This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate

Everything that you think you know about global warming is a lie.

This Changes Everything is as much about the psychology of denial as it is about climate change. “It is always easier to deny reality,” writes Naomi Klein, “than to allow our worldview to be shattered, a fact that was as true of diehard Stalinist at the height of the purges as of libertarian climate deniers today.”As a result of human activities, large-scale climate change is under way, and if it goes on unchecked it will fundamentally alter the world in which humans will in future have to live. Yet the political response has been at best ambiguous and indecisive. Governments have backed off from previous climate commitments, and environmental concerns have slipped down the policy agenda to a point at which in many contexts they are treated as practically irrelevant.

 The first of the book’s three sections details how the environmental movement has been derailed by the financial crisis and the aftermath of austerity, together with the corporate promotion of climate denial. In the last of the three Klein deals with the movements that are springing up in a wide variety of contexts to challenge the neoliberal order. The second section, dealing with what Klein calls “magical thinking”, is in many ways the core of the book. Here she considers technical fixes for climate change, including schemes of geoengineering. In one of the more grandiose schemes, dimming the rays of the sun with sulfate-spraying helium balloons has been proposed in order to mimic the cooling effect on the atmosphere of large volcanic eruptions. The risks of such technical mega-fixes are obvious. As any climate scientist will tell you, we simply don’t know enough about the Earth system to be able to re-engineer it safely. Yet as Klein notes, such madcap schemes will surely be attempted if abrupt climate change gets seriously under way.

 Throughout This Changes Everything, Klein describes the climate crisis as a confrontation between capitalism and the planet. It would be more accurate to describe the crisis as a clash between the expanding demands of humankind and a finite world, but however the conflict is framed there can be no doubt who the winner will be. The Earth is vastly older and stronger than the human animal. Even spraying sulfuric acid into the stratosphere will not trouble the planet for long. The change that is under way is no more than the Earth returning to equilibrium – a process that will go on for centuries or millennia whatever anyone does. Rather than denying this irreversible shift, we’d be better off trying to find ways of living with it.

We Are Unprepared

No Matter How Much You Prepare, You May Never Be Prepared For Whats Really In Store



We Are Unprepared, written by Meg Little Reilly, is a insight of what the future of the world could look like. The book begins with the two main characters Ash and Pia. The two are headed to Isole, Vermont for a more exclusive, quieter life. There is talks of a life threatening storm and
the fear and anxiety this produces is like nothing Ash and Pia have seen or experienced before. 

This story is told from Ash's point of view and is broken up into three parts. The first part is the longest. It is told over the course of several months and before the storm is scheduled to actually hit. The second part is when the storm actually hits. 

Everyone had different ways of preparing themselves for this potentially catastrophic event but they all experienced panic, paranoia, and terror as they waited to see if the storm would even come to fruition. Many people began to act rashly and highly out of their normal character as they grappled with the preparations necessarily to survive the impending and ominous weather. Ash and Pia find themselves on different sides when their town is divided; he joins in the local town elders to try and do what’s best for them as a whole while she begins meeting with a group of local preps who are mainly concerned with looking out for themselves. The pressures they are facing coupled with a tense environment put heavy strain on their marriage. How can they unite to ride out The Storm when they have such varying opinions and viewpoints? What does all this disparity mean for the future of not only their marriage, but also for society in general?

I enjoyed how Little Reilly used a catastrophic event but put a twist with it. It made me feel like I was apart of the story. I did not want to stop reading the book. I was anxiously anticipating the storm. Little Reilly managed to convey an important message and cautionary tale while weaving it together with compelling characters that I was invested in.


 

"Wildlife is her church..."

Delia Owens on "Where the Crawdads Sing"

The author's bestselling novel is love story, murder mystery, courtroom drama, and ode to the outdoors all in one https://t.co/flsjWbXnmg pic.twitter.com/AAkPWfnUzB

— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) March 17, 2019

Ammonia TCES- Good for the Environment?

 Ammonia TCES By: Tiara Ashley Brown

The Paris Climate Agreement, which is an agreement within the United Nations, deals with greenhouse gasses emissions. One main goal of theirs is to limit the human induced global temperature rise to less than 2°C.  

Global temperature rises results from the depletion of the ozone layer, thus causing more radiation from the sun to enter Earth's atmosphere. This is caused by human activity of burning fuels and air pollution from cars and factories.  

Renewable energy can, in fact, reduce the amount the of air pollution, but as scientist and engineers, we can all agree that there are other steps we can take to create clean energy. One is using Ammonia for energy storage. According to ANU, Ammonia has been shown a viable solar TCES medium for over 3 decades. 

Thermal energy from the sun can be stored as chemical energy through a process called thermochemical energy storage (TCES). The thermal energy is used to inhibit a reversible endothermic chemical reaction, which leads to the storage of energy. 

Energy storage with energy production is the key component to 0 emissions. Energy storage can be built in to a concentrating solar power system. This is where utilities can produce power to match demand. This method of power overcomes all challenges faced by other forms of renewable energy and it reduces the cost of solar energy through higher utilization. 

You may ask yourself, how is the possible with? We simply synthesize it through the Haber-Bosch process and store it, here's how it works. 

                  

The Haber-Bosch Process combines nitrogen from the air with hydrogen, which is derived from methane, into ammonia. 

During the ammonia TCES process, ammonia is extracted endothermically while absorbing sunlight simultaneously, in daylight of course. When energy is required during this, the reversible reaction releases energy t heat in a working fluid, for instance steam, and this produces electricity. A vital component is the process is the heat exchangers paired with the endo- and exothermic reactors. This lowers the endothermic reaction temperatures near ambient and rises their temperatures before the synthesis reaction. As a result of this, transport and storage of the reactants and products is conducted at ambient temperature. This process basically turns an ammonia tank into one big chemical battery. 

Would this viable in The U.S? Through extensive research, my answer would be Yes. The Ammonia Production process is sustainable and can be possible by using renewable energy. Hydrogen can be derived from the electrolysis of water, and organic waste. We can also derive ammonia from waste water. This can be a sustainable source of Ammonia because we have to remove it from the water anyway. 

I have been researching on this lately, I would like to different opinions on this and how you think this would help reduce global temperatures.