The geothermal systems in Texas interest me. They are technically renewable and are not intermittent as you wrote. What concerns me is that they rely upon fracking and injection wells which can be dangerous for the environment. I worry about the aquifers, watershed, and potential for destabilizing the surrounding land.
Hi Dr. Hayhoe, thanks for the shout out. I wonder if in a future post you’d consider exploring how revitalizing small water cycles and the related concept of the biotic pump theory might affect not only climate change but the biodiversity crisis. My understanding is that water vapour is a key component to global warming but of course we don’t want to “end” the water cycle 🙄 I also heard that the IPCC reports doesn’t account for the small water cycles. Is that true?
I bring this up because it is my understanding that by increasing the global amount of organic matter by a small amount we could greatly decrease the amount of carbon im the atmosphere. At the same time, better hydration of land would decrease the amount of land vulnerable to fire/desertification. All of this would also help to reduce the great biodiversity loss. Of course, I may be mistaken and/or you may not have time but i’d love to learn whether i sm wrong. Thank you for the good work you’re doing!
I agree about encouraging politicians to be concerned and change policies abut climate change. But it's important WHAT they do. Like any other policy climate change policy should be based on cost benefit analysis. The CO2 that a policy causes to be sequestered or whose emission is avoided is a benefit, but not an infinite benefit. It is still possible that the cost of the policy exceeds the benefit. Many policies adopted for the sake of climate change (subsidies for roof-top solar or EV) may have costs greater than benefits. The NPV could still be positive, but clearly the approach of IRA, subsidizing investment in zero projects that avoid CO2 emissions is inferior to directly and transparently subsidizing the avoidance. The only policy that is guaranteed to have a positive NPV is taxation of net emissions.
The geothermal systems in Texas interest me. They are technically renewable and are not intermittent as you wrote. What concerns me is that they rely upon fracking and injection wells which can be dangerous for the environment. I worry about the aquifers, watershed, and potential for destabilizing the surrounding land.
Hi Dr. Hayhoe, thanks for the shout out. I wonder if in a future post you’d consider exploring how revitalizing small water cycles and the related concept of the biotic pump theory might affect not only climate change but the biodiversity crisis. My understanding is that water vapour is a key component to global warming but of course we don’t want to “end” the water cycle 🙄 I also heard that the IPCC reports doesn’t account for the small water cycles. Is that true?
I bring this up because it is my understanding that by increasing the global amount of organic matter by a small amount we could greatly decrease the amount of carbon im the atmosphere. At the same time, better hydration of land would decrease the amount of land vulnerable to fire/desertification. All of this would also help to reduce the great biodiversity loss. Of course, I may be mistaken and/or you may not have time but i’d love to learn whether i sm wrong. Thank you for the good work you’re doing!
I agree about encouraging politicians to be concerned and change policies abut climate change. But it's important WHAT they do. Like any other policy climate change policy should be based on cost benefit analysis. The CO2 that a policy causes to be sequestered or whose emission is avoided is a benefit, but not an infinite benefit. It is still possible that the cost of the policy exceeds the benefit. Many policies adopted for the sake of climate change (subsidies for roof-top solar or EV) may have costs greater than benefits. The NPV could still be positive, but clearly the approach of IRA, subsidizing investment in zero projects that avoid CO2 emissions is inferior to directly and transparently subsidizing the avoidance. The only policy that is guaranteed to have a positive NPV is taxation of net emissions.