[GWSG] Economic problems; Enovix battery; the Freeport blast; Arctic heat; actions will reverberate;

[Tilley, Al]

1. Climate change leads to inflation when it increases demand by destroying homes and property, and undermines supply as it impairs productivity and destroys resources. It demands an increasing share of our GNP. In subtle and indirect, as well as obvious and direct, ways, it is an economic problem among its other disruptions. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/11/climate-crisis-inflation-economy-climatenomics-book

2.  Enovix, A CA manufacturer, has announced a silicon-lithium EV battery which charges in less than 10 minutes, holds a larger charge (and thus extends the range of the vehicle), and lasts longer than the current Li batteries. They cost $75/kwh. (The average cost of li-ion batteries in 2021 was $132/kwh.)  https://climatecrocks.com/2022/06/14/is-this-new-battery-too-good-to-be-true/

3. Commercial methane occasionally reminds us how damaging it is by exploding, often taking out several houses at a time. A big blast in Texas will put the Freeport gas plant at least partly out of commission until later this year.  Freeport handles 20% of our commercial methane exports. The story as Peter Sinclair found it was on Twitter (later confirmed, of course). Some would rather we avert our eyes from our disastrous use of methane.  https://climatecrocks.com/2022/06/14/lng-explosion-underlines-need-for-renewable-independence/

4. We have known for a long time that the heat would build more at the poles than at the equator, more at night than in the day, but we did not know that in the Arctic it would build seven times as fast as the global average. The North Barents Sea is now the fastest heating region on earth. The lost ice creates a surface which absorbs heat more readily, setting up a positive feedback. The new, heated Arctic will perturb weather in the hemisphere generally. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/15/new-data-reveals-extraordinary-global-heating-in-the-arctic

5.  Millions of lives hang on US climate action (or inaction). The Climate Impact Lab consortium provides a map showing the deaths from elevated heat alone at stake this century by US state. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/16/us-climate-crisis-millions-lives-saved

6. Dangerous heat is now threatening large parts of the world, including regions of India, Africa, and the US. Floods have closed Yellowstone Park for the time being. These events are well covered by the media, and I will not ordinarily feature the swelling number of climate disasters here, though I like most people am quite concerned. I will reserve the items in this news list to the sorts of technical, policy, and scientific items which get less attention but seem significant to me. I plan to emphasize things we could do, tools we could use, and studies which illuminate our future under the various realities we are in the process of choosing. The Freeport explosion, for example, is significant in itself, but is also a reminder of how disastrous it is to continue to burn fossil fuels.

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