Occasional Thoughts on Climate Change

[TheClimateChanger]

Morning thoughts:

 

[TheClimateChanger]

 

[TheClimateChanger]

Extreme volcanic venting in the north Pacific and all over the oceans! This is wild, you guys! 

[Typhoon Tip]

 

MHT 100R

BOS 99R

PVD 97R

CON 97R

BDL 96TR

 

[donsutherland1]

Glacial boulders at Franconia Notch State Park. The last boulder was split by the melting and refreezing of the ice. The boulders were deposited around 25,000 years ago as the ice sheet advanced south. 

[TheClimateChanger]

23 minutes ago, donsutherland1 said:

Glacial boulders at Franconia Notch State Park. The last boulder was split by the melting and refreezing of the ice. The boulders were deposited around 25,000 years ago as the ice sheet advanced south. 

Nice pics, and a good reminder that the climate is always changing... just usually a little slower than these days. I remarked recently on the irony of having the Great Lakes exist in a future hothouse earth, carved from that same ice just 14,000 years ago. 

[csnavywx]

On 7/29/2025 at 8:46 AM, nflwxman said:

Work in renewables and can confirm that this is the case. The 2025 numbers are even more compelling. For example, the average cost of an energy storage system dropped about 27% in the past year due to technology improvements (and a reduction in EV demand, unfortunately). Currently, battery systems are competitive with LNG Peaker plans in MISO (Midwest) where fossils were heavy entrenched incumbents. The reality is that PV + BESS make so much sense. The technology pair has no long-term extraction costs, can be recycled, and of course, no long-term combustion impacts. BESS is also the "swiss army knife" of grid technology and can respond to grid disturbances in milliseconds. Peaker plants, or even nuclear, can't do that.

The problem is adoption still isn't happening fast enough. This should have been 10 years ago.

 

Full disclosure as I'm long FSLR stock and ICLN etf shares as of a couple of months ago, but it's suffered on an important metric that doesn't ever seem to be discussed: profitability. For better or worse live and breathe in a market system, where component cost is only one part of the equation and the considerable firming costs get downplayed (esp. at high penetration, at low pen. they're negligible). There is no OPEC for RE and the oft cited negative power prices are a symptom of high volatility, something that's never good for bottom lines in a commodity space. If you rushed to buy in '21 during the initial wave of optimism without careful consideration of the downsides, you got rinsed for 70%+ of your investment.

The recent growth in PV+BESS is encouraging and I think the equity side has been pounded enough that it's a decent buy for LT positions, but we're going to have to spend a lot of cash upgrading the grid to handle this as well and that cost isn't going to be cheap, esp. at today's interest rates. If we're not honest about that up front, then well... the political backlash will be even worse than we've seen so far.

I agree this should have been 10 years ago -- I think rebound and network effects along with struggling profitability are going to result in it the transition moving slower than it otherwise could have. It still needs subsidies to fill the gap. Some companies are better than others, ofc.

[csnavywx]

A more in depth look at the issue available here (as a review of the book "The Price is Wrong"): https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=14174&context=mlr

The book itself is a good read.

[WEATHER53]

Can I ask?  If poles have moved 3 feet; that seems  seems insignificant?   But  do we  know that?  

 

 

[chubbs]

12 hours ago, csnavywx said:

Full disclosure as I'm long FSLR stock and ICLN etf shares as of a couple of months ago, but it's suffered on an important metric that doesn't ever seem to be discussed: profitability. For better or worse live and breathe in a market system, where component cost is only one part of the equation and the considerable firming costs get downplayed (esp. at high penetration, at low pen. they're negligible). There is no OPEC for RE and the oft cited negative power prices are a symptom of high volatility, something that's never good for bottom lines in a commodity space. If you rushed to buy in '21 during the initial wave of optimism without careful consideration of the downsides, you got rinsed for 70%+ of your investment.

The recent growth in PV+BESS is encouraging and I think the equity side has been pounded enough that it's a decent buy for LT positions, but we're going to have to spend a lot of cash upgrading the grid to handle this as well and that cost isn't going to be cheap, esp. at today's interest rates. If we're not honest about that up front, then well... the political backlash will be even worse than we've seen so far.

I agree this should have been 10 years ago -- I think rebound and network effects along with struggling profitability are going to result in it the transition moving slower than it otherwise could have. It still needs subsidies to fill the gap. Some companies are better than others, ofc.

Yes, renewables and fossil fuel are completely different industries: extractive vs tech manufacturing. Fossil fuels are very profitable if you control a cheap resource. In renewables China is the low cost-supplier, with an ever widening lead. Making it difficult for the rest of the world to compete. We are a laggard in renewables from a cost standpoint due to tariffs, permitting costs and other factors. With the current administration we aren't going to catch-up either. Another factor is natural gas prices, which are well below global levels in the US due to our local production. Which also hurts the competitiveness of renewables. In the future as US LNG exports continue to increase, the difference between our gas prices and the rest of the world could shrink. We could easily end up with high cost power, vs the rest of the world, particularly China. 

Batteries and solar are becoming increasingly important to energy economics supplanting oil and other fossil fuels. We are way behind China and falling further behind. Hitching our wagon to the wrong energy horse.  

https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/us-solar-manufacturers-lag-skyrocketing-market-demand/

https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-energy/global-cost-of-renewables-to-continue-falling-in-2025-as-china-extends-manufacturing-lead-bloombergnef/

[ChescoWx]

For those searching for UHI adjustments at the PHL Airport....we found them - but in 26 of the last 29 years NCEI has actually made warming adjustments....green is raw.

[TheClimateChanger]

In a stunning departure from the conditions of the summer to date, August has started off on a very cool note nationwide. The PRISM data below is only for the first two days of the month, but yesterday saw similarly impressive cold with a number of record low max temperatures in the south and a few isolated record lows in the eastern US. While I still expect August to finish out above normal for CONUS, this is going to make a new summer national record quite difficult. Will probably take a few days just to return to 1991-2020 means nationally, which means we are likely looking at one of the coolest first weeks of August in a long while. Probably would need an epic heat wave to keep pace with 2021 & 1936, at this point.