[GWSG] Hothouse readers; lake CH4; NM's solar savings; JEA's nuclear waste; becoming sapiens; solid state Li; N engineering

[Tilley, Al]

1. The hothouse Earth study has been downloaded 270,000 times, encouraging one of its authors to believe that awareness of problems with the climate is climbing. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/17/world-waking-up-to-reality-climate-change-hothouse-earth-author

2. Thermokarst lakes form in the Arctic when thawing soil releases water. The permafrost beneath those lakes melts rapidly, releasing significant quantities of methane not yet included in estimates of warming. “The lake activity could potentially double the release from terrestrial landscapes by the 2050s.” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180816143035.htm

3. A new solar farm in Gallup, New Mexico, will save the city $785,000 in the next eight years. https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/16/new-9-8-megawatt-solar-farm-in-gallup-new-mexico-will-save-city-785000-in-first-8-years/
[https://cleantechnica.com/files/2018/08/gallup-solar-farm.jpg]<https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/16/new-9-8-megawatt-solar-farm-in-gallup-new-mexico-will-save-city-785000-in-first-8-years/>

New 9.8 Megawatt Solar Farm In Gallup, New Mexico, Will Save City $785,000 In First 8 Years | CleanTechnica<https://cleantechnica.com/2018/08/16/new-9-8-megawatt-solar-farm-in-gallup-new-mexico-will-save-city-785000-in-first-8-years/>
cleantechnica.com
By taking advantage of otherwise unusable land located in a floodplain, and with financing provided by the solar company itself, Gallup, New Mexico, will benefit from a new 9.8 megawatt (MW) solar farm, saving an estimated $785,000 in energy costs in just the first 8 years



4. Our municipal utility JEA is trying to disentangle itself from a nuclear project over budget and past schedule, which has been usual with past nuclear projects. JEA’s share of the Vogtle Project overrun will be about $4 billion so far. That’s partly in my name as a customer. In 2008 I took an opportunity to warn the JEA management team in person to write in a liability limit before they signed the power purchase agreement. They did not.

Plant Vogtle is the only active new nuclear power project in the US. At least we have a chance that Vogtle will not be built, so that we can avoid the major costs of nuclear power, the ones we do not calculate: decommissioning, and the cost of dealing with the side effects and the aftereffects. Those costs are literally incalculable. http://www.jacksonville.com/article/20180817/NEWS/180817638
[http://www.jacksonville.com/storyimage/LK/20180817/NEWS/180817638/AR/0/AR-180817638.jpg]<http://www.jacksonville.com/article/20180817/NEWS/180817638>

JEA issues ultimatum to Plant Vogtle co-owner: Walk away from nuclear project<http://www.jacksonville.com/article/20180817/NEWS/180817638>
www.jacksonville.com
JEA's chief executive officer issued a sharply worded letter Friday to one of the Georgia-based co-owners of the faltering Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion



5. The Human Planet: How We Created the Anthropocene, by Simon Lewis and Mark Maslin, is now out (ahead of schedule) from Penguin in their Pelican series. It describes the lasting impact our presence will have on earth, whether we are around or not. We have been homo dominatus; it remains to be seen whether we will earn the title of sapiens. (See the previous item.) Two of the ways suggested by which we might become sapiens are E. O. Wilson’s project of rewilding half the earth, oceans and all, so that the non-human side of the earth might carry on its business, and a Universal Basic Income, so that we can move from consumer capitalism to whatever forms our next stage of development might take. I found that The Human Planet carried out something of a corrective relocation of my awareness of our current climate pickle and recommend it to you. https://smile.amazon.com/Human-Planet-How-Created-Anthropocene/dp/0300232179/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1534597150&sr=1-1&keywords=human+planet


6. New solid state lithium batteries will not burst into flames, carry twice the energy density of lithium ion batteries, and last much longer. They could act as drop-in replacements for current lithium ion auto batteries. https://www.futurity.org/ceramic-lithium-ion-batteries-1841362/

7. Agricultural nitrogen is the source of a powerful greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide. Genetic engineering has produced a rice which fixes nitrogen and will not require so much as fertilizer. https://grist.org/article/nitrogen-pollution-is-a-problem-as-big-as-climate-change-science-might-have-a-fix/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily
N2O is not only 300 times more pernicious than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, it is an ozone destroyer. https://theconversation.com/meet-n2o-the-greenhouse-gas-300-times-worse-than-co2-35204
[https://images.theconversation.com/files/66603/original/image-20141208-16338-79gmaf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=250&h=140&fit=crop]<https://theconversation.com/meet-n2o-the-greenhouse-gas-300-times-worse-than-co2-35204>

Meet N2O, the greenhouse gas 300 times worse than CO2<https://theconversation.com/meet-n2o-the-greenhouse-gas-300-times-worse-than-co2-35204>
theconversation.com
When we talk about greenhouse gases we usually talk about carbon dioxide. When media reports depict climate change, we invariably see the cooling towers of a coal power station. Which is fair, because…



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