Miami's crypto-friendly mayor is pitching bitcoin miners on the city's nuclear facilities to shrink their carbon footprint

ewu@insider.com (Ethan Wu) 

© Lynne Sladky/AP Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. Lynne Sladky/AP

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez told the Wall Street Journal he has been pitching miners on his city's nuclear plants and crypto friendliness.

In June, Suarez made a similar pitch to Chinese firms displaced by Beijing's mining ban.

Outside of Miami, too, miners are eyeing other opportunities to link with nuclear energy sources.

Concerns about bitcoin's heavy environmental impact are pushing miners toward carbon-free nuclear energy as cities like Miami look to capitalize on the trend, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who has fast become a beloved figure in crypto circles, told the Journal that he has been pitching bitcoin mining firms on his city's nuclear facilities and crypto friendliness.

A Miami-based nuclear plant owned by Florida Power & Light has been in talks with bitcoin miners over how to get ahold of cheap land near the facility to host mining rigs, Suarez told the Journal. He said worries about bitcoin's eco-unfriendliness "come from the fact that a lot of the mining was being done in coal-producing countries."

In June, Suarez made a similar pitch to Chinese firms displaced by Beijing's mining ban.

"The fact that we have nuclear power means that it's very inexpensive power," he told CNBC at the time. "We understand how important this is … miners want to get to a certain kilowatt price per hour."

While bitcoin mining is a highly energy-intensive activity, using nuclear power generates nearly zero carbon emissions or air pollution - presenting a seemingly tidy fix to a growing concern.

Outside of Miami, too, miners are eyeing other opportunities to link with nuclear energy sources.

Nuclear startup Oklo Inc. for example, has signed a 20-year deal to supply energy to Compass Mining through its mini reactor. Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte told the Journal that he had received requests from other interested bitcoin miners, though federal approval is still forthcoming.

Bitcoin Bros and Nuclear Bros Have Found Common Cause

In the hunt for cheap, carbon-free energy, some miners have sought out partnerships with aging nuclear power plants.

By Shoshana Wodinsky

Cryptocurrency mining is a wildly energy-intensive endeavor that doesn’t only pump out more carbon emissions than some small countries, but is quickly racking up a small mountain range’s worth of electronic waste.

Now, apparently, we can add radioactive waste to bitcoin’s list of unfortunate environmental side effects. According to the Wall Street Journal, a number of bitcoin miners are striking up deals with local nuclear power plants. While nuclear is a carbon-free source of power for mining rigs, there are likely better uses of those electrons.

A handful bitcoin miners have sought money-making deals with some of the country’s struggling nuclear power plants, the Journal writes. One company, the Pennsylvania-based Talen Energy Corp., told the paper that it recently entered a “joint venture” with TerraWulf, a bitcoin operation that bills itself as the answer to “next-generation zero-carbon bitcoin mining,” whatever that means. According to the report, TerraWulf’s new mining facility will be parked next to Talen’s Pennsylvania plant, and will also be the size of “four football fields.”

With the U.S. nuclear fleet floundering as reactors reach—and even pass—retirement age, bitcoin mining could offer a way to keep operating. There are other options, though, including state-led bailouts. That would keep emissions-free electricity floating as the world races to install enough renewables to clean up the grid.

Some states that tried to woo bitcoin miners in an attempt to boost their economies, and nuclear power has played a key role in the sales pitch. Noted bitcoin fanboy and mayor of Miami Francis Suarez, for example, confirmed to Bloomberg that his office had been approaching crypto-mining companies with the prospect of setting up their operations alongside South Florida’s Turkey Point nuclear power plant.

It’s worth noting here that last month, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported on Turkey Point’s many, many safety issues, which includes multiple staff members being fired over the past year for forging safety inspections. So, uh, godspeed to Suarez and his pitch.

Bitcoin has developed a reputation for guzzling electricity and relying on the cheapest available sources, many of which are often heavily polluting. China’s coal plants kept the GPUs churning for the majority of the world’s mining operations until the country began cracking down on bitcoin. Natural gas plants have recently become mining hubs in Upstate New York. Though it burns cleaner than coal in terms of carbon dioxide, gas is also a major source of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas the world’s leading scientists recently sounded the alarm about.

Nuclear power offers zero carbon emissions to generate the power, though other parts of the process are a source of emissions. It also produces radioactive waste, of which there’s roughly 85,000 metric tons in the U.S. Figuring out what to do with it is an ongoing issue.

TC Energy's Coastal GasLink pipeline worksite blocked by fresh protests

Coastal GasLink crews are being prevented from accessing a work area near the Morice River

Author of the article:

Bloomberg News
Robert Tuttle
Publishing date:Sep 27, 2021 

Supporters of the indigenous Wet'suwet'en Nation's hereditary chiefs block the Pat Bay highway as part of protests against the Coastal GasLink pipeline, in Victoria, B.C., Feb. 26, 2020. 

PHOTO BY KEVIN LIGHT/REUTERS FILES


Work on TC Energy Corp.’s Coastal GasLink pipeline has been hampered by protesters who blocked access to a construction site in western British Columbia, threatening further delays to the natural gas conduit.

Coastal GasLink crews are being prevented from accessing a work area near the Morice River, an area that includes “several pieces” of heavy equipment staged for clearing and site preparation activities, Calgary-based TC Energy said in a release.

The access road to a drill site on the river was destroyed and blockades have been erected “to stop the drilling under the sacred headwaters that nourish the Wet’suwet’en Yintah and all those within its catchment area,” the Indigenous Environmental Network said in a news release, adding that there had been one arrest.

The latest flareup of protests is another snag in a project that’s already behind schedule because of COVID-19 work restrictions. The pipeline will supply natural gas to the future LNG Canada site in Kitimat, B.C., billed as the largest private-sector investment in Canada’s history.

TC Energy warned in July that it may suspend some construction work amid a quarrel with the LNG project’s backers over costs and scheduling.

The pipeline has faced opposition in the past from local indigenous groups, including members of the Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chiefs. A standoff between pipeline workers and indigenous groups in early 2020 escalated into Canada-wide protest movement that blocked trains from moving goods and passengers across the country.

Bloomberg.com

In search of ‘Lithium Valley’: why energy companies see riches in the California desert


Firms say what’s underneath the Salton Sea could fuel a green-energy boom. But struggling residents have heard such claims before

An area along the Salton Sea that was once filled with water.

Photographs: John Francis Peters/The Guardian
by Aaron Miguel Cantú

in Calipatria

THE GUARDIAN
Mon 27 Sep 2021

LONG READ

Standing atop a pockmarked red mesa, Rod Colwell looks out at an expanse of water that resembles a thin blue strip on the horizon. The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, has come and gone at least five times in the last 1,300 years, most recently in 1905, when floodwaters from the Colorado River refilled its basin.

A mid-century resort destination, the lake has since become an environmental disaster zone. Its waters, long fed by pesticide-laden runoff from nearby farms, have been steadily evaporating, exposing a dusty shoreline that kicks up lung-damaging silt into the surrounding communities of the Imperial Valley, where rates of asthma are alarmingly high.

But as disastrous as the disappearing Salton Sea is, powerful people believe that a vast reserve of lithium locked beneath it and the surrounding area holds the key to flipping the region’s fortunes.

Global demand for lithium, a metal vital for the batteries in electric cars and computer electronics, is projected to grow by 40 times in the next 20 years as renewable technologies become more ubiquitous. The earth deep below the southern Salton Sea is rich in hot, mineral-abundant brine that contains some of the world’s largest deposits of lithium, and Colwell and others envision a “Lithium Valley” that would establish California as a global production hub and employ thousands of workers for generations to come.

The earth deep below the southern Salton Sea is rich in hot, mineral-abundant brine that contains some of the world’s largest deposits of lithium. 

Colwell keeps track of the Salton Sea’s water levels because as it evaporates, more land becomes available for Controlled Thermal Resources, the Australia-based lithium mining and geothermal power company where he is CEO. On this “blank canvas” of exposed land, he imagines a grid filled with huge, steam-emitting facilities, a cathode manufacturing plant for batteries and solar panels, and rows of crops to remediate the salty white soils.

California is already pursuing a $206m lake restoration plan to try to reverse the Salton Sea’s fortunes. But people in the surrounding communities are still being sickened by the pollution – proof, says Colwell, of state failure.

“Let private enterprise deal with it,” he said of the shrinking lake. “We’re trying to commercialize an environmental disaster.”

California officials estimate about 600,000 tons of lithium could be produced every year in the Imperial Valley – an amount that would upend global supply chains, especially if related businesses like battery and cathode makers decided to relocate here.

As the sea evaporates, more land becomes available for Controlled Thermal Resources, an Australia-based lithium mining and geothermal power company. 

The state has convened a “Lithium Valley” commission to study the potential industry, which envisions thousands of clean energy jobs and an economic leg up for communities along the US-Mexico border, across from Mexicali, whose residents are among the state’s poorest. But many who live here say they’ve heard similar promises before. Some fear that lithium is just the latest example of how their homes and bodies are treated as an industrial experiment, especially as the commercial-level technology needed to get at the lithium is still in its very early stages.

This could be a game changer but we have to have an open mind and not believe the spinFernando Leiva, professor and lithium industry researcher

Fernando Leiva, a professor of Latin American and Latino studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has studied the effects of lithium mining in Chile, where tribes in the Atacama desert, home to the world’s largest lithium brine deposits, have seen little of the profit reaped by international mining companies who exploit the area.

It’s a concern that Leiva, who presented his research on Chile to the Lithium Valley commission this spring, sums up as “disaster capitalism”.

“The private sector now appears – they’re the ones that produced the global climate crisis that destroyed ecosystems, now they’re the ones that are going to save us,” he said.

“This could be a game changer but we have to have an open mind and not believe the spin. Understand the enthusiasm, but take it with a grain of salt.”
A ‘once in a lifetime’ green transition

The US government has a lithium supply problem. More than 80% of the world’s raw supply is mined in Australia, Chile, and China. The latter also controls more than half of the world’s lithium processing facilities and hosts three quarters of lithium-ion battery megafactories in the world; just a handful are in the US.

The Biden administration also believes securing domestic sources of lithium is vital to national security. In June, the administration released a blueprint for jumpstarting domestic lithium production and refining as well as battery manufacturing, and set a national electric vehicle sales goal of 50% by 2030.

  

The future lithium mining site being developed by Controlled Thermal Resources in the Salton Sea geothermal field, Imperial, California.

For Colwell, whose company has been preparing to break ground for eight years, it’s a mad dash to keep up with the increasing demand driven by renewable technologies.

“When music stops, someone’s not gonna have a chair and we won’t be able to produce enough [lithium], it’s as simple as that,” Colwell says. “This is a wonderful time of transition. We’ll never see it again in our lifetime, this green transition – it’s very cool to be part of it.”

In an initial stage of the project, named Hell’s Kitchen Lithium and Power, lithium extraction plants would be powered by geothermal energy, a renewable source of power harnessed when brine is brought up from underground and flashes into steam, spinning turbines.

Wetlands still active with wildlife, as the Salton Sea has receded, in Imperial Valley, California. 

The company estimates an initial lithium and geothermal plant will cost $520m to build and will produce 40,000 tons of lithium along with 130 megawatts of power a year by 2024. Thirty per cent of the energy would be used to extract lithium, and the rest would be sold, Colwell hopes, to car companies for charging stations as well as utility companies in California and Arizona. By decade’s end, as more of the Salton Sea dries up, Controlled Thermal Resources will be able to operate on nearly 7,300 acres.

The heart of the operation will be a minerals facility where small beads are used to suck lithium from brine to produce lithium carbonate, one of two types of lithium products used in electric car batteries. The novel technology has been tested by companies around the world this year, including the in US, China, and France.

Unlike the Salton Sea region, where lithium-rich brine sits deep underground in hot metamorphic reserves, salt lakes in Chile and Argentina don’t produce heat that can be converted to geothermal energy. Minerals from those lakes have typically been extracted using evaporation ponds, a slower process.

EnergySource’s geothermal power facility in the Salton Sea geothermal field. 

Over the last 10 years, rock mining for lithium has increased with global demand, but it won’t be enough to sustain it, according to Dave Snydacker, CEO of Lilac Solutions, the company providing the technology for Hell’s Kitchen.

“Brines contain most of the lithium in the world,” said Snydacker. “We need brine resources to come online and come online fast.”

Controlled Thermal Resources won’t reveal its investors, but in June, GM invested an undisclosed amount in exchange for first dibs on Hell’s Kitchen lithium, part of its $35bn pivot to electric cars.


‘The air is toxic’: how an idyllic California lake became a nightmare

Past promises, little follow-through

For all the hype, lithium in the Imperial Valley is far from an assured thing.

Speculators have sent the price of lithium and other metals soaring, encouraging investment but also threatening the affordability of electric cars. A mismatch of supply and demand for the metal could lead to an industry downturn in the near future, possibly affecting the region’s potential economic revival. That’s just one of several uncertainties, another one being whether governments can stimulate enough demand, sometimes in the face of fossil fuel opposition.

It wouldn’t be the first time that renewable enterprise and other grand ideas have failed to deliver benefits to residents in this community, a patch of desert between the Salton Sea’s southern edge and the US-Mexico border that was transformed into an agricultural breadbasket a century ago.

“The reality here is that we have seen international trade promises that have yet to be delivered, solar promises that have yet to be delivered, water promises … housing, geothermal, wind,” according to Tom Soto, a founder and managing partner at the Diverse Communities Fund who delivered the remarks to the Lithium Valley commission’s first meeting in March.

“There have been a lot of promises that were supposed to have been delivered to the most economically depressed, disadvantaged areas.”
We need more opportunities for children because they leave – they find nothing here in the valleyFlerida Bañueles, resident and agriculture worker

More than a fifth of people in the Imperial Valley live below the poverty line and 85% are Latino; thousands also work here while commuting home to Mexico.

It’s also a land of vast inequality. In the town of Brawley, 20 miles away from 11 geothermal plants clustered by the Salton Sea, residents on the west side live in large houses with manicured lawns. These homes belong to ranch owners, law enforcement officers and other well-off people, according to Miguel Hernandez, the former communications coordinator for Comite Civico del Valle Inc, a community advocacy organization founded by farmworkers.
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Hernandez, 31, moved to Brawley six years ago. He was born in Mexicali but, like many here, he grew up on both sides of the border. At Comite, where he worked until September before taking a job with the state, his work included building environmental literacy among residents.

Miguel Hernandez at the site of a facility that once formulated and stored pesticides and other toxic chemicals

Riding in the passenger seat with the air conditioner blasting, Hernandez observes abandoned buildings on the city’s main street, where faint clouds of dust billow from a nearby trucking company. We drive to the poorer east side of town, where a block of houses sits across the street from a former fertilizer factory now owned by Chevron. The Guardian spoke with residents who lived in that neighborhood about the lithium plans. Most hadn’t heard of them.

Flerida Bañueles stood underneath the pink roof of her house as temperatures reached 120F. Her three grown children had all left for San Diego because of a lack of opportunity here, she said. Bañueles said she wasn’t familiar with the lithium industry but she supported the idea if it brought more jobs to the region.

“I think it will be good. There will be more work – that’s much better because Brawley is very low in many things,” said Bañueles, a former agricultural worker in her 50s. “The jobs here are for six months or less, and we need more opportunities for children because they leave; they find nothing here in the valley.”

The nearby fertilizer plant is indicative of how industry needs have come at the expense of residents’ health, advocates said. In addition to toxic dust billowing from the Salton Sea, the valley’s air is choked by pesticides and diesel emissions from heavy trucks, powder from rock and mineral processing facilities, and even hay. High levels of industrial pollution from Mexicali affect people on both sides of the border.

Several of Bañueles’ neighbors on the block died of rare throat cancers, and she thinks it is related to the fertilizer plant. Dusty debris was removed from the site last year, and Comite Civico del Valle is surveying residents about their health.

The California department of toxic substances control is overseeing the site’s remediation. A spokesperson acknowledged that some residents could be experiencing symptoms from toxic dust but said officials had taken measures to ensure it wasn’t picked up by the wind, including by covering it with coconut fiber covers, monitoring particulate matter, and spraying it with a binding agent.

Children play in a water park on a hot June afternoon where temperatures reached 110 degrees, in Brawley

One selling point of local lithium boosters is that geothermal plants produce far less pollution and greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels do. The climate crisis is having a powerful impact on the region, making heat even less tolerable and depleting the Colorado River, where the Imperial Valley gets its water. (A potential risk is that the existing geothermal plants are located in an active seismic zone, where researchers in 2013 found a correlation between production and an increase in small earthquakes.)

Alan Diaz, a 33-year-old private tutor who works remotely, said that most young people who stayed couldn’t look forward to having social mobility. Public health and the environment were important, he said, but he would support practically anything that brings jobs.

“I want to see more state and federal representatives pay more attention to the Imperial Valley,” he said. “Because since we’re a Democratic county, they feel safe only tackling some issues but not really any hard questions. They should pay more attention to the people still living here.”

Funneling benefits upward

The Lithium Valley Commission, which has been tasked with presenting a state-industry blueprint to the California legislature in October 2022, is composed of lithium executives as well as social justice advocates and regional representatives, including the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and the Quechan Indian Tribe.

The commission is exploring the plans of several companies to expand into lithium extraction. These include Controlled Thermal Resources; Berkshire Hathaway Renewables, which already operates 10 geothermal plants near the Salton Sea; and EnergySource, another player in the region’s geothermal industry.

The commission’s meetings have exposed a tension between corporate aspirations and the surrounding communities that continue to suffer from economic hardships. Berkshire Hathaway and others have pledged to hire hundreds more workers as they expand, but Luis Olmedo, the executive director of Comite Civico del Valle, has his doubts.

Luis Olmedo, the executive director of Comite Civico Del Valle, in Brawley.

Speaking at a meeting in May, he described the geothermal industry’s positive impacts as real but overhyped, and raised concerns the same could be true of lithium development.

“We are living at a time where we have been finding more and more that there have been inequities, and those inequities have resulted in disinvestment and creating extreme economic disadvantages, economic depressed areas, economic depressed neighborhoods.”

Past promises of community investment by renewable energy industries reinforce feelings of doubt. Even lithium is already tainted.

EnergySource is linked to an earlier bust, in which a startup declared it would hire hundreds at a lithium extraction facility attached to EnergySource’s geothermal plant in Calipatria. The arrangement fell through after anticipated investment from Tesla never arrived.

When these projects come in, these benefits tend to be funneled to the more affluentLuis Olmedo, Comite Civico del Valle

Similar disappointments abound: one solar project’s estimated 800 jobs are now a fraction of that after a private equity firm bought it.

Besides potential employment – which may not even benefit local residents if companies decide to hire people from outside the Imperial Valley – there’s a larger question of how to educate residents on engaging in civic life.

“When these projects come in, these benefits tend to be funneled to the more affluent in the valley because they’re the ones who are showing up in the meetings and are civically engaged and investing,” Olmedo told the Guardian.

A case in point was reported in the Desert Sun in 2017. Reporters found that a consulting firm had effectively captured the Imperial Irrigation District, the local authority that supplies water and power (and from which Controlled Thermal Resources is now leasing land). The district had approved solar projects and a battery storage project that personally benefited a small group of public officials and private executives.

One of those officials, James Hanks, is on the Lithium Valley Commission. (In an emailed statement, Hanks disparaged the Desert Sun’s reporting and said lithium extraction “may create hundreds of well paying jobs – jobs that our local, hard-working communities need”.)

The remains of structures at what was once a private club along the Salton Sea. 

For Fernando Leiva, the professor from Santa Cruz, these dynamics call to mind another ideological force alongside disaster capitalism: a “progressive neoliberalism” that is dominant in California and gaining currency worldwide, as western countries lean on private enterprise to lead an energy transition.

“It’s very hard for communities to navigate that confluence of interests,” he said.

In Brawley, across the street from the old fertilizer plant, Manuel Buenrostro stands on his sand-colored porch holding his state ID card, which shows that he just turned 90 years old. He worked decades ago on a ranch in Calipatria near the Salton Sea and recalls seeing dead fish washing up from the increasingly saline water.

Officials had communicated little with residents about how they were minimizing the sea’s pollution, he said in Spanish. He also hadn’t heard about lithium. He caught bits of information on the local news, but he wanted a chance to offer input.

“They haven’t even sent us a letter or anything about it,” Buenrostro said.

Next door, 70-year-old Frank Rodriguez prepares to take his wife to the doctor. A truck driver for a local beer distributor for 49 years – “I made people happy,” Rodriguez said – he was born and raised on the east side and has a daughter who now makes a living in San Diego.

For all the broken promises that he’s seen come and go, he’s still hopeful that lithium could bring better times.

“What I read is there’s going to be more jobs,” Rodriguez said. “But, you know, sometimes those things hold true and sometimes they don’t. I don’t know, man. It’s a good thing for the valley. And I’m kind of optimistic, but I wouldn’t know whether that’s the case or not.”

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Is Spinning Faster

The Hubble Space Telescope has recorded higher wind speeds in the famous Jovian storms in recent years.

By Isaac Schultz

Jupiter as seen on August 25, 2020. Image: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL team

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope keeps an eye on Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a 10,000-mile-wide storm system that has been swirling for at least 190 years and possibly much longer. Recent data from the telescope indicates that the spot’s outer winds have picked up speed in the past decade.

The storm has an “outer lane” and an “inner lane” of winds, both of which rotate counterclockwise. While the outer lane has sped up recently, the winds closer to the center of the spot were actually moving much slower in 2020 than they were back in 2009. The research exploring these wind trends was published last month in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

“Since we don’t have a storm chaser plane at Jupiter, we can’t continuously measure the winds on site,” said Amy Simon, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a NASA press release. “Hubble is the only telescope that has the kind of temporal coverage and spatial resolution that can capture Jupiter’s winds in this detail.”

The pickup in wind speed was steady: less than a 2-mile-per-hour change per Earth year from 2009 to 2020. It’s only because the team had 11 years of Hubble data, and that Hubble can see Jupiter with such precision, that they could pick out the trend. The winds are blowing at around 400 miles per hour, slightly slower than the cruising speed of a commercial airliner.

The counterclockwise winds of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, shown in visible light (left) and in a velocity map (right). Image: NASA, ESA, Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley)

Though Jupiter appears serene in images—a big marble in space—the planet is a turbid ball of gas that is constantly moving. Just last year, an entire new spot popped up on the planet. And for all its fame, even the Great Red Spot is something of an enigma; our modern instruments can’t probe much of the storm besides what happens on the surface.

“Hubble can’t see the bottom of the storm very well. Anything below the cloud tops is invisible in the data,” said Michael Wong, a planetary scientist specializing in atmospheres at the University of California at Berkeley, and the paper’s lead author, in the same release. Wong added that the recent trend is “an interesting piece of data that can help us understand what’s fueling the Great Red Spot and how it’s maintaining energy.”

The Great Red Spot, as imaged by Voyager 1 in 1979.Image: NASA

Planetary scientists do know some things about the spot. It has a tiered structure in which the storm’s higher clouds are toward the center, and the outer edges of the storm are deeper in the planet. The storm is slowly becoming more circular compared to the oval it’s long been.

The storm has been observed for nearly 200 years—maybe even 350 years, as it’s hard to say whether spots described by earlier astronomers were one and the same as the Great Red Spot—but it’ll likely take more time and better instruments to dig deeper into the tempestuous mystery at Jupiter’s heart.

More: Jupiter’s Great Red Spot Is About to Reveal Its Mysteries

Hubble shows winds in Jupiter's great red spot are speeding up

by Space Telescope Science Institute

By analyzing images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope from 2009 to 2020, 

researchers found that the average wind speed just within the boundaries of the

 Great Red Spot, set off by the outer green circle, have increased by up to 8 percent 

from 2009 to 2020 and exceed 400 miles per hour. In contrast, the winds near the

 storm's innermost region, set off by a smaller green ring, are moving significantly

 more slowly. Both move counterclockwise. 

Credit: NASA, ESA, Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley)

Like the speed of an advancing race car driver, the winds in the outermost "lane" of Jupiter's Great Red Spot are accelerating – a discovery only made possible by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which has monitored the planet for more than a decade.

Researchers analyzing Hubble's regular "storm reports" found that the average wind speed just within the boundaries of the storm, known as a high-speed ring, has increased by up to 8 percent from 2009 to 2020. In contrast, the winds near the red spot's innermost region are moving significantly more slowly, like someone cruising lazily on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

The massive storm's crimson-colored clouds spin counterclockwise at speeds that exceed 400 miles per hour – and the vortex is bigger than Earth itself. The red spot is legendary in part because humans have observed it for more than 150 years.

"When I initially saw the results, I asked 'Does this make sense?' No one has ever seen this before," said Michael Wong of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the analysis published today in Geophysical Research Letters. "But this is something only Hubble can do. Hubble's longevity and ongoing observations make this revelation possible."

We use Earth-orbiting satellites and airplanes to track major storms on Earth closely in real time. "Since we don't have a storm chaser plane at Jupiter, we can't continuously measure the winds on site," explained Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who contributed to the research. "Hubble is the only telescope that has the kind of temporal coverage and spatial resolution that can capture Jupiter's winds in this detail." 

Credit: Space Telescope Science Institute

The change in wind speeds they have measured with Hubble amount to less than 1.6 miles per hour per Earth year. "We're talking about such a small change that if you didn't have eleven years of Hubble data, we wouldn't know it happened," said Simon. "With Hubble we have the precision we need to spot a trend." Hubble's ongoing monitoring allows researchers to revisit and analyze its data very precisely as they keep adding to it. The smallest features Hubble can reveal in the storm are a mere 105 miles across, about twice the length of the state of Rhode Island.

"We find that the average wind speed in the Great Red Spot has been slightly increasing over the past decade," Wong added. "We have one example where our analysis of the two-dimensional wind map found abrupt changes in 2017 when there was a major convective storm nearby."

To better analyze Hubble's bounty of data, Wong took a new approach to his data analysis. He used software to track tens to hundreds of thousands of wind vectors (directions and speeds) each time Jupiter was observed by Hubble. "It gave me a much more consistent set of velocity measurements," Wong explained. "I also ran a battery of statistical tests to confirm if it was justified to call this an increase in wind speed. It is."

What does the increase in speed mean? "That's hard to diagnose, since Hubble can't see the bottom of the storm very well. Anything below the cloud tops is invisible in the data," explained Wong. "But it's an interesting piece of data that can help us understand what's fueling the Great Red Spot and how it's maintaining energy." There's still a lot of work to do to fully understand it.

Each loop in this video represents approximately 10 Earth hours or one Jupiter day, approximating what it would look like if the Great Red Spot were constantly illuminated. By analyzing this set of data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, researchers were able to simulate what the wind flow looks like around Jupiter’s Great Red Spot: Just south of the Great Red Spot is an eastward jet and at the southern border is a westward jet. Credit: NASA, ESA, Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley)

Astronomers have pursued ongoing studies of the "king" of solar system storms since the 1870s. The Great Red Spot is an upwelling of material from Jupiter's interior. If seen from the side, the storm would have a tiered wedding cake structure with high clouds at the center cascading down to its outer layers. Astronomers have noted that it is shrinking in size and becoming more circular than oval in observations spanning more than a century. The current diameter is 10,000 miles across, meaning that Earth could still fit inside it.

In addition to observing this legendary, long-lived storm, researchers have observed storms on other planets, including Neptune, where they tend to travel across the planet's surface and disappear over only a few years. Research like this helps scientists not only learn about the individual planets, but also draw conclusions about the underlying physics that drive and maintain planets' storms.

Hubble captures crisp new portrait of Jupiter's storms

More information: Michael H. Wong et al, Evolution of the Horizontal Winds in Jupiter's Great Red Spot from One Jovian Year of HST/WFC3 Maps, Geophysical Research Letters (2021). DOI: 10.1029/2021GL093982

Journal information: Geophysical Research Letters 

Provided by Space Telescope Science Institute

'MAYBE' TECH

The World’s First Polypropylene Made From Waste CO2

by Luana SteffenSeptember 27, 2021

Biotechnology company LanzaTech and carbon transformation company Twelve have joined forces to convert CO2 emissions into polypropylene, a primary polymer used in medical equipment such as syringes and IV bags. The polymer is also used for large-scale furniture, textiles, automotive, and other everyday products like bottle caps. This novel approach will significantly reduce CO2 emissions.

The partnership will combine two platform technologies – the carbon transformation technology and Pollution To Products™ technology – to enable additional product development from CO2 streams, representing one of many ways to scale carbon transformation solutions.

The carbon transformation technology created by Twelve transforms CO2 into materials that are usually made from fossil fuels. Twelve helps brands remove emissions by replacing the petrochemicals in their products and supply chains with carbon-neutral fuels and CO2Made® carbon-negative chemicals and materials.

Meanwhile, LanzaTech’s carbon recycling Pollution To Products™ technology uses nature-based solutions to create ethanol and other materials from waste CO2.

Dr. Etosha Cave, the Chief Science Officer at Twelve, said:

POLYPROPYLENE IS A CRUCIAL MATERIAL FOR ESSENTIAL MEDICAL SUPPLIES AND FOR MANY PRODUCTS WE RELY ON IN OUR DAILY LIVES. TODAY, 100% OF NEW POLYPROPYLENE IN USE WORLDWIDE IS MADE FROM PETROCHEMICALS. WE NOW HAVE A WAY TO PRODUCE THIS CRITICAL MATERIAL FROM CO2 AND WATER INSTEAD OF FOSSIL FUELS, WITH NO TRADE-OFFS IN QUALITY, EFFICACY, OR PERFORMANCE.

 

REPLACING ALL OF THE WORLD’S FOSSIL POLYPROPYLENE PRODUCTION WITH CO2MADE POLYPROPYLENE WOULD REDUCE CARBON EMISSIONS BY AN ESTIMATED 700 MILLION TONS PER YEAR OR MORE.

Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, the CEO of LanzaTech, explained:

BY HARNESSING BIOLOGY, WE CAN LEVERAGE THE POWER OF NATURE TO SOLVE A VERY MODERN PROBLEM. THE OVERABUNDANCE OF CO2 IN OUR ATMOSPHERE HAS PUSHED OUR PLANET INTO A STATE OF EMERGENCY. WE NEED ALL CARBON TRANSFORMATION SOLUTIONS TO TURN THIS LIABILITY INTO AN OPPORTUNITY, KEEPING FOSSIL RESOURCES IN THE GROUND AND OUR CLIMATE SAFE FOR EVERYONE.

Twelve and LanzaTech were awarded a $200,000 grant from Impact Squared to continue their partnership. The Impact Squared grant is a $1.1 million fund designed and launched by the Barclays and Unreasonable Group, a platform for entrepreneurs tackling some of the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. The partners plan to use the Impact Squared grant to reduce the fossil fuel impact of essential products.

Last year, we saw some exciting carbon transformation solutions in the works. For example, engineers from the University of New South Wales were developing a technique that converts CO2 emissions into chemical Lego-like building blocks to make synthetic fuel and plastics. Also, a team of NASA-funded chemists was developing a biohybrid system that would allow mars settlers to transform CO2, water, and sunlight to make drugs, food, and plastic. CO2 and water are abundant on Mars; about 96% of the atmosphere is CO2.

(Credit: Pixabay. Photo edit: Luana Steffen)

OF COURSE HE DOES

Matt Gaetz Defends Tucker Carlson – By Pushing Replacement Theory

Antoinette Siu 

Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz is defending Tucker Carlson and replacement theory — the racist and xenophobic notion that Caucasians are being replaced by migrants being brought into the United States

.

© TheWrap matt gaetz, newsmax

Fox News conservative host Tucker Carlson has been touting replacement theory in recent months. In an interview with Megyn Kelly last week, Carlson said the Biden administration was trying "to change the racial mix of the country." He added: "In political terms, this policy is called 'the great replacement,' the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries."

"The great replacement" is a term commonly used by white nationalists and other racist organizations.

Gaetz's tweeted that Carlson is "correct" about replacement theory as an explanation for "what is happening in America." While Gaetz did not explain further, it's implied he is talking

about the resettlement of Afghans who fled their country after the Taliban took over. He added that the Anti-Defamation League — a non-governmental organization whose mission it "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people, and to secure justice and fair treatment to all" — is a "racist organization."

The organization previously called for Carlson to be fired for accusing Biden with the replacement theory. "'The Great Replacement' theory and its racist and xenophobic roots have served as the inspiration for multiple mass shootings and deadly attacks," the ADL tweeted last Friday.

In response, media mogul and CEO of Fox Lachlan Murdoch came to Carlson's defense, saying that Carlson decried and rejected the theory.

 

Asteroid sample brought back to Earth gets close-up look

by Brown University

The Hayabusa2 spacecraft shot this image of the asteroid Ryugu at a distance of 40 kilometers as it approached the asteroid in 2018. Credit: JAXA

In December 2020, Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft swung by Earth to drop off a cache of rock samples taken from a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. Asteroids like Ryugu are thought to represent the ancient building blocks of the solar system, and scientists have been eager to get a closer look at the returned samples.

Last week, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency shipped one of the samples—a millimeter-sized fragment from the asteroid's surface—to the laboratory of Brown University planetary scientist Ralph Milliken for analysis. Milliken's lab is one of the first in the U.S. to examine a Ryugu sample so far.

Milliken and Takahiro Hiroi, a senior research scientist at Brown, are members of the Hayabusa2 mission's science team. They're interested in investigating evidence of water-bearing minerals on the asteroid, and they've already published research on the topic based on the spacecraft's remote sensing equipment. Now that they have a returned sample, Milliken and Hiroi are eager to compare their remote measurements with the close-up observations in the lab.

Milliken discussed the ongoing work in an interview.

Q: Why was Brown selected as one of the labs to analyze a Ryugu sample?

First of all, we're really excited to be a part of what is an amazing international mission, and it's a great honor to be able to analyze this sample so early in the process. I think there are a couple of reasons why we were chosen. One is the presence of our colleague, Takahiro Hiroi, who is an expert in working with meteorite samples and asteroid science in general, and he also worked on the first Hayabusa mission. There are other Brown connections on the mission as well, including professor Seiji Sugita at the University of Tokyo, a Brown Ph.D. graduate who is the lead scientist on the spacecraft's main camera.

Another reason is that Brown operates a NASA facility called RELAB, the Reflectance Experiment Laboratory. RELAB has a long history—going on 30 years now—of working with extraterrestrial samples dating back to the Apollo missions to the Moon, as well as the Soviet Luna missions. So we have a lot of expertise in making high-precision measurements, working with colleagues to interpret those data and then combining those findings with other observations to get a clear understanding of these samples and what they mean for processes happening beyond Earth.

Ralph Milliken eyes a tiny piece of the asteroid Ryugu. Credit: Brown University

Q: Can you describe the sample itself in a bit more detail?

It's quite small—only about 1 millimeter by 0.5 millimeters. It comes from Ryugu's outer surface. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft made two touchdowns on Ryugu. On the first, it touched down on the undisturbed surface and grabbed some of that material. Then for the second touchdown, the spacecraft sampled a location where an artificial impact crater had been made on the surface in the hopes that it would churn up some deeper material. The idea is to compare that surface material with the "fresher" material underneath that has been shielded a bit more from space weathering effects that can modify the uppermost undisturbed surface. The sample we looked at was from the first touchdown on the surface.

Q: What in particular are you looking for in your analysis?

The Hayabusa2 mission has a big science team, and each of those experts has a different question they're pursuing. Our group is really interested in minerals formed by water and organic compounds. Are they present in these samples, and if so, what is their chemistry and what do they tell us about the role of water in the first few million years of our solar system? Our initial data from the remote sensing instruments on the spacecraft suggested that maybe Ryugu wasn't quite as water-rich as we expected it might be. One hypothesis is that the original asteroid was altered by water, leading to the formation of water-bearing clay and perhaps other minerals, but at some point the asteroid was then heated up to the point where it partially dehydrated. Now that we have the samples in hand, we can take a closer look and see if that hypothesis was right.

Credit: Brown University

Q: What form does the analysis take?

To start, we're doing what's known as near and mid-infrared reflectance spectroscopy, which analyzes the light reflected by the sample at wavelengths longer than what the human eye can see but which tells us about the minerals present. There are similar instruments on the spacecraft that analyzed the asteroid surface on the scale of many meters to centimeters. But in the lab we're looking at the micrometer scale. So we can look at the individual little grains, the complexities of the minerals and their chemistry, and understand if and how water-bearing minerals are present in the sample. Once we have that detailed information, we can go back and look at our larger-scale spacecraft data and ask: Were the hypotheses we made based on those data correct or do we need to revise our interpretations? Being able to have remotely sensed spacecraft data and then samples in hand to do detailed lab analyses really helps us learn how to bridge those spatial scales.

Q: Why is it important to study asteroids like Ryugu?

We think that asteroids like Ryugu represent the primordial building blocks of the solar system. So by learning more about Ryugu, we might be able to learn more about how the solar system formed and how it evolved to be as it is today.

In addition, both Takahiro and I are co-investigators on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission which is currently on its way back to Earth to return samples from the asteroid Bennu and which the spacecraft data have shown is home to water-bearing minerals and organic compounds. We're looking forward to measuring samples from that mission as well, so this analysis of the Ryugu samples will also help us prepare for those future measurements.

Remote sensing data sheds light on when and how asteroid Ryugu lost its water

More information: K. Kitazato et al, Thermally altered subsurface material of asteroid (162173) Ryugu, Nature Astronomy (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41550-020-01271-2

Journal information: Nature Astronomy 

Provided by Brown University 

INSIDER TRADING BY ANYONE ELSE IS A CRIME

Boston Fed president announces early retirement amid trading backlash

Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, announced Monday he would retire early due to health concerns, but the move comes amid scrutiny over financial trades he made in 2020.

© Greg Nash Boston Fed president announces early retirement amid trading backlash

Rosengren said in a statement that he would retire Sept. 30, nine months earlier than required by law, to focus on treating a kidney condition. He had been president of the Boston Fed since July 2007 and joined the bank in 1985.

While Rosengren would have been able to serve until June 2022, when he would have hit the mandatory retirement age of 65 years old, he said he would step down at the end of the week to focus on his health.

"It has been an honor to serve at the Federal Reserve System, in a job where one can be constantly engaged in pursuing the economic and financial well-being of the country and New England," Rosengren said in a statement.

"I know that my colleagues will build on our progress, and continue making a difference for the public we serve."

Rosengren revealed that he qualifies for a kidney transplant after his renal health deteriorated during the pandemic, and hopes to delay the need for dialysis by retiring.

His sudden departure also comes after backlash to a series of recently disclosed investments he made while the Fed was scrambling to prop up markets during the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rosengren owned stakes in several real estate investment trusts and traded several other stocks in 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan also traded millions of dollars in securities last year, according to Journal, as the Fed was taking unprecedented steps to dampen the blow of the pandemic.

While Rosengren's activity was of a smaller scale than Kaplan's, his investments in commercial real estate were notable given his frequent warnings about the challenges facing the sector.

Both asserted that they followed the Fed's rules for financial trades, but Fed Chair Jerome Powell announced last week that the bank would review those standards after intense criticism.

In a Monday statement, Powell nonetheless praised Rosengren and highlighted his work spearheading the Fed's Main Street Lending Program for mid-sized businesses.

"Eric has distinguished himself time and again during more than three decades of dedicated public service in the Federal Reserve System," Powell said.

"In addition to his monetary policy insights, Eric brought a relentless focus on how best to ensure the stability of the financial system. My colleagues and I will miss him.