The SUMR (Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotors) project at US Department of Energy
(ARPAE) aims to design extreme-scale blades that are 200 meters long. Such blades can power 50-megawatt wind turbines and will be taller than the Eiffel Tower.
Whichever you play around with the various datasets, what awaits the planet is really scary. Please share this map and make everyone aware what lies ahead for their country/region!
Absolutely agree with your point here that we are presented with trade-offs in the real world.
The data simply shows the facts. Many deductions can be made. For example, it highlights the hypocrisy of Europe in criticizing countries like India and China when Europe bought 60% of the Russia's fossil fuel exports. They face a trade off too. Everyone does.
Another deduction can be - this reality was known to Europe and the West in general (deep fossil dependence on Russia) and the trade offs that would arise if a war started - still the war happened. It is not impossible to believe that this war could have been avoided.
..wait for it...reserve :) Roughly 11x its active army personnel are on standby and can be called in to serve in times of war.
Does anyone know if this has always been true (in times of US and Vietnam far e.g.)?
For better context, Vietnam population is 97million.
It is indeed quite a pickle we are in. I agree with you on not reaching 1.5 but humanity has always surprised me and the world has reinvented itself over and over again so I have some faith that we will figure out a way forward in this case too.
An astonishing (and rather troubling) paper was published in Nature a few days ago. It traces the ownership of 43,439 oil & gas production assets through a financial system of 1.8 million companies, to their 'ultimate' owners. Then, it works out what would would happen to the value of these assets if the world moves to cut emissions and limit global heating to 2℃.
The authors used their analysis to figure out who ultimately owns these stranded assets - for example, managed funds, creditors, pensions and banks. They then propagated the effect of losses in asset valuation throughout the financial system of ownership. They found that in only a medium re-alignment of asset valuations, financial companies would face $681 billion of losses.
It turns out that once propagated through the finance industry, majority of these losses will be experienced by the UK and US - see the chart in the link.
So what does it mean? Either,
(a) Oil and gas fields remain at their current valuation, which is consistent with >3degrees of warming (immeasurable suffering all around) OR
(b) We decide to tackle climate change, i.e. oil and gas assets are currently mispriced and will re-align, sending shockwaves through financial portfolios and causing huge losses. Unfortunately not just for big financial institutions but for most individuals with a pension or investments.
There are nuances to the above of course. Great paper overall - Must Read.
