New Gizmo That Converts Methane To Harmless Stuff To Help Combat Climate Change

The British tech firm Levidian has figured out a way to 
convert methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas into
two harmless but very useful byproducts. 

Levidian, a British carbon climate tech business, is on a mission to make methane into a hero instead of a villain. 

No, Levidian doesn't love methane. It's a greenhouse gas much more potent than carbon dioxide. Increasing methane emissions are worsening climate change. 

The company has figured out ways to break methane down into two substances that actually can do a world of good. 

 As CBS explains:

"The technology uses microwave energy and a special nozzle system to split methane molecules intl the gas' component parts - hydrogen and carbon - and captures them."

That hydrogen left over from the process is pretty valuable. It can be used to power factories, vehicles, ships and machinery.  When burned, hydrogen provides heat and energy, but the only emission is water vapor.

Water vapor is pretty harmless, and I supposed if you have a big enough operation, you can capture the water emissions for,  I don't know, irrigation or something. But you'd need to break down a LOT of methane. 

The leftover carbon from Levidian's process turns out to be even better. That carbon left over from that technology becomes a solid called graphene. Scientists have only known about this stuff for about two decades but it turns out it's one of the strongest materials in the world. 

It's also a great conductor of heat and electricity.

So Levidian is working on ways to use graphene in everyday products. Putting graphene into tire treads, for instance, makes them stronger and yields a longer-lasting, more fuel-efficient tire.

Adding graphene to concrete makes that material stronger and less likely to crumble. 

Graphene is even flexible enough to include in the manufacture of medical gloves to make them stronger. 

This stuff can also boost the battery life in electric vehicles. And it can be mixed in with plastic to help factories make material that uses less petroleum based material. 

As the BBC reports, most efforts to combat climate change have been to reduce emissions. You know, electric, cars, heat pumps, efficiency improvements. 

Not so many outfits have found ways to remove emissions altogether, so Levidian's efforts are unique and laudable. 

Luckily, Levidian is British, as noted, so we don't have to worry about the mendacious Trump administration from discouraging this or banning public investment. (The UK government is interested in doing some funding for technologies like Levidian's).

We're hoping more companies find ways to innovate our way out of climate change. Anything helps in that global battle, 

 

Fossil Fuel Giants Lose Bid To Dismiss Lawsuit Against Them

It's beginning to look like the fossil fuel industry is 
not have an easy time in courts and with lawsuits
as they had hoped. 

 The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month shut down an attempt by fossil fuel companies to avoid a climate change lawsuit against them. 

Per Courthouse News, the lawsuit is seeking "to hold companies liable over claims of deceptive marketing about the effect of greenhouse gases.

Companies such as Sunoco, Exxon Mobile, Chevron and BP said they are facing dozens of lawsuits, leaving a vital industry at risk of owing billions of dollars over accusations it causes climate change.

The justices denied the oil and gas companies' petition without further explanation in Monday's orders list."

Frankly, I was a little surprised the seriously right leaning Supreme Court would make a decision like this, but there you go. 

This all started in 2017, when Honolulu filed suit and against the oil giants. The claim was the companies misled consumers about fossil fuel impacts on climate change. This, said Honolulu's lawsuit, led to increased fossil fuel consumption and worsened the impacts of climate change in Hawaii. 

Honolulu cited state laws in its suit but the companies wanted it all transferred to federal court. Three courts denied that wish. 

Continues Courthouse News: 

"Once the case was kicked back to state court, the companies tried to get the lawsuit dismissed. Exxon and others argue that the state courts do not have jurisdiction to hear the dispute because the case involves the impact of interstate and international climate change."

That Exxon failed with this argument might have an impact on Vermont's "climate superfund" law and a similar statute just recently signed into law in New York State.

In a lawsuit recently filed against Vermont and its "Climate Superfund" law, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and oil companies contend that the law violated domestic and foreign commerce clauses by discriminating "against the important interest of other states by targeting large energy companies outside of Vermont."

I don't know whether the Hawaii case will have an influence here given there's other aspects of the lawsuit  against Vermont. Those include the contention it violates the U.S. Constitution and is pre-empted by the federal Clean Air Act. 

Maybe I'm being a bit of a Pollyanna here, but it's beginning to look like it's at least possible that the fossil fuel industry won't get as much sympathy from the courts as they'd hoped. 

 

Biden, Electrical Transformers, Climate Change, Demand, And Supplies Make For Complicated Mess

The Biden administration proposed
new rules to improve efficiency
of electrical transformers. Aim
was to help combat climate change.
Like most things, though, it got
complicated.

The Biden administration wanted new rules raising the energy efficiency standards for electric transformers. 

You know, those are the hoodickeys attached to a lot of power poles until they blow up in a dramatic flash during a storm or lightning strike, and shutting down the power to our homes

Problem was, in a small piece of a multi-pronged effort to combat climate change, the new transformer rules might have unintentionally done the opposite.  This is a relatively small episode, but in the grand scheme of things, it shows how efforts to confront climate change end up being a lot more complicated than you'd think.  

 Here's the set-up, as HuffPost describes it: 

Transformers are basically the connective tissue of power systems. 

Demand for electrical transformers is high. More development and sprawl is driving part of the demand. Climate change is also driving the market for these devices. People use more electricity on hot or smoky days to run air conditions and air purifiers. 

Climate change is also creating more frequent and intense  storms that make transformers go kablooey when strong winds rip at them or make trees and debris fall on them. Wildfires can also take out a bunch of transformers all at once. 

A third way climate change is creating booming demand for transformers is we're being encouraged to go electric to combat climate change. You need a bigger electrical grid, including plenty of transformers, along with the power lines and generation to feed all those EV plug ins. 

The problem, or potential problem, was that factories would need to use a different kind of steel and buy new equipment for the new rules set to take effect in 2027.  That risked creating a shortage of transformers when demand for them was already sky high. 

So the Biden people backed down. Sure, the rules would have helped an eensy, teensy bit in improving energy efficiency, which is definitely a goal if we want to reduce fossil fuel emissions. 

But a shortage of transformers might have stunted our transition away from fossil fuels toward clean energy.  You need transformers to ferry generated electricity from all those wind whirligigs and solar power stations out there to the outlet you plug your EV into. Or whatever.  

The rules have been dialed back after pressure from a wide variety of stakeholders, not the least of it were transformer manufacturers. 

A requirement for a special form of steel that would have been required in new transformers has been scrapped. That "special steel" would have forced transformer manufacturers to spend millions on new equipment that might end up becoming obsolete a few to several years later. 

Still some new energy efficiency regulations involving transformers are still scheduled to go into effect in five years.

HuffPost again:

"....the new standards still ratchet up efficiency of new transformers by enough to shave what the Energy Department estimated would be $14 billion off utility bills over the next 30 years, slashing nearly 85 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution - equal to the annual emissions of 11 million American homes - during the same period. 

The agency estimated the original proposal would have avoided 340 million metric tons of carbon pollution."

Regulators and presidential administrations seem to be constantly threading the needle between what environmentalists want and what industry wants. 

Environmentalists aren't happy with the transformer energy efficiency rules being watered down some. 

There's obviously a sense of urgency when it comes to combating climate change. It's also easy to get in the weeds when you do try to do something. 

This transformer kerfuffle is just one small example among many. 

 .

 

Some Employers Don't Care If Their Workers Die Of Heatstroke

It appears that some industries really don't care if low wage
workers die in climate change driven, worsening heat waves. 

Yes, I know hot weather is over for the year for pretty much all of the nation, but I'm still stewing big time about a Washington Post article I ran across this past August.  

The headline is infuriating enough: "As Temperatures rise, Industries Fight Heat Safeguards For Workers."

Basically, the gist of the article is this: Many employers don't give a crap if some of their workers die of heat stroke. They figure they can just hire somebody else to replace them. No biggie, apparently.   

The Washington Post article starts out with an introduction to Sandra Ascencia, a South Florida plant nursery worker who once spent a week in the hospital from work-related heat stroke and once saw the body of a coworker in a parking lot, dead from heat stroke. 

WAPO continues: 

"Today, she belongs to a growing group of immigrant laborers in South Florida pushing for what for what many health experts say is the best way to prevent heatstroke as temperatures reach new extremes: A law requiring employers to provide outdoor workers with drinking water, shade and rest breaks on hot days."

Wait, what? Outdoor workers aren't entitled to drinking water, shade and rest breaks on hot days?

Ascencio goes on, as quoted in the Washington Post:

"'We're seeing temperatures above 100 degrees,' said Ascencio, 50. 'We meet workers who tell us bosses don't give them even 10 or 15 minute breaks. They know it's inhumane to work under these conditions but they have to pay their bills.'"

Ascencio is being Captain Obvious here, but you wouldn't know it from many industry leaders who say we shouldn't worry about heat stroke killing workers. My cynical side says some employers figure that workers, many of the POC and immigrants, are just cogs that are easily replaced, kind of like a part that breaks in a machine. To them, these workers aren't really human, so what's the big deal? 

Unless workplace safety rules are finally enacted, all this will keep getting worse. Climate change is making summers hotter and in many cases more humid. It is becoming more and more untenable to work in our worsening heat waves. 

The Washington Post says some states, like California and Washington, have enacted laws to protect workers from heat exposure. But in many other states, attempts to pass similar laws were killed or weakened by industry lobbyists. 

The Biden administration is also enacting rules to protect workers from excessive heat. At last check an OHSA vote on these rules has been delayed several times, so the fate is unknown. 

The rules are needed nationwide. An investigation by NPR and Columbia Journalism Investigations released in the summer of 2021 indicated 384 people in the U.S. died of work-related heat exposure in the last decade. 

This problem is bound to get worse without reforms, as a worsening climate crisis is intensifying and prolonging both extreme heat and humidity.

The reaction from several industries has been beyond callous regarding safety rules for heat. 

Here's some choice WAPO quotes on this, followed of course with my eye roll that can probably be seen from Neptune.

"Victoria Carreon, an administrator at the Nevada Department of Business and Industry, said the agency is in talks with industry groups about the burdens on businesses of having to implement regulations."

Yeah, like it's absolutely impossible for any business to provide enough water or workers and make sure they receive a break in a cool environment every once in awhile.  

Oh, and here's this gem from the National Cotton Council:

"The National Cotton Council wrote that many heat related issues are not caused by farm work or poor management 'but instead result from the modern employee lifestyle in an advanced 21st century global economy.' The group pinned workers' inability to withstand high temperatures on 'present day luxuries such as air conditioning and Americans' sendentary lifestyle.'"

Hear that kiddies? Cotton pickers aren't dying or getting dangerously sick from extreme heat. They're actually a bunch of wusses who are so completely lazy that they seek out air conditioning when they are off work and overheated. The selfishness of those cotton workers! They should be miserable 24/7!  Never mind that heat is dangerous to cotton pickers whether or not they have access to air conditioning during their off hours. 

In Oregon, trade groups for the timber and manufacturing interests are saying that heat rules would regulate "a societal hazard rather than an occupational hazard."

In other words, it's hot. Deal with it. Never mind that the workers in question would not willingly go out and kill themselves in the heat in their off hours. 

 In Virginia, Juley Fulcher, a worker health advocate for nonprofit Public Citizen said she was infuriated when one business representative told her, "If we give them breaks, it costs us money."

Fulcher said her reaction was "If you don't give them breaks, they die and that costs you money, too."

By the way, A United States farm worker is 35 times more likely to die from heat related problems that people toiling in other industries, according to Fast Company and Nexus News Media. Heat is also responsible for 170,000 heat related injuries. 

I'm guessing here that for many of these industries, this has nothing to do with ethics, morals, or humanity. To their minds, keeping employees alive in heat waves is more expensive than disposing of the dead ones and replacing them.  I'm being pretty blunt here, but that's what it seems to boil down to.  

Pretty demonic, but there you go. 

Of course, if we insist on talking just dollars and completely ignore humanity and morality, there is more that should be of interest to the billionaire overlords who want to rake in more dough. 

On NPR's Planet Money, they recently made a good case that workplace heat regulations would actually save industries money. 

David Metz a senior quantitative analyst at the RAND Corporation, laid it out for Planet Money. 

Metz crunched some numbers and concluded work place heat regulations in California would cost industry $100 million a year. Yeah, that is a lot of money but consider that California is a big state.

However, the same businesses that would lose that $100 million through regulation would also save $200 million, mostly through better worker productivity.  Which seems obvious. A worker who isn't about to keel over from the heat will probably do a better job.

As Planet Money explains, worker injuries increase when it's too hot. Decision making and cognition wilt in the heat too. 

So heat regulations in the workplace are a win-win, right?  Then why aren't employers embracing this idea?

Metz theorized businesses this cost/benefit ratio hasn't dawned on the Powers That Be because it just never crossed their minds. Metz charitable toward these managers with this assessment, but I'm a lot more skeptical.

The managers - the bad ones, anyway - never thought about this because they never wanted to. To them, who cares about employee safety?  They just want to make money. 

My whole screed here isn't an indictment of capitalism in general. It's a howl of disgust over the fact that many no longer regard capitalism as a system that at least has the potential to lift all boats. It's instead a game of which billionaire can vacuum up more cash and impoverish and exploit the greatest number of people.

We thought the last Gilded Age in the 1800s was bad enough. In some respects, the current one seems even worse.