[GWSG] TBDs; heat forecasting; tomorrow's dome; forecasts past; NM's community solar; iron-air history; missing insects

[Tilley, Al]

1. Robert Vautard, director of France’s Laplace Institute, describes significant unsettled questions in climate science, including how to anticipate severe heat waves, to estimate the role of clouds in heating, and to foresee important tipping point thresholds. https://phys.org/news/2021-07-climate-mysteries-puzzle-scientists.html

2. The IPCC in its 2001 report foresaw deadly heatwaves in temperate cities. We now anticipate that large portions of the earth near the equator are likely to become uninhabitable. We still lack the understanding to give the generalizations satisfyingly exact definition, though weather forecasting has become quite good at delivering near-term warnings, such as the current warning of another heat dome in the American west. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/07/as-scientists-have-long-predicted-warming-is-making-heatwaves-more-deadly/

3. The heat dome is expected to settle on the US tomorrow, with temperatures generally high in most of the country. Severe or exceptional drought conditions now cover two-thirds of the US west.  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/24/america-heatwave-climate-crisis-heat-dome

4. Eunice Foote published her discovery of the heating potential of CO2 in 1856, warning that if the air were charged with increased CO2, increased heating would result. By the end of the century we had a good estimate of the rate at which our burning of fossil fuels was heating the planet. (Spencer Weart’s The Discovery of Global Warming, 2003, rev. 2008, gives much more info on the topic.) https://phys.org/news/2021-07-physics-climate-1800s-scientist-eunice.html

5. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance describes New Mexico’s community solar program as a model for other regions. https://ilsr.org/new-mexicos-community-solar-program/

6. Form Energy’s iron-air battery has drawn from previous projects going back to the 1970s for the technology behind its grid storage project, which promises to compete favorably with gas peaking plants. Success for the iron-air storage battery would essentially complete the rendering of most uses of fossil fuels for energy uneconomical. https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/stealthy-storage-contender-form-energy-reveals-secret-formula/

7. An extract from British biologist Dave Goulson’s Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse (Vintage, to be released Sept. 28) provides a comprehensive and passionate survey of what we are losing and a brief account of what we must do to limit our loss. In the last fifty years 75% of the insects have disappeared. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/25/the-insect-apocalypse-our-world-will-grind-to-a-halt-without-them

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