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Around the globe, from little kids playing with friends to premier professional athletes battling for prize money, climate change is increasingly impacting the sports world. Even so, most sports reporting continues to fail to connect the dots between a warming planet and worsening conditions for sports events. Here are several recent examples.

PRC Tennis Tournaments

International tennis tournaments in China have suffered from blistering heat as per a widely reported comment:

Rune, the world number 11, was heard to ask “do you want a player to die on court?”

“We can handle a certain amount of heat, because we’re strong, and mentally strong as well, but there is always a limit,” he told reporters after the match.

An article entitled ATP Confirms Heat Policy Under ‘Active Review’ After String Of Retirements At Shanghai Masters highlights just how hard the China heat was on tennis players but fails to even suggest there is something larger driving a need for “active review” of ATP’s Heat Policy. Not does this NY Times article. Nor …

Reading these — and multiple other articles — about the heat and tennis, it is hard to find a sports reporting connecting the dots.

What is interesting is the diversionary twist best seen in the Wall Street Journal’s reporting. Reading that, with an absence of climate change mention not surprising in a Murdoch-owned outlet, a reader could reasonably walk away that the real issue is growing unionization and player power in professional tennis.

Should we be surprised that a climate-denial, big business focused paper would essentially say the problem is “players actively lobbying for control” rather than the accelerating climate crisis?

To be clear, not all reporters and outlets fail to connect the dots as per

Climate change means temperatures are increasing globally and the searing heat in China this week has been slightly unfortunate for both tennis tours but it’s an issue that won’t suddenly go away.

This article, which is 95+% about tennis players in China shows how easy it is to not ignore the larger situation and help readers connect the dots.

A soccer/football refereeing item

Of course, it isn’t just tennis. Looking forward to next year’s World Cup, with 2025’s Club World Cup in the rear-view mirror, top-flight referees (and, well, almost certainly FIFA and others) have serious concerns about the potential for extreme heat as per this BBC article about a top-tier referee and referee abuse.

Taylor was one of the referees at the Club World Cup in the United States in the summer, when several matches were played in extreme heat.

He says the conditions were on a “completely different level to what you’re normally used to”.

Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca said it was “impossible” to have a normal training session during the tournament while midfielder Enzo Fernandez said he felt “dizzy” while playing in “very dangerous” heat.

“It was absolutely brutal,” Taylor says. “We were really fortunate that we had the opportunity to do some significant preparations before we left the UK using some environmental chamber work.

“The conditions were really challenging.”

Next summer’s World Cup will be held across North America.

“I don’t think it’ll be a major problem if if we’re able to prepare like people have done,” says Taylor. “Individuals need to make sure they’re prepared OK.”

Evidently this is about improved individual preparation rather than worsening conditions due to fossil fuel emissions driving a worsening climate crisis. (Though, of course, to discuss those fossil fuel linkage would open the door for highlighting FIFA’s, the World Cup’s, and professional football’s/soccer’s huge carbon footprint.)

Failing to connect the dots is rife across not just sports reporting but through most of media coverage (such as too much weather reporting). This failure to make things clear to readers and viewers are an enabler of science denialism from political movements like MAGA and politicians like Trump.

Unless you have been in a coma for several decades or living in Donald Trump’s dystopian mind, these two things are quite evident truths:

• The climate crisis is worsening.
• Solar power is growing exponentially.

Confronting these two realities feeds into a long-described self-description as a pessimistic optimist. The reality is that humanity has already created significant disruption to the earth’s system with serious and mounting negative climate change impacts (on humanity’s prospects and ecosystems). And, while the climate crisis is ever more ominous, it is also reality that clean tech (solar, wind, electrification, …) is increasingly proving to be not just a cleaner but a cheaper and better path forward for humanity that could — just might — deploy fast enough to displace fossil fuels and put the brakes on worsening of the climate catastrophe.

With Here Comes the Sun, Bill McKibben has produced what might be the most important pessimistic optimist book ever written. He is clear-eyed about the climate crisis, this includes honest engagement about painful choices that the worsening situation is driving, while making clear there is reason for optimism that not only do we have the tools at hand to stop worsening the problems but that those tools increasingly provide higher quality for lower cost than the fossil-foolish systems they can displace.

Let’s be clear, there are so many reasons to respect Bill and his work. Author, activist, organizer, collaborator incredibly caring and decent human being — let us sing Bill’s praises elsewhere but consider the book. Like essentially everything he’s written, Here Comes the Sun is replete with beautiful and skillful writing; interesting and thought-provoking perspectives; and, an envious passion. In this case, a very serious melancholy pessimism about the damage we’ve caused and the very serious potential (even likelihood) that we will not act in accord with the level of crisis combined with a well-informed optimism that we can effectively, equitably, and even profitably leverage solar power to stop worsening the crisis (and even start to turn the tides).

McKibben’s End of Nature, the first book truly speaking to mass audiences about global warming and climate change, fundamentally changed my way of viewing the world. The entire idea of “unspoiled” nature ended with a realization that pollution from fossil fuel burning (more recent realization, fossil fuel processing into micro-plastics) literally had impacted every single creature on earth and every square inch of the planet. While far more familiar with the subject space decades later, reading Here Comes the Sun is sparking much thinking about how to conceive the climate crisis and clean energy revolution.

An example of this, with clean tech, is fire obsolete?

• With solar and wind doing so cleaner and less expensively, fire isn’t necessary to make electricity.
• With induction stovetops working better (faster, safer), fire isn’t necessary to cook.
• With heat pumps warming and cooling more quietly and safely, fire isn’t necessary to heat.
• With electric cars providing better performance at lower cost, fire isn’t necessary to move.
• With …

Controlled fire is among humanity’s earliest and perhaps most continuously used inventions. With Here Comes the Sun, Bill McKibben makes a compelling argument that this invention, ever so central to millions of years of human existence) has — in just a few years — become OBE: overtaken by events. From the book’s opening paragraph

We’re quite suddenly at the moment where … we could and should break the habit of burning things. We could and should extinguish the firs in our power plants and factories, beneath the hoods of our cars, in our basements and kitchens, replacing those blaze with the fire of the sun. … we could leave fire behind. We don’t really need it anymore.

In the pages that follow, Bill makes clear the necessity for leaving fire behind while making it abundantly clear that life will be better with the fires in our rearview mirrors.

Perhaps more than any other of his works, Here Comes the Sun should be broadly read. Every library should have copies, schools should be teaching it, business leaders reading and discussing it, …

NOTE: Bill McKibben is on a book tour. If you can, you will not regret taking the time to hear him speak in person.

And, figure how you can engage with Sun Day, Sept 21, 2025.

On July 29, the Trump Department of Energy released a deceitful, truthiness-laden broadsheet at odds with basic climate science with significant distortion of what has and is happening in the real-world. This fossil-foolish screed, written by five-handpicked credential climate-science deceivers and deniers, is clearly designed to facilitate the Trump EPA’s July 29th (yes, same day) announced target for reversal of the Endangerment Finding which used scientific work to make clear how carbon dioxide is a pollutant to be covered under the Clean Air Act.

Rather than having a broad, multi-disciplinary team with recent substantive relevant credentials (such as numerous 21st century peer-reviewed articles), fossil-fuel multi- (100+) millionaire Secretary of Energy Chris Wright hand-selected five individuals who have been favored Congressional Republican witnesses attacking climate science and seeking to undermine climate action to write a propagandistic broadsheet that Trump’s DOE inappropriately labeled a “Report”. With this broadsheet, Trump’s DOE gave barely a month’s time for public response: until today, midnight (eastern) September 2d.

Even the most cursory read of the broadsheet sent shivers through climate-science aware individuals and experts: scientists seeing distortions of their work; authors seeing their names associated with what appeared to be AI-generated publications that didn’t exists; experts identifying data manipulation and misrepresentations; and … It didn’t take long (days, if not hours) for a coalesced understanding of the need for a crowd-sourced review of Trump DOE’s propaganda that eventually involved over 85 multi-disciplinary, credentialed experts from around the world. In barely a month, this volunteer effort has produced a (long) book-length response shining light on more than 100 of the broadsheet’s truthiness and misdirection with forthright and truthful discussions of climate science and reality.

These are scientists at work. Thus, recognize that they primarily use the caution and restraint in language used the scientific community in taking on DOE’s propaganda. With that in mind, read some of the scientists’ perspectives about the DOE broadsheet:

“The DOE Climate Working Group report is an intentionally skewed survey of mainstream climate science. In multiple contexts, the report privileges the outdated views of individual dissenters rather than the consensus of scientists. For example, the report argues that the economic impacts of carbon emissions are “negligible,” despite widespread evidence that climate change is likely to substantially affect human health, worker productivity, agriculture, and many other sectors. Work contrary to the conclusions of the DOE CWG report is dismissed or simply ignored, making it clear that the report is intended to support a specific policy decision and is not an unbiased synthesis of climate science.” Christopher Callahan

“Intentionally skewed … privileging dissenters rather than scientific consensus … to support a policy decision”. In my experience, it takes much (outrage at unprofessional and biased work) to get a scientist to use language like this about others’ work.

Reading through the scientists’/experts’ reactions, words like “sloppy”, “biased”, and so on jump out. From someone with decades of experience writing and dealing with review processes for U.S. government scientific reports:

“This document might appear to be a scientific report, but it is anything but. It is “science-y,” presenting an appearance of science but lacking meaningful scientific substance. I always like to find a silver lining; in this case the silver lining is that this document is a wonderful example of junk science that can be used as an example for years to come.” Andy Miller

Going through the report, it is hard to understate just how big and deceptive the distortions. Let us take a brief look at just one arena with, at the end of this post, a rather amusing twist to consider: sea level rise (SLR) and long-term sea level rise (LTSLR). Now, the primary responder on SLR is one of the world’s leading SLR/LTSLR science expert’s: Prof Stefan Rahmsdorf, University of Potsdam. What are some of some key SLR/LTSLR issues with the DOE broadsheet:

• Truth: With a warming planet, sea level rise is accelerating. And, acceleration will continue unless/until there is significant climate action.
  • DOE deceit: falsehood that data is not showing SLR/LTSLR acceleration and that we need to wait decade(+) to see if it is occurring.
• Truth: US East Coast tidal gauges are showing SLR acceleration with SLR above that of global average.
  • DOE falsehood: assertion that US tidal gauges aren’t showing accelerated SLR.
• Truth: Historical data shows SLR started to increase with early pollution impacts of industrial era.
  • DOE misdirection: a deceitful using “well before most” industrial pollution when discussing early SLR acceleration.

Let’s be clear, the review team does not (did not have the time) to dissect every distortion in the DOE’s 151-page broadsheet. If they had, the review publication might have been 40,000, rather than 400, pages long. Sticking with SLR, here is another example of the DOE broadsheet authors’ deceit.

• Truth: There are multiple and complex factors involved across all elements of climate science and change. Almost nothing has a single-point source nor a single impact. Actual honest scientists and scientific work understands and incorporates this truth. And, this is true when it comes to sea level rise. As an example, “global” SLR is an average that can mask dramatic differences regionally (and even quite locally). For example, when it comes to the Chesapeake Bay area on the U.S. East Coast (and, for example, Virginia Beach) there are multiple factors in play:
  • General Sea Level Rise due to melting glaciers and ice caps along with thermal expansion
  • Currents (Gulf Stream slowing leading to more SLR) and being on West Atlantic (water pushed by Earth’s rotation meaning more SLR on west side of oceans)
  • Land shifts which, for this area, is subsidence due to water withdrawals (human action) and millenial-long post-ice age land sinking
  • Let us be clear, all of the above are in play but general Sea Level Rise is roughly responsible for 70-80 percent of the region’s SLR with land shifts perhaps 20-30%.
• DOE Deceit: A truthiness misdirection pointing at subsidence, suggesting it is the most significant factor. Here is how the first paragraph of the SLR section ends:
  • “The largest sea level increases along U.S. coasts are Galveston, New Orleans, and the Chesapeake Bay regions – each of these locations is associated with substantial local land sinking (subsidence) unrelated to climate change”
  • Consider the points above and you will recognize that the DOE’s broadsheet’s sentence is both a true (even factual) statement but absolutely not truthful.

Above, I promised to comment on something that might cause some amusement (even if just painful chuckling). The climate distorting DOE broadsheet recognizes that there is sea-level rise going on and links this to climate change, even if downplaying the extent of SLR and deceiving as to climate impacts. We can contrast this with Donald Trump’s scientific genius and conclusions as to sea level rise:

“The oceans will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years“

Simple truth: 2024 SLR exceeded what he asserts will occur over four centuries. Even the DOE propaganda broadsheet’s authors couldn’t go as far as Trump in rejecting basic science and reality. The question to wonder: will, if he ever becomes aware of it, Trump blisteringly attack these five for rejecting his Truth?

ACTION ITEM: There is much out there to leverage in commenting on Trump DOE’s anti-science work and there are only hours left to get in a comment. Here is an easy way to add your voice calling for honesty and truth from the government.

Climate change policy and politics has long faced a Catch 22:

• Politicians don’t speak about the climate crisis and about climate policy since polling (seems to) shows that people don’t really place a high priority on climate action.
• Voters don’t think of climate policy action as critical and urgent because leaders (politicians) aren’t speaking about this as an urgent issue.

One of the (many) reasons why “Energy Smart Jeff” Merkley gained my enthusiastic support and fundraising when running (successfully) for Senate in 2008 was his recognition of that Catch 22 and determination to confront it head on. In one conversation (paraphrasing, don’t have the exact words in front of me), Jeff explained that

Climate change is a critical issue and we must act. My political consultants are telling me not to talk about climate and clean energy, that these aren’t winning issues. If we don’t talk about these issues, people won’t know they’re important and we won’t have support for action when we have the power to act. That is why I speak about climate and clean energy in every meeting and every single day of this campaign.

With Merkley’s words and approach in mind, let’s take a brief look at what might be the most important 2023 election in the United States: the Virginia governor’s race. Virginia’s next governor, Democratic candidate Abigail Spanberger, has some good words on energy and climate on her home page and some good clean energy and climate approaches in her Energy Affordability Plan. As an example, from the campaign’s website:

“Abigail knows that Virginia has the opportunity to be a national leader in clean energy, including by bringing high-paying clean energy jobs to the Commonwealth through investments in offshore wind, rooftop solar, and other renewable energy sources.
“In Congress, Abigail supported commonsense incentives for increased deployment of clean energy sources such as wind and solar, as well as electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage.
“As the next Governor of Virginia, Abigail is committed to making sure Virginia can meet its energy needs while growing its economy and keeping costs low for Virginians.”

However, those policy geek details don’t seem to seep into Spanberger’s public engagement.

Let’s take two social media sites as surrogates to understand this. Spanberger’s BlueSky and neo-fascist xTwitter accounts.

• In 614 BlueSky postings, there have been 0 uses of the words climate, solar, wind, renewable
• So far in 2025, the same result at xTwitter.
  • Note that solar does show up in older posts on that account, such as her 2019 announcement that she’d installed solar on her house roof.
  • As does climate, such as this 20 November 2018 sharing of a report on climate change: “A report released today details how climate change and the extreme environmental events it causes are threatening our health, economy, infrastructure, & security. Congress must acknowledge this threat, work to fight the impact, and address the causes.”
  • As does renewable, specifically in a 2018 campaign fundraising tweet: “Only 2 hours left to meet the June fundraising deadline! Investing in renewable energy means we can safeguard our natural resources while creating good-paying jobs here in Central Virginia. Help us make it happen by donating $7 to #Flipthe7th“

Let’s be clear, the 100s (no, 1,000s) of social media posts do not necessarily reflect all of Abigail Spanberger’s priorities nor her policy agenda nor are they likely (mainly) even posted by her (as opposed to a social media team). They do, however, provide a reasonable surrogate for how she and her campaign are thinking what matters politically and of how they are engaging with Virginia’s electorate.

It isn’t as if Spanberger isn’t aware of climate issues nor that she has been unwilling to talk about them in past campaigns. In 2019, for example, she emphasized that climate change is “one of the greatest and most imminent threats to our economy, our national security, and our way of life”. Let’s be clear, compounded by Trump’s climate science denialism and fossil foolish pollution promotion policies, that statement is even truer today.

A simple message to Abigail Spanberger: For Virginia’s and Virginians’ prosperity and security now and into the future, BE LIKE JEFF when it comes to speaking forthrightly about climate and clean energy issues.

The Steve Miller Band announced yesterday that it has “cancelled all … upcoming tour dates”:

“The combination of extreme heat, unpredictable flooding,
tornadoes, hurricanes and massive forest fires …”

That list certainly seems a smorgasbord of climate crisis fossil-fueled extreme weather events.  

The band has assessed the danger

“risks for you our audience, the band and crew unacceptable”

The risk assessment: too dangerous.

And, the band points fingers.

“You can blame it on the weather.”

And, well, here we go again: a failure to connect dots, to name names, and shine a spotlight on the climate crisis (and some of its perhaps unforeseen/considered costs and implications).  Did the band fail to go there because of: inability to connect the dots; poor ‘science communication’; fear (note the posting on climate-science denial xTwitter) of vitriolic backlash; and/or, concerns about seeming “political” in ways that could hurt this “classic rock” musician’s popularity and sales in the audience. 

As to that fan base, consider this classic climate-science denialism Instagram response to the announcement

“the weather has been the weather since the existence of Earth.
What’s the real reason?”

Well, perhaps news reports of climate-changed enhanced/worsened flooding here, heat waves there, extreme weather everywhere made the travails of touring simply too much for 81-year old Miller.  Maybe he just doesn’t want to faint — or, well, have crew or audience members — fainting in the heat or risk their lives to get to an event through flooded streets. 

What might be truly newsworthy, btw, here is the cancellation of an entire tour (not a specific event) due to the climate crisis even as the band tells us to “blame it on the weather”.

The rhetoric of the Trump-Vance-Musk (TVM) Administration is that dodgy DOGE is focused on eliminating government Waste, Fraud and Abuse (WFA). Putting aside the Madoff-like accounting fraud of DOGE claims, the true Waste, Fraud and Abuse is the Musk-Trump Cabal’s actions. The General Service Administration’s (GSA’s) announcement of shutting down the GSA’s electric charger infrastructure and plans to sell off the 25,000 electric vehicles in the GSA-managed federal fleet is a significant example of true WFA.

When it comes to the GSA EV WFA, the discussions to date have been mainly stove-piped: talking specifically about, for example, direct acquisition (purchase) prices without considering fully-burdened costs and benefits. Additional costs would include, for example, procurement decision-making, land-use, training of government staff to maintain a different fleet type, other opportunity costs, and lost value by a rapid sell-off of a large fleet of vehicles. Far (FAR) more important are the enormous benefits that the TVM GSA EV WFA are throwing away that include

• Reduce energy and maintenance costs of EVs compared to ICE
• Reduced pollution (health and other impacts)
• Improved safety and efficiency of EV compared to ICE vehicles
• Improved public servant productivity
  • reducing illness and sick leave costs
  • improved productivity (due to quieter and more comfortable driving experience; lessened noise and air pollution around government offices; …)
• Moving the United States down the path toward electrification of the economy (with massive efficiency, health, etc benefits)

While articles might headline $1B in potential cost of the TVM DOGE GSA EV WFA, the true costs are likely more than an order-of-magnitude larger.

As Hurricane Helene devastates much of the Southeast, hitting hard a state whose governor (and government) has banned the words “climate change” from most official documents, some might be wondering when President Biden will pull out a sharpie and whether nuclear weapons are being discussed in the White House Situation Room.

For any failing to understand the reference, some reminders:

• #SharpieGate trended in 2019 when Trump edited the map projecting Hurricane Dorian’s path using a Sharpie pen. What really mattered here was that the editing was, well, simply wrong and thus provided — from the Oval Office — explicitly false information about a life-and-death issue. Worsening the situation were Trump operatives attacking National Weather Service professionals who sought to get correct information out to protect lives (and uphold their responsibilities). The egregious nature of Trump political appointees defending Trump’s actions led the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chief Scientist to take the incredibly unusual (and, well, courageous) action of issuing a public statement defending the NWS personnel.
  • What would a President Trump do in a hurricane in September 2025? What would he (and his team) do to any public servant audacious enough to put public safety and American lives before helping make Trump look better and avoiding any hint of Trump making mistakes?
  • How laughable is it to even reflect for a moment to think that President Biden would do anything so anti-science and stupid as Trump’s deploying that Sharpie? And, just as ridiculous is to suggest that President Harris would do anything like that or that a Harris Administration would act to suppress maliciously the work of civil servants working to protect Americans.
• When briefed on a hurricane, Trump queried about blowing it up with a nuclear weapon. Oh, btw, that happened multiple times.
  • First, let’s recognize that this is part of Trump’s lifelong fascination with nuclear weapons (and card-carrying membership in the Dr. Strangelove crowd of ‘why have ’em if we won’t use them’) along with Trump’s other looks to nuclear weapons during his White House occupation that concerned even his appointees. Putting aside that reckless dalliance considering nuclear weapons use against other countries, attempting to blow up hurricanes with nuclear weapons is, simply, a bad idea. Looking again to those scientists at NOAA who Team Trump attacked, this is an idiotic idea:

“aside from the fact that [using nuclear weapons to destroy a hurricane] might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”

Again, does any rational human being think that President Biden and Vice President Harris are asking why we haven’t blown up Hurricane Helene with nuclear weapons?

Consider Trump’s Project 2025 and climate

Despite continued GOP climate science denialism, Ron Desantis’ and Florida Republican legislature’s ‘don’t hear, don’t see, don’t speak’ approach to climate change, and Trump’s Project 2025 cohort celebrating fossil foolish pollution, the science is clear: burning fossil fuels has heated (and is heating) the planet and there are mounting risks for humanity (let along the rest of the earth’s ecosystem). Hurricanes like Helene are, honestly, best described as unnatural disasters. The damage that burning fossil fuels has done to the climate system has created conditions for worsened and stronger storms. Hurricane Helene’s storm surges across much of the Florida Gulf coast are, for example, the largest ever recorded. Additionally, sea level rise increased due to fossil fuel burning impacts on the climate have further worsened the storm surge. (As an example illustrating this impact, about $8B of Hurricane Sandy’s $45B in damage is attributable to human-caused increases in sea level.)

There is a painful reality that we must recognize: humanity has already done significant damage to the climate system and, no matter what we do going forward, the pain will worsen before the situation stabilizes and then, hopefully, improves.

A corollary reality: we have a very clear choice in the election about that future:

• If he again occupies the White House, Trump (and his Project 2025 cohort) will disregard science (including Project 2025’s agenda to dismantle NOAA) and glorify ignorant measures to accelerate the climate crisis while undermining paths to mitigate pollution and adapt to the increasingly significant climate impacts.
• The Harris-Walz Administration, in glaring contrast, will respect (and promote) scientific conclusions and experience, pursue measures to mitigate (reduce) climate-impacting (and, honestly, other) pollution, execute programs for greater resilience to climate emergencies, and develop paths for adaptation to the climate change impacts that cannot be mitigated.

The choice is ours to make.

I pride myself on striving to think systems-of-systems, seeking to understand co-benefits and multi-solving along with potential negative impacts. Sometimes, however, I find myself strikingly (and, even, pleasantly) surprised when I fail to do so as was the case when first reading of induction stove-tops with built-in battery systems (about Impulse Labs‘ stovetop). Honestly, as written in a comment there, I found this “quite interesting and innovative” but wondered about the cubic space implications in high-value kitchen real estate (thinking of that very high traffic utensil drawer under my induction stove-top) and the complications of integrating the stove’s battery into a household and, more broadly, into grid and grid services. Legit “systems-of-systems” questions but, even with the evidence staring me in the face, I missed some of the really intriguing reasons why this is a power systems-of-systems approach.

In a Volts interview, Channing Street Copper Company‘s chief scientist, Sam Calisch, spoke of how having the battery made their induction stove and oven a plug-and-play into any 110 outlet without a requirement for an electrician for wiring a 220 plug (and, likely, do electrical panel work). One of the core principles of Energy Smart action is “make the better option the easier option”. Even without considering the reality that electricians are seemingly in short supply in every community across the country, removing rewiring from the path toward kitchen electrification is one less barrier to going with an induction stovetop. That this could save $1,000s isn’t insignificant either. And, speaking dollars and cents, that battery is eligible for tax credits above and beyond those the IRA offers for induction stovetops.

Calish highlighted how the ease of installation is playing out in the commercial market. Channing Street, in its initial sales, is selling their stove-top/oven for $6000 (final cost $4200 after battery tax credit + $780 if switching from a gas stove + additional benefits if income qualified). DC’s housing authority has, according to Calish, told them that these — in a systems-of-systems cost analysis — will be price competitive if they can be delivered for $5000 (not sure before or after potential IRA benefits). In other words, for the same price as other options, residents of those units would get a quality induction stove-top along with a four kilowatt hour battery.

That battery is critical to enabling the 110, rather than higher power, plug-in as the battery will supply power for peak loads (such as the few minutes to bring water to a boil or multiple burners on high power at once). That battery will also allow (limited?) cooking amid power outages and, with an outlet on it, allow plugging in other devices (phone/computer charging, lighting, …) during the outage.

In my inbox this morning, an email from The Climate Capitalist promoting a debunking post The Six Great Climate Fictions. Putting aside whether these are the right “six great”, this otherwise thoughtful post is yet another example where reality-based thinkers, seeking to support accelerated moves to climate action, think like a scientist (rather than following Randy Olsen‘s advice to Don’t Be Such a Scientist) and approach debunking erroneous arguments in a counter-productive manner.

Making clear that myths are myths with factual arguments is, in many ways, quite straightforward. Someone claims the earth is flat. Using satellite images (including live feeds from the International Space Station), our own senses of how we see things over the horizon (top appears first) and the nature of lunar eclipses, astronomical observations (even, again, with our own eyes), and otherwise, the evidence has been beyond overwhelming for millennia that the earth is spherical, not flat. All well and good and pretty compelling it might seem for left-brained analytical thinkers. However, that isn’t reality as regurgitating facts to debunk myths, especially well-established myths, only goes so far. And, the 21st century, that isn’t so far as cognitive science has made abundantly clear that “facts don’t change minds“.

Thus, to boost effectiveness, myth busting requires a deliberative approach. One good place to start: The Debunking Handbook. Just six pages of text, straightforward, with clear and direct advice. One of the core points: emphasize truth, not the myth. This includes sandwiching myths with truth and avoiding other ways of overly calling attention to the myth (such as putting the myth in bold characters).

There has been quite a furor over gas stoves (how they worsen human health along with cooking (far) less efficiently and safely than magnetic induction stove tops) over the past few months. During cold winter snaps, one can see and smell the signs of yet another indoor air quality disaster: wood-burning fireplaces.

ACTION ITEM NOTE: Open wood fireplace dampers are an energy inefficiency disaster. When not using the fireplace, seal the flu either with a DIY plug or buy something like a Fireplace Draftstopper. You’ll save money and have a more comfortable home.

The Washington Post‘s Allyson Chiu, amid the WashPost’s ramp-up of its climate coverage, wrote an article about fireplace issues and how to address them that appeared in the January 3rd Health & Science section as “How to light a greener blaze in the fireplace” (online 23 Dec). Amid a generally good laydown of issues with chimneys and fireplaces along with ameliorative options to those problems, this opening paragraph on “wood-burning fireplaces” go so much right and something quite fundamental wrong by implication:

A traditional open wood-burning fireplace “emits the greatest amount of pollution and is typically the least efficient,” according to a spokesperson with the Environmental Protection Agency. Most of the heat goes out through the chimney, making it a poor way to warm a home.

What is so right there?

• Wood-burning increases, significantly, indoor air pollution (with significant health impacts) and is a major contributor to outdoor pollution in many places.
• And, they are highly inefficient. When being used, a very good open wood fireplace might hit 25% efficiently but more often is 10 percent or less.

As to what is fundamentally wrong? Any implication that wood fireplaces actually contribute to warming a home.  Traditional fireplaces are actually disastrous as home heating systems