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Renewable Tuesday 12/26 What Did You Get for Christmas etc.? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-12-25
We don’t have enough peace on Earth, good will toward sentient beings, but we’re making progress. Knocking down disinformation seems to be the quickest way to summon the political will to implement the known Global Warming solutions everywhere. Solutions to poverty, oppression, and stupid wars, too.
Disinfo
Why Fake News About Climate Change is Still So Effective
People buy into bad information for different reasons, said Andy Norman, an author and philosopher who co-founded the Mental Immunity Project, which aims to protect people from manipulative information. Due to quirks of psychology, people can end up overlooking inconvenient facts when confronted with arguments that support their beliefs. “The more you rely on useful beliefs at the expense of true beliefs, the more unhinged your thinking becomes,” Norman said. Norman says it’s crucial that any intervention to stop the spread of disinformation comes with a “weakened dose” of it, like a vaccine, to help people understand why someone might benefit from lying. While political identity can explain some resistance to climate change, there are other reasons people dismiss the evidence, as Bloomfield outlines in her upcoming book Science v. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators. “In the climate change story, we’re the villains, or at least partially blameworthy for what’s happening to the environment,” Bloomfield said.
Continued below.
Continuing,
Oil companies including Shell, ExxonMobil, and BP spent about $4 million to $5 million on Facebook ads related to social issues and politics this year, according to the Climate Action Against Disinformation report. One promising approach, “deep canvassing,” seeks to persuade people through nonjudgmental, one-on-one conversations. The outreach method, invented by LGBTQ+ advocates, involves hearing people’s concerns and helping them work through their conflicted feelings. (Remember how accepting climate change means accepting you might be a tiny part of the problem?) Research has shown that deep canvassing isn’t just successful at reducing transphobia, but also that its effects can last for months, a long time compared to other interventions. After convincing several local governments across the West Kootenay region to shift to 100 percent renewable energy, volunteers with the nonprofit Neighbors United kept running into difficulties in the town of Trail, where they encountered distrust of environmentalists. They spoke to hundreds of residents, listening to their worries about losing jobs, finding common ground, and telling personal stories about climate change like friends would, instead of debating the facts like antagonists. A stunning 40 percent of residents shifted their beliefs, and Trail’s city council voted in 2022 to shift to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050.
Climate Disasters Are on the Rise. So Is Disinformation.
Mike Huckabee Is Now Peddling Climate Misinformation to Children
These 10 Publishers Produce Most of the Climate Lies on Facebook, Study Says
And the company is doing too little to stop them.
The Indivisible Truth Brigade has launched a new campaign on disinfo, joining several others launched in the last year and a half.
Regular Good News for the Planet
Electric Vehicles
x Britain likely to generate more electricity from #WindWaterSolar than fossil fuels for the first year ever in 2023
https://t.co/hTGKXZNxQN @techxplore_com #WWS #NoMiraclesNeeded — Mark Z. Jacobson (@mzjacobson) December 23, 2023
Nature [paywalled]: ‘Electrocaloric’ heat pump could transform air conditioning
Science [paywalled]: High cooling performance in a double-loop electrocaloric heat pump Cooling through solid-state electrocaloric materials is an attractive replacement for vapor compression. Despite recent efforts, devices that are potentially commercially competitive have not been developed. We present an electrocaloric cooler with a maximum temperature span of 20.9 kelvin and a maximum cooling power of 4.2 watts under the moderate applied electric field of 10 volts per micrometer without any observed breakdown. Moreover, the maximum coefficient of performance, even taking into account energy expended on fluid pumping, reaches 64% of Carnot’s efficiency as long as energy is properly recovered. We believe that this demonstration shows electrocaloric cooling to be a very promising alternative to vapor compression cooling. Reuters: US offshore wind poised for success next year after turbulent 2023
The U.S. offshore wind industry is eying a brighter 2024, with work expected to start on several projects following a year marked by stalled developments and billions of dollars in write-offs. ecoRI News: Offshore Wind Industry Plans Comeback in 2024 After Battering by Economic Tsunami Since 2020 The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) says if the country is to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030 — a goal enunciated by the Biden administration — the industry will need 2,100 wind turbines and foundations, 6,800 miles of cable, and almost 100 vessels for installation, crew transfer, laying of cables, transport, and servicing. All of this, along with new and expanded ports to accommodate much heavier loads than many ports have ever seen. Further, the NREL says employment in a fully built-out domestic industry could create 10,000 full-time jobs and up to five times as many jobs for suppliers across the country. The laboratory put the price tag of $22 billion on its vision. Pew Trusts: As States Advance Clean Energy Projects, 2024 Looms as Pivotal Year The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management—the federal agency tasked with facilitating responsible energy development off U.S. coasts—is on schedule to hold 2024 OSW [Off-Shore Wind] lease auctions in the Central Atlantic, Gulf of Maine, and off the Oregon Coast. Amid the headwinds mentioned previously, these auctions show ongoing interest in an industry whose supply chain alone has the potential to generate $109 billion in revenue this decade. Inside Climate News: Do Wind Farms Really Affect Property Values? A New Study Provides the Most Substantial Answer to Date Yes, the article says, which is bo-o-o-o-ogus. Here is the actual study, with the good part of the findings.
Commercial wind turbines and residential home values: New evidence from the universe of land-based wind projects in the United States
We examine the impact of proximity to land-based commercial wind turbines on residential home values in the United States using data on the universe of commercial wind turbines and residential property transactions from 2005 to 2020. Using event study and difference-in-differences identification strategies we find that, on average, homes located within 1 mile of a commercial wind turbine experience approximately an 11% decline in value following the announcement of a new commercial wind energy project, relative to counterfactual homes located 3 to 5 miles away. Event study estimates also reveal important dynamics in the evolution of home values, with property values first declining following project announcement, and then recovering post project construction, with property value impacts becoming relatively small (~2%) and statistically insignificant 9 years or more after project announcement (roughly 5 years after operation began). Homes located within 1–2 miles of a commercial wind turbine experience much smaller impacts and homes located farther than 2 miles away are unaffected. Our results are primarily driven by wind projects located in urban counties with populations greater than 250,000. [emphasis added]
Somebody could arbitrage these effects, investing in properties that have gone down after projects were announced, and holding them until the effects have passed. Or there could be a bidding war for the distressed properties, wiping out the irrational declines.
Don’t look at me. I am temperamentally unsuited to being a financial typhoon.
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