Climate Letter #520

Australia is sure to set a new temperature record for October.  It has been a very hot month so far, and now with El Nino still on the rise the outlook for the rest of the year is none too comfortable.

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How Exxon abuses complex climate charts.  Everyone can learn something from this, because of the way many charts that project future climate conditions are set up.  That is because they allow for both the unavoidable uncertainty that pertains to how nature will behave and a completely separate kind of uncertainty related to future human behavior.  That adds up to such an excess of uncertainty that no meaningful policy is able to deal with it, or so says the oil industry.
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New ways to build better batteries keep being demonstrated.  In this case the key material is copper foam, which has a number of interesting advantages, and there is a patent pending.  The underlying principles have been established for some time, with current activity also seen in other variations.
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How the potentially “ultimate” battery might be constructed.  A lithium-oxygen battery would theoretically have ten times the energy density of today’s lithium-ion batteries, a fifth as much weight and a fifth of the cost to produce.  Researchers at the University of Cambridge are working on it, and claim to have made significant progress, but with much work left to be done.  The way things are happening, my guess is that within perhaps ten years something like it, or pretty close, will actually be on the market.
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What does that mean for gasoline-powered automobiles?  Toyota believes they will be largely obsolete by 2050, along with those powered by diesel.  Their main bet, for now, is on fuel cells.  Nissan, GM and others, not forgetting Tesla, are more interested in electric with advanced batteries.  Either way, climate watchers have to feel encouraged.
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Tim Flannery has published a new book.  In this interview the popular author, himself a scientist, discusses some of the more unusual ideas in his book and offers reasons for being a little more optimistic than before about avoiding maximum damage from climate change.  He does worry about the consequences of exceeding a warming of more than 1.5C, which is now all but inevitable.
Carl

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