The return of ponderables

Since things are on fire here, let me resort to a retro moment and resurrect the “ponderables” style of post, likely for just this one day.

Herewith, I present some intriguing items that have gushed from the open hydrant that is my Internet connection and washed up on the stony shore of my mind. Have fun, but please watch out for the sharp jaggy pieces.

Technology Review: High-Energy Batteries Coming to Market:

A Swiss company says it has developed rechargeable zinc-air batteries that can store three times the energy of lithium ion batteries, by volume, while costing only half as much. ReVolt, of Staefa, Switzerland, plans to sell small “button cell” batteries for hearing aids starting next year and to incorporate its technology into ever larger batteries, introducing cell-phone and electric bicycle batteries in the next few years. It is also starting to develop large-format batteries for electric vehicles.

Same volume, half the cost, triple the energy storage? Yowza. You can do your own analysis about what that would do to personal transportation, the zombie meme of hydrogen fuel cells in cars, and just about every aspect of getting from point A to point B.

TreeHugger: CO2 Scrubbing Artificial Trees Won’t Save Us – Need Massive Investment, Colossal Infrastructure:

For some reason (frankly, entirely lost on me) the idea of artificial trees to remove CO2 from the atmosphere seems to grab people’s imagination in a way other geoengineering schemes don’t. Well, over at Yale e360 there’s a good piece that goes into the pros (artificial CO2 scrubbers could work with low chance of unintended consequences) and cons (it’s gonna be really expensive) of deploying them on a wide scale:

There are a number of different ways of using these artificial trees — which won’t look much like trees, despite some artists’ conceptions — and the original piece details different methods being researched, but it’s really other aspects of this that grab me.

Highly recommended, including the linked-to piece at Yale e360 and the Royal Society’s report from a few months back on geoengineering.

I think the reason why so many people, at least among those I speak with, love this idea is the Magnitude Disconnect. People see that something is technically feasible, but they have no appreciation for the sheer size of the problem–our yearly CO2 emissions, the amount of CO2 we’d have to pull out of the atmosphere to make a difference (after spending a couple of centuries putting it there), etc. Plus, even if they’re artificial, who doesn’t like trees?

Carbon capture coal tech must be ready by 2019: U.S.

TreeHugger: Carbon Capture Is “Essential” for Developing World, And Still a Pipe Dream

Clean Coal: The Future’s Not So Bright

CCS cannot significantly reduce tar sands emissions – WWF report

I have very little hope that CCS/clean coal/clean oil will arrive on a scale and soon enough to be a significant contributor to dealing with the infinitely nasty climate problem we’ve created for ourselves.

The WWF report, which I had a surprisingly hard time tracking down, is here [PDF].

Why we don’t do much about climate change:

A fascinating paper from the World Bank looks at the question of how people understand climate change and change their behaviour accordingly – or more often, don’t.

Climate change, the paper argues, is an anthropogenic problem, so the solutions need to be anthropogenic too. Instead, current talk of solutions focuses almost exclusively on economics and on technical solutions – but rarely on individual behaviour. And individual decisions, such as travel, heating, and food purchases, result in about 40 per cent of OECD greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course we are bombarded with exhortations to change our behaviour, but the net effect has been slight. Awareness of, and concern about, climate change is growing, but so are driving, flying, and so on.

So if people know more, and they worry more, why don’t they do more? Part of the problem, argues author Andrea Liverani, is assuming that information leads to action. In fact, information doesn’t even necessarily lead to understanding:

Concern about climate change does not necessarily mean understanding of its drivers and dynamics, nor of the responses needed. Polls show that the public admits to remaining confused over climate change’s causes and solutions.6 This “green gap” in public attitudes partly stems from how climate science is communicated and how our minds’ (mis)understand climate dynamics.

…

Even if we were indeed fully rational, knowledge would not necessarily lead to action.

If nothing else, this should trigger some interesting debates with your fellow enviros.