Yale Climate Connections

The last administration fought for the greatest support package ever provided to rural Red America since the New Deal with the Inflation Reduction Act (putting renewables, battery, and EV manufacturing in their states), and these people still voted poorly. So, forgive me if I have no empathy for people who will vote the country into the ground. Let them pull bootstraps. > Yeah I'm sure the Chinese will sell you cruise missiles when the time comes. I support cultivating domestic high tech, high throughput manufacturing capacity, just with as few humans required as possible. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/03/clean-energy-generates-majo… https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/its-conservative-states-that-benefi… https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25042572/e2-clean-economy-works…

> it's far more eco friendly and lower carbon Footprint to own an rv and travel and stay in it in various places than to own several properties and fly between them. It's considered worse to drive (vs fly) unless you have more than 2 people-- and that's for a normal car. With a truck+trailer the break-even point would need more passengers. https://terrapass.com/blog/carbon-footprint-of-driving-vs-flying-whats… https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-fl…

I liked this explanation video the best: https://youtu.be/watch?v=-vU9x3dFMrU Ref: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/02/how-heat-pumps-of-the-1800s…

I keep my windows cracked in the winter despite having control (and payment responsibility, mind) of our heating. It's worth being able to think clearly all winter: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2016/07/indoor-co2-dumb-and-dum…

Water-based shipping is extremely efficient. (However, they should be forced to install pollution controls on their internal combustion engines instead of just injecting raw exhaust into the ocean.) Of course, reducing their carbon footprint would also be good, but it's currently only 3% of global emissions: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/08/maritime-shipping-causes-mo… The carbon impact of the stuff on the ships is likely much higher. For instance, this BBC article breaks it down for food, and, for ocean-shipped stuff, the carbon emissions of transporting the food is rounding error: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220429-the-climate-benefits-of-ve… The only real exceptions to the rule involve highly-perishable food that has to be flown in next day, but that doesn't have anything to do with ocean transport. As far as I can tell, carbon offsets are a complete scam (vs. putting the money directly into stuff that reduces carbon production). If anyone knows how to pay an existing company to extract carbon from the atmosphere, and store it in a biologically inactive form for > 1000 years, then I'd love to hear about it.

This is great, but also hopelessly naive for a very important reason. Check out this graph from the article: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:… Note the trend line intersecting with the x axis in 1980. Now this: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/02/the-forgotten-story-of-jimm… The world was set to do everything we're doing today in the 80s. Except that the powers that be decided to extract every last dollar from fossil fuels, regardless of consequences like global warming. Decades of government subsidies for everything except solar and wind followed, creating a long tail of glacially slow price reductions for renewables. So we accept evolution and reject revolution because we can't see the strings controlling the marionette. <- writing this on a site dedicated to hacking around barriers is especially painful I wrote about stuff like heat pumps and carbon capture in long emails to my friends in the 2000s, complete with prices and sources. Then had to wait 20 long years for the world to manifest those ideas in its own time. Which hinged on political close calls like Obama's reelection, which provided a brief safety net for electric car manufacturers among other things, and almost didn't happen. It took almost no time for his successor the former president to impose a 30%…

This is a very well studied topic. Here's a good intro, for wind turbines specifically: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/06/whats-the-carbon-footprint-… In short, despite those costs, over the entire lifetime of the wind turbine this adds up to 5 - 26g of CO2 per kWh, as opposed to 437 - 758g (for gas) or 675 - 1689g (for coal). So yes, it's not literally _zero_ CO2, but it is a 97.4% / 98.7% reduction in CO2 compared to gas/coal respectively. The same applies to most other similar questions: yes, there are lots of small non-zero factors, and it would be great to minimize those, but they're dwarfed by the massive emissions of the current approach. The end goal here is _net_ zero, not strictly zero emissions output. Although there will still be some emissions there, they will be far far lower than today, and the remaining emissions are intended to be offset through all sorts of measures like increasing greenery, emission improvements in those production steps themselves, direct carbon capture, etc etc etc.

For those saying they should give these people services as well as housing - the problem is that they refuse services, but are given housing anyway. I just finished reading Sanfransicko by Michael Shellenberger, who is a critic of housing first. He doesn't seem like the most trustworthy author, especially after reading parts of his other book, Apocalypse Never, this scathing review of it (https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/review-bad-science-and-bad-… and Shellenberger's really poor defense (https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2020/8/3/bad-science-and-ba… However I think what Shellenberger is saying makes a lot of sense: you shouldn't give free housing to people without asking for something in return like getting off of drugs or taking antipsychotic meds. Shelters, yes, apartments, no. Addicts go into these places, overdose, and die, because there is no one around to help them when they overdose. It is also just a huge waste resource-wise and might even make the problem worse, because you are enabling people to live these lifestyles that they need to get out of.

There is some dispute about whether other, supposedly higher recorded temperatures were actually valid readings. Original long-form blog post here[1], and a summary taken from here[2] reads as follows: "Burt wrote a detailed 2016 blog post at Weather Underground challenging the 1913 record at Death Valley, explaining that official readings of 134, 130, and 131 degrees Fahrenheit taken on July 10, 12, and 13, 1913 were likely the result of an inexperienced observer. In order for the 1913 Death Valley record to be decertified, though, an official World Meteorological Organization investigation committee would have to be assembled to look into the matter, a years-long process for which there is currently no motivation. The only other temperature of at least 130 degrees Fahrenheit officially recognized by the World Meteorological Organization is a 131-degree reading at Kebili, Tunisia, set July 7, 1931, which is considered to be Africa’s hottest temperature. Burt disputed this record: “I mentioned to the WMO about the Kebili temperature of 131 degrees Fahrenheit back in 2012, when asked what I thought the next hottest temperature in Africa (after Al Azzia) might be, since that was the only temperature over 130 degrees Fahrenheit that had an actual date attached to it. However, the Kebili ‘record’ is even more bogus than even the Al Azzia record, and I said so. Kebili is a relatively cool spot in Tunisia (an oasis) and never since the 1930s ever again recorded a maximum…

Yes, I recall the California study was marred by fairly obvious problems - it was looking for the infection rate of a population. The population was known to have a low infection rate and the test had a high false positive rate. He got a result that indicated a ~1-2% infection rate but which was compatible with 0% infection rate and thus was essentially worthless. He's push covid denialism in every conceivable forum open to him and aligned with overtly right wing ideological institutions like the Hoover Institute and the American Institute For Economic Research. This stuff has been gone over so much by now it has skidmarks on it but I'll dust off the file I keep this stuff: A nice article describing the similarity of Covid-denial and Climate-change-denial: https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/04/coronavirus-doubters-fo… An article on the effort to spin the Santa Clara tests befor e they were even release: https://slate.com/technology/2020/04/coronavirus-circulating-californi… What's on with Ioannidis: https://undark.org/2020/04/24/john-ioannidis-covid-19-death-rate-criti… Richard A. Epstein of the Hoover Institution, another Stanford Connected "minimizer" https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-contrarian-coronavirus-theo… A summary of several related minimizers, with a similar program:…

I'm disheartened there's no mention of carbon footprint or sustainability. With all the great focus in our community on sustainable land transport (Tesla), data centers, solar and neo-nuclear power, etc., here we have a startup that markets this: "imagine leaving New York in the morning, making afternoon meetings in London, and being home to tuck your kids into bed." That is a terrible thing to enable from an environmental impact standpoint. While air travel can be somewhat more efficient per mile than driving alone in a gas car[1], the distances it enables you to travel are vastly greater. Further upping the convenience factor would no doubt encourage more "binge flying". Perhaps Boom is more efficient than typical airplanes. Perhaps it's less efficient. Perhaps it could make planes that travel at the same speed but at half the carbon footprint. We wouldn't know from this. It's not part of the story. Let's change that. Let's make sustainability as important a consideration with airplanes as it is with cars. [1] http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of…

We'll complain if it gives us an allergy to steak. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2026/06/as-lone-star-ticks-move-nor… Or malaria. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03476-7

> Is this about money? is this ideological? what is this, what's going on? The proximate cause is that the fossil fuel lobby went all-in on getting Trump elected. They paid big miney [1] and they expect a payback for that. Moves against renewables, electric vehicles, regulation, etc. are part of the transaction. More widely, renewables occupy an adjacent space in the conservative worldview to environmentalists and the liberal left. Being seen to destroy them reinforces Trump's leadership of his base. And emphasising use of traditional, domestic, fossil-based energy sources appeals to nationalist/traditionalist sentiment. So its money and ideology. [1] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/01/the-fossil-fuel-industry-sp…

Some relevant reading: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/01/the-role-of-climate-change-…

https://archive.is/TxL3e or .... YCC did one of their really deep dives into this. ref: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/08/where-are-the-hurricanes-th…

https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/07/death-valley-california-bre… https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/an-investigation-of…

Again, that doesn't tell the whole story. As we've discussed, solar research predates the episode by quite a long time, and Carter's efforts were not just about the energy crisis, but also about setting the foundation for future pro-environmental efforts (which were not necessarily about climate change at the time, but that certainly bled into those concerns later on). Your characterization seems to try to make Reagan's later actions seem more rational, when they very well may not have been based on anything but his disdain for his predecessor and his policies. We don't really know. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2008/11/jimmy-carters-solar-panels/

This article[1] is like a bit biased, but I think it adds the right context with quotes from those involved. The key paragraph here: Curiously — and this may say it all — the Reagan administration also allowed Carter’s financial incentives promoting renewables to expire around the time that the panels were removed. Tax credits established in 1977 for homeowners installing solar water heaters ended Dec. 31, 1985, just months before the White House roof coup d’état. [1] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/02/the-forgotten-story-of-jimm…

To fight climate change, the US needs renewable energy, and fast. Ironically, we already have it, the US has 947 GW of renewable generation capacity that is not hooked up to the grid [1]. To put that number into perspective, the US currently has 1.16 TW of generation capacity in total [2]. We could nearly double our generation capacity today if we could just hook it up. Unfortunately it takes 10 years to build new transmission lines in the US [3]. Changes are going to need to be made to the process, which may include giving more responsibility and agency to FERC to oversee the review process. [1] https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar [2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-… [3] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/10/permitting-americas-next-bi…

> Germany's energy production is below 1970s levels and their per capita figures are in a grim state Two thirds of energy from fossil fuels is wasted[1,2]. Renewables don't have wasted heat. Germany has been going green for a while, energy production does not give us a full picture. From: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-effic… "This is shown in the chart below. It plots global final energy demand today2 compared to a ‘post-transition’ energy system where suitable sectors are electrified, and the rest is fuelled by hydrogen. Electricity demand does increase – from 110 to 189 EJ, but total energy demand drops from 416 to 247 exajoules (EJ)." [1]https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ [2] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/10/energy-loss-is-single-bigge…

EVs are better in all US states: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/09/electric-vehicles-reduce-ca…

for wind turbines https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/06/whats-the-carbon-footprint-… https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/explore/journal/uniting-environme…

There's something going on over there: "From October 9 to October 25, western Mexico has been hit by FOUR consecutive eastern North Pacific tropical cyclones. " https://twitter.com/DrKimWood/status/1717557808147943922 I found this analysis more comprehensive https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/10/nightmare-scenario-category…

So is rape .... https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/12/more-co2-in-the-atmosphere-…

The flying thing is weird. It’s really that you emit a lot because you traveled so far. It’s more efficient that driving per mile and slightly less efficient than rail (not sure the type) https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2015/09/evolving-climate-math-of-fl… So it should be don’t travel so far and if you have to, take a train and if there’s no train, carpool, but fly rather than drive if you are traveling alone.

It's not a real concern. Might make for a good science Fiction story though. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2009/11/superfreakonomics-climate-c…

Current heat wave is pretty insane. Some stats here: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/07/the-scorching-summer-of-202… - El Paso has shattered the old record for consecutive 100+ degree highs by several days and still going strong - Phoenix just broke the old record for consecutive 110+ degree highs with the highs forecasted to continue for over a week with no end in sight. Phoenix has also broken the record for consecutive lows above 90 - so no relief from the heat. Antarcic sea ice seems to be broken as well - https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/ - switch to "Antarctic" and click "Show All Years" to see how all the other years overlap each other and 2023 is just... way off.

Even if the grid were entirely fueled by coal, 31% less energy would be needed to charge EVs than to fuel gasoline cars. If EVs were charged by natural gas, the total energy demand for highway transportation would fall by nearly half. Add in hydropower or other renewables, and the result gets even better, saving up to three-fourths of the energy currently used by gasoline-powered vehicles. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2022/08/electrifying-transportation…

This is not about your cannabis yields. In high concentrations CO2 is a pollutant: https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/12/more-co2-in-the-atmosphere-…

A tweet to a writer of a book with bad faith arguments (https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2020/07/review-bad-science-and-bad-… and a youtube link to a talk by the president of the Ayn Rand institute does not an argument make. PS: You might find this information on how her old was financed amusing (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn-rand-social-security/). I know I did.