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Spraying rice with sunscreen particles during heatwaves boosts growth Zinc nanoparticles, a common sunscreen ingredient, can make plants more resilient to climate change – in a surprising way By James Dinneen 4 November 2024 Spraying rice with sunscreen particles during heatwaves boosts growth Zinc nanoparticles, a common sunscreen ingredient, can make plants more resilient to climate change – in a surprising way By James Dinneen 4 November 2024 Sunrise over rice terraces in Bali, Indonesia Aliaksandr Mazurkevich / Alamy A common sunscreen ingredient, zinc nanoparticles, may help protect rice from heat-related stress, an increasingly common problem under climate change. Zinc is known to play an important role in plant metabolism. A salt form of the mineral is often added to soil or sprayed on leaves as a fertiliser, but this isn’t very efficient. Another approach is to deliver the zinc as particles smaller than 100 nanometres, which can fit through microscopic pores in leaves and accumulate in a plant. Researchers have explored such nanoparticles as a way to deliver more nutrients to plants, helping maintain crop yields while reducing environmental damage from using too much fertiliser. Now Xiangang Hu at Nankai University in China and his colleagues have tested how zinc oxide nanoparticles affect crop performance under heatwave conditions. They grew flowering rice plants in a greenhouse under normal conditions and under a simulated heatwave where temperatures broke 37°C (98.6°F) for six days in a row. Some plants were sprayed with nanoparticles and others weren’t treated at all. When harvested, the average grain yield of the plants treated with zinc nanoparticles was 22.1 per cent greater than the plants that hadn’t been sprayed, and this rice also had higher levels of nutrients. The zinc was also beneficial without heatwave conditions – in fact, in these cases, the difference in yield between treated and untreated plants was even greater. Based on detailed measurements of nutrients in the leaves, the researchers concluded that zinc boosted yields by enhancing enzymes involved in photosynthesis, as well as antioxidants that protect the plants against harmful molecules known as reactive oxygen species. “Nanoscale micronutrients have tremendous potential to increase the climate resilience of crops by a number of unique mechanisms related to reactive oxygen species,” says Jason White at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. The researchers also found that rice treated with zinc nanoparticles maintained more diversity among the microbes living on the leaves – called the phyllosphere – which may have contributed to the improved growth. Tests of zinc oxide nanoparticles on plants like pumpkin and alfalfa have also shown yield increases. But Hu says more research is needed to verify this could benefit other crops, such as wheat. Journal reference Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2414822121 Any delay in reaching net zero will influence climate for centuries Reaching net-zero emissions is essential for halting climate change - but even after we achieve this goal, parts of the planet will continue to warm. Delaying net zero will worsen these effects By Madeleine Cuff 11 November 2024 Ice collapsing into the water at Perito Moreno Glacier in Los Glaciares National Park, Argentina R.M. Nunes/Alamy Even a few years’ delay in reaching net-zero emissions will have repercussions for hundreds or even thousands of years, leading to warmer oceans, more extensive ice loss in Antarctica and higher temperatures around the world. Nations around the world have collectively promised to prevent more than 2°C of global warming, a goal that can only be achieved by reaching net-zero emissions – effectively ending almost all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions – before the end of the century. But once that hugely challenging goal is achieved, the planet will keep warming. “Even if we do reach net-zero emissions – and that has to be a goal – we still have lots of aspects of the climate that are going to evolve for a very long time,” says Andrew King at the University of Melbourne. Climate modellers are using a new generation of models that capture the way carbon is absorbed and released by land and the ocean to simulate how Earth’s systems might respond to a stable net-zero emissions world. Most of these experiments simulate a net-zero world for around 100 years, but King and his colleagues have gone further, simulating 1000 years of net-zero emissions. The team modelled scenarios in which emissions continue to rise rapidly before reaching net zero at five-year intervals from 2030 to 2060. This resulted in seven simulations of net zero under different levels of warming. They found that although warming over land stabilises once net zero is achieved, the deep ocean continues to warm for centuries to come, as heat from surface waters descends, pushing up global mean temperatures. “The unfortunate thing is that we have changed the climate, and in some aspects it is going to keep going further and further away from its pre-industrial state for quite a long time, even under net zero,” says King. Certain parts of the world will experience more ongoing change than others. In the northern hemisphere, most land regions reach peak warming within a few centuries of net-zero emissions being reached. By contrast, the Southern Ocean continues to warm for 800 to 900 years. This leads to a long-term decline in Antarctic sea ice over the centuries, and more warming in Australia than elsewhere. The later we achieve net zero, the larger these changes will be, suggest the simulations. Delaying net zero by just five years results in a warmer ocean, lower levels of sea ice and higher average temperatures around the world. For example, if net-zero emissions are reached in 2060, under a high-emissions scenario, the city of Melbourne will warm by a further 1°C after that point. “If we equivocate or delay in reaching net zero, it will take a long time for that delay to be washed out,” says King. “The faster we get to net zero, the better.” While some aspects of the climate system will keep changing after net zero, others appear to return to a pre-industrial “normal” in the simulations. In some areas, such as the Mediterranean, rainfall patterns return quickly to 19th-century levels. The El Niño and La Niña weather patterns, which have seen their heating and cooling effects strengthened by climate change, will also damp down again once we reach net zero. Much more research is needed into these kinds of regional change under net zero, says King, who cautions that the results are based on just one Earth system model. Plus, the findings may not factor in every relevant climate “tipping point” that could trigger sudden, irreversible changes to regional climate systems at a certain level of warming. Nevertheless, Paulo Ceppi at Imperial College London says the results may enhance our understanding of how net-zero emissions will change regional climates. “I am sure there are some aspects here that would be robust across models,” he says. An important thing to keep in mind is that the simulations aren’t direct predictions of a net-zero emissions future. For one, the model simulated emissions being cut from high levels down to zero overnight, rather than a more realistic tapering down over decades. “It’s completely unrealistic to go to net zero overnight,” says Ceppi. Meanwhile, the simulations assume the world stays at net-zero emissions. Climate campaigners hope that once humanity achieves net zero, there will be an effort to remove even more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to start reversing some climate impacts. Journal reference Earth System Dynamics DOI: 10.5194/esd-15-1353-2024 2024 is set to be the first year that breaches the 1.5°C warming limit This year’s average global temperature is almost certain to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial times – a milestone that should spur urgent action, say climate scientists By Madeleine Cuff 6 November 2024 Firefighters work to control a blaze in California in July ABACA/Shutterstock 2024 is now almost certain to become the first year on record when average temperatures exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, breaching the threshold set by the Paris Agreement. “At this point, barring an asteroid impact or a massive volcanic eruption… I think it’s safe to say this will be the first year above 1.5 degrees,” says Zeke Hausfather at US non-profit Berkeley Earth. Last year, the average surface temperature across the globe was 1.45°C above the 1850-1900 average, which is used as the pre-industrial baseline, with a margin of error of 0.12°C, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It uses an average of five major datasets to arrive at this figure. For the first eight months of 2024, the average temperature surpassed that for the same month in 2023, says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The average for this period was 1.54°C above pre-industrial levels, according to data from the Met Office, the UK’s weather service. Although the average for September was cooler than at the same time last year, there is little doubt that 2024 as a whole will exceed the global target for the first time. “It would take quite a notable and unusual cooling event to bring the annual average below 1.5°C,” says Colin Morice at the Met Office. Temperature datasets collected by various agencies and institutions around the world vary slightly, mainly due to differences in how ocean temperatures have been collected and analysed over the decades. But the five main datasets are set to indicate 2024 temperatures settled around 1.5°C above pre-industrial times, with several just above this mark, says Hausfather. “While not all of the datasets are going to be above 1.5°C this year, it is going to be the first year where the average… is above 1.5°C,” he says. The primary driver of rising global temperatures is human-caused climate change, says Carlo Buontempo at Copernicus, the European Union body that monitors climate. “This is not coming out of the blue,” he says. “The main driver for this warming is increasing greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.” A recent, strong El Niño pattern – the Pacific Ocean phenomenon that generally brings higher global temperatures – is another significant factor. But the scale and persistence of the heat has shocked many experts, who expected temperatures to subside once El Niño ended in May 2024. Instead, the record-breaking heat continued well into the second half of the year, puzzling scientists. Competing explanations abound. The sun reached a so-called solar maximum in 2024, slightly increasing the solar radiation hitting Earth. Meanwhile, changes to shipping pollution rules in 2020 have reduced air pollution over the world’s oceans, potentially magnifying heat absorption from the sun as certain pollutants are known to have a cooling effect. But research into the impacts of these factors is still inconclusive, says Piers Forster at the University of Leeds, UK. “We do not completely understand why this extra spike in surface temperatures has continued,” he says. He warns it may be that the rate of climate change has accelerated. “If you just look at historical temperature changes, they do not increase in a monotonic way – they seem to go in fits and starts,” he says. The world has already experienced a 12-month period above 1.5°C of warming, with temperatures between July 2023 and June 2024 1.64°C above pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus. Nevertheless, the passing of the 1.5°C threshold in one calendar year is a totemic moment for the climate community. The limit has become a guiding light for it, after being included as a “stretch goal” in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Yet years of failure to cut global emissions have made a breach almost inevitable, despite research since 2015 showing warming beyond 1.5°C would be far more dangerous than first thought. However, a single year above 1.5°C of warming will not count as a breach of the Paris Agreement – which is judged on a 30-year average. On that basis, most climate models expect the 1.5°C threshold to be exceeded at some point in the early 2030s, unless the world makes immediate, dramatic cuts to emissions. Nevertheless, Hausfather hopes 2024 will underscore how fast the world is changing due to human activities. “Hopefully it will serve as a wake-up call for policymakers, and then history will look back on it as the year when the world changed and started finally taking this problem as seriously as it deserves,” he says. Forster echoes this sentiment, arguing it should spur leaders into taking action to cut real world emissions and adapting societies to prepare for future climate change. “I want to try as much as possible to connect this passing of 1.5°C with what we have to do to protect our society from the impacts of climate change,” he says.

A while back someone asked about the amount of energy it takes to batteries( @JamesPa). At the time I did some quick research, and as Hannah Richie has found out, it is not that easy to get to the bottom of this, and she has a lot more resources than I do. She produced this report, from this study. Well worth reading (I would have copied and pasted, but it does not do a good job. There is also this report about recycling existing RE technology. Low-carbon tech needs much fewer materials than it used to; this matters for resource extraction in the future Improvements in material efficiency + recycling = super-circularity. Hannah Ritchie Nov 12, 2024 The concept of a “circular economy” has always sounded nice and aspirational: running an economy on refurbished and recycled materials so that the amount of new materials you need to extract is close to zero. I have to be honest and say that I was always a bit skeptical of this vision: wonderful in theory, but just not how the world will ever work. Of course, a fossil-fueled economy is as far from circular as you can get. Fossil fuels are dug up, burned once, and the process repeats. It requires continuous extraction, with no hopes of recycling. Low-carbon technology gives us some opportunity to get closer to a circular model. Many materials can be recycled, even if they’re not being recycled right now (see my previous post on battery recycling stats). Yes, we will need a large ramp-up period of mineral extraction as the world shifts to renewables, batteries, and electric cars, but the hope is that we then reach a better equilibrium where materials for new solar panels and turbines are coming from old ones that have reached the end of their life. Total circularity seems unlikely, but maybe we could get close. But I think this circularity discussion actually underestimates how much of a difference low-carbon technology could make in the model of the resource economy. That’s because we underestimate, forget, or are not aware of the massive improvements in material efficiency of these technologies. A solar panel built today uses far fewer materials than one a decade ago, and the same goes for batteries. My vision of circularity has always been a 1-to-1 conversion or loop: the best we could achieve would be turning one old solar panel into one new solar panel, or using my old phone battery as the battery in my new phone. Sure, the recovery rate of materials might be 80% or 90% rather than 100%, so one old panel provides a little less than a full new one. But the overall aim is to get as close to “one in, one out” as possible. But, if we’re able to achieve very high recovery rates for valuable materials, then a solar panel built 20 years ago can now supply the materials for far more than one today. It’s not just “circular” — it’s what we might call “super-circular” or, to use environmental language, “regenerative.” That’s because it now takes far less silicon, lithium, silver, cobalt, glass, or other materials to produce a solar panel, turbine, or battery than it did in the past. Material intensity has improved massively (and this has been one reason why prices have plummeted). It’s surprisingly hard to find material intensity data for these technologies. If anyone has access to good public data on this, please let me know—I’d love to build a dataset that people can use and explore. But I did find data on polysilicon and silver for solar panels, which I’ll use as an example. In 2004, one watt of solar PV needed around 16 grams of poly-silicon. By 2023, this had dropped to 2 grams. One-eighth of the amount. Source: Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (2024). A solar panel installed in 2004 will be reaching the end of its life sometime this decade. Now, if we could recover most of that silicon (which isn’t common today, but scientists are making progress on methods to recycle it back into silicon suitable for new panels), then theoretically it could be enough to make eight new panels.1 Realistically, recovery rates wouldn’t reach 100%, so let’s assume it’s only 80%—that would still be enough for six new panels. With the 16 grams of polysilicon, you could have made one watt of solar power in 2004, 2 to 3 watts in 2014, and 6 to 8 watts today. ⚠️ Note that for simplicity — and to make the key message more soluble — I’m going to assume the wattage of a solar panel hasn’t changed over time. In other words, the change in silicon needed per “panel” is the same as the change per watt. This is so I can help people visualise the transformation. Or take the example of silver. The amount of silver needed per watt of solar fell by 20% for every doubling of global cumulative capacity.2 That’s very similar to the “learning curve” of solar costs: every doubling in cumulative capacity led to a 20% drop in costs. In 2010, solar used around 55 milligrams (mg) per watt. By 2020, this was around 20mg. And recent figures from Jenny Chase (legendary solar analyst at BNEF) have it at around 10 to 13 mg in 2023.3 So, the silver used in one solar panel built in 2010 would be enough for around five panels today (or four if recovery rates are just 80%). By the time a 2010 panel reaches the end of its life — in 2035 or 2040 — silver consumption might be as low as 5mg. In this case, it’d be enough for 10 panels (or “only” 8 if the recovery rate is 80%). High recycling and recovery rates will be key This is very different from the standard vision of “circularity,” where, at best, one product at the end of its life is reincarnated into one new product. Instead, it could look something like the model below—at least for some minerals.4 For other materials, efficiency improvements might be much lower, so the amount of steel used decades ago would still only be enough for one panel today. We might be able to achieve some degree of circularity even while demand for products such as solar panels and batteries continues to grow. Even if this super-circular model is too optimistic, improvements in material efficiency could, at the very least, offset the amount of material that’s lost in recycling processes that are below 100%. If recycling rates recover just 80% of the material, as long as the material efficiency has improved by 20%, there will be enough material in one panel, turbine, or battery to make another one. No extra minerals needed. I’ve heard Michael Liebreich make this point several times before on his Cleaning Up podcast. Of course, this model depends on achieving high recycling rates, especially recycling materials to a “good enough” grade that they can be reused in low-carbon technologies. I admit, this is a significant contingency. But if we can overcome it, there’s enormous potential to reduce pressure on new mineral extraction for decades to come. Material consumption data is hard to come by, and academics are constantly lagging behind You’ll notice that I focused on polysilicon and silver here. That’s because they were the two minerals that I could find public reports and discussions on. There is a dire lack of publicly available data on the material intensity of different technologies. How much cobalt and lithium do lithium-ion batteries use compared to a decade ago? I couldn’t find any good numbers. If you know of datasets that document the changes in material use of low-carbon technologies over time, let me know! I’d love to build a small dataset that others could use. This lack of transparency is probably one of the reasons why so few people are aware of how dramatic the improvements in material efficiency have been. Even academics and analysts writing key papers on the state of the energy transition and material requirements can’t keep up. I was only aware of the amazing silver story because of this exchange between Seaver Wang and Jenny Chase. The fact that researchers can’t keep up with developments in low-carbon energy is, in many ways, a good thing. It means things are moving quickly. But it also means that a lot of the literature is too pessimistic, using outdated assumptions on costs, and the amount of materials we’ll need in the future. 1 Hoseinpur, A., Tang, K., Ulyashin, A., Palitzsch, W., & Safarian, J. (2023). Toward the recovery of solar silicon from end-of-life PVs by vacuum refining. Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, 251, 112181. Preet, S., & Smith, S. T. (2024). A comprehensive review on the recycling technology of silicon based photovoltaic solar panels: Challenges and future outlook. Journal of Cleaner Production. 2 I'm being a bit conservative here because recovery rates closer to 90% are more likely": Li, L., Zhang, X., Li, M., Chen, R., Wu, F., Amine, K., & Lu, J. (2018). The recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries: a review of current processes and technologies. Electrochemical Energy Reviews, 1, 461-482. 3 Hallam et al. (2022). The silver learning curve for photovoltaics and projected silver demand for net-zero emissions by 2050. 4 This is from her fantastic (and fun) book, Solar Power Finance Without The Jargon (Second Edition).

Is that when it 'sees' a speed restriction sign on the back of a lorry?

Does that mean you won't be coming on here any more?

That is a big statement, what are the reasons?

I have just googled this. Seems that the hot and cold pipes can sometimes suck back the fluids. I would post up some pictures, but the kiddy filter at work has kicked in.

Stop paying the bill and they will disconnect you. I got rid of gas at my holiday home, cost nothing, but that was 32 years ago.

Check with the light manufactures, or a proper electrician, about ventilation/cooling for the spot lights. Many cannot be simply buried into insulation.

Is it freeware, or does it have Apple prices. Are there any free vector packages for iPads? Is Vectornator still about, that used to be free.

That is the best if reasons. When I first went to university in Bournemouth, I had just bought my first place in High Wycombe. I rented that out, lived in a mobile home, and was 10 quid a week better off than my classmates. I did suggest to my Parents that they buy a place for me to live in, got turned down flat. Bournemouth was pretty scummy in the student area around Winton back then, you could get a 3 or 4 bed semi for under £30k. Those places are now, 42 years later, going for around £330k, so 11 times the value. Using the Rule of 72, that is a growth of 1.7%. Not that great when you look at it.

If you have more cars to charge, the chargers will throttle back so that they don't cause too much voltage drop. I think car chargers have to be 'smart' already.

Better with someone else's partner. We are not open evenings, had 15 years of that. (expletive deleted)ing customers turning at at closing time, then when they leave say 'you can go home now'. Apart from the hours cleaning.

My DNO fits 3phase by default, other DNOs may well do the same.

There is a thing called 'diversity'. This is what governs how much power each circuit is likely to take, depending on the type of load and devices fitted i.e. a cooker has a diversity of 1, only thing on that circuit. Bedrooms will be different as the largest loads will be vacuum cleaner, and that is only run for a few minutes. So Google diversity and you will find formula. Or ask @ProDave, though he is working under scotch regs.

Get a cabinet maker in if you want to listen to constant droning/whining all week.

By spacing the UFH pipework to suit the losses for each room. Why a room by room heat loss calculations are done.

I have no idea what is going on. But when sampling (in statistics) you have to make sure that the sample rate is high enough to capture enough data (Shannon sorted this all out and it is why we have MP3s and reliable internet). To me it looks like it is only sampling every few minutes, and they are not coinciding with reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist–Shannon_sampling_theorem

50m2 is about the same as my total floor area, 170m2, would include the walls and the roof. I know what you are say, and using forced air heating with a heat pump is away around it. But then why would you for no runnign cost savings.

Yes. Kills the CoP though. We tend to let houses rapidly heat up from a cold temperature as that is what we have got used to over the last 60 years. We then let them cool down too much, as we know we can easily blast them with 30 kW of power at a delivery temperature around 70°C. Not many people (even in here) ever question, or measure, how efficient their boilers are. Shame that has boilers don't have energy meters on them. Would scare a lot of people when they see efficient numbers in the 50 to 60% range. A lot of people quite gas boilers as being 95% in efficiency. Not many will be once installed. It is a bit like car MPG. I can get better than the official figures, sometimes. But most of the time I am below them. Not surprising as my first journey in the morning has 9 sets of traffic lights, 3 roundabouts, two steep hills, and 5 junctions. All in a 30 MPH zone. And that is over 2 miles. So cold engine, stop start and generally 3rd gear. Bloody amazing that at the end of the week my Mondeo averages out 65 MPG.

Yes, no, kind of. Combustion boilers are usually sized to heat the DHW so they can run a bath or a couple of showers. The space heating power requirements are generally a lot lower. Gas boilers have good modulation i.e. 25 kW down to 3 kW. A correctly sized ASHP of say 6 kW may only modulate down to just below 4 kW. There can be a bit of trickery with the flow temperatures, but to keep the CoP high, they are quite limited in power delivery. This is why they need to be sized correctly. Just fitting an oversized unit would not work, it would sense the return temperature, see it is close to the flow temperature, then throw an error and shut down.

With difficulty as they probably have a different electrical charge to the door. Have been told that graphite coated PS balls 'flow' better, but I have no personal experience.

A heat pump is not used like a gas/oil boiler. You set the temperature you like your house to be at (this can take a few days and a bit of work as the installers usually leave them on default settings) and the heat pump warm and cool as necessary. You won't be needing a wood burner then.

All circuits at night. Just saves having a timer to lock out the space heating and DHW. Wires in and out meter.

Mine has dedicated circuits.

About 150-200mm of PIR.