executive chairman of Fortescue, says it is time for the world to walk away from the ‘proven fantasy’ of Net Zero emissions by 2050 and to embrace ‘Real Zero’ by 2040 instead.

What? He is a true believer, despite the fundamentals of the underlying physics of the universe. Forrest continues:

‘What they are really saying is that you can’t do it. And I’m saying to each of those chief executives and those political leaders who use the words, “I can’t…” Okay, what about you get off the stage and let on a young girl [does he mean Greta?] or wiser leader who can. Someone with a bit of ticker because the technology is there.’

‘We know the world can go Real Zero 2040 and I’m reaching out to the business people and politicians across our planet to say it is time now to walk away from this proven fantasy [of] Net Zero 2050 and adopt Real Zero 2040,’ Forrest said. ‘We can, we must, let’s do it.’

His company is retreating from green hydrogen because it is not economically feasible to produce hydrogen by electrolysis. Neither is it by the two methods that do it well – steam reforming and methane pyrolysis. All these methods are energy-intensive.

Currently, 95 per cent of hydrogen fuel is ‘grey hydrogen’ made from natural gas via the steam reformation process, but that method produces more carbon dioxide than burning an equivalent amount of petrol.

And by our current understanding of physics the Climate Cult dream of mythical hydrogen gas mined straight out of the ground is just that. More mythology! It is a pain when you come up against the laws of physics and chemistry.

No amount of religious cries like, ‘We can, we must, let’s do it!’ can change the laws of physics.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/green-hydrogen-limps-toward-inevitable-demise/

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