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Seaver Wang Profile picture
@wang_seaver
Sep 17, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
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New PNAS paper highlights increasing fragility of buttressing ice shelves at the mouths of the Pine Island + Thwaites glaciers in Antarctica, further emphasizing the importance of warming-induced positive feedbacks for ice mass loss + sea lvl rise: (1)

pnas.org/content/early/…
Scientists studying Antarctic ice are paying close attention to Thwaites and Pine Island ice shelves, as they are exhibiting some of the fastest changes among West Antarctic glaciers and could drive considerable sea level rise over timescales of a century and beyond. (2)
The Thwaites Glacier is thought to be particularly important to the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as a whole, which could be significantly destabilized by its degradation. (3)

washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…
Lhermite et al. used satellite images to track signs of damage, namely the dvlpmt of crevasses + fractures, on these ice shelves over 20 yrs of satellite records. They discovered signs of structural weakening that accelerates damage to the ice shelf in a positive feedback. (4)
Downstream ice shelves provide a buttressing or structurally-reinforcing effect on glaciers upstream. The thinning and retreat of floating ice shelves thanks to atmospheric and ocean warming thus destabilizes upstream ice and accelerates seaward flow. (5)
This physical dynamic has been long suspected but is not currently included in ice sheet models used to simulate Thwaites and Pine Island glacier retreat, highlighting the importance of incorporating such feedbacks into modeling work. (6)
As a side note, the paper is open access and features some eye-opening movies of these glaciers flowing seawards and breaking up.

Really impressive to see more multimedia-based data visualization/presentation in papers - science has come a long way. (7)
Ultimately, these findings reinforce what we already knew - that major basins of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet are highly vulnerable to climate change and could produce irreversible contributions to sea lvl rise if destabilized. (8 - END)

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More from @wang_seaver

Seaver Wang Profile picture
Apr 1
In a new piece, I emphasize how the ability to build new upstream metallurgical and chemical plants is crucial to industrial competitiveness and the downstream ability to mass produce drones, batteries, or electric cars.

In other words, what if it’s all the aluminum tech stack? Image
“Raw materials importantly determine the performance or form factor of the final product—the size or thinness of the silicon wafer, the capacity and longevity of the battery, and the strength of a permanent magnet motor.”

breakthroughjournal.org/p/the-aluminum…
The “aluminum tech stack” is a provocation to be sure, not a verbatim thesis. Yet the connections it highlights are remarkable:

- A country producing 15 million tons of aluminum (China in 2010) is coincidently producing 6-7 million tons/yr of carbon based anodes whose production route is similar to synthetic battery graphite.
- I actually forgot to add the statistic that 25% of Chinese aluminum consumption goes to transportation sector applications.
- Common aluminum alloys require silicon metal, which is also a key feedstock for solar and chips. In fact, a number of metallurgical silicon smelters in China are co-located with aluminum smelters.
- Alumina refineries upstream of aluminum smelting recover gallium, a key semiconductor material, as a byproduct. Circa 2012 the world’s largest producer of gallium was the Aluminum Corporation of China.
- Aluminum smelting expertise is highly inter-transferable with rare earth metal refining, a similar electrolytic process.
- Planners and engineers adding 1-2 million tons of aluminum capacity yearly across China can similarly accommodate other electricity-intensive heavy industries.
- Lithium-ion batteries use aluminum foils as the current collectors at the cathode end.Image
Read 14 tweets
Seaver Wang Profile picture
Feb 9
Let’s be clear how much the frame on the aluminum “long green march” story in China has now shifted, from “renewables are cheaper than coal so China is now moving heavy industry to where renewables are!” to “I built a plant here to use cheap coal mined 8 miles down the road, and now the govt is making me buy renewables certificates for 30% of my power needs”

As I do think it’s useful for the climate folks and what I’ll call the "China futurist" folks in this convo to understand what these plants in Xinjiang + Inner Mongolia look like, I’m going to show each of them here while I lay out some thoughts. 🧵

Tianshan Aluminum, Xinjiang 44°25'N 86°04'EImage
Why is this important? I don’t think there’s any question solar/wind will supply much of our future energy. The risk is this:
Hallucinating that solar/wind are *already* cheaper than fossils for directly supplying heavy industry will skew policy + advocacy over the next 5 yrs, lead to inevitable disappointment, and end up further entrenching Chinese dominance of strategic manufacturing.

Xinjiang Jiarun 44°18'N 86°25'EImage
After all, low Chinese solar/wind/battery project costs are likely at the extreme end of what Europeans, Japan, or CAN/AUS/US could hope to bring about 5 yrs from now. If not even the Chinese are jumping to build fully green-powered industrial complexes now, how can leapfrogging towards a solar/wind electrostate vision for say Europe be the key to reasserting industrial competitiveness?

Xinfa Wujiaqu 44°16’N 87°42'EImage
Read 18 tweets
Seaver Wang Profile picture
Sep 18, 2025
Amused that Alexander Zaitchik @newrepublic attacks @billmckibben’s citation of my paper on clean tech minerals in critiquing McKibben’s “ecomodernist optimism” on green growth, yet doesn’t point to anything specifically wrong with my research.

Spoiler: I’m right.🧵 Image
I think this is an example of the shallowness of some pushback against ecomodernism. Despite revering "scientific" refutations of growth, critics often don’t actually read underlying research, let alone offer specific critiques of research they dislike.

newrepublic.com/article/199748…
Zaitchik’s core critique of my work is:
- I find global mineral reserves suffice for decarbonizing the power generation sector to 2050 for nearly all minerals in 75 scenarios.
- but another Cornell/UMichigan study finds copper can’t “be mined fast enough” to electrify the US.
Read 17 tweets
Seaver Wang Profile picture
May 7, 2025
Ketan mocks inertia chatter re: Spain outage while misunderstanding inertia. Inertia doesn’t scale with generation output but rather with spinning generator mass. Spain had 4 reactors online, 2 at 70% power. Inertia equivalent to 4 reactors at full power!

More thoughts below.🧵 Image
In his blog post + thread, Ketan shares ~10 graphs of Spanish grid data to show how in April 2025 Spain’s nuclear fleet was generating at historic record lows. Except it’s largely misleading as nuclear generation is a poor proxy for the % of grid-forming resources on the grid. Image
Inertia scales w kinetic energy of spinning generators, which are synced to grid at fixed rpm even if output to the grid is reduced.

Spain: 2/4 nuclear units at 70% power but inertia equiv to 4 units at full power. This is in line with other past spring/fall shoulder seasons. Image
Read 31 tweets
Seaver Wang Profile picture
Mar 11, 2025
21 House Republicans just wrote a letter urging continued IRA energy credits. Most have solar/wind projects or clean tech factories in district, or are in swing districts. THREAD🧵

Arizona 6th - Juan Ciscomani - Many solar projects. Battery factories in Tucson. Swing district. Image
California 20th - Vince Fong - Bakersfield area, R+16 district but lots of solar and amazing solar resource potential especially to the southeast near Edwards Air Force Base, some good wind resource in the Tehachapi Mountains. Image
California 22nd - David G. Valadao - Bakersfield area neighboring the 20th district, lots of solar developments in the larger I-5 highway corridor. Competitive district. Image
Read 22 tweets
Seaver Wang Profile picture
Apr 25, 2024
To supply low-carbon power to a grid via nuclear, solar, wind, or grid batteries, how much material must we dig up to build those power plants?
Answer: far less than for fossil fuels, with nuclear needing the least mining. New @TheBTI report by my team:
thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/…
Image
Big takeaways:
Coal? Digs ~1.18 million kgs of rock+coal per GWh for fuel only
Solar+wind have improved much in last 10 yrs
Nuclear still needs least mining + critical minerals per GWh
Cu, steel, Ni, Li, U, Ag offer ways to improve mining footprint further
thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/…
What inspired this analysis? Energy transition mining remains divisive, but discussions often cite flawed or out-of-date data, or end up handwavy. For this analysis, we wanted to make an up-to-date comparison, w transparent methodology using public sources
apps.openei.org/REMPD/
Read 24 tweets

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