Dan Schroeder

@dvschroeder.bsky.social

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Physicist, educator, number-cruncher. Cartoon by the great Cal Grondahl. physics.weber.edu/schroeder

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Dan Schroeder

My main personal rule on social media is, always take a moment to watch Sister Rosetta Tharpe play guitar when a clip comes up on the timeline.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe- "Didn't It Rain?" Live 1964 (Reelin' In The Years Archive)www.youtube.com YouTube video by ReelinInTheYears66

Interesting tidbit from a Utah legislative committee agenda: a Rocky Mountain Power representative will discuss the "potential to separate from PacifiCorp". Could be related to UT's insistence on sticking with coal while CA OR WA want nothing to do with it. le.utah.gov/Interim/2024... 🔌💡

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Dan Schroeder

France is building out parking lot solar, mandated by law. The estimated output will equal that of several of their nuclear power plants. Depending on size, owners have 3-5yrs to comply but projects can be completed in less time. 🧪🔌💡🔌🚗

#France: Car parks with space for 80 cars or more are now required by law to be covered with solar panels. - Parks between 80-400 spaces have 5 years to comply - Parks with spaces of 400+ have 3 years to comply This should be required everywhere! #ClimateCrisis #Electrification

The NYTimes has a new article announcing that US wind generation surpassed coal in March and April. Not sure why this is being reported in August, or why they didn't include a chart to show exactly what's going on. Anyhow here are a couple of charts. 🔌💡

If Ember's estimates are correct, monthly US solar generation surpassed wind for the first time in July. ember-climate.org/data/data-to... 🔌💡

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Dan Schroeder

The carbon cycle has been close to equilibrium through the Holocene; we know this because we measure atmospheric CO2 concentrations in ice cores. But in the past few centuries CO2 has increased by 50%, and is now at the highest level in millions of years due to human emissions.

The wizards at LBNL and USGS have updated their database and interactive map of US PV farms to include those that came online in 2022 and 2023. It now gives footprints and other basic data for >4000 solar farms with a total AC capacity of >70 GW. eerscmap.usgs.gov/uspvdb/viewer/ 🔌💡

This really saddens me. I didn't know BJ well, but he was my academic uncle and his office was near my desk during my last year of grad school. My most vivid BJ memory is of the Loma Prieta earthquake, when I looked up from under the desk to see him standing in his doorway as the shaking died down.

I only met James Bjorken once, as a grad student. @seanmcarroll.bsky.social left me alone with BJ in his office. I was awestruck, but his enthusiasm and genuine interest in knowing what *I*, a lowly grad student, thought about his ideas on dark energy, left me feeling like a king. RIP BJ.

The smoke from wildfires in CA and OR finally cleared this morning. Here's a comparison of 5 days ago (when I shouldn't have been out breathing) and today.

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Mara Wilson

I will once again refer everyone to my friend Emo Phillips and the greatest joke ever told www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjQT...

Voted One Of The Funniest Jokes In The World - by Emo Phillips Crazy Coderwww.youtube.com At The Golden Gate Bridge 1987 - wu tang financial financial crisis financial collapse

I wrote a YIMBY letter to my local paper because somebody had to do it. www.standard.net/opinion/lett...

Letter: Apartments are good, actuallywww.standard.net Look around Ogden these days, and you'll notice a startling transformation. Dozens of new apartment buildings have suddenly sprung up along Washington Boulevard

When Utah hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002, 96% of our electricity came from coal. What will Utah's energy landscape look like when the Olympics return in 2034? 🔌💡 especiallyfuture.blogspot.com/2024/07/powe...

Powering the Next Utah Olympicsespeciallyfuture.blogspot.com It’s now official: Utah will again host the Winter Olympic Games in February 2034. As we look a decade into the future, it’s natural to wo...

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Dan Schroeder

Our new State of the Climate Q2 update @carbonbrief.org: carbonbrief.org/state-of-the... ⬆️ ~95% chance 2024 will be the warmest year on record. ⬆️ 13 month streak set between June 2023 and June 2024. ⬆️ July 22nd 2024 warmest day (in absolute terms). ⬇️ July 2024 onward very likely below July 2024.

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June 2024 Temperature Update 🧵 Warmest June since records began in 1850 13th consecutive record warm month, 12th at least 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) above preindustrial El Niño ends, La Niña & modest cooling expected soon 2024 likely to become the warmest year berkeleyearth.org/june-2024-te...

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My colleague Pol Lezcano on NPR's Planet Money podcast (he starts around minute 22), which focuses on buyer beware in US residential solar. www.npr.org/2024/07/12/1...

Rooftop solar's dark side : Planet Moneywww.npr.org 4.5 million households in the U.S. have solar panels on their homes. Most of those customers are happy with it - their electricity bills have just about disappeared, and it's great for the planet. But...

Finally, a single interactive map of the entire world that shows power plants by type and capacity. From Global Energy Monitor, of course. What an amazing resource. What an enormous amount of work must have gone into it. 🔌💡 globalenergymonitor.org/projects/glo...

Anyone on EnergySky know (or care to guess) why Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind is telling EIA their nameplate capacity will be 2640 MW but their summer capacity only 1265 MW and their winter capacity just 713 MW? How much annual generation should we actually expect from this project?

With the possible restart of Three Mile Island Unit 1 in the news, here's a look at its geographical context in 2007 and 2022. Dots are sized by net generation, with coal in black, gas in orange, and nuclear in violet. 🔌💡 Images from physics.weber.edu/schroeder/en...

Today is World Population Day and that means the UN just released its biannual update of demographic data and projections. So far I'm not seeing much that has changed since 2022 but it's fun to browse all the charts. population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/P...

A new solar+battery farm proposal hardly seems like news these days, but I'll be watching this one, on agricultural land in northern Utah. Based on the acreage it would probably be ~200 MW. Would need a zoning amendment from the all-Republican county council. 🔌💡 www.upr.org/utah-news/20...

A green energy company wants to build a commercial solar facility in Cache Countywww.upr.org Representatives of Enel North America presented their tentative plan to the Cache County Council on Tuesday.

If the message here is that we should all try to emulate Latin America, then I can't agree. There are better ways forward.

I'm excited to announce the latest release of the Sustainable Development Index, now with data through 2022. Costa Rica tops the list! sustainabledevelopmentindex.org

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT INDEXsustainabledevelopmentindex.org The Sustainable Development Index (SDI) measures the ecological efficiency of human development, recognizing that development must be achieved within planetary boundaries. It was created to update t...

Not sure I see the point of ranking countries according to their solar power potential. Nearly all countries have plenty of room for all the solar they'll need in the foreseeable future. (Far from the equator you can't rely on solar in winter but wind+hydro resources tend to be good.)

A huge untapped opportunity: Many of the countries with the largest solar power potential are amongst the last ranked countries in the world when it comes to installed PV generation. www.reuters.com/business/ene...

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Dan Schroeder

I've made some minor improvements to this mini-text on special relativity, and also created a pdf printer-friendly version, linked at the end of the document. All source files are also available. physics.weber.edu/schroeder/r5/ #iTeachPhysics

Relativity in Five Lessonsphysics.weber.edu

Just noticed in the EIA Electric Power Monthly that SEGS IX is scheduled to retire this October. End of an era. 🔌💡 www.eia.gov/electricity/...

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Dan Schroeder

Is the derivative a rhetorical intensifier? mathwithbaddrawings.com/2024/06/25/i...

Is the derivative a rhetorical intensifier?mathwithbaddrawings.com An acceleratingly strange quirk.

Wind+solar+batteries+electric motors are replacing heat engines in more and more places. But thermodynamics is much more than just heat engines! (Most of the article is paywalled so I don't know whether Smith clarifies this.) 🔌💡 #iTeachPhysics www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-triump...

The triumph of electromagnetism over thermodynamicswww.noahpinion.blog How electricity is replacing combustion as humanity's key tool for mastering the physical world.

While the tech giants invest in speculative energy technologies for the long term, their data centers are delaying coal plant retirements and creating demand for new gas plants. Plenty of interesting examples in this detailed WaPo story (gift link). 🔌💡 wapo.st/3KSgQxx

AI is exhausting the power grid. Tech firms are seeking a miracle solution.wapo.st Some data centers need as much energy as a small city, turning companies that promised a clean energy future into some of the most insatiable guzzlers of power

This year's Statistical Review of World Energy is now available from the Energy Institute (formerly BP). Great summary here. Remember EI/BP define "primary energy" of renewables to be the fossil fuel you'd need to make the same electricity. This is the right way to do it! Everyone else is wrong. 🔌💡

Analysis: Wind and solar added more to global energy than any other source in 2023 | @drsimevans.bsky.social @vernerviisas.bsky.social Read here: buff.ly/3VPNqGX

The plan to keep burning coal at Utah's Intermountain Power Plant: hope Trump wins and waives air quality regs, then, since LA doesn't want the power and there's no transmission to send it elsewhere, try to entice a bitcoin miner to locate nearby. 🔌💡 www.sltrib.com/news/politic...

Utah wants to keep IPP’s coal burning — but who will buy the electricity?www.sltrib.com The Utah Legislature pumped the brakes Wednesday on a plan that could have Utah taxpayers assume ownership of a coal-fired power plant in the west-central part of the state that is in the process of b...