With Warming Climate, Planting Zones Are Changing: Animals Are Noticing Too
ICSUSA Article May 2025 - Some 585 gigawatts [GW] or [585,000,000,000 watts] of renewables were addedWhen it comes to science, when it comes to climate, data is always involved to help tell the story, and what a story it is. The implications are enormous. At the beginning of this planting season our warming temperatures offer some new planting opportunities. Note the chart titled, “Albany, NY Warming Planting Zones” from Climate Central that was published April 30, 2025.

Renewable Energy; Good News, Really!
ICSUSA Article April 2025 - Some 585 gigawatts [GW] or [585,000,000,000 watts] of renewables were added and represents 15.1% annual growth. This data is courtesy of IRENA [International Renewable Energy Agency]. Let’s look at the bar chart titled, “Renewable share of annual power capacity expansion.” The calendar year is at the bottom of the graph [from 2004 to 2024] and there are two bars for each year.

Climate News and Weather Forecasts, but Climate Data May Be Hard to Find
ICSUSA Article March 2025 - With a large loss [hundreds at least] of employees, some very experienced, we can expect delays in the gathering, distribution and interpretation of weather and climate data. The pending closure of the NOAA Center For Weather And Climate Prediction at the University of Maryland is one example of the challenges ahead.

The Data Still Stands: Unlike Ice It Will Not Melt Away
ICSUSA Article February 2025 - One case in point is the graph of average temperatures for January [January Warming] in New York City seen here in the graph from Climate Central. The solid white line starts at about 30 degrees in January 1970 and ends at about 35 degrees in January 2025. The darker up and down lines in the background of this graph are the year-to-year variations we normally see in weather data. But when this data is averaged over that period of time, we find there has been a 4.6 degree increase in the temperature over that 50-year period. This is now climate!

Information and Individuals Matter; and More Progress
ICSUSA Article January 2025 - Cordelia Baehr is not exactly a household name. However, she is a person with an education, a career, curiosity, and a desire to make positive changes. In 2015, as a young lawyer in Zurich, Switzerland she read about the 2003 heat wave in Europe that killed an estimated 70,000 people. As she went over the data she noted “that older women died at much higher rates during that disaster, and they are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.” [Nature, p554, Vol 636, 19/26 December 2024 and Photo].

Earth’s Climate System: Complex, But Our Understanding Grows
ICSUSA Article December 2024 - North Country. According to NOAA [National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration], “As plants and animals near the surface of the ocean die and decay, they slowly fall toward the seafloor, just like leaves and decaying material fall onto a forest floor. In addition to dead animals and plants, marine snow also includes fecal matter, sand, soot, and other inorganic dust.”

The Oceans, Their Complexity and Their Major Role in Earth’s Climate
ICSUSA Article November 2024 - The first image here is not a bowl of spaghetti though it may perhaps look like one. They are not Ramon noodles nor elbow macaroni either. If one looks closely, the east coast of North America is visible in the upper left-hand portion, with the North Atlantic Ocean to the right. Here we notice lots of circles, eddies and lines all across the ocean surface. These lines and shades of color show different water temperatures, and they are all higher than normal.The image, published in “Live Science” on 10/25/24 is courtesy of the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.

Warmer Ocean Waters, Climate Tidbits, Renewables and More
ICSUSA Article October 2024 - . . . And now we have Hurricane Milton. A monster of a storm developing in early October that went from Category 1 to Category 5 in less than 24 hours with sustained winds of 190+ mph. Wind shear and other atmospheric conditions have reduced its intensity somewhat, but it is still an enormous and powerful storm. Landfall is expected in central Florida by October 10. It will not be good for the residents and their property.

Earth Time is Changing and Renewables Too
ICSUSA Article September 2024 - Do you feel that things are moving a bit slower of late? Not a lot but just a little. Because they are. It turns out that our planet is spinning just a little bit slower than it has in the recent past. Just as an ice or figure-skater can raise their arms and spin faster, and then lower them to their waist to spin slower, so it is with planet Earth.

New Vocabulary, Intense Rainfall, Renewables, and Then Norway
ICSUSA Article August 2024 - Pyrocumulonimbus clouds. Now that is the word of the day. Pronounce it please, and get familiar with it, as we will be seeing this in print more frequently in the future. Those vocabulary wonks among us might enjoy its technical name, cumulonimbus flammagenitus [CbFg]. According to Dr. Flannigan at University of British Columbia, “They are by far the most intense fires in the world.” See Wikipedia for additional information.

We Have Been Through Energy Transitions Before
ICSUSA Article July 2024 - Red Bay is a fishing village in Labrador in its southeast corner, across from Newfoundland. It is a special underwater archeological site and was a Basque whaling station in the 1500’s. It is a World Heritage Site because some whaling boats are still there, underwater, along with pottery shards that were used for rendering the blubber into oil. The site may even predate the discovery of North America by Europeans in 1492.

Dead Trees Can Talk to Us, in a Way; Our National Electrical Grid
ICSUSA Article June 2024 - Scientists are curious creatures and will go to great lengths to try and get answers to questions. In this case there is an interest in knowing what the climate has been like in the past. Our instrumental records only go back less than 2 centuries [about 1850], so what were the temperatures like 2,000 years ago? Or perhaps 1,000 years ago? A recent peer reviewed paper in the journal Nature examined one way to try and understand what temperatures and climate variability was like before the instrumental record was available. The lead author of the paper is Jan Esper, a climatologist at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. In an ambitious study involving a dozen research groups, the scientists analyzed some 12,000 trees from across the Northern Hemisphere. The cores taken were from live trees, dead trees and historical wood samples from museums and archeological sites.

Change is in the Air, and That Does Not Mean the Seasons
ICSUSA Article May 2024 - Let’s review, for a moment, and take another look at the sources of carbon emissions in the U.S. with this circular chart from the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency]. Recent government policy has been to focus on two of the major sounces of carbon dioxide emissions; namely “Transportation” at 28% of total U.S. emissions and “Electric Power” at 25% of total U.S. emissions. The other sectors of the U.S economy also being addressed includes “Agriculture” at 10%, “Residential & Commercial” at 13% and “Industry” at 23%. The carbon emissions from all of these sources are collectively responsible for our changing climate and increased extreme weather events. . . . .

Dunkelflaute? Zombie Fires? New Issues and Words Used in the Climate Crisis
ICSUSA Article April 2024 - The climate crisis and the associated energy transition to renewables has brought about a new vocabulary for many. An early term was the abbreviation, F.U.D. or Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Some fossil fuel associated organizations, conservative think tanks, and others, support writers to publish articles trying to show the potential downside and problems with the transition to renewable energy. Of course, anything that slows up this energy transition is to their benefit. . . .

Sea Surface Temperatures are High: Good Chance for Another Record Weather Year
ICSUSA Article March 2024 - The oceans, which cover about 70% of Earth’s surface, have absorbed about 92% of the excess heat that results from the high levels of greenhouse gases [GHG] in our atmosphere. Humans have largely escaped the effects of all of this heat, for the moment. Basically, the Earth has a heat imbalance. More heat is now being retained/trapped in our atmosphere [and oceans] than is escaping to outer space. The current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now 424 parts per million [ppm]. This compares to a level of about 280 ppm at the start of the Industrial Revolution in the middle 1700’s.

F.U.D. … A Climate Related Acronym
ICSUSA Article February 2024 - FEAR. UNCERTAINTY. DOUBT.Change is hard. And that applies to most kinds of change. And what compounds this change, this transition when we move from one technology to another, is when money and resistance to change, are involved. As the world [yes, the planet] grapples with climate weirding and extreme weather events the science is clear, we know what needs to be done: we must rapidly reduce the emissions of the greenhouse gas [GHG] carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere. And this means that one of the largest sources of this heat trapping gas, the combustion of fossil fuels [coal, oil, and gas], must be phased out.

“Let’s Do the Numbers,” For Earth’s Climate That Is
ICSUSA Article January 2024 - As one financial analyst says regularly on NPR, “Let’s do the numbers.” And by numbers here, it is not meant to be the S&P 500 or the latest interest rates. It has to do with Earth’s climate and what has happened over the past year and the prior decades. We may remember that Dr. James Hansen, at the Goddard Institute of Space Studies [GISS], testified in Congress in 1988 that a signal had been detected that humans were having an impact on the climate. Even in his retirement he has continued to study and publish data on this topic.

COP 28, … And The Circus Continues
ICSUSA Article December 2023 - At that time the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] was established to “combat dangerous human interference with the climate system.” The goal was to stabilize greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions and the treaty was signed by 154 countries at that time. The country count today is over 190. It also established a decision-making body, the Conference of the Parties [COP] to meet on an annual basis to deal with climate change [Wikipedia]. In 1992 the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was 356 parts per million [PPM].

Dueling Banjo’s: Dueling Energy Report and Giant Oil’s Response
ICSUSA Article November 2023 - The 1972 movie, “Deliverance”, written by James Dickey, was based on his own novel from 1970 with the same title. The movie opens with the tuneful music of Arthur Smith, “Dueling Banjos”. And now, according to a review in the Guardian on 30 Jul 2022, 50 years after the movie was released, the banjo and acoustic guitar that dueled in the music featured in the film, in part symbolizes the conflict and opposing views of many aspects of our society today. And so it is, with a recently released energy and fossil fuel report, and news of large mergers and acquisitions by Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

Climate Chaos: Climate Anxiety and the S-Curve
ICSUSA Article October 2023 - This and That; Climate Chaos Has Many Fronts September 2023 was the month that was. Or was that August? Or July? It is getting hard to remember with extreme weather events of all kinds; fires, floods, and temperature extremes happening so frequently. In late September in New York City people turned out by the tens of thousands to put pressure on the UN, its representatives, and political leaders to take stronger action on climate change and climate chaos. Indeed, it is estimated that some 2 million people around the world were protesting at the same time the lack of action by responsible adults in combatting climate chaos. But look at the front lines of some of the protestors as seen in the image [Sarah Blesener for The New York Times]. The people are all young. Most of them probably are not even able to vote.

This and That; Climate Chaos Has Many Fronts
ICSUSA Article September 2023 - A man named Cedric Ringenbach, a Frenchman, an engineer, and an energy transition consultant has developed materials for a workshop titled, Climate Fresk. His concept, or idea, is that with global warming, or climate chaos, we first need to understand the problem and then develop solutions. Thus began a series of workshops in France that starts with 42 cards to recreate the chain of events that lead to global warming as well as solutions. The cards and charts have information on the Sun’s radiation, greenhouse gases [GHG], their sources and concentrations, deforestation, floods, wildfires, loss of sea ice, ocean acidification and more. Many charts dealt with renewable energy, nuclear power, consumerism, energy- hungry air travel, carbon capture and storage, and other aspects of how we got to where we are today and how do we deal with our planet’s heating. The game is played in nightclubs, bars and other public spaces and with the aid of a facilitator, the participants are asked to arrange the cards in a logical sequence on a table or sheet to represent the causes and consequences of climate change. More than one million people have participated in these events.

The “Out of the Mouth of Babes” Proverb Shows the Wisdom of Youth and Helps in Our Fight Against Climate Chaos
ICSUSA Article August 2023 - This move towards a charging station standard will help the transition from ICE’s [internal combustion engines] to EV’s and address the largest source of greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions in the U.S. This is in line with the national objective to stop producing new internal combustion vehicles by 2035. And, reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a critical objective as recent ‘climatic chaos’ events have demonstrated. Phoenix, Arizona had an unprecedented 31 days in a row of temperatures above 110 degrees Fahrenheit and one daily high of 119 degrees this summer. A new record. Its’ average high for July was 102.7 degrees, also a new record.

Geologists Say We Are in the Holocene Epoch; Others Call it “Anthropocene,” Some, “Pyrocene”
ICSUSA Article July 2023 - Let us review a recent “climate” event we all shared to some degree. It illustrated the urgency of many climate scientists and some policy makers for the need to take faster and stronger action on reducing carbon emissions. Experts agree that significantly hotter temperatures and severe drought enabled more than 10 million acres of this northern [boreal] forest in Quebec, Canada to burn. It was a wildfire. Then, the counterclockwise rotation of the weather system brought to the U.S. the smell of smoke … and haze consisting of tiny particles … lots of them. In early June New York City had the worst air quality in the world! That includes Delhi, Beijing and all other cities normally viewed as having polluted air. Approximately 80 - 100 million Americans were living under a “Red” air quality alert. The air was considered dangerous to breathe for people with asthma, pulmonary [lung] and heart conditions.

Solar: Reducing Carbon Emissions from Transportation and Power Generation
ICSUSA Article June 2023 - The combustion of fossil fuels still accounts for most of the electrical energy the world uses but renewables are growing rapidly. See the graph labeled, “EU Solar Farms Now Produce More Power Than Coal Plants.” For the first time “the EU transition to clean energy hit a milestone in May, solar panels generated more electricity than all of the bloc’s coal plants for the first time.” The graph [by EMBER] from a recent article in Bloomberg New Energy Finance [BNEF] shows the two lines converging with solar [the orange wavy line] ahead of coal [the black curvy line.] The declining amount of coal power over the past 8 years and the growing contribution of solar is a significant milestone. The generated amount of solar power of ~26 TWh [TeraWatthours] is enormous.

Perspective: The Nations Clean Power Goals Will Require Changes In Our Views
ICSUSA Article May 2023 - All aspects of a particular install have certain costs associated with the choices made. Trackers are more expensive than fixed mounts, lower ground mounts are cheaper than the taller pole mounts, etc. And then we have agrivoltaics whose definition is the use of land for both agriculture and solar photovoltaic energy generation. It is also called agrisolar, dual use solar, low impact solar, together with solar grazing which is a variation where livestock graze in and around solar panels.

Connectedness, The Recent Climate IPCC Report, and More
ICSUSA Article April 2023 - IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] Sixth Assessment Report [AR6], Summary for Policymakers. It was released on March 20, 2023. See cover photo of report consisting of a landscape with two curving bridges in misty clouds. This AR6 report summarizes and integrates the recent climate data, impacts and findings since AR5 was issued in 2014. In the very first Paragraph A.1 the report states: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”

In Time?: Globally, The World Invested $1.1 Trillion in 2022 on Renewables
ICSUSA Article March 2023 - Their plan is to plant some five million seeds of seagrass over the next few years that will absorb carbon from the atmosphere. It will also create fish habitat and restore “really valuable and important marine habitat.” Ms. Thomas goes on to say, “we have got very short time windows. We have to wait for the tide to go out. Once the tide has gone out, we can lay out our equipment and then we can get set up.” The group will continue to move up the coast and go on to Anglesey, Wales next year.

In Time?: Globally, The World Invested $1.1 Trillion in 2022 on Renewables
ICSUSA Article February 2023 - And then we have: “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the Earth.” — Henry David Thoreau

A Distant View of Earth: “Earth Set” from Beyond the Moon
ICSUSA Article January 2023 - Geopolitics appears to make politicians see the benefits of renewables. With Russia turning off most of the natural gas supply to Europe the leaders there responded. The amount of solar power in the European Union [EU] soared by almost 50% in 2022. Indeed, the EU installed a record 41.4 GW of solar last year “enough to power the equivalent of 12.4 million homes.” Germany installed the most solar power of any other country in the block [8 GW], followed by Spain with 7.5 GW installed.

Antarctica: A Birthday of Sorts, The Antarctic Treaty
ICSUSA Article December 2022 - What they are finding is that the warmer ocean waters are circulating under the seaward edges of this 74,000 square mile glacier, named Thwaites, and melting it from underneath or the bottom. It is loosening it from its contact with the ocean floor. The forward portion is no longer “pinned” or anchored to the sea floor. This work was published April 9, 2022 in the journal “Scientific Advances.” And its speed of flow into the ocean is increasing.

Permafrost Regions: What is Happening There?
ICSUSA Article November 2022 - The quick answer to this question is: we really don’t know all that we need to know. The temperatures in these 15 boreholes across Alaska are all increasing with some approaching 32 degrees F. The open boxes are data from “Northern Alaska” while the solid boxes are from “Interior Alaska.” The methane and huge amount of organic matter trapped in the soil, along with any carbon dioxide present, will be released into the atmosphere as this melting permafrost adds significantly to the GHGs in the atmosphere.

Science and Research: Understanding the Workings of Our Planet
ICSUSA Article October 2022 - The ocean as we know, plays a huge role in our planets’ climate system. It absorbs about 50% of our carbon dioxide [CO2] emissions, and about 90+% of the excess amount of infrared heat brought about by the greenhouse gases [GHG] we emit. Much of that CO2 is taken up by phytoplankton which are microscopic marine algae or microscopic plants. And, these plants contain chlorophyll, and in sunlight take up the dissolved gas, lives and grows. Of course, as part of the food chain we also have zooplankton, small animals that just love to browse on the phytoplankton. And then, in turn, they become food for still larger organisms. You get the picture. As these creatures die the carbon in their bodies is released and much of it falls, like rain, down through the water column to the ocean floor. Here it can be stored for long periods of time effectively removing it from the climate system. The overall process, amounts, storage times and more are not known with clarity and this is where the Alvin comes in. Experiments and dives are planned to better understand this process, its significance, and how it impacts and influences Earths’ climate complexities.And then we have things happen which are hard to explain and understand; war and human actions that are disasters for Earth’s climate. And this is not easily predictable.

Transportation and the Transition Revolution
ICSUSA Article September 2022 - The data [FuelEconomy.gov] and image [Karin Kirk] titled “Gasoline powered vehicle: …” is from Yale Climate Connections. The car and arrows show that about “80% of the energy is lost [wasted] to various inefficiencies.” Only about “16-25% of original [fossil fuel] energy goes to wheels” to move the car forward. And, hopefully, this transition and reduction in carbon dioxide [CO2] emissions will be in time to make a serious and positive impact on the planet’s “climate crises.” And this transition is none too soon. See photo of female scientist by Crispin Hughes, courtesy by www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01461-y. This scientist in a lab coat with her sign says it very clearly; “Fossil Fuels are Choking Humanity.” One can read in the woman’s face a mix of emotions; concern, worry, empathy and more. She is one of many hundreds of scientists in recent weeks protesting the use of fossil fuels and the resulting climate impacts from the CO2 being emitted into the atmosphere.

Time for a Refresher: Basic Climate Change Science and Current Trends
ICSUSA Article August 2022 - Some of our leaders are beginning to step up to the plate and address the climate crises by displacing fossil fuel use as has Governor Dan McKee of Rhode Island. In July 2022 he signed into law historic legislation requiring that his state provide 100% of its electricity needs by renewable sources by 2033. Next, look at the bar chart titled, “Operating and planned generating capacity additions (2022)”. The vertical axis is in gigawatts and the horizontal axis is months of 2022. This chart is from cleantechnica.com, August 4, 2022 with data from EIA. The first portion is for the first 6 months of 2022, installed capacity, and the second portion is for the second half of 2022, planned additions. Developers and project planners indicate that the U.S. will add 29.4 gigawatts [GW] of new capacity in the second half for a total of almost 45 GW for the year. This is an enormous amount of power with the bulk of it coming from solar and wind.And yes, NIMBY [not in my backyard] is an issue as more and more renewables are installed. So, entrepreneurs and planners are looking at some creative solutions.

It’s All About Time, Do We Need a New Name for Earth’s Condition Today?
ICSUSA Article July 2022 - The Holocene, which began about 11,800 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene, is the current geological epoch we live in today, as defined by the International Commission on Stratigraphy. According to Wikipedia, the Holocene is the most recent Epoch and corresponds to “the rapid proliferation, growth and impacts of the human species worldwide, including all of its written history, technological revolutions, development of major civilizations.” And now, according to some scholars, a new third division within the Quaternary, the Anthropocene, has begun. It is the present time “in which many geological significant conditions and processes have been profoundly altered by human activities,” [Holocene, Wikipedia]. Indeed, a free, new Weekly Science Dispatch, titled “Anthropocene Magazine” is being published.

Let’s Talk About Biomass: Is It Really Part of the Climate Solution?
ICSUSA Article June 2022 - The science and understanding of using biomass have progressed significantly in the last decade. In Forests Adrift the author writes,” there is little question that leaving the biomass in the forest is more effective than converting it to biomass energy. Wood has a very low energy density and it’s wet.” Hegoes on to state “that more carbon is released per unit of useable energy from wood than from even inefficient fossil fuels like coal.” We get a barrage of information directed towards us every day but much of it is “soundbites without context” with little in the way of perspective, interpretation and summary. But when we see a horizontal bar chart titled, “Power Plants Opening and Closing” by Paul Horn of Inside Climate News, the information and status becomes more clear. It cuts through a lot of news items and summarizes clearly where we are in the messy, complicated, and prolonged transition from fossil fuel energy generation to renewables.

PPM Means a Lot in Climate Science: Just Like in Wine or Cooking
ICSUSA Article May 2022 - We may hear about parts per million [ppm] of methane, or carbon dioxide, or some other component in our environment but how can we relate to this? What does it mean? It doesn’t sound like much in quantity; but its impacts may be anything but. One way to try and get a handle on and understand what is one ppm, is this example: go 16 miles in one direction, turn around, and come back one inch. That is about 1 ppm. This is calculated as follows: 12 inches/foot x 5280 feet/mile x 16 miles = 1,013, 760. Thus one inch = approximately one ppm in this example. Recent analytical equipment has looked at the aroma and flavor molecules in wine and results show that many chemical agents are at the ppm level, and sometimes even less, and are a powerful contributor to the desirability, flavor and character of a wine. The same applies to cooking where a small amount of a particular spice enhances significantly the flavor of the food.

Energy of all Kinds: Plans for Change do Change
ICSUSA Article April 2022 - The early drafts of the plans had nuclear energy as a major source of power generation but as the disaster unfolded in Japan, and the extent of radiation contamination became known, the plans changed. And changed significantly. The ensuing nuclear reactor meltdowns caused by the earthquake-generated tsunami forced the initial evacuation of more than 150,000 people from about 140 square miles of land. The overriding German concern was that if a nuclear disaster could happen in a highly advanced nation like Japan, it could happen here [in Germany]. Many people and many politicians thought this might be an unacceptable price to pay. Indeed, in a survey 3 years later only 5% of the public would accept a nuclear power plant in their neighborhood

Doomsday Vault, the Black Box and Renewables: Quite A Mix
ICSUSA Article March 2022 - As we grapple with climate change with all of its implications., some far sighted countries and individuals have interesting projects underway. While some of our leaders can’t seem to “lead” us out of this situation, other groups are taking the initiative to “do something.” There are vaults and then again, there are vaults. This one is not the kind one puts money into, and that has a massive metal door to keep the bad guys out. Nor is it a gymnastic routine. No, this vault is designed for storing something extremely valuable: seeds and the precious germ plasm and DNA contained therein. This is the “Seed Vault” built in and by Norway. As it so happens many countries around the world collect seeds for storage against manmade and natural disasters. These seeds are literally the results of thousands of years of genetic selection by us for characteristics that enable mankind to grow the food we require. Free of charge, countries can store samples from their own collections in this Global Seed Vault safely.

Blue Hydrogen, Green Hydrogen; What’s with these Colors and Their Connection to Climate Change?
ICSUSA Article February 2022 - Let’s take a look at a little bit of chemistry first. Don’t worry, please stay with this and there are no tests. Hydrogen is the first element in the periodic chart and its atomic number is 1. It is a clear, colorless, odorless gas and is highly combustible. Also of note, hydrogen is the most abundant chemical substance in the universe and comprises about 75% of all matter. It exists as a molecule of two hydrogens and is a potent source of energy. The equation here (1) shows that when hydrogen [H2] is combined with oxygen, a large amount of energy is released [kj/mol] along with a byproduct, water [H2O]. This energy can then be used in a variety of ways including generating electricity

Greenwashing? What Does This Have to do With Climate Change?
ICSUSA Article January 2022 - No, this is not an article about the local laundromat, or special detergents that will perform magic on ones soiled items. This is about an attempt by some companies spending millions of dollars in advertising, to project a “clean” and responsible image. This takes various forms. It is done in an effort to promote technologies that either don’t exist yet, or are unproven, or are decades away from possible widespread use. Or, another approach is to suggest that they are recycling materials to minimize waste. The idea seems to be to convince people, and enough policymakers, that we can continue on with business as usual and that there are solutions to address environmental concerns. Then we can continue to consume and burn fossil fuels, and oh yes, continue to buy their product[s].