Fritz Vahrenholt bei Viertel nach Acht

Fritz Vahrenholt bei Bild auf Youtube:

Viertel nach Acht – 13. Juli 2022 | LIVE mit u.a. Prof. Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt und Sebastian Czaja

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Columbia University:

You’ve heard of water droughts. Could ‚energy‘ droughts be next?

Renewable energy prices have fallen by more than 70 percent in the last decade, driving more Americans to abandon fossil fuels for greener, less-polluting energy sources. But as wind and solar power continue to make inroads, grid operators may have to plan for large swings in availability.

The warning comes from Upmanu Lall, a professor at Columbia Engineering and the Columbia Climate School who has recently turned his sights from sustainable water use to sustainable renewables in the push toward net-zero carbon emissions.

„Designers of renewable energy systems will need to pay attention to changing wind and solar patterns over weeks, months, and years, the way water managers do,“ he said. „You won’t be able to manage variability like this with batteries. You’ll need more capacity.“

In a new modeling study in the journal Patterns, Lall and Columbia Ph.D. student Yash Amonkar show that solar and wind potential vary widely over days and weeks, not to mention months to years. They focused on Texas, which leads the country in generating electricity from wind power and is the fifth-largest solar producer. Texas also boasts a self-contained grid that’s as big as many countries‘, said Lall, making it an ideal laboratory for charting the promise and peril of renewable energy systems.

Weiterlesen

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The Conversation:

To make our wardrobes sustainable, we must cut how many new clothes we buy by 75%

If things don’t change fast, the fashion industry could use a quarter of the world’s remaining global carbon budget to keep warming under 2℃ by 2050, and use 35% more land to produce fibres by 2030.

While this seems incredible, it’s not. Over the past 15 years, clothing production has doubled while the length of time we actually wear these clothes has fallen by nearly 40%. In the EU, falling prices have seen people buying more clothing than ever before while spending less money in the process.

This is not sustainable. Something has to give. In our recent report, we propose the idea of a wellbeing wardrobe, a new way forward for fashion in which we favour human and environmental wellbeing over ever-growing consumption of throwaway fast-fashion.

What would that look like? It would mean each of us cutting how many new clothes we buy by as much as 75%, buying clothes designed to last, and recycling clothes at the end of their lifetime.

For the sector, it would mean tackling low incomes for the people who make the clothes, as well as support measures for workers who could lose jobs during a transition to a more sustainable industry.

Weiterlesen und weiterwundern.

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DasWetter.com:

Verändert der Klimawandel hunderte Jahre alte Bauernregeln?

Jeder kennt die Eisheiligen im Mai oder die Schafskälte im Juni. Doch sind diese alten Bauernregeln in Zeiten des Klimawandels eigentlich noch gültig?

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University of New South Wales:

Stalagmites reveal Australia’s pre-colonial bushfire history

Like Plato’s Cave, where fires reveal the portrait of an otherwise hidden reality, researchers have for the first time used a stalagmite’s chemical signal to reveal the nature of Australia’s historic wildfires, identifying differences before and after European settlement.

„For around 50 years, researchers have focused on the climate record contained in cave stalagmites,“ says Prof Andy Baker, project chief investigator from UNSW’s School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences. „However, hiding in the shadows all along was this geochemical record of past fires.“

The stalagmite used in the study, findings of which are published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, was extracted from Yonderup cave in Western Australia and preserved a record of fires, climate conditions and the intervening years since its formation, allowing researchers to link local fires with any climatic antecedents.

„We found that the largest fire event in the [stalagmite] record, in approximately 1897, coincided with a decades-long drought period known as the Australian Federation drought,“ says Dr. Liza McDonough from ANSTO and lead author of the study, conducted with UNSW and other universities. „The intensity of this fire was likely caused, at least partially, by these dry conditions.

„We also know that this [the largest fire] occurred a few decades after Indigenous cultural burning would have been suppressed by Europeans, so the fire was also probably exacerbated by a build-up of understory vegetation and dry combustible material on the forest floor due to removal of Indigenous land management practices.“

The researchers interpret the pre-European period captured in the stalagmite record as characterized by regular, low-intensity fires, while its post-European record depicts infrequent, high-intensity fires, which they speculate could be due to management practices.

This is the first study in which a stalagmite’s geochemistry has been used to describe historical fires. The technique relies upon the stalagmite’s composition, the variation in its elements and the order in which they were laid down.

„Nutrients such as phosphorus, and trace metals are found in bushfire ash and, in theory, can dissolve into waters that eventually infiltrate underground caves. Our research provides the first evidence that water containing high concentrations of these dissolved ash-derived elements can also alter the chemistry of a stalagmite and result in the preservation of signals from past fire events,“ says Dr. McDonough.

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Werner Köppen:

8.8.2 Der Gaspreisanstieg, wesentliche Ursache ist die  grüne Energiepolitik

Grüne Energiepolitik

# Grüne Energiepolitik ist nicht nur die Energiepolitik der Partei der Grünen sondern bereits Angela Merkel hat sie zur Chefsache gemacht und alle Parteien ausgenommen die AFD haben sich diese Politik zu eigen gemacht. Nach dem Ausstieg aus der Atomenergie betrieb Merkel mit Nachdruck auch den Kohleausstieg und den für sie problemlosen Ersatz durch Erneuerbare Energien.

Im Koalitionsvertrag der „Ampel“ heißt es:

„Das verschärfte 2030-Klimaziel (…) verlangt (…) (auch) die Errichtung moderner Gaskraftwerke (…). Die bis zur Versorgungssicherheit durch Erneuerbare Energien notwendigen Gaskraftwerke sollen (…) auch an bisherigen Kraftwerksstandorten gebaut werden.“ Die ist – so das EWI-Ergebnis ( EWI: Energiewirtschaftliches Institut Universität Köln)  – bis 2030 durch den Neubau von nun präzise 23 GW an Leistung von Gaskraftwerken zu schließen“

Autor: was bei einer Leistung von 500 MW/Kraftwerk 40 bis 50 Kraftwerken entspricht.

Der Grund für diese Forderung der grünen Energiepolitik nach CO2-emittierenden  Kraftwerken ist die Tatsache, dass

# Die Stromversorgung mit den erneuerbaren Energien Wind und Sonne nur im Zusammenwirken mit konventionellen Kraftwerken (Gas, Kohle) funktioniert. Nur so kann zu jeder Tageszeit und jeder Wetterlage (beispielsweise auch nachts bei windstillem Wetter) nutzbarer (grundlastfähiger) Strom zur Verfügung gestellt werden kann.

2021: der Gaspreisschock

# Der wesentliche Teil des Anstiegs der Erdgaspreise auf den Großhandelsmärkten geschah bereits 2021 vor dem Ukrainekonflikt (siehe untenstehende Grafik), selbst wenn der Ukrainekrieg noch einmal eine deutlichen Preisschub brachte.

Weiterlesen bei Werner Köppen

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