I'm insanely proud that I have paved the way for PhDs like this in the NEONresearch.nl program.
First here is @swapnil_shekhar explaining in 2 minutes how he will research the diffusion of zero emission trucks and why that matters a lot.
Here the brilliant @EmielVanDruten (who is also a consultant for @WitteveenBos) explains how his PhD will shed light on how sector coupling can give us more renewable energy with less costly and labour intensive updates of the electricity grid.
And did you see we (in this case Zenmo.com) are hiring modelers to show policy makers how more autonomous power for prosumers, cooperations etc can give us more renewable energy sooner? (In Dutch.) zenmo.com/vacatures/
Master students also welcome!
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I think we need to start talking about psychological health of climate scientists. They are talking each other and us into a depression. Depression is real and it's a soul destroying unhelpful affliction to have.
Climate scientists are most severely impacted it seems. I think that's not because they know more but because they only focus on the problems (not on solutions) and because perversely they are more important when the problem is worse.
I've scanned hundreds of climate scientist papers the last few months and they almost always boil down to: "here's some new way to look at precisely how bad it is."
Even when you don't actually find that the future looks worse than you thought, that's a pretty horrible job.
Capitalism is not inherently bad. Many people just seem confused about income redistribution. I would love twitter to tell me why that is because I simply don't understand.
Quick🧵about how money could make use happier by redirecting it where it does the most good.
First of all, being super rich doesn't make you happy. That is not just the observation of this consultant to the super rich. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Extra money is super important when you are poor, but the added value per $ quickly decreases once you get richer and in US it tops at around $75k per year. cnbc.com/2015/12/14/mon…
Among all the doomism surrounding climate change it's good to realize we have the capacity to reduce the damage done, as the way we are dealing with natural disasters shows.
Of course severity and frequency of storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves could still be increasing (models certainly predict they will in the future) but how much of that can we already see in the data?
And then a little magic can happen on twitter...
World renowned expert @RichardTol asks @OurWorldInData to take a look at a dataset about precisely that, that lacks a user friendly interface due to funding that dried up.
Unfortunate news: battery prices will probably not go down for a few years as the price of metals (especially Lithium) soars. We really need new mines!
🧵 lithiumstoragebattery.com/news-lithium-b…
This was predicted already of course (e.g. by @JamesTFrith of @BloombergNEF), since improvements in manufacturing mean that the biggest costs are now to be found in the cathode material that now accounts for more than half of the battery cost.
One extra reason to phase out gas quickly is that production is so "leaky" that emissions are much higher than previously thought.
Abandoned fracking wells and countries like Russia are especially big culprits.
See the academic work of @howarth_cornell who put this on the map.
Stopping leaks and reducing venting during maintenance helps but as long as the worst polluters go scot-free it's like pushing water uphill.
Remember that e.g. Russia didn't sign the methane reduction pledge on #COP26.
I LOVED this piece by @_HannahRitchie that explains how the doomism almost made her choose another career but how she (now a data ninja at @OurWorldInData) sees reason for hope in facts and numbers.